The New Year is often a time for looking back and looking forward. Looking back it is a time to check our balance sheet for the year, to see how much ground we have covered in our great and tremendous journey of life. Looking back we can also discover what were the chief obstacles that stood in our way, what impeded and resisted our advance, what stopped us from moving forwards towards the Goal. Looking towards the Future we can see what we still need to develop to make our self-giving complete, our surrender total, our consecration perfect, our faith and sincerity integral, our aspiration, intense and one-pointed, an all-consuming fire that burns down all the dross in our nature and release all that is ready and strong and beautiful to receive Her Force without breaking down under the pressure.
Some would say that a new year is after all a convention. In a certain sense everything is a convention, a habit or a pattern woven into our thoughts and beliefs. The universe is born anew each moment and there is nothing in us that repeats the hour that is left behind. Yet we can equally say that all is the same and nothing essential changes in this seeming march of Time. This is because time moves in a linear as well as a cyclic manner. The linear movement carries us always forward, even without our conscious effort or choice. It is as if we were all being carried in a super-giant wave or ocean of Consciousness driven by the Breath of the Lord, inevitably, helplessly, inevitably towards HIM who is the Source and Origin of all things. But if this were all then we have nothing more to do but drift with the flow and flux of time towards whatever shore or destination it is leading us. But the cyclic movement is also there. All things move in a circle, from the atom to the galaxies and universes. Our thoughts and feelings and impulsions, our very body follows both these motions. We return back to the same point again and again. But this is not any retrogression but a chance to give a fresh impulsion to our forward motion. It is a chance to pick up the threads we have left behind in an over-eager step forward. It is a chance to reawaken in us the urge for conscious progress so that the same ocean wave impels us much farther helped by our own propulsion and the momentum gained through several attempts.
The New Year is one such cyclical motion of Time. It is when the earth returns to the same point even though it has moved forward in linear terms. The moment returns regardless of when we take as the starting point of the year. The Earth completes one parikrama (circumambulation) and is ready for a fresh change of seasons. It is an annual renewal of its energies. We too can therefore use this occasion to start afresh, to renew our energies for the needed effort, to rekindle the fire of aspiration for a fresh drive towards the Goal. Let us then use this moment to once again surge forwards with a fresh enthusiasm towards the Goal. Let us pray with the Mother thus:
O LORD, grant that this collective convention of the ending year be for us also the occasion to put an end to a whole lot of bonds and attachments, illusions and weaknesses which have no longer any purpose in our lives. At every moment we must shake off the past like falling dust, that it may not soil the virgin path which, at every moment also, is opening before us.
May our mistakes, acknowledged and rectified within us, be no more than vain mirages powerless to bring any consequences and, pressing our foot down firmly upon all that no longer should exist, on all ignorance, all obscurity, all egoism, may we take our flight boldly towards wider horizons and intenser light, a more perfect compassion, a more disinterested love …. towards Thee.
I hail Thee, O Lord, Master of our life, and I want to proclaim Thy reign over all the earth.
The Mother: 29th December 1913
About Savitri | B1C1-10 The Response of Earth (p.5)