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III
THE NEW AGE ASSOCIATION
The New Age Association was founded in 1964 as a forum of expression for the Higher Course students of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education.
The reader will please note the meaning of the following signs which have been placed after the subjects of the quarterly seminars and the seventh and ninth annual conferences:
* = subject given by the Mother;
‡ = subject chosen by the Mother from a list of proposed topics;
† = subject approved by the Mother. Page – 302 A free talk where each one is able to express what he thinks or feels. 1964
Inaugural Session:
Never believe that you know. Always try to know better. Blessings.
First Seminar:
What is the best way of surmounting the ordinary mental activity?*
My answer: Keep silent.
Second
Seminar:
How to be steady and sincere in our aspiration for the Divine Life.*
Consider the Divine Life as the most important thing to obtain.
Third Seminar:
How to discriminate between Truth and falsehood in the impulses of action*. Page – 303 Those who wish to help the Light of Truth to prevail over the forces of darkness and falsehood, can do so by carefully observing the initiating impulses of their movements and actions, and discriminating between those that come from the Truth and those that come from the falsehood, in order to obey the first and to refuse or reject the others. This power of discrimination is one of the first effects of the Advent of the Truth's Light in the earth's atmosphere. Indeed it is very difficult to discriminate the impulses of Truth from the impulses of falsehood, unless one has received this special gift of discrimination that the Light of Truth has brought. However, to help at the beginning, one can take as a guiding rule that all that brings with it or creates peace, faith, joy, harmony, wideness, unity and ascending growth comes from the Truth; while all that carries with it restlessness, doubt, scepticism, sorrow, discord, selfish narrowness, inertia, discouragement and despair comes straight from the falsehood.
Fourth Seminar:
How to make one's studies a means of one's sadhana?‡
Fifth Seminar:
How to turn one's difficulties into opportunities for progress?‡ Page – 304
Sixth Seminar:
1. What is the best way of making humanity progress?† 2. What is true freedom and how to attain it?†
1. To progress oneself. 2. {a) Freedom from the ego. {b) Get rid of the ego.
Seventh Seminar:
How to serve the Truth?1†
Eighth Seminar:
What is the destiny of Man?‡
Ninth
Seminar:
What is true love and how to find it?‡
Do you know what is true love? There is only one true love, the love from the Divine, which, in human beings, turns into love for the Divine. Shall we say that the nature of the Divine is Love.
1This subject is related to the Mother's New Year message for 1966: “Let us serve the Truth.” Page – 305 Page - 306
Tenth
Seminar:
Why is the Choice imperative?1‡
Because we are at one of the “hours of God” as Sri Aurobindo puts it-- and the transforming evolution of the world has taken a hastened and intensified movement.
Eleventh Seminar:
What is the need of the hour?‡
Sincerity. Do not try to deceive the Divine.
Twelfth Seminar:
Sri Aurobindo and the New Age.‡
Fourth Annual Conference:
To break away from the old traditions and not to obey the old rules is good – but on condition that one discovers in oneself a higher and truer consciousness which manifests Harmony, Peace, Beauty and a superior Order, vast and progressive.
1This subject is related to the New Year message for 1967: “Men, countries, continents! The choice is imperative: Truth or the abyss.” Page – 307
Thirteenth Seminar:
The new outlook on education.‡
What should be the guiding principles of the new ideal of education?
Truth, Harmony,
Fourteenth Seminar:
What we expect from the Mother.
What is the right thing that we should expect from You?
Everything.
What have You been expecting from us and from humanity in general for the accomplishment of Your Work upon earth?
Nothing.
From Your long experience of over sixty years, have You found that Your expectation from us and from humanity has been sufficiently fulfilled?
As I am expecting nothing I cannot answer this question.
Does the success of Your Work for us and for humanity depend in any way upon the fulfilment of Your expectation from us and from humanity?
Happily not.
Page – 308
Fifteenth Seminar:
1. How to remain young?‡ 2. What is the secret of perpetual progress?1‡
1. Since the process of decline and disintegration which brings old age is really the beginning of death, is it possible to prevent getting old without conquering death? Is it possible to keep the body constantly young without complete transformation of its material cells by the supramental Ananda?
How can these questions be answered before the supramental is manifested upon earth? It is only after that manifestation that we may know how it came and how it manifests.
2. Does Your answer mean that the supramental is not yet
manifested upon earth? Or are You referring to its full manifestation down to the roots of
inconscient Matter?
I am speaking of a supramental manifestation evident to all, even the most ignorant – as the human manifestation has been evident to all when it happened.
1These subjects are related to the New Year message for 1968: “Remain young, never stop striving towards perfection.” Page – 309
Sixteenth
Seminar:
1. The God of the Religions and the ONE Divine.‡ 2. Asceticism and true austerity.‡
What should be the attitude of the sadhak of Sri Aurobindo's yoga towards the various forms of God worshipped by different religions in the past and the present? If he continues to worship them, will it create an obstacle to his progress and prevent his realisation of his aim?
A benevolent goodwill towards all worshippers. An enlightened indifference towards all religions. As for the relation with the beings of the Overmind, if this relation exists already, each case must have its own solution.
What will be the role of the different gods of the religions in the supramental age? Can they help in the establishment of the supramental Truth upon earth and in the work of the transformation of Matter?
It is too soon to put such a question.
Seventeenth Seminar:
1. Why is our yoga an adventure?‡ 2. The power of faith.‡
1. In what sense is our yoga an adventure?
It can be called an adventure because it is the first time that a yoga aims at transformation and divinisation of physical life instead of escape from it. Page – 310 2. Why is faith so supremely important in yoga?
Because we are aiming at something quite new that has never been done before.
3. What is its determining power due to?
Your faith puts you under the protection of the Supreme who is all-powerful.
Sixth
Annual Conference:
Above all words, above all thoughts, in the luminous silence of an aspiring faith give yourself totally, unreservedly, absolutely to the Supreme Lord of all existences and He will make of you what He wants you to be. With love and blessings.1
Eighteenth Seminar:
Here is the subject. The salvation of the world lies in union and harmony. How do you conceive this union and this harmony? Blessings.*
1This statement, written to a sadhak on another occasion, was approved by the Mother as the message for this conference. Page – 311
Nineteenth Seminar:
What is the big change for which the world is preparing? How can one help it?1†
1: What is the big change for which the world is preparing?
A change of consciousness. And when our consciousness will change we will know what the change is.
2: How can one help this change to come?
The change does not need our help to come, but we need to open ourselves to the consciousness so that its coming is not in vain for us.
Twentieth Seminar:
Is the aim of life to be happy?‡
Is the aim of life to be happy? This is just putting things topsy-turvy. The aim of human life is to discover the Divine and to manifest it. Naturally this discovery leads to happiness; but this happiness is a consequence, not an aim in itself. And it is this mistake of taking a mere consequence for aim of life that has been the cause of most of the miseries which are afflicting human life.
1This subject is related to the New Year message for 1970: “The world is preparing for a big change. Will you help?” Page – 312
Page - 313
Seventh
Annual
Conference:
You have said in one of Your messages: Page – 313 “The number one problem for How to find back
Become conscious of your psychic being. Let your psychic being
become intensely interested in
Twenty-First Seminar:
The solution of the world's problems lies in a change of consciousness. What is your conception of this change and how to bring it about?‡
The consciousness that has to be manifested is already in the earth atmosphere. It is now only a question of receptivity.
Twenty-Second Seminar:
How to take a leap towards the future?1‡
In one of Your previous New Year messages You had asked us to make an “imperative choice”. Now this year You have asked us to take “a leap”. What is the difference between that “choice” and this “leap”?
The choice is mental. The leap is made by the whole being.
1This subject is related to the New Year message for 1970: “The world is preparing for a big change. Will you help?” Page – 314 How is this leap to be taken?
Each one in his own way.
Why have You used the Biblical term “Blessed” in this year's message? Has it any significance?
“Blessed” is not the exclusive property of the Bible.
1This subject is related to the New Year message for 1971: “Blessed are those who take a leap towards the future.”
Twenty-Third Seminar:
What is our ideal of integral perfection?‡
Conscious union with the Divine.
Eighth
Annual
Conference:
Have faith and be sincere. Blessings.
Twenty-Fourth Seminar:
Sri Aurobindo's call to the youth.‡
What is Sri Aurobindo's call to the youth?
To become the builders of a better future in the light of the Supramental consciousness.
Page – 315
Twenty-Fifth Seminar:
How to be worthy of Sri Aurobindo's Centenary?1†
On the 1st of January this year You said: “A special help has come on to the earth for Sri Aurobindo's centenary year.” Will You please indicate the nature and action of this help and also what we should do to avail ourselves of it?
Those who will be able to become receptive by the mastery of the psychic upon their ego, will know what this help is and will have the full benefit of it.
Twenty-Sixth Seminar:
Education and Yoga.‡
What should be the spirit and character of education when it is undertaken as a part of the discipline of Yoga?
Read Sri Aurobindo.
Ninth Annual Conference:
Sri Aurobindo reveals the future.*
1This subject is related to the New Year message for 1972: “Let us all try to be worthy of Sri Aurobindo's centenary.” Page – 316 In Your message of “In this year of his centenary, his help will be stronger still. It is up to us to be more open and to take advantage of it. “The future is for those who have the soul of a hero.” Will You please explain what You mean by “a hero” in the above message?
A hero fears nothing, complains of nothing and never gives way.
Twenty-Seventh Seminar:
How to collaborate in all sincerity in showing to the world that man can be a true servant of the Divine?1‡
By being a true servant of the Divine.
1This subject is related to the Christmas message of 1972:”We want to show to the world that man can be a true servant of the Divine. Who will collaborate in all sincerity?”
Twenty-Eighth Seminar:
How to reconcile the individual's claim for freedom with the collectivity's need for unity and order?†
Freedom is far from meaning disorder and confusion. It is the inner liberty that one must have, and if you have it nobody can take it away from you. 1This subject is related to the New Year message for 1972: “Let us all try to be worthy of Sri Aurobindo's centenary.” “we want to show to the world that man can be a true servant of the Divine. Who will collaborate in all sincerity?” Page – 317\ (In October 1967, some students were reluctant to speak at the seminars, indicating the difficulties of mental inertia, and shyness and nervousness in speaking before an audience. These difficulties were referred to the Mother who wrote the following reply.)
The chief meaning of this kind of activity is just to solve the difficulties they speak of – inertia, shyness, laziness, etc., etc. And it is just for that I asked you to do it four times a year. The students are not here to have an easy life but to prepare themselves for the Divine Life. How can they expect to get ready if they shun an effort, remain lazy and “tamasic”? Page – 318 |
