A Prayer for the New Year -- by Alok Pandey

May our minds and intelligence refuse to admit the dark and tortuous thoughts that revolt against the Light and resist it by doubt, denial and scepticism.

May our hearts banish the feelings that mock at faith, dismiss love and devotion as mere concessions to the weak, and distort the straight and simple truth they refuse to see.

May our will be free of all unclean motives, hypocrisy and duplicity, cunning and falsehood and all that corrupts and perverts by vain ambition, lust for power and greed for fame.

May we reject and expunge from our entire being the whispers of the Night that cast a hostile look on all that is True and Sacred and Beautiful and Pure and inflict upon the Divine and His messengers the thorns of its fallen nature by testing, judging, condemning and crucifying Him on the world’s altar and by returning Her Love and Grace with denial and distrust, refusal and revolt instead of love, gratitude and surrender.

May ‘We’ unite as one body, one mind, one will, one heart, one soul around the central fire of aspiration that ever seeks and labours, struggles and battles for the advent of a Light greater than reason, a Love deeper than human sentiments, a Freedom born of an inner liberation, a Unity that is founded on the bedrock of the One Self behind all things, an Equality that does not blur all distinctions through a blind indifference and the complacence born of inertia but shows each thing its right place for the harmonious arrangement of all things and ideas and forces in space and time.

May we be cleansed of all blind dogmas – whether religious or scientific, of all obscurantism ─ whether born of a clouded thinking or a rigid and narrow heart and mind, of all prejudices ─ whether arising out of a misguided materialism or a traditional escapist and nihilistic philosophy.

May the diabolic force that inspires works of the likes of TLOSA be dissolved once for all, defeated of its devious designs to hold the human mind a captive to the darkness of the Night from which a New World is struggling to emerge.

May this year, 2010, the centenary of Sri Aurobindo’s coming to Pondicherry be for all of us and for the earth a year for the return of light in our minds, of clarity in our perception and understanding, of devotion and gratitude in our hearts, of faith in our will, and of all that is necessary for Their Work.

Bonne Année

Happy New Year


Alok Pandey