Thus Spake Sri Aurobindo

I will persist O Lord

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:43:00 +0000

I will not faint, O God. There is the thirst,

And thirst supposes water somewhere. Yes,

But in this life we may not ever find;

Old nature sits a phantom by the way,

Old passions may forbid, old doubts return.

Then are there other lives here or beyond

To satisfy us? I will persist, O Lord.

[SABCL 23: 572-73]

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:18:00 +0000

Faith is indispensable to man, for without it he could not proceed forward in his journey to the unknown; but it ought not to be imposed, it should come as a free perception or an imperative direction from the inner spirit.

[SABCL 17:110]

Sleep, dream and consciousness

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Sat, 30 May 2009 12:45:00 +0000

It is a mistake to think that we live physically only, with the outer mind and life. We are all the time living and acting on other places of consciousness, meeting others there and acting upon them, and what we do and feel and think there, the forces we gather, the results we prepare have an incalculable importance and effect, unknown to us, upon our outer life. Not all of it comes through, and what comes comes through takes another form in the physical-though sometimes there is an exact correspondence; but this little is at the basis of our outward existence. All that we become and do and hear in the physical life is prepared behind the veil within us. It is therefore of immense importance for a yoga which aims at the transformation of life to grow concious of what goes within these domains, to be master there and be able to feel, know and deal with the secret forces that determine our destiny and our internal and external growth or decline.
--Sri Aurobindo
[Letters on Yoga, 23:993-94]

Dream and reality

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Sat, 30 May 2009 11:56:00 +0000

Unreal-seeming yet more real than life,

…truer than things true

If dreams these were or captured images,

Dream's truth made false earth's vain realities.

[Savitri, 28:120]

You are already That

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Fri, 22 May 2009 13:23:00 +0000

Nothing can be taught to the mind which is not already concealed as potential knowledge in the unfolding soul of the creature. So also all perfection of which the outer man is capable, is only a realising of the eternal perfection of the Sprit within him. We know the Divine and become the Divine, because we are That already in our secret nature. All teaching is a revealing, all becoming is an unfolding. Self-attainment is the secret; self-knowledge and an increasing consciousness are the means and the process.

[Synthesis of Yoga, 20:48]

Why shouldst thou limit thyself?

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Fri, 22 May 2009 13:20:00 +0000

Why shouldst thou limit thyself? Feel thyself also in the sword that strikes thee and the arms that embrace, in the blazing of the sun and the dance of the earth…in all that is past and all that is now and all that is pressing forward to become. For thou art infinite and all this joy is possible to thee. [The Superman, 16:289]

Physical things have a consciousness

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Tue, 19 May 2009 10:27:00 +0000

*It is very true that physical things have a consciousness within them which feels and responds to care and is sensitive to careless touch and rough handling. To know or feel that and learn to be careful of them is a great progress of consciousness.

*The rough handling and careless breaking or waste and misuse of physical things is a denial of the yogic consciousness and a great hindrance to the bringing down of the Divine Truth to the material plane.

[Letters on Yoga-p 717]

ON SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM AND THE MOTHER

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Thu, 14 May 2009 14:53:00 +0000

There are only two possible foundations for the material life here. One is that one is a member of an Ashram founded on the principle of self-giving and surrender. One belongs to the Divine and all one has belongs to the Divine; There is no question of payment or return, no bargain, no room for demand and desire. The Mother is in sole charge and arranges things as best they can be arranged within the means at her disposal and the capacities of her instruments. She is under no obligation to act according to mental standards or vital desires and claims of the sadhaks; she is not obliged to use a democratic equality in her dealings with them. She is free to deal with each according to what she sees to be his true need or what is best for him in his spiritual progress. No one can be her judge or impose on her his own rule and standard; she alone can make rules, and she can depart from them too if she thinks it fit, but no one can demand that she shall do so.…This is the spiritual discipline of which the one who represents or embodies the Divine Truth is the centre. Either she is that and all this is the plain common sense of the matter; or she is not and then no one need stay here. Each can go his own way and there is no Ashram and no Yoga.

[The Mother, p 233-34]

Achievement by yoga

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:14:00 +0000

My sadhana is not a freak, a monstrosity, or a miracle done outside the laws of Nature and the conditions of life and consciousness on earth. If I could do these things or if they could happen in my yoga, it means that they can be done and that therefore these developments and transformations are possible in the terrestrial consciousness …I had no urge towards spirituality in me, I developed spirituality. I was incapable of understanding metaphysics, I developed into a philosopher. I had no eye for painting –I developed it by yoga. I transformed my nature from what it was to what it was not. I did it by a special manner, not by a miracle and I did it to show what could be done and how it could be done. I did not do it out of any personal necessity of my own or by a miracle without any process. I say that if it is not so, then my yoga is useless and my life was a mistake-a mere absurd freak of Nature without meaning or consequence. [Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo-I, 139]

Self

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:53:00 +0000

Man twitters intellectually (=foolishly) about the surface results and attributes them all to his “noble self”, ignoring the fact that his noble self is hidden far away from his own vision behind the veil of his dimly sparkling intellect and the reeking fog of his vital feelings, emotions, impulses, sensations and impressions.

[Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, I, 460

Psychological science

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:32:00 +0000

You must know the whole before you can know the part and the highest before you can truly understand the lowest. That is the promise of the greater psychology awaiting its hour before which these poor gropings will disappear and come to nothing.

[Letters on Yoga,24: 1608-09]

IMPATIENCE WHEN THINGS SEEM TO BE GOING WRONG

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 11:45:00 +0000

The impatience of things going wrong is the defect of a quality –an insistence on accuracy and order. The thing is to keep the quality and get rid of the defect.

ORDER & RHYTHM AND PHYSICAL LIFE

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 11:40:00 +0000

There can be no physical life without an order and rhythm. When this order is changed, it must be in obedience to an inner growth and not for the sake of external novelty. It is only a certain part of the surface lower vital nature, which seeks always external change and novelty for its own sake.

It is by constant inner growth that one can find a constant newness and unfailing interest in life. There is no other satisfying way.

[Letters on Yoga, p-715]

Consciousness

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 04:58:00 +0000

As we progress and awaken to the soul in us and things, we shall realise that there is a consciousness also in the plant, in the metal, in the atom, in electricity, in everything that belongs to physical nature; we shall find even that is not really in all respects a lower or more limited mode than the mental, on the contrary it is in many ‘inanimate’ forms more intense, rapid, poignant, though less evolved towards the surface.

[The Synthesis of Yoga, p-370-71]

Faith

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 04:54:00 +0000

Faith is an intuition, an intuition not only waiting for experience to justify it, but leading towards experience.

[Letters on Yoga, p-166]

I go on till I conquer

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 14:39:00 +0000

Let all men jeer at me if they will or all Hell fall upon me if it will for my presumption –I go on till I conquer or perish. This is the spirit in which I seek the Supermind, no hunting for greatness for myself or others…

[On Himself, p-144]

Sadhaka of Integral Yoga

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 14:22:00 +0000

For the Sadhaka of the integral Yoga it is necessary to remember that no written Shastra, however great its authority or however large its spirit, can be more than a partial expression of the eternal knowledge. He will use, but never bind himself even by the greatest Scripture…He must live in his own soul beyond the written Truth…He is a Sadhaka of the infinite.

[The Synthesis of Yoga, p-49]

The Yoga

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 14:15:00 +0000

The process of Yoga is a turning of the human soul from the egoistic state of consciousness absorbed in the outward appearances and attractions of things to a higher state

[The Synthesis of Yoga, p-51]

Avatar

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 13:43:00 +0000

An Avatar, roughly speaking, is one who is conscious of the presence and the power of the Divine born in him, or descended into him and governing from within his will and life and action; he feels identified inwardly with the divine power and presence.

[Letters on Yoga, p-417]

Reward and Punishment and Rebirth

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:42:00 +0000

Note that the idea of rebirth and the circumstances of the new life as a reward or punishment...is a crude human idea of “justice” which is quite unphilosophical and unspiritual and distorts the true intention of life. Life here is an evolution and the soul grows by experience, working out by it this or that in the nature, and if there is suffering, it is for the purpose of that working out, not as a judgement inflicted by God or Cosmic Law on the errors or stumblings which are inevitable in the Ignorance.

[Letters on Yoga, p. 441]

Retrogression to lower form of life

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:18:00 +0000

We have to ask whether the soul, having once arrived at humanity, can go back to the animal life and body, a retrogression which the old popular theories of transmigration have supposed to be an ordinary movement. It seems impossible that it should so go back with any entirety, and for this reason that the transit from the animal to the human life means a decisive conversion of the vital consciousness, quite as decisive as the conversion of the vital consciousness of the plant into the mental consciousness of the animal. It is surely impossible that a conversion so decisive made by Nature should be reversed by the soul and the decision of the spirit within her come, as it were, to naught.

[The Life Divine, p. 762)

The Soul

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 10:20:00 +0000

*The soul in man is greater than his fate.
[Savitri –691]

*The soul, representative of the central being, is a spark of the Divine supporting all individual existence in Nature.
[Letters on Yoga-267]

Conviction

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:28:00 +0000

When the peace of God descends on you, when the Divine Presence is there within you, when the Ananda rushes on you like a sea, when you are driven like a leaf before the wind by the breath of the Divine Force, when love flowers out from you on all creation, when Divine Knowledge floods you with a Light which illumines and transforms in a moment all that was before dark, sorrowful and obscure, when all that is becomes part of the One Reality, when the Reality is all around you, you feel at once by the spiritual contact, by the inner vision, by the illumined and seeing thought, by the vital sensation and even by the very physical sense, everywhere you see, hear, touch only the Divine. Then you can much less doubt it or deny it than you can doubt or deny daylight or air or the sun in heaven-for of these physical things you cannot be sure but they are what your senses represent them to be; but in the concrete experiences of the Divine, doubt is impossible.

[Letters on Yoga-p 168]

Consciousness

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:47:00 +0000

Consciousness is not something abstract, it is like existence itself or ananda or prana, something very concrete. If one becomes aware of the inner consciousness, one can do all sorts of things with it, send it out as a stream of force, erect a circle or wall of consciousness around oneself, direct an idea so that it shall enter somebody’s head in America, etc., etc.
[Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo-Nirodbaran-p 1063]

No religion

noreply@blogger.com (Blogger) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:34:00 +0000

I may say that it is far from my purpose to propagate any religion, new or old, for humanity in the future. A way to be opened that is still blocked, not a religion to be founded is my conception of the matter.

[On Himself-125]