Sri Aurobindo’s 150th Birth Centenary will come on August 15, 2022. In 2021 we begin a year of tribute to honor everything he did for humanity, the earth and the universe. As this year of tribute begins, we look at the beginning of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, which was formed to help and guide the the very first seekers who followed his footsteps on the golden path of consciousness that he brought for all. In Sri Aurobindo’s letters we have his own words describing the consciousness he used to help the early Ashramites, and the work he did together as one with his partner, the Mother of his Ashram. As well, we have Sri Aurobindo’s letters on his teachings about the Yoga Shakti, the evolutionary power which is usually called the Kundalini power. His teachings go far beyond traditional teachings on the subject. Finally we have some beautiful and moving personal experiences of Sri Aurobindo and Mother in those very early days.

Mother and Sri Aurobindo have given very clear information about death and transformation. Part of their work was to bring humanity to the point where death and rebirth were no longer necessary for the universal transformation which goes on all the time and which affects everyone, whether they know about it or not. They spoke about an accelerated transformation which would more quickly bring man to this point. In the first talk we had their answers to the age-old questions; what is death, and what happens when we die.

On the 21st of February 2018, at Unity Pavilion, Loretta shared the first part of her talk “Finding the Soul”. Reading from Savitri and quoting Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s various writings, Loretta took all present on the inner exploration deep within to find their Soul. Grace was emanating through the strong presence of Sri Aurobindo that evening. At the end when Loretta asked if anyone had any questions there was a pure silence in the room. How could any questions arise once the Soul is recognized, so beautiful!

On the 22nd of February, at Unity Pavilion, Loretta shared the second part of her talk “Finding The Soul”, whilst using Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem “Savitri”, which he says contains all of his teachings in the form of mystic poetry, as her main reference. Loretta starts the talk by saying “We are traveling with Savitri through her inner body, she’s making her way to find her immortal Soul”. This beautifully sets the tone for what follows. Loretta goes on saying that “they taught us we have to be conscious of our soul (psychic being) as this makes everything in life much easier and also those around us much happier too”. So lets find a quiet time and place to listen and travel within with Savitri, guided by Loretta, to the recognition of Soul and to share the experience of all the deep and powerful things that happen when our Soul comes forward within us.

Members of the Italian Community Of Living Ethics attended a talk by Loretta on integral health and healing according to Sri Aurobindo and Mother. Many of the visitors were Naturopaths. They learned about the planes of the physical, mental, and vital and how an illness could be in any or all of these parts of the patient. Mother taught that illness is always a fall back into some kind of unconsciousness because we are not able to keep up with the movement of transformation of our consciousness. This is true whether it is Nature’s slower evolution in us or when we do yoga to work for faster transformation. All illness is a disharmony in the being. The healer’s work is to restore harmony. All healing is a change of consciousness. The talk ended with this quotation from Mother; “The method we use to deal with our body, to maintain it, to keep it fit, to improve it and keep it in good health, depends exclusively on the state of consciousness we are in, because our body is an instrument of our consciousness and our consciousness can act directly on our body and can obtain what we want from it.

The first major goal to attain in Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga is to realize your own soul, called by Sri Aurobindo the Psychic Being, from the Greek (and French) word, Psyche. In July, 2010, at the Matagiri AUM Conference in New York, Loretta gave a lecture called Finding the Psychic Being, which presented recordings of Mother teaching the Ashram school children how to find their soul.That tiny portion of the One Supreme which decided to forget its universal totality in order to become an individual and to grow back into itself by successive realizations through many lifetimes is our individual soul. This lecture radiates the atmosphere of the Psychic Being and explains how to find it through Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s teachings.