Sri Aurobindo Center of Los Angeles

Doug Grimes passed away on January 22, 2024 and not January 22, 2023. We apologize for the error in the previous post.

Doug Grimes, dedicated seeker deeply devoted to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, and a precious friend and well-wisher of Sri Aurobindo Center of Los Angeles, passed away peacefully in the early morning hours of January 22, 2024. His last days were marked by a increasing absorption in thoughts of the Divine Mother.

He discovered the Sri Aurobindo Center of Los Angeles a little more than two years ago, and quickly endeared himself to all the devotees there, sharing an affectionate bond with all through his warm, caring, and largely sattwic nature. He became an intimate part of the Center’s Satsang group that meets thrice weekly. He rarely missed a meeting, if any, and his presence was a precious part of the soul nurturing atmosphere that we aspire to create. Drawn powerfully by the atmosphere of the relics, he frequently drove from San Diego to stay at the Center where he offered himself enthusiastically with laborious work in the garden and miscellaneous tasks in the house.

His adoration, love and devotion for the Divine incarnate in the Master and Mother always shone through his keen analytical mind, and was a notable quality of his soul. His passing leaves a lacuna in our meetings, and his place there will be deeply missed, reminding us powerfully of the words of the Mother:

We have, every one of us, a role to fulfil, a work to do, a place which we alone can occupy.

Sri Aurobindo Center of Los Angeles

We surrender to Thee this evening all that is artificial and false, all that pretends and imitates. Let it disappear with the year that is at an end. May only what is perfectly true, sincere, straight and pure subsist in the year that is beginning.

~The Mother
1935
(CWM 15:165)

In the Essays on the Gita Sri Aurobindo mentions the names of three Avatars, and Christ is one of them. An Avatar is an emanation of the Supreme Lord who assumes a human body on earth. I heard Sri Aurobindo himself say that Christ was an emanation of the Lord’s aspect of love.

The Mother, On Thoughts and Aphorisms: Aphorism – 38

Vigilance means to be awake, to be on one’s guard, to be sincere—never to be taken by surprise. When you want to do sadhana, at each moment of your life, there is a choice between taking a step that leads to the goal and falling asleep or sometimes even going backwards, telling yourself, “Oh, later on, not immediately”—sitting down on the way.

To be vigilant is not merely to resist what pulls you downward, but above all to be alert in order not to lose any opportunity to progress, any opportunity to overcome a weakness, to resist a temptation, any opportunity to learn something, to correct something, to master something. If you are vigilant, you can do in a few days what would otherwise take years. If you are vigilant, you change each circumstance of your life, each action, each movement into an occasion for coming nearer the goal.

There are two kinds of vigilance, active and passive. There is a vigilance that gives you a warning if you are about to make a mistake, if you are making a wrong choice, if you are being weak or allowing yourself to be tempted, and there is the active vigilance which seeks an opportunity to progress, seeks to utilise every circumstance to advance more quickly.

There is a difference between preventing yourself from falling and advancing more quickly.

And both are absolutely necessary.

He who is not vigilant is already dead. He has lost contact with the true purpose of existence and of life.

So the hours, circumstances, life pass in vain, bringing no-thing, and you awake from your somnolence in a hole from which it is very difficult to escape.

17 January 1958

The Mother