Celebration of Sri Aurobindo Dashan day in the Moscow Center of Integral Yoga |
On August 15th our Center celebrated birthday of the founder of Integral Yoga – Sri Aurobindo.
On that very day at 12 p.m. local time the followers of the Integral Yoga all over the world carry out Universal meditation and devote it to their Teacher - Sri Aurobindo. This collective meditation encouraged all Sadhakas of our Center to get together that day. Among the participants of the meditation were also guests who came to take part into this celebration, moreover people arrived from different parts of Russia.
Sadhikas Maria and Catherine prepared and brought Sri Aurobindo’s aphorismstaken from his miscellany “Thoughts and aphorisms”. Everyone could choose one or several for oneself and later on read them out for the others.
At 12 o’clock sharp the meditation started. It was conducted by the Center Senior Mentor – Catherine.
After meditation was finished, Spiritual leader and Guru of our Center - Mikhail Malakhov- made a small speech. Among others, he emphasized a film called “A man after man” dated 1982 that was dedicated to Satprem. The film started after Mikhail finished his speech.
As the film was over, Sadhakas were invited to prepare tables for Prasad. Some of them brought hand-made cookies, pastries and different kind of sweets. Numerous fruits and berries naturally reminded that it was the very middle of the summer outdoors.
When the tables were ready and everyone found its place at them, the silence settled in the room. Lots of Sadhakas were staring towards the stage, where quietly sitting at the microphone was one of the founders and facilitators of ARM – (All Russian Auroconference), President of the Fund of man’s integral development called “Savitri”, - Zenkin Igor Mikhailovich.
As an honorable guest of the Center, he attracted everybody’s attention by his lecture on “The Mind of the Cells” that provoked brisk reaction of the audience, numerous questions and discussions as well as talks aimed to exchange experiences.
After the lecture was over it was suggested to start the “Evening with…”.
The first one to perform was Sadhaka of the Center – Mikhail. With all his natural sense of delicacy he favored us with some songs accompanying himself on a guitar. Mikhail’s sincerity, warm heart and openness touched the major of the hearts.
After this small music break, the Head of our Center and our Guru, Mikhail, read out some of his aphorisms. If You would like to have more details about the Master’s works as well as works of other our Sadhakas you should follow the link.
The Senior Mentor Catherine was the next to alternate Mikhail at the stage. With inspiration she recited an extract from a famous Sri Aurobindo’s poem “Savitri”.
Here came the time for sacral dances. Sacral dance (from latin sacer (or sacri) – “sacred”) is a method that has for ages been used as a path to the Spiritual world by our predecessors, it is a separate direction of spiritual activity of mankind.
Eugenia, the Sadhika of our Center, is constantly teaching and practicing this kind of dance. Interested ones, and there were lots of them, had a chance to learn some dances together with her. As to Eugenia: “While practicing sacral dance we’re arranging ourselves in a circle and direct our sight towards the center of it. It reflects the inner resource of ours. Learning a form and a meaning of each movement as well as common dancing experience contributes to the conscious participation in a process of life creation”.
Tired but happy, Sadhakas could sigh with relief and listen to the sounds of guitar: Sadhu Daniil presented several songs that he wrote himself and bhajans. During each song the audience joined Daniil in singing to become the equal part of performance.
Sadhika Irina also deserves to be mentioned. As the photographer of the Evening she made and later on prepared pictures that we placed on this page.
Igor Mikhailovich closed the evening with two magnificent poems of himself. Each of them described Igor’s experience of spontaneous sinking into deep meditation. Either mysterious stories that preceded these poems or the poems themselves impressively touched the hearts of the audience. One could hardly ever make up any better ending for the Evening devoted to Sri Aurobindo’s Birthday.
Thus, the whole day rushed away like one minute. There are days that value the whole life. There are minutes that the Sole lives with. August 15th is one of such days when every minute is an unforgettable blink.
The hardest task is to practice Yoga in an everyday life. Keeping it in mind, we’re doing our best to realize Sri Aurobindo Yoga with life, each moment of aspiration, each movement, word and act. There’s no sense to mention that this day - August 15th – was totally full of such movements, words and acts.
We are so happy to have a chance to experience all this, Friends!
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