Some lines from Sri Aurobindo's India's rebirth

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Namaste

 

Following are some lines from Sri Aurobindo's book India's rebirth.

 

 

" India, the ancient Mother, is indeed striving to be reborn, striving with agony

and tears, but she strives in vain. What ails her, she who is after all so vast

and might be so strong? There is surely some enormous defect, something vital is

wanting in us, nor is it difficult to lay our finger on the spot. We have all

things else, but we are empty of strength, void of energy. We have abandoned

Shakti and are therefore abandoned by Shakti. The Mother is not in our hearts,

in our brains, in our arms.

 

Is it love, enthusiasm, Bhakti that is wanting? These are ingrained in the

Indian nature, but in the absence of Shakti we cannot concentrate, we cannot

direct, we cannot even preserve it. Bhakti is the leaping flame, Shakti is the

fuel. If the fuel is scanty how long can the fire endure?...

 

The deeper we look, the more we shall be convinced that the one thing wanting,

which we must strive to acquire before all others, is strength?strength

physical, strength mental, strength moral, but above all strength spiritual

which is the one inexhaustible and imperishable source of all the others. If we

have strength everything else will be added to us easily and naturally. In the

absence of strength we are like men in a dream who have hands but cannot seize

or strike, who have feet but cannot run....

 

What is our mother-country? It is not a piece of earth, nor a figure of speech,

nor a fiction of the mind. It is a mighty Shakti, composed of the Shaktis of all

the millions of units that make up the nation, just as Bhawani Mahisha Mardini

sprang into being from the Shakti of all the millions of gods assembled in one

mass of force and welded into unity. The Shakti we call India, Bhawani Bharati,

is the living unity of the Shaktis of three hundred million people,[3] but she

is inactive, imprisoned in the magic circle of Tamas, the self-indulgent inertia

and ignorance of her sons....

 

We have to create strength where it did not exist before; we have to change our

natures, and become new men with new hearts, to be born again.... We need a

nucleus of men in whom the Shakti is developed to its uttermost extent, in whom

it fills every corner of the personality and overflows to fertilise the earth.

These, having the fire of Bhawani in their hearts and brains, will go forth and

carry the flame to every nook and cranny of our land. "

 

 

Beautiful.

 

-Regards

Rajarshi