Aspiring Swan

ASPIRING SWAN

Front Cover:

A painting by Tehmi offered to the Mother. The Mother gave it to Champaklal on his birthday, 2.2.1967 with the above blessings.

Sri Aurobindo

The Mother

Preface

Many of the readers at some stage in their lives would have wondered about the nature and meaning of their existence and perhaps found themselves ending in complicated questioning. This book is an attempt to help them in their ponderings particularly on their birthdays. A birthday is a gateway between old .years and new, an opening into the future where one can get a wider view and greater understanding as life unfolds itself before us.

Our approach in this book is not through philosophical inquiries. We present in this book a facsimile collection of birthday messages given to Champaklal and Kamalaben regularly since 1940 by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. They used to write these messages every year in a small diary, specially made and carefully preserved for this purpose. Champaklal and Kamalaben are the blessed ones who had continuous records of birthday messages.

Once, after a long and interesting talk with the Mother, Champaklal asked her if she could write for him what she had said. She wrote the following:

Champaklal,

1. Be always faithful to the Divine in your heart.-

2. Let nothing interfere with the absoluteness of your consecration or stop your progress which has been upto now quite satisfactory.

3. Take the present circumstances and the coming

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back of... as a test and face it victoriously.

4. Be vigilant.

12.2.1932

Champaklal decided to put these directions very sincerely in practice and requested Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to evaluate his progress every year against these four criteria. They carried out their assesment from 1933 to 1940 after which they found his progress very satisfactory and told him to go forward straight on the path, always being vigilant.

Champaklal, who is a born artist, used to prepare beautiful cards and folders to be given to people on their birthdays by the Mother with her blessings. The Mother appreciated his art and skill by calling him "the great doer of cards". The Mother had given to Champaklal from 1963 to 1973 big cards and folders with beautiful paintings done by sadhakas with her blessings; a few of these are included here from this collection. Some valuable sketches done by the Mother specially for Champaklal's birthday are also given in this book. The cover page and the symbolic painting given in the book were done and offered to the Mother by Tehmi, an ardent devotee, an artist and a dedicated teacher in Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education. These were later given by the Mother to Champaklal on his birthday.

In Sri Aurobindo Ashram, a birthday is a very special day, a day of decision, a day of aspiration, a day of grace,

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a day of experiencing Light and Ananda and a day of possible renewal when the being is likely to be more plastic. During the early years in the Ashram, sadhakas used to meditate with the Mother on their birthdays and she showered her grace by rekindling the flame of the aspirants in her own way.

We hope the messages given in the book will provide the reader with deeper insights and valuable discoveries in the world of human consciousness, leading to self- revelation and experiences. Someone who is concerned about the world and at the same time the necessity for change in himself must make an earnest effort to be free from religious conformity and tradition, free from the weight of time in order to become a new human being. Birthday may be the most appropriate day to make a beginning and this book perhaps may be a source of help in this direction.

We present this book with great reverence to Champaklal. We offer our sincere thanks to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press and the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Pondicherry, for the cooperation extended by them. We are grateful to ail those who have helped in the publication of this book.

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