March 2012

The Sri Aurobindo Learning Center


SriAuroSym
Sri Aurobindo’s Symbol

The descending triangle represents Sat-Chit-Ananda. The ascending triangle represents the aspiring answer from matter
under the form of life, light and love. The junction of both - the central square – is the perfect manifestation,
having at its centre the Avatar of the Supreme - the lotus. The water - inside the square - represents the multiplicity, the creation.


"As the crust of the outer nature cracks, as the walls of inner separation break down,
the inner light gets through, the inner fire burns in the heart... the soul begins to unveil itself... A guidance, a governance begins from within which exposes every movement to the light of Truth... all is purified, set right, the whole nature harmonised, modulated in the psychic key, put in spiritual order."

~ Sri Aurobindo in The Life Divine

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The soul and the psychic being are not exactly the same thing, although their essence is the same.
The soul is the divine spark that dwells at the centre of each being; it is identical with its Divine Origin; it is the divine in man.
The psychic being is formed progressively around this divine centre, the soul, in the course of innumerable lives in the terrestrial evolution, until the time when the psychic being, fully formed and wholly awakened, becomes the conscious sheath of the soul around which it is formed.
And thus identified with the Divine, it becomes His perfect instrument in the world.


~The Mother in The Psychic Being

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The Dual Being

There are two beings in my single self.
A Godhead watches Nature from behind
At play in front with a brilliant surface elf,
A time-born creature with a human mind.

Tranquil and boundless like a sea or sky,
The Godhead knows himself Eternity’s son.
Radiant his mind and vast, his heart as free:
His will is a sceptre of dominion.

The smaller self by Nature’s passions driven,
Thoughtful and erring learns his human task;
All must be known and to that greatness given
His mind and life the mirror and the mask.

As with the figure of a symbol dance
The screened Omniscient plays at Ignorance.

~ Sri Aurobindo, Sonnets


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Join us for a community meditation with Intention,
each Monday, 5-6pm (An initiative of the Heart-Based Integration
Cluster of the C-B Holistic Living Alliance)

The Center’s regular offerings include:
• Potluck, Savitri reading & meditation, Tuesdays, 6pm
• Monthly study group (usually 2nd Sunday, but call ahead)
• Library & Meditation Dome
• Guest room w/ bath, kitchen privileges, WiFi - $35/night
• Cozy space for intimate workshops, functions

For more info: 719-256-4917 or
sriaurobindolc@gmail.com



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February 2012

Sri Aurobindo Learning Center

“The knowledge possessed by the Yogi is also an answer to
the terrible theory that all that takes place [on Earth] is God’s direct
working. For once you rise to the Supermind you immediately
perceive that the world is false and distorted … How then can the
world be a genuine expression of the Divine? Only when the Supermind
is established and rules here, then alone the Supreme Will may
be said to have authentically manifested. At the same time, we must
steer clear of the dangerous exaggeration of the sense of the falsehood
of the world, which comes to those who have risen to the higher
consciousness. What happened with Shankara and others like him
was that they had a glimpse of the true consciousness, which threw
the falsehood of this world into such sharp contrast that they declared
the universe to be not only false but also a really non-existent
illusion which should be entirely abandoned. We, on the other hand,
see its falsehood, but realize also that it has to be replaced and not
abandoned as an illusion. Only, the truth has got mistranslated—
something stepped in to pervert the divine reality—but the world is
in fact meant to express it. And to express it is indeed our Yoga.”

—The Mother: CWM Vol 3: 162

For monogamy may be the best for the body, but the soul that
loves God in men dwells here always as the boundless and ecstatic
polygamist; yet all the time—that is the secret—it is in love with only
one being.

—Sri Aurobindo, Thoughts and Aphorisms


Join us for a community meditation with Intention,
each Monday, 5-6pm (An initiative of the Spiritual Integration
Cluster of the C-B Holistic Living Alliance)

The Center’s regular offerings include:
• Potluck, Savitri reading & meditation, Tuesdays, 6pm
• Monthly study group (usually 2nd Sunday)
• Library & Meditation Dome
• Guest room w/ bath, kitchen privileges, WiFi - $35/night
• Cozy space for intimate workshops, functions

For more info: 719-256-4917 or
sriaurobindolc@gmail.com.




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January 2012

Sri Aurobindo Learning Center

We have come to the end of 2011 and are beginning another new year.
How should we approach this New Year? No doubt we have plans and
expectations. Whatever they may be, let’s approach 2012 with a sense of
gratitude and adoration to the Divine Being who supports us. Even though
in our daily lives that Divine Being often seems remote, and things don’t
seem to be going our way, let’s try to feel that Infinite Being as a living
presence in our lives. Sri Aurobindo wrote a poem expressing
his adoration of the Divine which can inspire us to be more open, to set our
egos aside and open to Love.

In a mounting as of sea-tides

In a mounting as of sea-tides, in a rippling as of invisible waters.
On a cry in me my soul is uplifted, in a passion of my nature
My heart climbs up towards thee, O unimaginable Wonder and Resplendence,
In its striving for the caress of thy Light and for the embrace of thy presence.

If once given were but a touch of thy feet on the thrilled bosom of my longing,
But a glance of thy eyes mingling with mine in the recesses and the silence,
Such a rapture would envelope me, such a fi re of transfiguring effulgence,
I could never again be as a man upon this earth, but one immortal.

For my mind would be dissolved in a sun-glory of God-vision and of knowledge,
And my heart would be made suddenly more pure and determined and self-tranquil,
And my nerves and my body would transmute into an ethereal divineness,
A fi t vesture for the godhead thou buildest in me, for the immortal thy adorer.

O thou Life of my life and the unseen heart of the worlds and the immenseness,
Let thy Flame-vision leap down upon the coilings of our python inconscience,
Let the Love-wine be poured out in Thy chalice, let me be drunk with it forever.

I shall meet thee in the ocean of thy stillness, in the ether of thy splendor,
Thy Force shall be in my veins like the ichor in the Unaging who are deathless:
My soul shall be as one breath with thy soul and thy infinity around thee,
And shall quiver into the vision of thy beauty and the marvel of thy sweetness.


The Sri Aurobindo Learning Center wishes all a Happy and Spiritual New Year.

The Center’s regular offerings include:
• Potluck, Savitri reading & meditation, Tuesdays, 6pm
• Monthly karma yoga and study group
• Library & Meditation Dome
• Guestroom w/bath, kitchen privileges, WiFi - $30.00/night
• Cozy space for intimate workshops, functions

For more info phone 719-256-4917 or sriaurobindolc@gmail.com.



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December 2011

Sri Aurobindo Learning Center


So much emphasis on Love and Harmony and Oneness these
days—have you noticed? It’s as if the time spirit of the One has finally
arrived to inhabit our thoughts and hearts and communities, and
open us up to the field of infinite possibility in which we live and are
free to co-create. This is the evolution foreseen and described in
beautiful detail by Sri Aurobindo nearly 100 years ago. Some snippets,
originally published in Arya, 1915-1917:

What I cannot do now is the sign of what I shall do hereafter.
The sense of impossibility is the beginning of all possibilities. Because
this temporal universe was a paradox
and an impossibility, therefore the Eternal created it out of Its being.

Impossibility is only a sum of greater unrealized possibles. It
veils an advanced stage and a yet unaccomplished journey.

If you would have humanity advance, buffet all preconceived ideas.
Thought thus smitten awakes and becomes creative. Otherwise it
rests in a mechanical repetition and mistakes that for its right activity.
To rotate on its own axis is not the one movement for the human soul.
There is also its wheeling around the Sun of an inexhaustible illumination.

Be conscious first of thyself within, then think and act. All living
thought is a world in preparation; all real action is a thought
manifested. The material world exists because an
Idea began to play in divine self-consciousness.

Not to go on forever repeating what man has already done is our
work, but to arrive at new realizations and undreamed-of masteries.
Time and soul and world are given to us for our fi eld, vision and hope
and creative imagination stand for our prompters, will and thought
and labour are our all-effective instruments.

Possession in oneness and not loss in oneness is the secret. God
and Human, World and Beyond-World become one when they know
each other. Their division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is
the cause of suffering.

What is God after all? An eternal child playing an
eternal game in an eternal garden.


The Center’s regular offerings include:

• Potluck, Savitri reading & meditation, Tuesdays, 6pm
• Monthly karma yoga and study group. Call for details
• Library & Meditation Dome
• Guest room w/bath, kitchen privileges, WiFi—$30/night
• Cozy venue for intimate workshops, functions

For more info: 719-256-4917 or sriaurobindolc@gmail.com

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November 2011

Sri Aurobindo Learning Center

“True surrender enlarges you;
it increases your capacity;
it gives you a greater measure
in quality and in quantity
you would not have had
by yourself.”—The Mother

Give instead of taking

(from a talk given by The Mother in 1953)


If one were spread out in all things, if all the vibrations which
come and go expressed the need to merge into everything, to widen
oneself, grow—not by remaining within one’s limits but coming out
of them—and finally to be identified with everything, one would no
longer have anything to lose, for one would have everything. Only, [if]
one doesn’t know this . . . one can’t do it. One tries to take, accumulate,
accumulate, accumulate, but that is impossible, one can’t accumulate.
One must identify oneself.

And then, the little bit that one gives, one wants to get it back:
one gives a good thought, one expects
some recognition; one gives a little affection, one expects it from
others—[if] one doesn’t have the ability to become the good thought
in everything, . . . to be the affection, the tender love in all things.
One feels all cut up and limited, and fears to lose everything, fears to lose
what one has because one would be impoverished.

On the other hand, if one were able to identify oneself [with the Divine
in everything], one would no longer need to pull. The more one
spreads out, the more one has. The more one gets identified, the more
one becomes. And then, instead of taking, one gives. And the more one
gives, the more one grows.

The Center’s regular offerings include:
• Potluck, Savitri reading & meditation, Tuesdays, 6pm
• Monthly karma yoga and study group
• Library & Meditation Dome
• Guest room w/bath, kitchen privileges, WiFi - $30/night
• Cozy space for intimate workshops, functions
For more info: 719-256-4917 or sriaurobindolc@gmail.com.


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October 2011

Sri Aurobindo Learning Center


May light, joy, peace and love be with you every moment.

Namaste :-)



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September 2011

Sri Aurobindo Learning Center


The following is excerpted from a talk given by The Mother of the
Sri Aurobindo Ashram 54 years ago, on July 10
th 1957. Always a
woman ahead of her time . . .


The Great Adventure

“In the supramental creation there will no longer be any
religions.
The whole life will be the expression, the flowering into
forms of the divine Unity manifesting in the world.
... Meanwhile, we are in a very special situation, extremely special,
without precedent. We are now witnessing the birth of a new
world; it is very young, very weak – not in its essence but in its
outer manifestation – not yet recognized, not even felt, denied by
the majority. But it is here. It is here, making an effort to grow,
absolutely
sure of the result. But the road to it is a completely new
road which has never before been traced out – nobody has gone
there, nobody has done that! It is a beginning, a universal
beginning. So, it is an absolutely unexpected and unpredictable
adventure.

There are people who love adventure. It is these we call, and we tell them this:
“We invite you to the great adventure.”
It is not a question of repeating spiritually what others have
done before us, for
our adventure begins beyond that [emphasis
added].
It is a question of a new creation, entirely new, with all the
unforeseen events, the risks, the hazards it entails – a
real adventure,
whose goal is certain victory, but the road to which is unknown
and must be traced out step by step in the unexplored. Something
that has never been in this present universe and that will
never be
again in the same way. If that interests you … well, let us embark.
What will happen to you tomorrow - we have no idea.

One must put aside all that has been foreseen, all that has been
devised, all that has been constructed, and then . . . set off walking
into the unknown. And – come what may! There.”


The Center’s regular offerings include:

• Conscious Evolution Synergy Group, call for current timing
Savitri reading & meditation, Tuesdays, 6pm
• Library & Meditation Dome
• Guest room w/bath, kitchen privileges, WiFi—$30/night
• Cozy space for intimate workshops, functions

For more info: 719-256-4917 or sriaurobindolc@gmail.com.


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August 2011

Sri Aurobindo Learning Center

August 15 is the anniversary of Sri Aurobindo’s birth. What was
his great gift to the understanding of spirituality? To me, it was
his conviction that evolution was the progressive divinization of life
on Earth. In so many traditions, worldly life is spurned—only by living
away from it is a true spiritual life possible. But in Sri Aurobindo’s
teaching, All Life is Yoga! To realize our true Self, and unify with the
One, yes—but that is not the end of the journey! This passage from
Savitri perfectly describes the allure of transcendence—and then
the admonition that the work is not finished:

A STILLNESS absolute, incommunicable,
Meets the sheer self-discovery of the soul;
A wall of stillness shuts it from the world,
A gulf of stillness swallows up the sense
And makes unreal all that mind has known,
All that the laboring senses still would weave
Prolonging an imaged unreality.
Self’s vast spiritual silence occupies Space;
Only the Inconceivable is left,
Only the Nameless without space and time:
Abolished is the burdening need of life:
Thought falls from us, we cease from joy and grief;
The ego is dead; we are freed from being and care,
We have done with birth and death and work and fate.
O soul, it is too early to rejoice!
Thou hast reached the boundless silence of the Self,
Thou hast leaped into a glad divine abyss;
But where hast thou thrown Self’s mission and Self’s power?
On what dead bank on the Eternal’s road?
One was within thee who was self and world,
What hast thou done for his purpose in the stars?
Escape brings not the victory and the crown!
Something thou cam’st to do from the Unknown,
But nothing is finished and the world goes on
Because only half God’s cosmic work is done.
Only the everlasting No has neared
And stared into thy eyes and killed thy heart:
But where is the Lover’s everlasting Yes,
And immortality in the secret heart,
The voice that chants to the creator Fire,
The symboled OM, the great assenting Word,
The bridge between the rapture and the calm,
The passion and the beauty of the Bride,
The chamber where the glorious enemies kiss,
The smile that saves, the golden peak of things?
This too is Truth at the mystic fount of Life .


Savitri

The Center’s regular offerings include:
• Potluck, Savitri reading & meditation, Tuesdays, 6pm
• Conscious Evolution Synergy Group, Thursdays, 7pm
• Library & Meditation Dome
• Guest room w/ bath, kitchen privileges, WiFi—$30/night
• Cozy space for intimate workshops, functions

Info: Swaha at 719-256-4917 or sriaurobindolc@gmail.com.

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July 2011

Sri Aurobindo Learning Center

The Sri Aurobindo Learning Center
Integral Soundscapes Intensive

Come explore the evolutionary
Integral Yoga with us!


A Bliss, a Light, a Power, a
flame-white Love
Caught all into sole, immense
embrace;
Existence found its truth on
Oneness’ breast
And each became the self and
space of all.

Savitri, II, III


The Sri Aurobindo Learning Center is hosting a potent retreat
experience during the last week of July called an Integral Soundscapes
Intensive. Some talented people will guide our exploration of sound/
vibration, including
Leigh Ann Phillips and her incredible crystal
bowls,
Jillian Klarl Ellzey leading a powerful practice called Yoga of
the Voice, as well as kirtan; and renowned artist
Marika Popovitz
exploring the sound of color. Other planned activities include the
yoga mantra of Savitri, sounding with instruments, listening to
Nature, the sound of silence, Qi Gong & breathing, feeling into the
vibrational qualities of food and variously treated water, and a full
moon Chi practice and moonwalk in the Great Sand Dunes National
Park and Preserve.

The intention for this gathering is a kind of research—a
deep exploration and discovery of the impacts of sound and vibration,
both audible and subtle. In order to concentrate attention, we will
remain in silence from 6am to 6pm each day, except for presenters and
any focused inquiry or sounding that is evoked by them.
Timing: Tuesday, July 26, 5pm—Sunday July 31 at noon.
Cost: $235 includes all activities and meals (vegetarian),
from Tuesday dinner through Sunday breakfast; plus a small
additional fee for art supplies. The number of participants
will be limited, so reserve your space soon!

Co-creating evolution
The Center continues its commitment to hold a space for those
wanting to explore ways to co-create the future together. In late June,
we hosted a joint potluck for the Transition Crestone and Conscious
Evolution groups to explore synergistic possibilities. If you are
interested in not just surviving, but visioning and working with others
to create a vibrant, sustainable world that works for everyone,
please join us! Meeting times may shift as the movement grows, so call
for current timing.

The Center’s regular offerings include:
• Potluck, Savitri reading & meditation, Tuesdays, 6pm.
• Conscious Evolution Synergy Group, call for current timing
• Library & Meditation Dome
• Guest room w/bath, kitchen privileges, WiFi—$30/night
• Cozy space for intimate workshops, functions

Call Swaha at 719-256-4917 or write sriaurobindolc@gmail.com for more info. on any of the Center’s offerings, or to register for the Intensive.

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June 2011


Sri Aurobindo Learning Center

May saw the initiation of a Conscious Evolution course at SALC.
The Center’s steward, Swaha (formerly Kathryn Van Note), has been following a course given by Barbara Marx Hubbard in association with The Shift Network, and is so thrilled with the optimism, synergy and collective empowerment that she is experiencing with others worldwide that she wants to share it locally – and create a Conscious Evolution Home Team!

A flyer around town describes this course as “midwife training for planetary Birth 2012”. To expand on that a little: There is a tremendous amount of awareness and energy globally around the 21 December 2012 date. Predictions and scenarios abound, be it apocalypse, ascension, transition, transmutation, merging/emerging, destruction and new creation, pole shift, new grids, parallel universes, returning to star source, etc. Some scenarios are hopeful and some provoke fear, but for the most part they leave us waiting and/or preparing for something to happen
to us.

The aim of Barbara and the Shift Network in offering this course is to connect and synergize as many people as possible worldwide, to create both a “map of what’s working” and a pooled field of talents for ecstatic co-creation that is an exponentially potent evolutionary force. Whether we are aware of it or not, we ARE participating in a process of “evolution by choice, not by chance”. So - what do we choose? What do we imagine that we CAN choose?

The SALC’s aim in mirroring the course locally (with lots of room for spontaneity) is to create a participatory, resonant field of infinite possibility right here, and a co-creative, no-dreams-barred vision and action plan for the concentric circles of I – individual, family, community, country, planet.
Humanity is now empowered to create the collective reality that we want to live in. This is the evolution foreseen 100 years ago by Sri Aurobindo – human will merging with Divine Will, through progressive union with the Essential Self (psychic being, indwelling divine) - the whole evolving consciously and naturally through each one discovering and living the truth of his/her being. This course offering happens Thursdays, 7PM.

The Center’s regular offerings include:

  • Potluck, Savitri reading & meditation, Tuesdays, 6 PM.
  • Conscious Evolution Traiing, Thurdsdays, 7 PM.
  • Library & Meditation Dome Open
  • Guest room w/private bath & kitchen priv. - $30/night
  • Cozy space for intimate workshops, functions

Call Swaha at 719-256-4917 or write sriaurobindolc@gmail.com for more info.

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May 2011


The Sri Aurobindo Learning Center

Beautiful, fertile May to everyone!
Work continues on refreshing the Center, with another room painted, more insulted curtains made by Charter School students, and new carpet on the way. Donations to continue this much-needed work are gratefully received! We have a new website up: www.sriaurobindolc.org – do have a look. Peas and onions are up outside and we’ve been eating fresh salads for a few weeks already from our little greenhouse that was re-built last year with the assistance of our hard-working Solar Corps students. We will be hosting a young intern in May. Our disappointing news is that it looks like Sraddhalu from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, India will not be venturing out west this trip, as his Boulder program was cancelled. We’ll keep you posted if another scenario develops.

The Wed evening
evolutionary space offered last month presented a scheduling conflict with Transition Crestone (another worthy venture!) and weekly appears to be too daunting for regular attendance. However we still feel that holding a space for sharing of Shift-related tools, teachings and experiences is key to the Center’s intention and purpose, so it will be held twice monthly on the 2nd & 4th Thursdays at 7PM. Call for info on the current offering.

“The teaching of Sri Aurobindo starts from that of the ancient sages of India, that behind the appearances of the universe there is the Reality of a Being and Consciousness, a Self of all things, one and eternal. All beings are united in that One Self and Spirit but divided by a certain separativity of consciousness, an ignorance of their true Self and Reality in the mind, life and body. It is possible by a certain psychological discipline to remove this veil of separative consciousness and become aware of the true Self, the Divinity within us and all.

Sri Aurobindo's teaching states that this One Being and Consciousness is involved here in Matter. Evolution is the method by which it liberates itself; consciousness appears in what seems to be inconscient, and once having appeared is self-impelled to grow higher and higher and at the same time to enlarge and develop towards a greater and greater perfection. Life is the first step of this release of consciousness; mind is the second; but the evolution does not finish with mind, it awaits a release into something greater, a consciousness which is spiritual and supramental. The next step of the evolution must be towards the development of Supermind and Spirit as the dominant power in the conscious being. For only then will the involved Divinity in things release itself entirely and it become possible for life to manifest perfection.”

(excerpted from
Sri Aurobindo On Himself.)

The Center's regular offerings include:
  • Potluck, Savitri reading & meditation, Tues., 6 PM.
  • Confluence of evolution learning/sharing,
  • 2nd & 4th Thursday 7 PM.
  • Library
  • Guest Room w/ private bath & kitchen privileges.
  • $30 / night
  • Cozy space for intimate workshops, functions

Call Swaha at 719-256-4917 or write
sriaurobindolc@gmail.com for more information.

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April 2011


Sri Aurobindo Learning Center

We take this opportunity to give you advanced notice of the visit of one of the most captivating speakers on the meaning and relevance of Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga alive today, Sraddhalu Renade. Sraddhalu plans to be in Crestone June 5th -7th, and will offer a public talk. Topic, date/time and location will be announced. This is an opportunity that you won’t want to miss! (www.globalonenessproject.org/videos/sraddhaluclip1 for a 5 minute “taste” entitled The Essentiality of Oneness).

Also in April we are trying something new: films or recorded lectures followed by reflection/discussion; guest lecturers; participant-generated topics sparked by a poem, experience, intuition, or dream; deep dialogue or sharing about the increasing, “non-ordinary” experiences and perceptions that so many of us are having – pretty much anything related to an “evolutionary” topic.

The space will be held at Savitri House, 83 Baca Grant Way, on Wednesday evenings, 7:00 PM.

We want to be fluid as to the topic and mode, so feel free to call ahead to check on the current week’s offering – or to suggest or offer one! The intention is
confluence - to spark and strengthen shared awareness of emerging realities/ possibilities in this accelerated transformational period - to share tools, teachings, inspiration, breakthroughs, insights, skills, information – ultimately to cultivate and nurture our felt experience of Oneness.

From Savitri:
The master of existence lurks in us
And plays at hide and seek with his own Force;
In Nature’s instrument loiters secret God.
The Immanent lives in man as in his house;
He has made the universe his pastime’s field,
All-knowing he accepts our darkened state,
Divine, wears shapes of animal or man;
Eternal, he assents to Fate and Time,
Immortal, dallies with mortality
The All-Conscious ventured into Ign
orance,
The All-Blissful bore to be insensible.
Incarnate in a world of strife and pain,
He puts on joy and sorrow like a robe
And drinks experience like a strengthening wine.
He whose transcendence rules the pregnant Vasts,
Prescient now dwells in our subliminal depths,
A luminous individual Power, alone.


Book I, Canto IV –The Secret Knowledge

The Center’s regular offerings include:
  • Weekly potluck, Savitri reading and meditation, Tuesdays, 6 PM
  • Confluence of evolution learning/sharing space, Wednesdays, 7 PM
  • Study Group - 2nd Sunday of each month - April 10th
  • Library Open anytime - call to be sure. :-)
  • Guest Room w/private bath and kitchen privileges - $30/night
  • Cozy space for intimate workshops, functions.

Call Kathryn at 719-256-4917 for more information.


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March 2011


The Mother

February 21
st is the birth anniversary of the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Who was the Mother? What did She represent?

According to Sri Aurobindo
, “The Divine Mother is the Consciousness and Force of the Divine – which is the Mother of all things. …”

“The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates. But something of her ways can be seen and felt through her embodiments ….

There are three ways of being of the Mother of which you can become aware when you enter into touch of oneness with the Conscious Force that upholds us and the universe.
Transcendent, the original supreme Shakti, she stands above the worlds and links the creation to the ever unmanifest mystery of the Supreme. Universal, the cosmic Mahashakti, she creates all these beings and contains and enters, supports and conducts all these million processes and forces. Individual, she embodies the power of these two vaster ways of her existence, makes them living and near to us and mediates between the human personality and the divine Nature.”

When asked whether she who is called the Mother at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram was the “Individual” Divine Mother, he answered simply “Yes”.

Upon further query he responds,
“Her embodiment is a chance for the earth-consciousness to receive the Supramental (the consciousness that can realize the perfection of embodied existence) into it …” The Mother was the most receptive, active and perfect instrument of Sri Aurobindo’s evolutionary Yoga, the ultimate aim of which is the manifestation of a divine life on Earth. The Mother worked tirelessly, not only on all aspects of the rapidly growing Ashram, but with the very cells of her body, in order to prepare them to increasingly receive the vibrations of divine Truth and Love.

The Center’s regular offerings include:
  • Weekly potluck, Savitri reading and mediation, Tuesdays 6PM
  • Study Group - 2nd Sunday of each month - March 13th
  • Library open anytime - call to be sure. :-)

Call Kathryn at 719-256-4917 for more information.

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February 2011


The Power of Savitri

“In a real sense, it is the sound body of Sri Aurobindo’s own consciousness.”
– M.V. Nadkarni

One of the goals of the Sri Aurobindo Learning Center is to help make the extraordinary, evolutionary teachings of Sri Aurobindo more accessible to the seeker. Let’s face it – taking on his 1024 page
The Life Divine or his 24,000 line epic poem, Savitri, can be a daunting prospect! Sharing the experience with others – some who have been engaged with the material for many years – can make it more approachable.

For our weekly
Savitri readings, we have opened up the format so that questions that arise from the reading can be explored at the beginning of the following session, and other texts and scholars who can shine a revealing light on various sections can be brought to the discussion. That said, reading Savitri is rightfully more of an experience than a study. Savitri is mantric poetry, considerably more powerful when read aloud.

Why might you want to take up this practice, make the effort? American scholar Raymond Frank Piper said about Savitri: “It ranges symbolically from a primordial cosmic void through earth’s darkness and struggles, to the highest realms of Supramental spiritual existence, and illumines every important concern of man, through verse of unparalleled massiveness, magnificence, and metaphorical brilliance. Savitri is perhaps the most powerful artistic work in the world for expanding man’s mind towards the Absolute.”

The Mother indicated that the entirety of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga of transformation was contained within its pages. She says: Savitri is a revelation. It is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal …. One can find there all that is needed to realize the Divine. …The words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads to the original sound which is OM.”

Sri Aurobindo said: “Savitri
has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one’s own yogic consciousness and how that could be made creative.”

Join us for this weekly adventure of consciousness, Tuesdays – 5:30PM potluck, 6:30 discussion, 7:00 reading, followed by meditation.

We also offer a monthly study group each 2
nd Sunday of the month, 4-6 PM. The library /reading room is open on request.

Call Kathryn at 719-256-4917 for more information.

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January 2011



“A universal vision that unites .

Savitri, Book III, Canto III


New Stewardship at Savitri House

The Sri Aurobindo Learning Center Board and community would like to take this opportunity to express our heartfelt gratitude to Pavita Decorah, who is retiring from her years of selfless service to Savitri House and its founder, Seyril Schochen. Pavita has shepherded the Center since Seyril’s passing 4 years ago, and has been keen on building bridges with the larger community. Her grant-writing efforts allowed the Center to become a work study site for students from the Crestone Charter School to learn about renewable energy applications and efficiencies, while moving the Center toward a lower carbon footprint and earning the students money for their annual school trip. Pavita and her partner, Sandia Belgrade, have moved into their newly built, light and cozy casita on Lost Cave Way. We wish them peace and fulfillment in their new home and future endeavors.

And let us introduce the Center’s new steward, Kathryn Van Note. Kathryn has called Crestone home for 3½ years now, arriving here from Auroville in South India, where she resided and worked for the previous 12 years. In her tenure here Kathryn has served on the boards of the San Luis Valley Citizens Alliance and the Baca Grande POA, and was an active member of the Annexation Task Force. As a consultant to Saguache County she researched, compiled and drafted oil and gas regulations, solar development guidelines, an emergency operations plan and the County’s comprehensive plan. She has most recently been involved in public information and the NEPA scoping process on the proposed Low Altitude Technical Navigations (i.e. airborne combat practice) being proposed for our skies by the Air Force.

Kathryn brings a deep devotion to Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, a passionate love of Savitri and a wide experience of working in the complex, international, human unity experiment called Auroville. She was first introduced to the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo by Seyril, whom she met in 1981 while both were living in Boulder. Kathryn has always felt a deep connection to and gratitude for Seyril, who represented for her a kind of lighthouse, guiding her to her spiritual home after a decade of searching and exploring various paths and teachings. She is honored to be the Center’s new steward.

She wants to further the Center as a living bridge – a resonant outpost if you will - of Auroville, as Seyril envisioned, as well as a venue for transformative learning. She hopes to discover ways to make the evolutionary teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother more accessible to the wider community of seekers.

Weekly potluck and Savitri readings continue on Tuesday evenings. Potluck begins at 5:30 PM this month, with reading and meditation at 6:30. We have also embarked on a monthly study group, which meets the 2
nd Sunday of the month (Jan 9th) from 4 to 6 PM. For more info or to visit the library,

Call Kathryn at 719-256-4917 for more information.



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December 2010


“One soul’s ambition lifted up the race;
A Power worked, but none knew whence it came.
The universal strengths were linked with his;
Filling earth’s smallness with their boundless breadths,
He drew the energies that transmute an age.
Immeasurable by the common look,
He made great dreams a mould for coming things
And cast his deeds like bronze to front the years.
His walk through Time outstripped the human stride.
Lonely his days and splendid like the sun’s.


- Sri Aurobindo, Savitri


In the early morning of December 5, 1950, Sri Aurobindo left his body.
He lay in state, in the South Indian heat, for four days, charged with a
golden light, and was interred four days later. Although not well known
here, the revolutionary pr o p h e t - seer is one of the fathers of Indian
independence from Britian, and his photograph appears on Indian TV
news each evening. The Integral Yoga, which Sri Aurobindo brought us,
differs from the traditional yogas of which it is a synthesis and
“the next step” in human evolution. In a letter to a disciple,
Sri Aurobindo explained: “The principle of this yoga:
The old yoga demanded a complete renunciation extending to the
giving up of the worldly life itself. This yoga aims instead at a new
and transformed life. But it insists as inexorably on a complete throwing
away of desire and attachment in the mind, life and body.
Its aim is to refound life in the truth of the spirit and for that purpose to
transfer the roots of all we are and do from the mind, life and body to
a greater consciousness above the mind. That means that in the new life
all the connections must be founded on a spiritual intimacy and a truth
quite other than any which supports our present connections. One must
be prepared to renounce at the higher call what are spoken of as natural
affections. Even if they are kept at all, it can only be with a change which
transforms them altogether. But whether they are to be renounced or
kept and changed must be decided not by the personal desires but by the
truth above. All must be given up to the Supreme Master of the yoga.

“The power that works in this yoga is of a thorough-going
character and tolerates in the end nothing great or small
that is an obstacle to the "Truth and its realization.”

- Sri Aurobindo on The Intergnal Yoga


C e n t e r activities:

• Naomi Lake will facilitate the empowerment
of the global feminine — a dynamic meditation on
Peace, Wednesday, December 1 at 4pm, at Savitri House.

• T h e Savitri Reading Circle meets each Tuesday
evening at 5:30 for a potluck meal, reading
Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem, Savitri
followed by meditation.
All are welcome to join us at 83 Baca Grant
Way.
Call 256-4917 for information.

• Study Group the second
Sunday of each month at 4pm, at
the home of Marika Popovits.
Call 256-4917.


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