Works of Sri Aurobindo

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-24_Holidays.htm

HOLIDAYS 

 

There are two rumours in the Ashram concerning holidays.

The first is that You said that this time You are allowing us to go out during the holidays, but that You will not allow it next year. The second is that You do not want us to go out.

I would like to know which rumour is true, because many students have already received Your permission to go out during the holidays.

 

Neither one nor the other is true.

Neither one nor the other is false.

Both of them, and many others, are the more or less distorted expression of my synthesising and harmonising will.

To each one individually my reply, if he is sincere, is the expression of his need.  

17 October 1964 

 

Mother, why and how does one lose one’s spiritual gain by going outside? One can make a conscious effort and your protection is always there, is it not?

 

To go to one’s parents is to return to an influence generally stronger than any other: and few are the cases where parents help you in your spiritual progress, because they are generally more interested in a worldly realisation.

Parents who are chiefly interested in spiritual realisation do not usually ask their children to go back to visit them.

Blessings.

 8 November 1969 

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The students who are not present for the beginning of the school-year on 16th December will not be allowed to attend classes for the entire school-year.

 

November 1969  

Holidays 

 

Shall we say holy days? There are two kinds of them: traditionally, the Lord for six days (or aeons) worked to create his world and the seventh He stopped for rest, concentration and contemplation. This can be called the day of God.

The second one is: the men, the creatures, during six days work for their personal interests and egoistic motives, and the seventh they stop working to take rest and have time to look inwardly or upwardly, in contemplation of the source and origin of their existence and consciousness, in order to take a dip in It and renew their energies.

It is scarcely necessary to mention the modern manner of understanding the word or the thing, that is to say, all the possible ways of wasting time in a futile attempt at amusing oneself.

 

For those in Auroville who want to be true servitors, is Sunday a holiday?

 

In the beginning the organisation of the week was conceived in this way: six days of work for the collectivity to which the individual belonged; the seventh day of the week was reserved for the inner quest for the Divine and the offering of one’s being to the divine will. This is the only meaning and the only true reason for the so-called Sunday rest.

Needless to say, sincerity is the essential condition for realisation; all insincerity is a degradation.  

25 October 1971  

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