Date: October 31, 2025
Venue: Matriniketan, Pondicherry
As part of the residential programme organized by Uditam: Institute for Integral Healing, Sri Aurobindo Society, Dr. Beloo Mehra, Director, BhāratShakti, was invited to facilitate a group discussion session on Saturday, October 31, 2025. For her session, Dr. Mehra focused on the topic – The Age of Mahasaraswati.
Dr. Mehra began her talk by briefly outlining Sri Aurobindo’s discussion of the Four Aspects of the Mother – Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, and Mahasaraswati. She said that in order to understand these four powers in a more relatable manner at our human psychological level, we should explore the rightful place of Wisdom, Strength, Harmony and Perfection as aspects of our integral being. And it is also important to recognise that these are not four separate powers but four which are integral aspects of One Shakti.
After briefly mentioning a few key attributes of the first three powers, Dr. Mehra brought the focus to Mahasaraswati and connected it to the idea of skill and perfection in work. The power of Mahasaraswati grants intimate and precise knowledge, subtlety, patience, and an intuitive and accurate working mind and hand to those who sincerely aspire for this kind of perfection. At the outer level, this sincere aspiration involves that we pay meticulous attention to all details when doing any work; at the inner psychological level it requires us to constantly be attentive to any slightest defect or imperfection in our attitude toward work.
Dr. Mehra read out a few key points from Sri Aurobindo’s description of Mahasaraswati. At the outer level, Mahasaraswati is the strong, tireless, and efficient builder, organizer, administrator, technician, artisan, and classifier of the worlds. No aspect of work, however small or invisible, escapes her attention; and she detests carelessness, negligence, indolence, haste, clumsiness, and incomplete or misdirected labour.
At the psycho-spiritual level, the action of Mahasaraswati is transformative because it is detailed, slow, and painstaking but ultimately flawless and complete. With a meticulous and indefatigable will, she observes every detail, detects every defect, and ensures completeness in all.
Dr. Mehra then elaborated on these points with the help of appropriate examples. Connecting these powers with the chaturvarna system using relevant examples, she highlighted the necessity of becoming aware of our psychological make-up so that we can gradually identify our innate svabhava. This led to some interesting discussion with the participants.
Shri Pradeep Narang, Chairman, Sri Aurobindo Society, who was also present at the session, brought in the point about recognising the interconnection among the four powers. Dr. Mehra emphasised that the future age requires that we grow as integral being, which means that we must cultivate all these four powers within us, though one or two may be predominant in us giving us our unique svabhava.