- COLLECTED WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO -
01 - EarlyCulturalWritings - Early essays and other prose writings on literature, education, art and other cultural subjects. The volume includes The Harmony of Virtue, Bankim Chandra Chatterji, essays on Kalidasa and the Mahabharata, The National Value of Art, Conversations of the Dead, the "Chandernagore Manuscript", book reviews, "Epistles from Abroad", Bankim Tilak Dayananda, and Baroda speeches and reports. Most of these pieces were written between 1890 and 1910, a few between 1910 and 1920. (Much of this material was formerly published under the title The Harmony of Virtue.)
02 - Collected Poems - All short poems and narrative poems in English.
This volume consists of sonnets, lyrical poems, narrative poems, and metrical experiments in various forms. All such poems published by Sri Aurobindo during his lifetime are included here, as well as poems found among his manuscripts after his passing. Sri Aurobindo worked on these poems over the course of seven decades. The first one was published in 1883 when he was ten; a number of poems were written or revised more than sixty years later, in the late 1940s.
03-04 - Collected Plays And Stories - All original dramatic works and works of prose fiction. Volume 1: The Viziers of Bassora, Rodogune, and Perseus the Deliverer. Volume II: Eric and Vasavadutta; seven incomplete or fragmentary plays; and six stories, two of them complete.
05 - Translations - All translations from Sanskrit, Bengali, Tamil, Greek and Latin into English, with the exception of translations of Vedic and Upanishadic literature. The volume includes translations from Sanskrit of parts of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and works of Kalidasa and Bhartrihari; translations from Bengali of Vaishnava devotional poetry and works of Bankim Chandra Chatterji, Chittaranjan Das and others; translations from Tamil of poems of Andal, Nammalwar, Kulesekhara Alwar and Tiruvalluvar; and translations from Greek and Latin. Sri Aurobindo made most of these translations while living in Baroda and Bengal; some were done later in Pondicherry.
06-07 - BandeMataram - All surviving political writings and speeches from 1890 to 1908. The two volumes consist primarily of 353 articles originally published in the nationalist newspaper Bande Mataram between August 1906 and May 1908. Also included are political articles written by Sri Aurobindo before the start of Bande Mataram, speeches delivered by him between 1907 and 1908, articles from his manuscripts of that period that were not published in his lifetime, and an interview of 1908.
08 - Karmayogin - All surviving political writings and speeches of 1909 and 1910.
This volume consists primarily of articles originally published in the nationalist newspaper Karmayogin between June 1909 and February 1910. It also includes speeches delivered by Sri Aurobindo in 1909.
09 - Writings in Bengali and Sanskrit - All writings in Bengali and Sanskrit. Most of the pieces in Bengali were written by Sri Aurobindo in 1909 and 1910 for Dharma, a Calcutta weekly he edited at that time; the material consists chiefly of brief political, social and cultural works. His reminiscences of detention in Alipore Jail for one year ("Tales of Prison Life") are also included. There is also some correspondence with Bengali disciples living in his ashram. The Sanskrit works deal largely with philosophical and cultural themes. (This volume will be available both in the original languages and in a separate volume of English translations.)
10-11 - Record of Yoga - Sri Aurobindo's diary of his yogic practice between 1909 and 1927. This two-volume record of sadhana contains fairly regular entries between 1912 and 1920 and a few entries in 1909, 1911 and 1927. It also contains related materials Sri Aurobindo wrote about his practice of yoga during this period, including descriptions of the seven "chatusthayas" (groups of four elements), which are the basis of the yoga of the Record.
12 - Essays Divine And Human - Short prose pieces written between 1910 and 1950, but not published during Sri Aurobindo's lifetime. The material is arranged in four parts: (1) "Essays Divine and Human", complete essays on yoga and related subjects, (2) "From Man to Superman: Notes and Fragments on Philosophy, Psychology and Yoga"; (3) "Notes and Fragments on Various Subjects", and (4) Thoughts and Aphorisms. (Some of this material was formally published under the title The Hour of God and Other Writings)
13 - Essays In Philosophy And Yoga - Short works in prose written between 1909 and 1950 and published during Sri Aurobindo's lifetime. Most of these short works are concerned with aspects of spiritual philosopy, yoga, and related subjects. The material includes: (1) essays from the Karmayogin, (2) The Yoga and Its Objects, (3) writings from the Arya, such as On Ideals and Progress, The Superman, Evolution, Thoughts and Glimpses, The Problem of Rebirth, and (4) The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth. (Most of these works were formerly published together under the title The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth and Other Writings.)
14 - Vedic and Philological Studies - Writings on the Veda and philology, and translations of Vedic hymns to gods other than Agni not published during Sri Aurobindo's lifetime. The material includes (1) drafts for The Secret of the Veda, (2) translations (simple translations and analytical and discursive ones) of hymns to gods other than Agni, (3) notes on the Veda, (4) essays and notes on philology, and (5) some texts that Sri Aurobindo called "Writings in Different Languages". Most of this material was written between 1912 and 1914 and is published here for the first time in a book.
15 - The Secret Of The Veda - Essays on the Rig Veda and its mystic symbolism, with translations of selected hymns. These writings on and translations of the Rig Veda were published in the monthly review Arya between 1914 and 1920. Most of them appeared there under three headings: The Secret of the Veda, "Selected Hymns" and "Hymns of the Atris". Other translations that did not appear under any of these headings make up the final part of the volume.
16 - Hymns to the Mystic Fire - All translations of Vedic hymns to Agni; and related writings. The material includes all the contents of Hymns to the Mystic Fire (translations of hymns to Agni from the Rig Veda, with a Foreword by Sri Aurobindo) as well as translations of many other hymns to Agni, some of which are published here for the first time.
17 - Isha Upanishad - Translations of and commentaries on the Isha Upanishad. The volume is divided into two parts: (1) Sri Aurobindo's final translation and analysis of the Isha Upanishad. This small work contains his definitive interpretation of the Upanishad. It is the only writing in this volume published during his lifetime; (2) ten incomplete commentaries on the Isha. Ranging from a few pages to more than a hundred, these commentaries show the development of his interpretation of this Upanishad from around 1900 to the middle of 1914.
18 - Kena and Other Upanisads - Translations of and commentaries on Upanishads other than the Isha Upanishad. The volume is divided into two parts: (1) translations of and commentaries on the Kena, Katha and Mundaka Upanishads and some "Readings in the Taittiriya Upanishad"; (2) early translations of the Prashna, Mandukya, Aitareya and Taittariya Upanishads; incomplete translations of and commentaries on other Upanishads and Vedantic texts; and incomplete and fragmentary writings on the Upanishads and Vedanta in general. The writings in the first part were published by Sir Aurobindo during his lifetime; those in the second part were transcribed from his manuscripts after his passing.
19 - Essays On The Gita - Essays on the philosophy and method of self-discipline presented in the Bhagavad Gita. These essays were first published in the monthly review Arya between 1916 and 1920 and revised in the 1920s by Sri Aurobindo for publication as a book.
20 - TheRenaissance In India - Essays on the value of Indian civilisation and culture. This volume consists of three series of essays and one single essay: (1) "The Renaissance in India", (2) "Indian Culture and External Influence", (3) "Is India Civilised?" and (4) "Defence of Indian Culture". They were first published in the monthly review Arya between 1918 and 1921. In 1953, they first appeared in a book under the title The Foundations of Indian Culture.
21-22 - The Life Divine -
1) Sri Aurobindo's principal work of philosophy. In this book, Sri Aurobindo presents a theory of spiritual evolution and suggests that the present crisis of humanity will lead to a spiritual transformation of the human being and the advent of a divine life upon earth. The material first appeared as a series of essays published in the monthly review Arya between 1914 and 1919. They were revised by Sri Aurobindo in 1939 and 1940 for publication as a book.
2) Sri Aurobindo's principal philosophic work, a theory of spiritual evolution culminating in the transformation of man from a mental into a supramental being and the advent of a divine life upon earth. In my explanation of the universe I have put forward this cardinal fact of spiritual evolution as the meaning of our existence here, Sri Aurobindo wrote to a disciple. Behind the appearances of the universe, he explained, there is the Reality of a Being and Consciousness, a Self of all things, one and eternal... This One Being and Consciousness is involved here in Matter. Evolution is the method by which it liberates itself.
23-24 - The Synthesis Of Yoga -
1) Truth of philosophy is of a merely theoretical value unless it can be lived, and we have therefore tried in The Synthesis of Yoga to arrive at a synthetical view of the principles and methods of the various lines of spiritual self-discipline and the way in which they can lead to an integral divine life in the human existence.
2) Sri Aurobindo's principal work on yoga. In this book Sri Aurobindo examines the traditional systems of yoga and provides an explanation of certain components of his own system of integral yoga. There is an Introduction, "The Conditions of the Synthesis", and four parts: "The Yoga of Divine Works", "The Yoga of Integral Knowledge", "The Yoga of Divine Love" and "The Yoga of Self-Perfection". The material was first published serially in the monthly review Arya between 1914 and 1921; the introduction and first two parts were later revised by Sri Aurobindo for publication.
25 - The Human Cycle - Three works of social and political philosophy. In The Human Cycle, Sri Aurobindo traces the evolution of human society and suggests where it is headed. In The Ideal of Human Unity, he examines the possibility of the unification of the human race. In War and Self-Determination, he discusses the sovereignty of nations in the aftermath of the First World War. These works were first serialised in the monthly review Arya between 1915 and 1920; later Sri Aurobindo revised them for publication.
26 - The Future Poetry - Sri Aurobindo's principal work of literary criticism. In this work, Sri Aurobindo outlines the history of English poetry and explores the possibility of a spiritual poetry in the future. It was first published in a series of essays between 1917 and 1920; parts were later revised for publication as a book.
27 - Letters On Poetry And Art - Letters on poetry and other forms of literature, on painting and the other arts, on beauty and aesthetics, and on their relation to the practice of yoga. Most of these letters were written by Sri Aurobindo in the 1930 and 1940s to members of his ashram. Around one sixth of them were published during his lifetime; the rest were transcribed from his manuscripts after his passing. Many are being published for the first time in this volume.
28 - Letters On Yoga I - Four volumes of letters on the integral yoga, other spiritual paths, the problems of spiritual life, and related subjects. In these letters, Sri Aurobindo explains the foundations of his integral yoga, its fundamentals, its characteristic experiences and realisations, and its method of practice. He also discusses other spiritual paths and the difficulties of spiritual life. Related subjects include the place of human relationships in yoga; sadhana through meditation, work and devotion; reason, science, religion, morality, idealism and yoga; spiritual and occult knowledge; occult forces, beings and powers; destiny, karma, rebirth and survival. Sri Aurobindo wrote most of these letters in the 1930s to disciples living in his ashram. A considerable number of them are being published for the first time.
29 - Letters On Yoga II
30 - Letters On Yoga III
31 - Letters On Yoga IV
32 - The Mother With Letters On The Mother - This volume opens with Sri Aurobindo's small book The Mother, in which he describes the nature, character and role of the Divine Mother. The rest of the volume consists primarily of letters on the Mother on the Divine Mother and on Sri Aurobindo's collaborator, the Mother, who was the head of his ashram. He wrote most of these letters in the 1930s to disciples living in the ashram.
33-34 - Savitri - Sri Aurobindo's major poetic work, an epic in blank verse.
In Savitri, a legend from the Mahabharata becomes the symbol of the human soul's spiritual destiny. In poetic language, Sri Aurobindo describes his vision of existence and explores the reason for ignorance, darkness, suffering and pain, the purpose of life on earth and the prospect of a glorious future for humanity. The writing of the epic extended over much of the later part of his life.
35 - Letters On Himself And The Ashram - Sri Aurobindo's letters between 1927 and 1950 on his life, his path of yoga and the practice of yoga in his ashram. In these letters, Sri Aurobindo writes about his life as a student in England, a teacher in Baroda, a political leader in Bengal, and a writer and yogi in Pondicherry. He also comments on his formative spiritual experiences and the development of his yoga. In the latter part of the volume, he discusses the life and discipline followed in his ashram and offers advice to the disciples living and working in it. Sri Aurobindo wrote these letters between 1927 and 1950 most of them in the 1930s.
36 - AutobiographicalNotes - Sri Aurobindo's writings on himself (excluding the letters in volume 35, Letters on Himself and the Ashram) and other material of historical importance. The volume is divided into four parts: (1) brief life sketches, autobiographical notes, and corrections of statements made by others in biographies and other publications; (2) letters of historical interest to family, friends, political and professional associates, public figures, etc; also letters on yoga and spiritual life to disciples and others; (3) public statements and other communications on Indian and world events; (4) public statements and notices concerning Sri Aurobindo's ashram and yoga. Much of the material is being published here for the first time in a book.
37 - Reference Volume
38 - Glossary to the Record of Yoga
- WIKI -
Sri Aurobindo (born Aurobindo Ghose; 15 August 1872 5 December 1950) was an Indian philosopher, yogi, guru, poet, and nationalist. He joined the Indian movement for independence from British rule, for a while was one of its influential leaders and then became a spiritual reformer, introducing his visions on human progress and spiritual evolution. Aurobindo studied for the Indian Civil Service at King's College, Cambridge, England. After returning to India he took up various civil service works under the maharaja of the princely state of Baroda and became increasingly involved in nationalist politics in the Indian National Congress and the nascent revolutionary movement in Bengal with the Anushilan Samiti. He was arrested in the aftermath of a number of bomb outrages linked to his organisation, but in a highly public trial where he faced charges of treason, Aurobindo could only be convicted and imprisoned for writing articles against British rule in India. He was released when no evidence could be provided, following the murder of a prosecution witness, Narendranath Goswami during the trial. During his stay in the jail, he had mystical and spiritual experiences, after which he moved to Pondicherry, leaving politics for spiritual work. At Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo developed a spiritual practice he called Integral Yoga. The central theme of his vision was the evolution of human life into a divine life. He believed in a spiritual realisation that not only liberated but transformed human nature, enabling a divine life on earth. In 1926, with the help of his spiritual collaborator, Mirra Alfassa (referred to as "The Mother ), he founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. His main literary works are The Life Divine, which deals with theoretical aspects of Integral Yoga; Synthesis of Yoga, which deals with practical guidance to Integral Yoga; and Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, an epic poem.
- QUOTES ABOUT SRI AUROBINDO -
The Divine is what you adore in Sri Aurobindo.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I, [T2]
One should read Sri Aurobindo and know the answer.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I, [T0]
You must feel that Sri Aurobindo is looking at you.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I, [T5]
What should I read at present?
Sri Aurobindo's books.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - II,
Savitri
the supreme revelation
of Sri Aurobindo's
vision.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I
The help of Sri Aurobindo is constant; it is for us to know how to receive it.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I,
How beautiful is the day when one can offer one's devotion to Sri Aurobindo.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I, [T2]
To grieve is an insult to Sri Aurobindo who is here with us, conscious and alive.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I, [T5]
If one reads Sri Aurobindo carefully one finds the answers to all that one wants to know.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I, [T5]
Sri Aurobindo is constantly among us and reveals himself to those who are ready to see and hear him.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I, [T5]
Sri Aurobindo is in the subtle physical, you can meet him when you sleep, if you know how to go there.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I, [T1]
(Darshan Message)
Sri Aurobindo's message is an immortal sunlight radiating over the future. 15 August 1972
*
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I
To express our gratitude to Sri Aurobindo we can do nothing better than to be a living demonstration of his teaching.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I, [T3]
By studying carefully what Sri Aurobindo has said on all subjects one can easily reach a complete knowledge of the things of this world.
~ The Mother, On Education, [T5]
Sri Aurobindo is always with us, enlightening, guiding, protecting. We must answer to his grace by a perfect faithfulness.
~ The Mother, Mantras Of The Mother, 14 AUGUST, [T1]
The control over the thoughts and the power of seeing the image of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo in the head are a very good beginning.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV, [T5]
How can I make Sri Aurobindo's influence living and dynamic in my daily activities?
Be perfectly sincere and He will answer your call.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I,
Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother - On spirit possession and mental imbalances
~ ?, https://auromere.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/on-spirit-possession-and-mental-imbalances/
Eternal Presence
[facsimile]
Sri Aurobindo is constantly among us and reveals himself to those who are ready to see and hear him.
*
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I, [T5]
Utter SILENCE must be observed in the room. Whoever pronounces a word in the presence of Sri Aurobindo will have to leave the place immediately.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I,
In fact, if one reads attentively what Sri Aurobindo has written, all that he has written, one would have the answer to every question.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958, [T0]
For Sri Aurobindo's centenary, what is the best offering that I can personally make to Sri Aurobindo?
Offer him your mind in all sincerity. 13 November 1970
~ The Mother, On Education
Since the beginning of earth history, Sri Aurobindo has always presided over the great earthly transformations, under one form or another, one name or another.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I,
It is not by books that Sri Aurobindo ought to be studied but by subjects - what he has said on the Divine, on Unity, on religion, on evolution, on education, on self-perfection, on supermind, etc., etc.
~ The Mother, On Education, 205
The other quotation is a mantra.
OM Sri Aurobindo Mira
Open my mind, my heart, my life to your Light,
your Love, your Power. In all things may I see the Divine.
16 July 1938
On Himself, 26.512
~ The Mother, Agenda Vol 11
It goes without saying that for admission to live in this ideal place (Sri Aurobindo Ashram) the essential conditions that need to be fulfilled are good character, good conduct, honest, regular and efficient work and a general goodwill. ~ The Mother, CWM 13
Last night, we (you and I and some others) were together for quite a long time in the permanent dwelling-place of Sri Aurobindo which exists in the subtle physical (what Sri Aurobindo called the true physical).
1 February 1963
*
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I, [T1]
Sri Aurobindo does not belong to the past nor to history.
Sri Aurobindo is the Future advancing towards its realisation.
Thus we must shelter the eternal youth required for a speedy advance, in order not to become laggards on the way. 2 April 1967
~ The Mother, On Education, 210
The red lotus is the flower of Sri Aurobindo, but specially for his centenary we shall choose the blue lotus, which is the colour of his physical aura, to symbolise the centenary of the manifestation of the Supreme upon earth. 21 December 1971
*
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I
We must not be bewildered by appearances. Sri Aurobindo has not left us. Sri Aurobindo is here, as living and as present as ever and it is left to us to realise his work with all the sincerity, eagerness and concentration necessary. 15 December 1950 ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I
It matters not if there are hundreds of beings plunged in densest ignorance. He whom we saw yesterday is on earth; his presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, when Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth.
~ The Mother, on after meeting Sri Aurobindo for the first time, March 30th 1914
Sri Aurobindo is constantly in the subtle physical, very active there. I see him almost daily, and last night I spent many hours with him.
If you become conscious in the subtle physical you will surely meet him, it is what he called the true physical - it has nothing to do with the psychic. 21 December 1969
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I, [T1]
Where you are? In the Mother's presence here and close to me. Where you are going? Towards union with the Divine through dedication and service. What you are doing here? Service and self-giving to the Divine. The rest depends, as the Mother writes to you, on the simplicity and fullness with which you give yourself and serve.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV
Have confidence in the Mother and be sure that the liberation from these things will surely come. What the soul feels is the sign of the spiritual destiny as of the spiritual need. What opposes is a remnant of the nature of the human ignorance. Our help will be there with you fully to overcome it. 27 February 1935
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother
... The undivine, therefore, is all that is unwilling to accept the light and force of the Mother. That is why I am always telling you to keep yourself in contact with the Mother and with her Light and Force, because it is only so that you can come out of this confusion and obscurity and receive the Truth that comes from above. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother
It is now long since Sri Aurobindo has put up everywhere in the Ashram this reminder that you all know: 'Always behave as if the Mother was looking at you, because she is, indeed, always present.' This is not a mere phrase, not simply words, it is a fact. I am with you in a very concrete manner and they who have a subtle vision can see me.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I, [T0]
Above them is the miracle of eternal beauty, an unseizable secret of divine harmonies, the compelling magic of an irresistible universal charm and attraction that draws and holds things and forces and beings together and obliges them to meet and unite that a hidden Ananda may play from behind the veil and make of them its rhythms and its figures.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother
The Mother guides, helps each according to his nature and need, and, where necessary, herself intervenes with her Power enabling the sadhak to withstand the rigours and demands of the Path. She has placed herself - with all the Love, Peace, Knowledge and Consciousness that she is - at the disposal of every aspiring soul that looks for help.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, [T2]
Never allow this idea I am not able, I am not doing enough to come and vex you; it is a tamasic suggestion and brings depression and depression opens the way to the attacks of the wrong forces. Your position should be, Let me do what I can; the Mothers force is there, the Divine is there to see that in due time all will be done.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, Letters On The Mother
All human beings are full of ego. If you want to change, you must be very quiet and always aspire for a higher consciousness to come down into you in which there is not the ego. When it comes down, the real change will come. But you must be quiet within, not worried and restless - you must open confidently to the Mother's Force and let it work in you.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV, Ego and Its forms
Message for 4. 5. 67
"Earth-life is the self-chosen habitation of a great Divinity and his aeonic will is to change it from a blind prison into his splendid mansion and high heaven-reaching temple." - Sri Aurobindo
The Divinity mentioned by Sri Aurobindo is not a person but a condition that will be shared by all those who have prepared themselves to receive it. May 1967 ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - III
279 - O soldier and hero of God, where for thee is sorrow or shame or suffering? For thy life is a glory, thy deeds a consecration, victory thy apotheosis, defeat thy triumph. - Sri Aurobindo.
For one who is totally consecrated to the Divine, there can be neither shame nor suffering, for the Divine is always with him and the Divine Presence changes all things into glory. 9 January 1970 ~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms, volume-10, page no.295
FOOTER
see also ::: SA (quotes)
see also ::: CWSA, The Mother
subject class:Integral Yoga
subject class:Hinduism
subject class:Philosophy
subject class:Psychology
class:God
class:person
class:author
class:Beinng
class:Poet
subject class:Poetry
class:Philosopher
class:Guru
class:Sage
class:Yogi
word class:noun
alt spellings:Shri Aurobindo, Aurobindo, Aurobindo Ghose
TERMS STARTING WITH
Sri Aurobindo: "A compromise is a bargain, a transaction of interests between two conflicting powers; it is not a true reconciliation.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Akshara, the immobile, the immutable, is the silent and inactive self, it is the unity of the divine Being, Witness of Nature, but not involved in its movement; it is the inactive Purusha free from Prakriti and her works.” Essays on the Gita
Sri Aurobindo: "A life of gnostic beings carrying the evolution to a higher supramental status might fitly be characterised as a divine life; for it would be a life in the Divine, a life of the beginnings of a spiritual divine light and power and joy manifested in material Nature.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . all cosmic and real Law is a thing not imposed from outside, but from within, all development is self-development, all seed and result are seed of a Truth of things and result of that seed determined out of its potentialities. For the same reason no Law is absolute, because only the infinite is absolute, and everything contains within itself endless potentialities quite beyond its determined form and course, which are only determined through a self-limitation by Idea proceeding from an infinite liberty within.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "All philosophy is concerned with the relations between two things, the fundamental truth of existence and the forms in which existence presents itself to our experience.” *The Hour of God
Sri Aurobindo: "And though this Spirit of the universe, this One who is all, seems to be turning us on the wheel of the world as if mounted on a machine by the force of Maya, shaping us in our ignorance as the potter shapes a pot, as the weaver a fabric, by some skilful mechanical principle, yet is this spirit our own greatest self and it is according to the real idea, the truth of ourselves, that which is growing in us and finding always new and more adequate forms in birth after birth, in our animal and human and divine life, in that which we were, that which we are, that which we shall be, — it is in accordance with this inner soul-truth that, as our opened eyes will discover, we are progressively shaped by this spirit within us in its all-wise omnipotence.” *Essays on the Gita
Sri Aurobindo—A note on the Chhandogya Upanishad
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Sri Aurobindo: "A spiritual atmosphere is more important than outer conditions; if one can get that and also create one"s own spiritual air to breathe in and live in it, that is the true condition of progress.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "As there are Powers of Knowledge or Forces of the Light, so there are Powers of Ignorance and tenebrous Forces of the Darkness whose work is to prolong the reign of Ignorance and Inconscience. As there are Forces of Truth, so there are Forces that live by the Falsehood and support it and work for its victory; as there are powers whose life is intimately bound up with the existence, the idea and the impulse of Good, so there are Forces whose life is bound up with the existence and the idea and the impulse of Evil. It is this truth of the cosmic Invisible that was symbolised in the ancient belief of a struggle between the powers of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil for the possession of the world and the government of the life of man; — this was the significance of the contest between the Vedic Gods and their opponents, sons of Darkness and Division, figured in a later tradition as Titan and Giant and Demon, Asura, Rakshasa, Pisacha; the same tradition is found in the Zoroastrian Double Principle and the later Semitic opposition of God and his Angels on the one side and Satan and his hosts on the other, — invisible Personalities and Powers that draw man to the divine Light and Truth and Good or lure him into subjection to the undivine principle of Darkness and Falsehood and Evil.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "As there is an inner sight other than the physical, so there is an inner hearing other than that of the external ear, and it can listen to voices and sounds and words of other worlds, other times and places, or those which come from supraphysical beings.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: A symbol, as I understand it, is the form on one plane that represents a truth of another. For instance, a flag is the symbol of a nation…. But generally all forms are symbols. This body of ours is a symbol of our real being and everything is a symbol of some higher reality. There are, however, different kinds of symbols: 1. Conventional symbols, such as the Vedic Rishis formed with objects taken from their surroundings. The cow stood for light because the same word `go ‘ meant both ray and cow, and because the cow was their most precious possession which maintained their life and was constantly in danger of being robbed and concealed. But once created, such a symbol becomes alive. The Rishis vitalised it and it became a part of their realisation. It appeared in their visions as an image of spiritual light. The horse also was one of their favourite symbols, and a more easily adaptable one, since its force and energy were quite evident. 2. What we might call Life-symbols, such as are not artificially chosen or mentally interpreted in a conscious deliberate way, but derive naturally from our day-to-day life and grow out of the surroundings which condition our normal path of living. To the ancients the mountain was a symbol of the path of yoga, level above level, peak upon peak. A journey, involving the crossing of rivers and the facing of lurking enemies, both animal and human, conveyed a similar idea. Nowadays I dare say we would liken yoga to a motor-ride or a railway-trip. 3. Symbols that have an inherent appositeness and power of their own. Akasha or etheric space is a symbol of the infinite all-pervading eternal Brahman. In any nationality it would convey the same meaning. Also, the Sun stands universally for the supramental Light, the divine Gnosis. 4.* Mental symbols, instances of which are numbers or alphabets. Once they are accepted, they too become active and may be useful. Thus geometrical figures have been variously interpreted. In my experience the square symbolises the supermind. I cannot say how it came to do so. Somebody or some force may have built it before it came to my mind. Of the triangle, too, there are different explanations. In one position it can symbolise the three lower planes, in another the symbol is of the three higher ones: so both can be combined together in a single sign. The ancients liked to indulge in similar speculations concerning numbers, but their systems were mostly mental. It is no doubt true that supramental realities exist which we translate into mental formulas such as Karma, Psychic evolution, etc. But they are, so to speak, infinite realities which cannot be limited by these symbolic forms, though they may be somewhat expressed by them; they might be expressed as well by other symbols, and the same symbol may also express many different ideas. Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Atheism is the shadow or dark side of the highest perception of God.” *Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo, Avatar and Poet Supreme, has enriched Savitri, his magnum opus, with words from a number of languages. In fact he has also coined words when no word would suffice to convey the mantric power and meaning required.
Sri Aurobindo: "Avatarhood would have little meaning if it were not connected with the evolution. The Hindu procession of the ten Avatars is itself, as it were, a parable of evolution. First the Fish Avatar, then the amphibious animal between land and water, then the land animal, then the Man-Lion Avatar, bridging man and animal, then man as dwarf, small and undeveloped and physical but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence, then the rajasic, sattwic, nirguna Avatars, leading the human development from the vital rajasic to the sattwic mental man and again the overmental superman. Krishna, Buddha and Kalki depict the last three stages, the stages of the spiritual development — Krishna opens the possibility of overmind, Buddha tries to shoot beyond to the supreme liberation but that liberation is still negative, not returning upon earth to complete positively the evolution; Kalki is to correct this by bringing the Kingdom of the Divine upon earth, destroying the opposing Asura forces. The progression is striking and unmistakable.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Aware of the Divine as the Master of our being and action, we can learn to become channels of his Shakti, the Divine Puissance, and act according to her dictates or her rule of light and power within us.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Beauty is the special divine Manifestation in the physical as Truth is in the Mind, Love in the heart, Power in the vital.” *The Future Poetry
Sri Aurobindo: "Birth is the first spiritual mystery of the physical universe, death is the second which gives its double point of perplexity to the mystery of birth; for life, which would otherwise be a self-evident fact of existence, becomes itself a mystery by virtue of these two which seem to be its beginning and its end and yet in a thousand ways betray themselves as neither of these things, but rather intermediate stages in an occult processus of life.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Brahma is the Power of the Divine that stands behind formation and the creation.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “Brahma is the Power of the Divine that stands behind formation and the creation.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "But if the individual is a persistent reality, an eternal portion or power of the Eternal, if his growth of consciousness is the means by which the Spirit in things discloses its being, the cosmos reveals itself as a conditioned manifestation of the play of the eternal One in the being of Sachchidananda with the eternal Many.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "But what do we mean by the individual? What we usually call by that name is a natural ego, a device of Nature which holds together her action in the mind and body. This ego has to be extinguished, otherwise there is no complete liberation possible; but the individual self or soul is not this ego. The individual soul is the spiritual being which is sometimes described as an eternal portion of the Divine, but can also be described as the Divine himself supporting his manifestation as the Many. This is the true spiritual individual which appears in its complete truth when we get rid of the ego and our false separative sense of individuality, realise our oneness with the transcendent and cosmic Divine and with all beings.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "But when I speak of the Divine Will, I mean something different, — something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will be not an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the law of the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty and Ananda, for these are the Divine Nature.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "By aesthesis is meant a reaction of the consciousness, mental and vital and even bodily, which receives a certain element in things, something that can be called their taste, Rasa, which, passing through the mind or sense or both, awakes a vital enjoyment of the taste, Bhoga, and this can again awaken us, awaken even the soul in us to something yet deeper and more fundamental than mere pleasure and enjoyment, to some form of the spirit"s delight of existence, Ananda.” *Letters on Savitri
Sri Aurobindo: "By attaining to the Unborn beyond all becoming we are liberated from this lower birth and death; by accepting the Becoming freely as the Divine, we invade mortality with the immortal beatitude and become luminous centres of its conscious self-expression in humanity.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "By immortality we mean the absolute life of the soul as opposed to the transient and mutable life in the body which it assumes by birth and death and rebirth and superior also to its life as the mere mental being who dwells in the world subjected helplessly to this law of death and birth or seems at least by his ignorance to be subjected to this and to other laws of the lower Nature.” *The Upanishads
Sri Aurobindo: "Chance is not *in this universe; the idea of illusion is itself an illusion. There was never illusion yet in the human mind that was not the concealing [?shape] and disfigurement of a truth.” Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "Concentration is a gathering together of the consciousness and either centralising at one point or turning on a single object, e.g., the Divine; there can also be a gathered condition throughout the whole being, not at a point. In meditation it is not indispensable to gather like this, one can simply remain with a quiet mind thinking of one subject or observing what comes in the consciousness and dealing with it.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Confidence — the sense of security that goes with trust.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Consciousness is a fundamental thing, the fundamental thing in existence — it is the energy, the motion, the movement of consciousness that creates the universe and all that is in it — not only the macrocosm but the microcosm is nothing but consciousness arranging itself.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Consecration becomes in its fullness a devoting of all our being to the Divine; therefore also of all our thoughts and our works.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Conviction — intellectual belief held on what seems to be good reasons.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Cruelty transfigured becomes Love that is intolerable ecstasy; . . . .”
Sri Aurobindo: "Day and Night, – the latter the state of Ignorance that belongs to our material Nature, the former the state of illumined Knowledge that belongs to the divine Mind of which our mentality is a pale and dulled reflection.” The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "Destiny in the rigid sense applies only to the outer being so long as it lives in the Ignorance. What we call destiny is only in fact the result of the present condition of the being and the nature and energies it has accumulated in the past acting on each other and determining the present attempts and their future results. But as soon as one enters the path of spiritual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new factor, the Divine Grace, the help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma, which can lift the sadhak beyond the present possibilities of his nature. One"s spiritual destiny is then the divine election which ensures the future.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Destruction in itself is neither good nor evil. It is a fact of Nature, a necessity in the play of forces, as things are in this world. The Light destroys the Darkness and the Powers of Darkness, and that is not a movement of Ignorance!” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: " . . . Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Doubt cannot be convinced, because by its very nature it does not want to be convinced; . . . .” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “… Durga, the conquering and protecting aspect of the Universal Mother.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Each nation is a Shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity and lives by the principle which it embodies.” The Renaissance in India
Sri Aurobindo: "Equality is to remain unmoved within in all conditions.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Essence can never be defined — it simply is.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Every man is knowingly or unknowingly the instrument of a universal Power and, apart from the inner Presence, there is no such essential difference between one action and another, one kind of instrumentation and another as would warrant the folly of an egoistic pride. The difference between knowledge and ignorance is a grace of the Spirit; the breath of divine Power blows where it lists and fills today one and tomorrow another with the word or the puissance. If the potter shapes one pot more perfectly than another, the merit lies not in the vessel but the maker. The attitude of our mind must not be ‘This is my strength" or ‘Behold God"s power in me", but rather ‘A Divine Power works in this mind and body and it is the same that works in all men and in the animal, in the plant and in the metal, in conscious and living things and in things apparently inconscient and inanimate."” The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Existence is an infinite and therefore indefinable and illimitable Reality which figures itself out in multiple values of life.” *Social and Political Thought
Sri Aurobindo: "Faith is a necessary means for arriving at realisation, because we are ignorant and do not yet know that which we are seeking to realise; faith is indeed knowledge giving the ignorance an intimation of itself previous to its own manifestation, it is the gleam sent before by the yet unrisen Sun. When the Sun shall rise, there will be no longer any need of the gleam.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Fifty, hundred, a thousand are numbers symbolic of completeness.” The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "Finally, we have the goddess Dakshina who may well be a female form of Daksha, himself a god and afterwards in the Purana one of the Prajapatis, the original progenitors, — we have Dakshina associated with the manifestation of knowledge and sometimes almost identified with Usha, the divine Dawn, who is the bringer of illumination. I shall suggest that Dakshina like the more famous Ila, Saraswati and Sarama, is one of four goddesses representing the four faculties of the Ritam or Truth-consciousness, — Ila representing truth-vision or revelation, Saraswati truth-audition, inspiration, the divine word, Sarama intuition, Dakshina the separative intuitional discrimination.” *The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "Force of being in conscious action is will.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . for each individual is in himself the Eternal who has assumed name and form and supports through him the experiences of life turning on an ever-circling wheel of birth in the manifestation. The wheel is kept in motion by the desire of the individual, which becomes the effective cause of rebirth and by the mind"s turning away from the knowledge of the eternal self to the preoccupations of the temporal becoming.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Form is the basic means of manifestation and without it it may be said that the manifestation of anything is not complete. Even if the Formless logically precedes Form, yet it is not illogical to assume that in the Formless, Form is inherent and already existent in a mystic latency, otherwise how could it be manifested?” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: " For the highest intuitive Knowledge sees things in the whole, in the large and details only as sides of the indivisible whole; its tendency is towards immediate synthesis and the unity of knowledge.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Freedom is the law of being in its illimitable unity, secret master of all Nature: . . . .” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Further, vision is of value because it is often a first key to inner planes of one"s own being and one"s own consciousness as distinguished from worlds or planes of the cosmic consciousness. Yoga-experience often begins with some opening of the third eye in the forehead (the centre of vision in the brows) or with some kind of beginning and extension of subtle seeing which may seem unimportant at first but is the vestibule to deeper experience.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “Further, vision is of value because it is often a first key to inner planes of one’s own being and one’s own consciousness as distinguished from worlds or planes of the cosmic consciousness. Yoga-experience often begins with some opening of the third eye in the forehead (the centre of vision in the brows) or with some kind of beginning and extension of subtle seeing which may seem unimportant at first but is the vestibule to deeper experience.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Genius is one attempt of the universal Energy to so quicken and intensify our intellectual powers that they shall be prepared for those more puissant, direct and rapid faculties which constitute the play of the supra-intellectual or divine mind. It is not, then, a freak, an inexplicable phenomenon, but a perfectly natural next step in the right line of her [Nature"s] evolution.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Gnosis or true supermind is a power above mind working in its own law, out of the direct identity of the supreme Self, his absolute self-conscious Truth knowing herself by her own power of absolute Light without any need of seeking, even the most luminous seeking.” The Upanishads (footnote)
Sri Aurobindo: "God and Man, World and Beyond-world become one when they know each other. Their division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is the cause of suffering.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Hatred is the sign of a secret attraction that is eager to flee from itself and furious to deny its own existence. That too is God"s play in His creature.” *Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "He is the Cosmic Spirit and all-creating Energy around us; he is the Immanent within us. All that is is he, and he is the More than all that is, and we ourselves, though we know it not, are being of his being, force of his force, conscious with a consciousness derived from his; even our mortal existence is made out of his substance and there is an immortal within us that is a spark of the Light and Bliss that are for ever. No matter whether by knowledge, works, love or any other means, to become aware of this truth of our being, to realise it, to make it effective here or elsewhere is the object of all Yoga.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Hell and heaven are often imaginary states of the soul or rather of the vital which it constructs about it after its passing. What is meant by hell is a painful passage through the vital or lingering there, as for instance, in many cases of suicide where one remains surrounded by the forces of suffering and turmoil created by this unnatural and violent exit. There are, of course, also worlds of mind and vital worlds which are penetrated with joyful or dark experiences. One may pass through these as the result of things formed in the nature which create the necessary affinities, but the idea of reward or retribution is a crude and vulgar conception which is a mere popular error.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "His [the Titan"s] instincts call for a visible, tangible mastery and a sensational domination. How shall he feel sure of his empire unless he can feel something writhing helpless under his heel, — if in agony, so much the better? What is exploitation to him, unless it diminishes the exploited? To be able to coerce, exact, slay, overtly, irresistibly, — it is this that fills him with the sense of glory and dominion. For he is the son of division and the strong flowering of the Ego. To feel the comparative limitation of others is necessary to him that he may imagine himself immeasurable; for he has not the real, self-existent sense of infinity which no outward circumstance can abrogate. Contrast, division, negation of the wills and lives of others are essential to his self-development and self-assertion. The Titan would unify by devouring, not by harmonising; he must conquer and trample what is not himself either out of existence or into subservience so that his own image may stand out stamped upon all things and dominating all his environment.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “His [the Titan’s] instincts call for a visible, tangible mastery and a sensational domination. How shall he feel sure of his empire unless he can feel something writhing helpless under his heel,—if in agony, so much the better? What is exploitation to him, unless it diminishes the exploited? To be able to coerce, exact, slay, overtly, irresistibly,—it is this that fills him with the sense of glory and dominion. For he is the son of division and the strong flowering of the Ego. To feel the comparative limitation of others is necessary to him that he may imagine himself immeasurable; for he has not the real, self-existent sense of infinity which no outward circumstance can abrogate. Contrast, division, negation of the wills and lives of others are essential to his self-development and self-assertion. The Titan would unify by devouring, not by harmonising; he must conquer and trample what is not himself either out of existence or into subservience so that his own image may stand out stamped upon all things and dominating all his environment.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "History teaches us nothing; it is a confused torrent of events and personalities or a kaleidoscope of changing institutions. We do not seize the real sense of all this change and this continual streaming forward of human life in the channels of Time. What we do seize are current or recurrent phenomena, facile generalisations, partial ideas. We talk of democracy, aristocracy and autocracy, collectivism and individualism, imperialism and nationalism, the State and the commune, capitalism and labour; we advance hasty generalisations and make absolute systems which are positively announced today only to be abandoned perforce tomorrow; we espouse causes and ardent enthusiasms whose triumph turns to an early disillusionment and then forsake them for others, perhaps for those that we have taken so much trouble to destroy. For a whole century mankind thirsts and battles after liberty and earns it with a bitter expense of toil, tears and blood; the century that enjoys without having fought for it turns away as from a puerile illusion and is ready to renounce the depreciated gain as the price of some new good. And all this happens because our whole thought and action with regard to our collective life is shallow and empirical; it does not seek for, it does not base itself on a firm, profound and complete knowledge. The moral is not the vanity of human life, of its ardours and enthusiasms and of the ideals it pursues, but the necessity of a wiser, larger, more patient search after its true law and aim.” *The Human Cycle etc.
Sri Aurobindo: "Human life is itself only a term in a graded series, through which the secret Spirit in the universe develops gradually his purpose and works it out finally through the enlarging and ascending individual soul-consciousness in the body. This ascent can only take place by rebirth within the ascending order; an individual visit coming across it and progressing on some other line elsewhere could not fit into the system of this evolutionary existence.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . *ideals and idealists are necessary; ideals are the savour and sap of life, idealists the most powerful diviners and assistants of its purposes.” The Human Cycle
Sri Aurobindo: "If this higher buddhi {{understanding in the profoundest sense] could act pure of the interference of these lower members, it would give pure forms of the truth; observation would be dominated or replaced by a vision which could see without subservient dependence on the testimony of the sense-mind and senses; imagination would give place to the self-assured inspiration of the truth, reasoning to the spontaneous discernment of relations and conclusion from reasoning to an intuition containing in itself those relations and not building laboriously upon them, judgment to a thought-vision in whose light the truth would stand revealed without the mask which it now wears and which our intellectual judgment has to penetrate; while memory too would take upon itself that larger sense given to it in Greek thought and be no longer a paltry selection from the store gained by the individual in his present life, but rather the all-recording knowledge which secretly holds and constantly gives from itself everything that we now seem painfully to acquire but really in this sense remember, a knowledge which includes the future(1) no less than the past. ::: Footnote: In this sense the power of prophecy has been aptly called a memory of the future.]” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "If we believe that the soul is repeatedly reborn in the body, we must believe also that there is some link between the lives that preceded and the lives that follow and that the past of the soul has an effect on its future; and that is the spiritual essence of the law of Karma.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “If we believe that the soul is repeatedly reborn in the body, we must believe also that there is some link between the lives that preceded and the lives that follow and that the past of the soul has an effect on its future; and that is the spiritual essence of the law of Karma.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "I have accented on the first syllable as I have done often with words like ‘occult", ‘divine". It is a Russian word and foreign words in English tend often to get their original accent shifted as far backward as possible. I have heard many do that with ‘ukase". Letters on Savitri.
Sri Aurobindo: " In all Yoga the first requisites are faith and patience. The ardours of the heart and the violences of the eager will that seek to take the kingdom of heaven by storm can have miserable reactions if they disdain to support their vehemence on these humbler and quieter auxiliaries. And in the long and difficult integral Yoga there must be an integral faith and an unshakable patience.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "In considering the action of the Infinite we have to avoid the error of the disciple who thought of himself as the Brahman, refused to obey the warning of the elephant-driver to budge ::: from the narrow path and was taken up by the elephant"s trunk and removed out of the way; ‘You are no doubt the Brahman," said the master to his bewildered disciple, ‘but why did you not obey the driver Brahman and get out of the path of the elephant Brahman?"” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "In fact it [the world] is not an illusion in the sense of an imposition of something baseless and unreal on the consciousness, but a misinterpretation by the conscious mind and sense and a falsifying misuse of manifested existence.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "In other words, that which has thrown itself out into forms is a triune Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, Sachchidananda, whose consciousness is in its nature a creative or rather a self-expressive Force capable of infinite variation in phenomenon and form of its self-conscious being and endlessly enjoying the delight of that variation.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: [in reference to the following lines of Virgil] ::: Largior hic campos aether et lumine vestit
Sri Aurobindo: "Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge; it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses.” *The Hour of God
Sri Aurobindo: "Intellectual activities are not part of the inner being – the intellect is the outer mind.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Intelligence does not depend on the amount one has read, it is a quality of the mind. Study only gives it material for its work as life also does. There are people who do not know how to read and write who are more intelligent than many highly educated people and understand life and things better. On the other hand, a good intelligence can improve itself by reading because it gets more material to work on and grows by exercise and by having a wider range to move in. But book-knowledge by itself is not the real thing, it has to be used as a help to the intelligence but it is often only a help to stupidity or ignorance — ignorance because knowledge of facts is a poor thing if one cannot see their true significance.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "In the very atom there is a subconscious will and desire which must also be present in all atomic aggregates because they are present in the Force which constitutes the atom.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "I suppose the golden child is the Truth-Soul which follows after the silver light of the spiritual. When it plunges into the black waters of the subconscient, it releases from it the spiritual light and the sevenfold streams of the Divine Energy and, clearing itself of the stains of the subconscient, it prepares its flight towards the supreme Divine (the Mother).” (Reply to a question in the chapter Visions and Symbols.) Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "I take upon myself the right to coin new words. ‘Immensitudes" is not any more fantastic than ‘infinitudes" to pair ‘infinity".” immensitude, Immensitudes.
Sri Aurobindo: “It can be taken as the (Avatar) incarnation on the mental plane.” Visions of Champaklal
Sri Aurobindo: "It could be affirmed as a consequence that there is one all-pervading Life or dynamic energy — the material aspect being only its outermost movement — that creates all these forms of the physical universe, Life imperishable and eternal which, even if the whole figure of the universe were quite abolished, would itself still go on existing and be capable of producing a new universe in its place, must indeed, unless it be held back in a state of rest by some higher Power or hold itself back, inevitably go on creating. In that case Life is nothing else than the Force that builds and maintains and destroys forms in the world; it is Life that manifests itself in the form of the earth as much as in the plant that grows upon the earth and the animals that support their existence by devouring the life-force of the plant or of each other. All existence here is a universal Life that takes form of Matter. It might for that purpose hide life-process in physical process before it emerges as submental sensitivity and mentalised vitality, but still it would be throughout the same creative Life-principle.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "I think you said in a letter that in the line
Sri Aurobindo: "It is an achievement to have got rid so rapidly and decisively of the shimmering mists and fogs which modern intellectualism takes for Light of Truth. The modern mind has so long and persistently wandered – and we with it – in the Valley of the False Glimmer that it is not easy for anyone to disperse its mists with the sunlight of clear vision.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . it is this emptiness inward and outward that often in yoga becomes the first step towards a new consciousness.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "It might be said again that, even so, in Sachchidananda itself at least, above all worlds of manifestation, there could be nothing but the self-awareness of pure existence and consciousness and a pure delight of existence. Or, indeed, this triune being itself might well be only a trinity of original spiritual self-determinations of the Infinite; these too, like all determinations, would cease to exist in the ineffable Absolute. But our position is that these must be inherent truths of the supreme being; their utmost reality must be pre-existent in the Absolute even if they are ineffably other there than what they are in the spiritual mind"s highest possible experience. The Absolute is not a mystery of infinite blankness nor a supreme sum of negations; nothing can manifest that is not justified by some self-power of the original and omnipresent Reality.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "[‘Its passive flower of love and doom it gave."] Good Heavens! how did Gandhi come in there? Passion-flower, sir — passion, not passive.” Letters on Savitri [in reference to a typographical error]
Sri Aurobindo: “[‘Its passive flower of love and doom it gave.’] Good Heavens! how did Gandhi come in there? Passion-flower, sir—passion, not passive.” Letters on Savitri [in reference to a typographical error]
Sri Aurobindo: "I used the word ‘mystic" in the sense of a certain kind of inner seeing and feeling of things, a way which to the intellect would seem occult and visionary — for this is something different from imagination and its work with which the intellect is familiar.” *On Himself
Sri Aurobindo: " Karma is nothing but the will of the Spirit in action, consequence nothing but the creation of will. What is in the will of being, expresses itself in karma and consequence. When the will is limited in mind, karma appears as a bondage and a limitation, consequence as a reaction or an imposition. But when the will of the being is infinite in the spirit, karma and consequence become instead the joy of the creative spirit, the construction of the eternal mechanist, the word and drama of the eternal poet, the harmony of the eternal musician, the play of the eternal child.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Krishna is the Eternal"s Personality of Ananda; because [of] him all creation is possible, because of his play, because of his delight, because of his sweetness.” *Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: “Krishna is the Eternal’s Personality of Ananda; because [of] him all creation is possible, because of his play, because of his delight, because of his sweetness.” Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "Krishna with Radha is the symbol of the Divine Love.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “Krishna with Radha is the symbol of the Divine Love.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “Lakshmi is usually golden, not white. Saraswati is white.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Life itself here [on earth] is Being at labour in Matter to express itself in terms of conscious force; human life is the human being at labour to impress himself on the material world with the greatest possible force and intensity and extension.” *Social and Political Thought
Sri Aurobindo: “Love fulfilled does not exclude knowledge, but itself brings knowledge; and the completer the knowledge, the richer the possibility of love. ‘By Bhakti’ says the Lord in the Gita ‘shall a man know Me in all my extent and greatness and as I am in the principles of my being, and when he has known Me in the principles of my being, then he enters into Me.’ Love without knowledge is a passionate and intense, but blind, crude, often dangerous thing, a great power, but also a stumbling-block; love, limited in knowledge, condemns itself in its fervour and often by its very fervour to narrowness; but love leading to perfect knowledge brings the infinite and absolute union. Such love is not inconsistent with, but rather throws itself with joy into divine works; for it loves God and is one with him in all his being, and therefore in all beings, and to work for the world is then to feel and fulfil multitudinously one’s love for God. This is the trinity of our powers, [work, knowledge, love] the union of all three in God to which we arrive when we start on our journey by the path of devotion with Love for the Angel of the Way to find in the ecstasy of the divine delight of the All-Lover’s being the fulfilment of ours, its secure home and blissful abiding-place and the centre of its universal radiation.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: " Love? It is not Love who meets the burdened great and governs the fate of men! Nor is it Pain. Time also does not do these things — it only provides the field and movement of events. If I had wanted to give a name, I would have done it, but it has purposely to be left nameless because it is indefinable. He may use Love or Pain or Time or any of these powers but is not any of them. You can call him the Master of the Evolution, if you like. Letters of Savitri
Sri Aurobindo: “ Love? It is not Love who meets the burdened great and governs the fate of men! Nor is it Pain. Time also does not do these things—it only provides the field and movement of events. If I had wanted to give a name, I would have done it, but it has purposely to be left nameless because it is indefinable. He may use Love or Pain or Time or any of these powers but is not any of them. You can call him the Master of the Evolution, if you like. Letters of Savitri
Sri Aurobindo: "Lust is the perversion or degradation which prevents love from establishing its reign: . . . .” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Masters of the Truth-Light who make the Truth grow by the Truth.” Rig Veda. *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Material Nature is not ethical; the law which governs it is a co-ordination of fixed habits which take no cognisance of good and evil, but only of force that creates, force that arranges and preserves, force that disturbs and destroys impartially, non-ethically, according to the secret Will in it, according to the mute satisfaction of that Will in its own self-formations and self-dissolutions.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Matter, body is only a massed motion of force of conscious being employed as a starting-point for the variable relations of consciousness working through its power of sense.” *Essays on the Gita
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . memory is only a process of consciousness, a utility; it cannot be the substance of being or the whole of our personality: it is simply one of the workings of consciousness as radiation is one of the workings of Light.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: " Mental intelligence thinks out because it is merely a reflecting force of consciousness which does not know, but seeks to know; it follows in Time step by step the working of a knowledge higher than itself, a knowledge that exists always, one and whole, that holds Time in its grasp, that sees past, present and future in a single regard.: The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Mind is not sufficient to explain existence in the universe. Infinite Consciousness must first translate itself into infinite faculty of Knowledge or, as we call it from our point of view, omniscience.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: “Narada stands for the expression of the Divine Love and Knowledge.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “Nihil is the void, where there can be no potentialities; …” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: “Not likely! I would think of the French eternuer and sneeze.”“Letters on Savitri”
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . obedience is necessary so as to get away from one"s own mind and vital and learn to follow the Truth. . . . Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Of course you can [do yoga without being great]. There is no need of being great. On the contrary humility is the first necessity, for one who has ego and pride cannot realise the Highest.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . one can be free only by living in the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Only those thoughts are true the opposite of which is also true in its own time and application; indisputable dogmas are the most dangerous kind of falsehoods.” Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "On the other hand, Pranayama awakens the coiled-up serpent of the Pranic dynamism in the vital sheath and opens to the Yogin fields of consciousness, ranges of experience, abnormal faculties denied to the ordinary human life while it puissantly intensifies such normal powers and faculties as he already possesses. These advantages can be farther secured and emphasised by other subsidiary processes open to the Hathayogin.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . our imperfection is the sign of a transitional state, a growth not yet completed, an effort that is finding its way; . . . .” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . our mind has the faculty of imagination; it can create and take as true and real its own mental structures: . . . . Our mental imagination is an instrument of Ignorance; it is the resort or device or refuge of a limited capacity of knowledge, a limited capacity of effective action. Mind supplements these deficiencies by its power of imagination: it uses it to extract from things obvious and visible the things that are not obvious and visible; it undertakes to create its own figures of the possible and the impossible; it erects illusory actuals or draws figures of a conjectured or constructed truth of things that are not true to outer experience. That is at least the appearance of its operation; but, in reality, it is the mind"s way or one of its ways of summoning out of Being its infinite possibilities, even of discovering or capturing the unknown possibilities of the Infinite.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision"s limited range.” *Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: ::: "O Wisdom-Splendour, Mother of the universe,
Sri Aurobindo: "Personality is only a temporary mental, vital, physical formation which the being, the real Person, the psychic entity, puts forward on the surface, — it is not the self in its abiding reality.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Pride is only one form of ego — there are ten thousand others. Every action of man is full of ego — the good ones as well as the bad, his humility as much as his pride, his virtues as much as his vices.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Quiet is a condition in which there is no restlessness or disturbance.” ::: "Quiet is rather negative — it is the absence of disturbance.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “Radha is the personification of the absolute love for the Divine, total and integral in all parts of the being from the highest spiritual to the physical, bringing the absolute self-giving and total consecration of all the being and calling down into the body and the most material nature the supreme Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo ref: the above line from Savitri:
Sri Aurobindo: "Revelation is a part of the intuitive consciousness.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Sacrifice means an inner offering to the Divine and the real spiritual sacrifice is a very joyful thing.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “Satyavan is the soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance; …” (Note at the preface to Savitri.)
Sri Aurobindo: “Savitri is the Divine Word, daughter of the Sun, goddess of the supreme Truth who comes down and is born to save; …” (Author’s note at beginning of Savitri.)
Sri Aurobindo: "Science started on the assumption that the ultimate truth must be physical and objective — and the objective Ultimate (or even less than that) would explain all subjective phenomena. Yoga proceeds on the opposite view that the ultimate Truth is spiritual and subjective and it is in that ultimate Light that we must view objective phenomena.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: ” See God everywhere and be not frightened by masks. Believe that all falsehood is truth in the making or truth in the breaking, all failure an effectuality concealed, all weakness strength hiding itself from its own vision, all pain a secret & violent ecstasy. If thou believest firmly & unweariedly, in the end thou wilt see & experience the All-true, Almighty & All-blissful.” Essays Divine and Human*
Sri Aurobindo: " Sin is the working of the lower nature for the crude satisfaction of its own ignorant, dull or violent rajasic and tamasic propensities in revolt against any high self-control and self-mastery of the nature by the spirit.” *Essays on the Gita
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . some things are suppressed in the ordinary life and remain lying in the nature, suppressed but not eliminated; they may rise up any day or they may express themselves in various nervous forms or other disorders of the mind or vital or body without it being evident what is their real cause. This has been recently discovered by European psychologists and much emphasised, even exaggerated in a new science called psycho-analysis.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "So the possibility of the sunlit path is not a discovery or original invention of mine. The very first books on yoga I read more than thirty years ago spoke of the dark and sunlit way and emphasised the superiority of the latter over the former.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “So too when the seer of the house of Atri cries high to Agni, ‘O Agni, O Priest of the offering, loose from us the cords,’ he is using not only a natural, but a richly-laden image. He is thinking of the triple cord of mind, nerves and body by which the soul is bound as a victim in the great world-sacrifice, the sacrifice of the Purusha; he is thinking of the force of the divine Will already awakened and at work within him, a fiery and irresistible godhead that shall uplift his oppressed divinity and cleave asunder the cords of its bondage; he is thinking of the might of that growing Strength and inner Flame which receiving all that he has to offer carries it to its own distant and difficult home, to the high-seated Truth, to the Far, to the Secret, to the Supreme.” The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "‘Spiritual" has not a necessary connection with the Absolute. Of course the experience of the Absolute is spiritual. All contacts with self, the higher consciousness, the Divine above are spiritual.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Substance, then, as we know it, material substance, is the form in which Mind acting through sense contacts the Conscious Being of which it is itself a movement of knowledge.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: " Suffering is due first to the Ignorance, secondly to the separation of the individual consciousness from the Divine Consciousness and Being, a separation created by the Ignorance — when that ceases, when one lives in the Divine and no more in one"s separated smaller self, then only suffering can altogether cease.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo’s Unique Uses of Words
Sri Aurobindo: "Surrender is giving oneself to the Divine — to give everything one is or has to the Divine and regard nothing as one"s own, to obey only the Divine will and no other, to live for the Divine and not for the ego.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "That (‘to blend and blur shades owing to technical exigencies"] might be all right for mental poetry — it won"t do for what I am trying to create — in that, one word won"t do for the other. Even in mental poetry I consider it an inferior method. ‘Gleam" and ‘glow" are two quite different things and the poet who uses them indifferently has constantly got his eye upon words rather than upon the object.” Letters on Savitri *
Sri Aurobindo: "The Absolute cannot indeed be bound in its nature to manifest a cosmos of relations, but neither can it be bound not to manifest any cosmos. It is not itself a sheer emptiness; for a vacant Absolute is no Absolute, — our conception of a Void or Zero is only a conceptual sign of our mental inability to know or grasp it: it bears in itself some ineffable essentiality of all that is and all that can be; and since it holds in itself this essentiality and this possibility, it must also hold in itself in some way of its absoluteness either the permanent truth or the inherent, even if latent, realisable actuality of all that is fundamental to our or the world"s existence.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The anarchic is the true divine state of man in the end as in the beginning; but in between it would lead us straight to the devil and his kingdom.” Essays Divine and Human*
Sri Aurobindo: "The ancient knowledge in all countries was full of the search after the hidden truths of our being and it created that large field of practice and inquiry which goes in Europe by the name of occultism, — we do not use any corresponding word in the East, because these things do not seem to us so remote, mysterious and abnormal as to the occidental mentality; they are nearer to us and the veil between our normal material life and this larger life is much thinner.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The Being is one, but this oneness is infinite and contains in itself an infinite plurality or multiplicity of itself: the One is the All; it is not only an essential Existence, but an All-Existence. The infinite multiplicity of the One and the eternal unity of the Many are the two realities or aspects of one reality on which the manifestation is founded.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "the black dragon of the Inconscience sustains with its vast wings and its back of darkness the whole structure of the material universe; its energies unroll the flux of things, its obscure intimations seem to be the starting-point of consciousness itself and the source of all life-impulse.” The Life Divine ::: **Unused, guarded beneath Night"s dragon paws,**
Sri Aurobindo: "The centres or Chakras are seven in number: ::: The thousand-petalled lotus on the top of the head.
Sri Aurobindo: "The contact of mind with its objects creates what we call sense.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The cosmic consciousness is that of the universe, of the cosmic spirit and cosmic Nature with all the beings and forces within it. All that is as much conscious as a whole as the individual separately is, though in a different way. The consciousness of the individual is part of this, but a part feeling itself as a separate being. Yet all the time most of what he is comes into him from the cosmic consciousness. But there is a wall of separative ignorance between. Once it breaks down he becomes aware of the cosmic Self, of the consciousness of the cosmic Nature, of the forces playing in it, etc. He feels all that as he now feels physical things and impacts. He finds it all to be one with his larger or universal self.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The Divine and no other is the flame of life that sustains the physical body of living creatures and turns its food into sustenance of their vital force. He is lodged in the heart of every breathing thing; from him are memory and knowledge and the debates of the reason. He is that which is known by all the Vedas and by all forms of knowing; he is the knower of Veda and the maker of Vedanta. In other words, the Divine is at once the Soul of matter and the Soul of life and the Soul of mind as well as the Soul of the supramental light that is beyond mind and its limited reasoning intelligence.” *Essays on the Gita
Sri Aurobindo: “The Divine and no other is the flame of life that sustains the physical body of living creatures and turns its food into sustenance of their vital force. He is lodged in the heart of every breathing thing; from him are memory and knowledge and the debates of the reason. He is that which is known by all the Vedas and by all forms of knowing; he is the knower of Veda and the maker of Vedanta. In other words, the Divine is at once the Soul of matter and the Soul of life and the Soul of mind as well as the Soul of the supramental light that is beyond mind and its limited reasoning intelligence.” Essays on the Gita
Sri Aurobindo: "[The Divine"s] totality of finite and changeable circumstances dependent on an equal, immutable and eternal Infinity is what we call the Universe.” *The Upanishads
Sri Aurobindo: "The Divinity in man dwells veiled in his spiritual centre; there can be no such thing as self-exceeding for man or a higher issue for his existence if there is not in him the reality of an eternal Self and Spirit.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The duality is a position taken up, a double status accepted for the operations of the self-manifestation of the being; but there is no eternal and fundamental separateness and dualism of Being and its Consciousness-Force, of the Soul and Nature.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The faith in the divine Shakti must be always at the back of our strength and when she becomes manifest, it must be or grow implicit and complete. There is nothing that is impossible to her who is the conscious Power and universal Goddess all-creative from eternity and armed with the Spirit"s omnipotence.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the feeling of sure expectation of another"s help and reliance on his word, character etc.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The first is the discovery of the soul, not the outer soul of thought and emotion and desire, but the secret psychic entity, the divine element within us. When that becomes dominant over the nature, when we are consciously the soul and when mind, life and body take their true place as its instruments, we are aware of a guide within that knows the truth, the good, the true delight and beauty of existence, controls heart and intellect by its luminous law and leads our life and being towards spiritual completeness.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: ".The Herds and the Waters are the two principal images of the Veda; the former are the trooping Rays of the divine Sun, herds of the luminous Consciousness;” The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "The hostile forces are those whose very raison d"être is revolt against the Divine, against the Light and Truth and enmity to the Divine Work.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The idea is the realisation of a truth in Consciousness as the fact is its realisation in Power.” *The Supramental Manifestation
Sri Aurobindo: "The Infinite is not a sum of things, it is That which is all things and more.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The Infinite pauses always in the finite; the finite arrives always in the Infinite. This is the wheel that circles forever through Time and Eternity.” *Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: “The legend of the Tower of Babel speaks of the diversity of tongues as a curse laid on the race; but whatever its disadvantages, and they tend more and more to be minimised by the growth of civilisation and increasing intercourse, it has been rather a blessing than a curse, a gift to mankind rather than a disability laid upon it. The purposeless exaggeration of anything is always an evil, and an excessive pullulation of varying tongues that serve no purpose in the expression of a real diversity of spirit and culture is certainly a stumbling-block rather than a help: but this excess, though it existed in the past, is hardly a possibility of the future. The tendency is rather in the opposite direction. In former times diversity of language helped to create a barrier to knowledge and sympathy, was often made the pretext even of an actual antipathy and tended to a too rigid division. The lack of sufficient interpenetration kept up both a passive want of understanding and a fruitful crop of active misunderstandings. But this was an inevitable evil of a particular stage of growth, an exaggeration of the necessity that then existed for the vigorous development of strongly individualised group-souls in the human race. These disadvantages have not yet been abolished, but with closer intercourse and the growing desire of men and nations for the knowledge of each other’s thought and spirit and personality, they have diminished and tend to diminish more and more and there is no reason why in the end they should not become inoperative.” The Human Cycle. Babel-builders’.
Sri Aurobindo: "The Life Heavens are the heavens of the vital gods and there is there a perfect harmony but a harmony of the sublimated satisfied senses and vital desires only.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “The link between the spiritual and the lower planes of the being is that which is called in the old Vedantic phraseology the vijñâna and which we may describe in our modern turn of language as the Truth-plane or the ideal mind or supermind. There the One and the Many meet and our being is freely open to the revealing light of the divine Truth and the inspiration of the divine Will and Knowledge.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The lower nature is ignorant and undivine, not in itself hostile but shut to the Light and Truth. The hostile forces are anti-divine, not merely undivine; they make use of the lower nature, pervert it, fill it with distorted movements and by that means influence man and even try to enter and possess or at least entirely control him.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The Master and Mover of our works is the One, the Universal and Supreme, the Eternal and Infinite. He is the transcendent unknown or unknowable Absolute, the unexpressed and unmanifested Ineffable above us; but he is also the Self of all beings, the Master of all worlds, transcending all worlds, the Light and the Guide, the All-Beautiful and All-Blissful, the Beloved and the Lover. He is the Cosmic Spirit and all-creating Energy around us; he is the Immanent within us. All that is is he, and he is the More than all that is, and we ourselves, though we know it not, are being of his being, force of his force, conscious with a consciousness derived from his; even our mortal existence is made out of his substance and there is an immortal within us that is a spark of the Light and Bliss that are for ever. No matter whether by knowledge, works, love or any other means, to become aware of this truth of our being, to realise it, to make it effective here or elsewhere is the object of all Yoga.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass though the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.” The Mother
Sri Aurobindo: "The motion of the world works under the government of a perpetual stability. Change represents the constant shifting of apparent relations in an eternal Immutability.” The Upanishads
Sri Aurobindo: ". The mystic Muse is more of an inspired Bacchante of the Dionysian wine than an orderly housewife.” Letters on Savitri
Sri Aurobindo: "The nature of Bhakti is adoration, worship, self-offering to what is greater than oneself; the nature of love is a feeling or a seeking for closeness and union. Self-giving is the character of both; both are necessary in the yoga and each gets its full force when supported by the other.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The omniscient is not born, nor dies, nor has he come into being from anywhere, nor is he anyone. He is unborn, he is constant and eternal, he is the Ancient of Days who is not slain in the slaying of the body. . . .” *The Upanishads
Sri Aurobindo: “The One is Four for ever in his supramental quaternary of Being, Consciousness, Force and Ananda.
Sri Aurobindo: "The ordinary mind in man is not truly the thinking mind proper, it is a life-mind, a vital mind as we may call it, which has learned to think and even to reason but for its own ends and on its own lines, not on those of a true mind of knowledge.” The Human Cycle (footnote).
Sri Aurobindo: "The peacock is the bird of Victory.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The physical nerves are part of the material body but they are extended into the subtle body and there is a connection between the two.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The prophetic or revealing power sees the substance; the inspiration perceives the right expression. Neither is manufactured; nor is poetry really a poiesis or composition, nor even a creation, but rather the revelation of something that eternally exists. The ancients knew this truth and used the same word for poet and prophet, creator and seer, sophos, vates, kavi.” Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "The Purusha, the inner Self, no larger than the size of a man"s thumb.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The quest of man for God, which becomes in the end the most ardent and enthralling of all his quests, begins with his first vague questionings of Nature and a sense of something unseen both in himself and her. Even if, as modern Science insists, religion started from animism, spirit-worship, demon-worship, and the deification of natural forces, these first forms only embody in primitive figures a veiled intuition in the subconscient, an obscure and ignorant feeling of hidden influences and incalculable forces, or a vague sense of being, will, intelligence in what seems to us inconscient, of the invisible behind the visible, of the secretly conscious spirit in things distributing itself in every working of energy. The obscurity and primitive inadequacy of the first perceptions do not detract from the value or the truth of this great quest of the human heart and mind, since all our seekings, — including Science itself, — must start from an obscure and ignorant perception of hidden realities and proceed to the more and more luminous vision of the Truth which at first comes to us masked, draped, veiled by the mists of the Ignorance. Anthropomorphism is an imaged recognition of the truth that man is what he is because God is what He is and that there is one soul and body of things, humanity even in its incompleteness the most complete manifestation yet achieved here and divinity the perfection of what in man is imperfect.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The real subconscious is a nether diminished consciousness close to the Inconscient; the subliminal is a consciousness larger than our surface existence. But both belong to the inner realm of our being of which our surface is unaware, so both are jumbled together in our common conception and parlance.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "There are two allied powers in man: Knowledge and Wisdom. Knowledge is so much of the truth, seen in a distorted medium, as the mind arrives at by groping; Wisdom what the eye of divine vision sees in the spirit.” *The Hour of God
Sri Aurobindo: "The reason itself is only a special kind of application, made by a surface regulating intelligence, of suggestions which actually come from a concealed, but sometimes partially overt and active power of the intuitive spirit.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "There is an inner vision that opens when one does sadhana and all sorts of images rise before it or pass. Their coming does not depend upon your thought or will; it is real and automatic. Just as your physical eyes see things in the physical world, so the inner eyes see things and images that belong to the other worlds and subtle images of things of this physical world also.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "[There is] a Supernature behind all that is apparent, a supreme power of the Spirit in Time and beyond Time, in Space and beyond Space, a conscious Power of the Self who by her becomes all becomings, of the Absolute who by her manifests all relativities.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "There is no difference between the terms ‘universal" and ‘cosmic" except that ‘universal" can be used in a freer way than ‘cosmic". Universal may mean ‘of the universe", cosmic in that general sense. But it may also mean ‘common to all", e.g., ‘This is a universal weakness" — but you cannot say ‘This is a cosmic weakness".” Letters on Yoga*
Sri Aurobindo: "There is no difference between the terms ‘universal" and ‘cosmic" except that ‘universal" can be used in a freer way than ‘cosmic". Universal may mean ‘of the universe", cosmic in that general sense. But it may also mean ‘common to all", e.g., ‘This is a universal weakness" — but you cannot say ‘This is a cosmic weakness".” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "There is no ignorance that is not part of the Cosmic Ignorance, only in the individual it becomes a limited formation and movement, while the Cosmic Ignorance is the whole movement of world consciousness separated from the supreme Truth and acting in an inferior motion in which the Truth is perverted, diminished, mixed and clouded with falsehood and error.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "There is no necessity in the essential nature of mind, sense, life that they should be so limited: for the physical sense-organs are not the creators of sense-perceptions, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic sense; the nervous system and vital organs are not the creators of life"s action and reaction, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Life-force; the brain is not the creator of thought, but itself the creation, the instrument and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Mind. The necessity then is not absolute, but teleological; it is the result of a divine cosmic Will in the material universe which intends to posit here a physical relation between sense and its object, establishes here a material formula and law of Conscious-Force and creates by it physical images of Conscious-Being to serve as the initial, dominating and determining fact of the world in which we live. It is not a fundamental law of being, but a constructive principle necessitated by the intention of the Spirit to evolve in a world of Matter.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: “There is no necessity in the essential nature of mind, sense, life that they should be so limited: for the physical sense-organs are not the creators of sense-perceptions, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic sense; the nervous system and vital organs are not the creators of life’s action and reaction, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Life-force; the brain is not the creator of thought, but itself the creation, the instrument and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Mind. The necessity then is not absolute, but teleological; it is the result of a divine cosmic Will in the material universe which intends to posit here a physical relation between sense and its object, establishes here a material formula and law of Conscious-Force and creates by it physical images of Conscious-Being to serve as the initial, dominating and determining fact of the world in which we live. It is not a fundamental law of being, but a constructive principle necessitated by the intention of the Spirit to evolve in a world of Matter.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The Rishi hymns the Sun-God as the source of divine knowledge and the creator of the inner worlds.” *The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "The robbers are as in the Veda vital beings who come to steal away the good condition or else to steal the gains of the sadhana.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: *"The seer does not need the aid of thought in its process as a means of knowledge, but only as a means of representation and expression, — thought is to him a lesser power and used for a secondary purpose. If a further extension of knowledge is required, he can come at it by new seeing without the slower thought processes that are the staff of support of the mental search and its feeling out for truth, — even as we scrutinise with the eye to find what escaped our first observation” The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “The Self that becomes all these forms of things is the Virat or universal Soul; the Self that creates all these forms is Hiranyagarbha, the luminous or creatively perceptive Soul.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the Self that creates all these forms is Hiranyagarbha, the luminous or creatively perceptive Soul; . . . . ” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The sense of release as if from jail always accompanies the emergence of the psychic being or the realisation of the self above. It is therefore spoken of as a liberation, mukti. It is a release into peace, happiness, the soul"s freedom not tied down by the thousand ties and cares of the outward ignorant existence.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The Sphinx is a symbol of the eternal quest that can only be answered by the secret knowledge.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “The Sphinx is a symbol of the eternal quest that can only be answered by the secret knowledge.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “The spiritual man who can guide human life towards its perfection is typified in the ancient Indian idea of the Rishi, one who has lived fully the life of man and found the word of the supra-intellectual, supramental, spiritual truth.” Social and Political Thought
Sri Aurobindo: "The supernatural is that the nature of which we have not attained or do not yet know, or the means of which we have not yet conquered. The common taste for miracles is the sign that man"s ascent is not yet finished.” Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "The supramental Knowledge-Will is Consciousness-Force rendered operative for the creation of forms of united being in an ordered harmony to which we give the name of world or universe; . . .” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: “… the terrible Kali is also the loving and beneficent Mother; …” Essays on the Gita
Sri Aurobindo: "The thousand-petalled lotus is above the head. It is the seventh and highest centre.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The Truth-being is the Hara-Gauri (the biune body of the Lord and his Spouse, Ishwara and Shakti, the right half male, the left half female) of the Indian iconological symbol; it is the double Power masculine-feminine born from and supported by the supreme Shakti of the Supreme.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The universe is a manifestation of the Reality, and there is a truth of the universal existence, a Power of cosmic being, an all-self or world-spirit. Humanity is a formation or manifestation of the Reality in the universe, and there is a truth and self of humanity, a human spirit, a destiny of human life.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existent and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally, all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The Unseen with whom there can be no pragmatic relations, unseizable, featureless, unthinkable, undesignable by name, whose substance is the certitude of One Self, in whom world-existence is stilled, who is all peace and bliss — that is the Self, that is what must be known.” Mandukya Upanishad. The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The wideness comes when one exceeds or begins to exceed the individual consciousness and spread out towards the universal. But the psychic can be active even in the individual consciousness.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘descend" has various meanings according to the context — I used it here in the sense of the psychic being coming down into the human consciousness and body ready for it.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘ghost" as used in popular parlance covers an enormous number of distinct phenomena which have no necessary connection with each other. To name a few only: ::: An actual contact with the soul of a human being in its subtle body and transcribed to our mind by the appearance of an image or the hearing of a voice.
Sri Aurobindo: "The word is a sound expression of the idea. In the supra-physical plane when an idea has to be realised, one can by repeating the word-expression of it, produce vibrations which prepare the mind for the realisation of the idea. That is the principle of the Mantras and of Japa. One repeats the name of the Divine and the vibrations created in the consciousness prepare the realisation of the Divine. It is the same idea that is expressed in the Bible: ‘God said, Let there be Light, and there was Light". It is creation by the Word.” *The Future Poetry
Sri Aurobindo: "This descent is felt as a pouring in of calm and peace, of force and power, of light, of joy and ecstasy, of wideness and freedom and knowledge, of a Divine Being or a Presence — sometimes one of these, sometimes several of them or all together.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "This idea of universality, of oneness not only with God or the eternal Self in me, but with all humanity and other beings, is growing to be the most prominent strain in our minds and it has to be taken more largely into account in any future idea or computation of the significance of rebirth and karma.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "This material universe is itself only existence as we see it when the soul dwells on the plane of material movement and experience in which the spirit involves itself in form, and therefore all the framework of things in which it moves by the life and which it embraces by the consciousness is determined by the principle of infinite division and aggregation proper to Matter, to substance of form.” The Upanishads
Sri Aurobindo: "This mind of pure intelligence has behind it our inner or subliminal mind which senses directly all the things of the mind-plane, is open to the action of a world of mental forces, and can feel the ideative and other imponderable influences which act upon the material world and the life-plane but which at present we can only infer and cannot directly experience: . . . .” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "This truth of Karma has been always recognised in the East in one form or else in another; but to the Buddhists belongs the credit of having given to it the clearest and fullest universal enunciation and the most insistent importance. In the West too the idea has constantly recurred, but in external, in fragmentary glimpses, as the recognition of a pragmatic truth of experience, and mostly as an ordered ethical law or fatality set over against the self-will and strength of man: but it was clouded over by other ideas inconsistent with any reign of law, vague ideas of some superior caprice or of some divine jealousy, — that was a notion of the Greeks, — a blind Fate or inscrutable Necessity, Ananke, or, later, the mysterious ways of an arbitrary, though no doubt an all-wise Providence.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga *Ananke"s.
Sri Aurobindo: “This truth of Karma has been always recognised in the East in one form or else in another; but to the Buddhists belongs the credit of having given to it the clearest and fullest universal enunciation and the most insistent importance. In the West too the idea has constantly recurred, but in external, in fragmentary glimpses, as the recognition of a pragmatic truth of experience, and mostly as an ordered ethical law or fatality set over against the self-will and strength of man: but it was clouded over by other ideas inconsistent with any reign of law, vague ideas of some superior caprice or of some divine jealousy,—that was a notion of the Greeks,—a blind Fate or inscrutable Necessity, Ananke, or, later, the mysterious ways of an arbitrary, though no doubt an all-wise Providence.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Time and Space . . . are the conceptual movement and extension of the Godhead in us.” *Essays on the Gita
Sri Aurobindo: "To act according to a standard of Truth or a rule or law of action (dharma) or in obedience to a superior authority or to the highest principles discovered by the reason and intelligent will and not according to one"s own fancy, vital impulses and desires. In yoga obedience to the Guru or to the Divine and the law of the Truth as declared by the Guru is the foundation of discipline.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "To be entirely sincere means to desire the divine Truth only, to surrender yourself more and more to the Divine Mother, to reject all personal demand and desire other than this one aspiration, to offer every action in life to the Divine and do it as the work given without bringing in the ego. This is the basis of the divine life.” Bases of Yoga*
Sri Aurobindo: “To be entirely sincere means to desire the divine Truth only, to surrender yourself more and more to the Divine Mother, to reject all personal demand and desire other than this one aspiration, to offer every action in life to the Divine and do it as the work given without bringing in the ego. This is the basis of the divine life.” Bases of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Trance or samadhi is a way of escape — the body is made quiet, the physical mind is in a state of torpor, the inner consciousness is left free to go on with its experiences. The disadvantage is that trance becomes indispensable and the problem of the waking consciousness is not solved; it remains imperfect.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "True reconciliation proceeds always by a mutual comprehension leading to some sort of intimate oneness. It is therefore through the utmost possible unification of Spirit and Matter that we shall best arrive at their reconciling truth and so at some strongest foundation for a reconciling practice in the inner life of the individual and his outer existence.” The Life Divine*
Sri Aurobindo: "Unity is the eternal and fundamental fact, without which all multiplicity would be an unreal and an impossible illusion. The consciousness of Unity is therefore called Vidya, the Knowledge.” *The Upanishads
Sri Aurobindo: "Universal love is the spiritual founded on the sense of the One and the Divine everywhere and the change of the personal into a wide universal consciousness, free from attachment and ignorance.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo uses the word in the sense of the definition for imager.
Sri Aurobindo: "Very usually, altruism is only the sublimest form of selfishness.” *Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "Vices are simply an overflow of energy in irregulated channels.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Victory. The final emergence of the embodied consciousness on earth from the bondage of the Ignorance.” *On Himself
Sri Aurobindo: "‘Violet" is the colour of benevolence or compassion, but also more vividly of the Divine Grace. . . .” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “Vishnu the all-pervading, the cosmic Deity, the Lover and Friend of our souls, the Lord of the transcendent existence and the transcendent delight.” The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "Visions come under the head of experiences, unless they fix themselves and are accompanied by a realisation of which they are as it were the support.” The Mother*
Sri Aurobindo: "Vitality means life-force — wherever there is life, in plant or animal or man, there is life-force — without the vital there can be no life in matter and no living action. The vital is a necessary force and nothing can be done or created in the bodily existence, if the vital is not there as an instrument.” *Letters on Yoga
"The vital proper is the life-force acting in its own nature, impulses, emotions, feelings, desires, ambitions, etc., having as their highest centre what we may call the outer heart of emotion, while there is an inner heart where are the higher or psychic feelings and sensibilities, the emotions or intuitive yearnings and impulses of the soul. The vital part of us is, of course, necessary to our completeness, but it is a true instrument only when its feelings and tendencies have been purified by the psychic touch and taken up and governed by the spiritual light and power.” *Letters on Yoga
". . . the vital is the Life-nature made up of desires, sensations, feelings, passions, energies of action, will of desire, reactions of the desire-soul in man and of all that play of possessive and other related instincts, anger, fear, greed, lust, etc., that belong to this field of the nature. Letters on Yoga
The Mother: "The vital is the dynamism of action. It is the seat of the will, of impulses, desires, revolts, etc.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15*.
Sri Aurobindo: "Weakness puts the same test and question to the strengths and energies and greatnesses in which we glory. Power is the play of life, shows its degree, finds the value of its expression; weakness is the play of death pursuing life in its movement and stressing the limit of its acquired energy.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "We have distinguished a fourfold principle of divine Being creative of the universe, — Existence, Conscious-Force, Bliss and Supermind.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . we insist so much on sincerity in the yoga — and that means to have all the being consciously turned towards the one Truth, the one Divine.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "We mean by the Absolute something greater than ourselves, greater than the cosmos which we live in, the supreme reality of that transcendent Being which we call God, something without which all that we see or are conscious of as existing, could not have been, could not for a moment remain in existence. Indian thought calls it Brahman, European thought the Absolute because it is a self-existent which is absolved of all bondage to relativities . . . The Absolute is for us the Ineffable.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "We see at once that if such an Existence is, it must be, like the Energy, infinite. Neither reason nor experience nor intuition nor imagination bears witness to us of the possibility of a final terminus. All end and beginning presuppose something beyond the end or beginning. An absolute end, an absolute beginning is not only a contradiction in terms, but a contradiction of the essence of things, a violence, a fiction. Infinity imposes itself upon the appearances of the finite by its ineffugable self-existence.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Whatever the manifestation may be, spiritual or material or other, it has behind it something that is beyond itself, and even if we reached the highest possible heights of the manifested existence there would be still beyond that even an Unmanifested from which it came.
Sri Aurobindo: "What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "What is meant by hell is a painful passage through the vital or lingering there, as for instance, in many cases of suicide where one remains surrounded by the forces of suffering and turmoil created by this unnatural and violent exit.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "What the "void" feels as a clutch is felt by the Mother only as a reminding finger laid on her cheek. It is one advantage of the expression ‘as if" that it leaves the field open for such variation. It is intended to suggest without saying it that behind the sombre void is the face of a mother. The two other ‘as if"s have the same motive and I do not find them jarring upon me. The second is at a sufficient distance from the first and it is not obtrusive enough to prejudice the third which more nearly follows. . . .” Letters on Savitri
Sri Aurobindo: "What we call unconsciousness is simply other-consciousness; it is the going in of this surface wave of our mental awareness of outer objects into our subliminal self-awareness and into our awareness too of other planes of existence. We are really no more unconscious when we are asleep or stunned or drugged or ``dead"" or in any other state, than when we are plunged in inner thought oblivious of our physical selves and our surroundings. For anyone who has advanced even a little way in Yoga, this is a most elementary proposition and one which offers no difficulty whatever to the thought because it is proved at every point by experience.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "When all is in agreement with the one Truth or an expression of it that is harmony.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Whoever the recipient, whatever the gift, it is the Supreme, the Eternal in things, who receives and accepts it, even if it be rejected or ignored by the immediate recipient. For the Supreme who transcends the universe, is yet here too, however veiled, in us and in the world and in its happenings; he is there as the omniscient Witness and Receiver of all our works and their secret Master.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Who is the superman? He who can rise above this matter-regarding broken mental human unit and possess himself universalised and deified in a divine force, a divine love and joy and a divine knowledge.” *The Hour of God
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . wrong will and falsehood of the steps, . . . separative egoism inflicting by its ignorance and separate contrary will harm on oneself or harm on others, self-driven to a wrong dealing with one"s own soul, mind, life or body or a wrong dealing with the soul, mind, life, body of others, . . . is the practical sense of all human evil.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Yes: the purpose is to create a large luminous trailing repetitive movement like the flight of the Bird with its dragon tail of white fire.” *Letters on Savitri
Sri Aurobindo: “Yes: the purpose is to create a large luminous trailing repetitive movement like the flight of the Bird with its dragon tail of white fire.” Letters on Savitri
Sri Aurobindo: "Yet all the time the universal forces are pouring into him without his knowing it. He is aware only of thoughts, feelings, etc., that rise to the surface and these he takes for his own. Really they come from outside in mind waves, vital waves, waves of feeling and sensation, etc., which take particular form in him and rise to the surface after they have got inside. But they do not get into his body at once. He carries about with him an environmental consciousness (called by the Theosophists the Aura) into which they first enter. If you can become conscious of this environmental self of yours, then you can catch the thought, passion, suggestion or force of illness and prevent it from entering into you. If things in you are thrown out, they often do not go altogether but take refuge in this environmental atmosphere and from there they try to get in again. Or they go to a distance outside but linger on the outskirts or even perhaps far off, waiting till they get an opportunity to attempt entrance.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Your ‘barely enough", instead of the finer and more suggestive ‘hardly", falls flat upon my ear; one cannot substitute one word for another in this kind of poetry merely because it means intellectually the same thing; ‘hardly" is the mot juste in this context and, repetition or not, it must remain unless a word not only juste but inevitable comes to replace it… . On this point I may add that in certain contexts ‘barely" would be the right word, as for instance, ‘There is barely enough food left for two or three meals", where ‘hardly" would be adequate but much less forceful. It is the other way about in this line. Letters on Savitri
TERMS ANYWHERE
"1. ‘The Golden Embryo" in Hindu cosmology; the name given to the golden-hued Egg which floated on the surface of the primeval waters. In time the egg divided into two parts, the golden top half of the shell becoming the heavens and the silver lower half the earth. 2. ‘God imaginative and therefore creative"; the ‘Spirit in the middle or Dream State"; Lord of Dream-Life who takes from the ocean of subconsciously intelligent spiritual being the conscious psychic forces which He materializes or encases in various forms of gross living matter. (Enc. Br.; A)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works.
absolute reality ::: Sri Aurobindo: "I would myself say that bliss and oneness are the essential condition of the absolute reality, and love as the most characteristic dynamic power of bliss and oneness must support fundamentally and colour their activities; . . . .” Letters on Yoga
A Dictionary of Words and Terms in Sri Aurobindo"s SavitriLexicon of an Infinite MindNarad (Richard Eggenberger)
adoration ::: 1. The act of paying honour, as to a divine being; worship. 2. Reverent homage. 3. Fervent and devoted love. **adoration"s.*Sri Aurobindo: "Especially in love for the Divine or for one whom one feels to be divine, the Bhakta feels an intense reverence for the Loved, a sense of something of immense greatness, beauty or value and for himself a strong impression of his own comparative unworthiness and a passionate desire to grow into likeness with that which one adores.” Letters on Yoga*
adventurer ::: one who seeks adventures, or who engages in daring enterprises. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.) adventurers, Adventurers.
aeons ::: ages of the universe, immeasurable periods of time; the whole duration of the world, or of the universe; eternity. aeons", aeoned, million-aeoned, (employed as an adj. by Sri Aurobindo), aeon-rings.
"A fabulous tribe of wild, beastlike monsters, having the upper part of a human being and the lower part of a horse. They live in the woods or mountains of Elis, Arcadia, and Thessaly. They are representative of wild life, animal desires and barbarism. (M.I.) Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works.*
*[Agni]. Sri Aurobindo: "Agni is the leader of the sacrifice and protects it in the great journey against the powers of darkness. The knowledge and purpose of this divine Puissance can be entirely trusted; he is the friend and lover of the soul and will not betray it to evil gods. Even for the man sitting far off in the night, enveloped by the darkness of the human ignorance, this flame[Agni] is a light which, when it is perfectly kindled and in proportion as it mounts higher and higher, enlarges itself into the vast light of the Truth. Flaming upward to heaven to meet the divine Dawn, it rises through the vital or nervous mid-world and through our mental skies and enters at last the Paradise of Light, its own supreme home above where joyous for ever in the eternal Truth that is the foundation of the sempiternal Bliss the shining Immortals sit in their celestial sessions and drink the wine of the infinite beatitude.” *The Secret of the Veda
agreement ::: a contract or other document delineating an arrangement that is accepted by all parties to a transaction. (Sri Aurobindo capitalizes the word.)
alacananda ::: "One of the four head streams of the river Ganga in the Himalayas. According to the Vaishnavas it is the terrestrial Ganga which Shiva received upon his head as it fell from heaven. The famous shrine of Badrinath is situated on the banks of this stream. (Dow.)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
amethyst ::: a purple or violet quartz; having the clear colour as of the precious stone. Sri Aurobindo uses the word as an adj."for Amethyst (the Mother)she has revealed that it has a power of protection” Huta
an adjective suffix meaning "without” (childless, peerless). Sri Aurobindo forms a number of new words utilizing this suffix.
ananke ::: "In Greek mythology, personification of compelling necessity or ultimate fate to which even the gods must yield.” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
**Angel of the Way *Sri Aurobindo: "Love fulfilled does not exclude knowledge, but itself brings knowledge; and the completer the knowledge, the richer the possibility of love. ‘By Bhakti" says the Lord in the Gita ‘shall a man know Me in all my extent and greatness and as I am in the principles of my being, and when he has known Me in the principles of my being, then he enters into Me." Love without knowledge is a passionate and intense, but blind, crude, often dangerous thing, a great power, but also a stumbling-block; love, limited in knowledge, condemns itself in its fervour and often by its very fervour to narrowness; but love leading to perfect knowledge brings the infinite and absolute union. Such love is not inconsistent with, but rather throws itself with joy into divine works; for it loves God and is one with him in all his being, and therefore in all beings, and to work for the world is then to feel and fulfil multitudinously one"s love for God. This is the trinity of our powers, [work, knowledge, love] the union of all three in God to which we arrive when we start on our journey by the path of devotion with Love for the Angel of the Way to find in the ecstasy of the divine delight of the All-Lover"s being the fulfilment of ours, its secure home and blissful abiding-place and the centre of its universal radiation.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
animal ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out man. Man himself may well be a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation she wills to work out the superman, the god. Or shall we not say, rather, to manifest God?” *The Life Divine
a person who professes beliefs and opinions that he or she does not hold in order to conceal his or her real feelings or motives; one who pretends to be what he is not. (Sri Aurobindo also uses the term as an adjective.) hypocrite"s.
apsaras ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Apsaras are the most beautiful and romantic conception on the lesser plane of Hindu mythology. From the moment that they arose out of the waters of the milky Ocean, robed in ethereal raiment and heavenly adornment, waking melody from a million lyres, the beauty and light of them has transformed the world. They crowd in the sunbeams, they flash and gleam over heaven in the lightnings, they make the azure beauty of the sky; they are the light of sunrise and sunset and the haunting voices of forest and field. They dwell too in the life of the soul; for they are the ideal pursued by the poet through his lines, by the artist shaping his soul on his canvas, by the sculptor seeking a form in the marble; for the joy of their embrace the hero flings his life into the rushing torrent of battle; the sage, musing upon God, sees the shining of their limbs and falls from his white ideal. The delight of life, the beauty of things, the attraction of sensuous beauty, this is what the mystic and romantic side of the Hindu temperament strove to express in the Apsara. The original meaning is everywhere felt as a shining background, but most in the older allegories, especially the strange and romantic legend of Pururavas as we first have it in the Brahmanas and the Vishnoupurana.
arcanes ::: of things known or understood by very few; mysterious; secret; obscure; esoteric. (Employed by Sri Aurobindo as a noun.)
a religious official among the Romans, whose duty it was to predict future events and advise upon the course of public business, in accordance with omens derived from the flight, singing, and feeding of birds. Hence extended to: A soothsayer, diviner, or prophet, generally; one that foresees and foretells the future. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adjective.) augured.
arise ::: 1. To get up from sleep or rest; to awaken; wake up. 2. To go up, come up, ascend on high, mount. Now only poet. **3. To come into being, action, or notice; originate; appear; spring up. 4. Of circumstances viewed as results: To spring, originate, or result from. 5. To rise from inaction, from the peaceful, quiet, or ordinary course of life. 6. To rise in violence or agitation, as the sea, the wind; to boil up as a fermenting fluid, the blood; so of the heart, wrath, etc. Now poet. 7. Of sounds: To come up aloud, or so as to be audible, to be heard aloud. arises, arising, arose, arisen. *(Sri Aurobindo also employs arisen as an adj.*)
artist ::: 1. One who practises the creative arts; one who seeks to express the beautiful in visible form. 2. A follower of a manual art; an artificer, mechanic, craftsman, artisan. artists. (Sri Aurobindo often employs the word as an adj.)
ascent ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The ascent or the upward movement takes place when there is a sufficient aspiration from the being, i.e., from the various mental, vital and physical planes.” *Letters on Yoga
A slow miraculous gesture dimly came. ::: Sri Aurobindo ref: the above line from Savitri:
aswapati ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Aswapati, the Lord of the Horse, her [Savitri"s] human father, is the Lord of Tapasya, the concentrated energy of spiritual endeavour that helps us to rise from the mortal to the immortal planes; . . . .” (From a letter written by Sri Aurobindo) Aswapati"s.
athlete ::: Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adj. in the sense of athletic: Of the nature of, or befitting, one who is physically active, powerful, muscular, robust, agile.
auspice-hour ::: an auspice is any divine or prophetic token; a favourable sign or propitious circumstance, esp. an indication of a happy future. Sri Aurobindo combines the word ‘hour" with auspice to emphasize a special moment.
avatars ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The word Avatar means a descent; it is a coming down of the Divine below the line which divides the divine from the human world or status.” *Essays on the Gita
babel ::: "The reference is to the mythological story of the construction of the Tower of Babel, which appears to be an attempt to explain the diversity of human languages. According to Genesis, the Babylonians wanted to make a name for themselves by building a mighty city and tower ‘with its top in the heavens". God disrupted the work by so confusing the language of the workers that they could no longer understand one another. The tower was never completed and the people were dispersed over the face of the earth.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica) Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works Sri Aurobindo: "The legend of the Tower of Babel speaks of the diversity of tongues as a curse laid on the race; but whatever its disadvantages, and they tend more and more to be minimised by the growth of civilisation and increasing intercourse, it has been rather a blessing than a curse, a gift to mankind rather than a disability laid upon it. The purposeless exaggeration of anything is always an evil, and an excessive pullulation of varying tongues that serve no purpose in the expression of a real diversity of spirit and culture is certainly a stumbling-block rather than a help: but this excess, though it existed in the past, is hardly a possibility of the future. The tendency is rather in the opposite direction. In former times diversity of language helped to create a barrier to knowledge and sympathy, was often made the pretext even of an actual antipathy and tended to a too rigid division. The lack of sufficient interpenetration kept up both a passive want of understanding and a fruitful crop of active misunderstandings. But this was an inevitable evil of a particular stage of growth, an exaggeration of the necessity that then existed for the vigorous development of strongly individualised group-souls in the human race. These disadvantages have not yet been abolished, but with closer intercourse and the growing desire of men and nations for the knowledge of each other"s thought and spirit and personality, they have diminished and tend to diminish more and more and there is no reason why in the end they should not become inoperative.” The Human Cycle
beast ::: 1. An animal other than a human, especially a large four-footed mammal. 2. Fig. Animal nature as opposed to intellect or spirit. 3. A large wild animal. 4. A domesticated animal used by man. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.) beast"s, Beast"s, beasts, wild-beast. ::: —the Beast. Applied to the devil and evil spirits.
being ::: 1. The state or quality of having existence. 2. The totality of all things that exist. 3. One"s basic or essential nature; self. 4. All the qualities constituting one that exists; the essence. 5. A person; human being. 6. The Divine, the Supreme; God. Being, being"s, Being"s, beings, Beings, beings", earth-being"s, earth-beings, fragment-being, non-being, non-being"s, Non-Being, Non-Being"s, world-being"s.
Sri Aurobindo: "Pure Being is the affirmation by the Unknowable of Itself as the free base of all cosmic existence.” *The Life Divine :::
"The Absolute manifests itself in two terms, a Being and a Becoming. The Being is the fundamental reality; the Becoming is an effectual reality: it is a dynamic power and result, a creative energy and working out of the Being, a constantly persistent yet mutable form, process, outcome of its immutable formless essence.” *The Life Divine
"What is original and eternal for ever in the Divine is the Being, what is developed in consciousness, conditions, forces, forms, etc., by the Divine Power is the Becoming. The eternal Divine is the Being; the universe in Time and all that is apparent in it is a Becoming.” Letters on Yoga
"Being and Becoming, One and Many are both true and are both the same thing: Being is one, Becomings are many; but this simply means that all Becomings are one Being who places Himself variously in the phenomenal movement of His consciousness.” The Upanishads :::
"Our whole apparent life has only a symbolic value & is good & necessary as a becoming; but all becoming has being for its goal & fulfilment & God is the only being.” *Essays Divine and Human
"Our being is a roughly constituted chaos into which we have to introduce the principle of a divine order.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
being, conscious ::: Sri Aurobindo: "We have to conceive one indivisible conscious being behind all our experiences. . . . That is our real self.” *The Life Divine
being, Master of ::: Sri Aurobindo: " Vamadeva goes on to say, "Let us give expression to this secret name of the clarity, — that is to say, let us bring out this Soma wine, this hidden delight of existence; let us hold it in this world-sacrifice by our surrenderings or submissions to Agni, the divine Will or Conscious-Power which is the Master of being.” The Secret of the Veda
belief ::: 1. Confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof. 2. Trust or confidence, faith. 3. Something believed; an opinion or conviction. beliefs.
Question: "Sweet Mother, l don"t understand very clearly the difference between faith, belief and confidence.”
Mother: "But Sri Aurobindo has given the full explanation here. If you don"t understand, then. . . He has written ‘Faith is a feeling in the whole being." The whole being, yes. Faith, that"s the whole being at once. He says that belief is something that occurs in the head, that is purely mental; and confidence is quite different. Confidence, one can have confidence in life, trust in the Divine, trust in others, trust in one"s own destiny, that is, one has the feeling that everything is going to help him, to do what he wants to do. Faith is a certitude without any proof. Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 6.
beyond ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The language of the Upanishad makes it strikingly clear that it is no metaphysical abstraction, no void Silence, no indeterminate Absolute which is offered to the soul that aspires, but rather the absolute of all that is possessed by it here in the relative world of its sojourning. All here in the mental is a growing light, consciousness and life; all there in the supramental is an infinite life, light and consciousness. That which is here shadowed, is there found; the incomplete here is there the fulfilled. The Beyond is not an annullation, but a transfiguration of all that we are here in our world of forms; it is sovran Mind of this mind, secret Life of this life, the absolute Sense which supports and justifies our limited senses.” The Upanishads *
bird ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Bird in the Veda is the symbol, very frequently, of the soul liberated and upsoaring, at other times of energies so liberated and upsoaring, winging upwards towards the heights of our being, winging widely with a free flight, no longer involved in the ordinary limited movement or labouring gallop of the Life-energy, the Horse, Ashwa.” *The Secret of the Veda
bliss ::: perfect happiness; serene joy or ecstasy. (See delight for Sri Aurobindo"s definitions.) **self-bliss, World-Bliss.
blue lotus of the Idea. ::: Sri Aurobindo: "It can be taken as the (Avatar) incarnation on the mental plane.” Visions of Champaklal
bodiless ::: having no body, form, or substance; incorporeal. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as a n.) Bodiless.
brahma ("s) ::: "Brahma is the nominative; the uninflected form of the word is brahman; it differs from brahman ‘the Eternal" only in gender.” *Glossary of Terms in Sri Aurobindo"s Writings
Sri Aurobindo: "A compromise is a bargain, a transaction of interests between two conflicting powers; it is not a true reconciliation.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "Action is the first power of life. Nature begins with force and its works which, once conscious in man, become will and its achievements; therefore it is that by turning his action Godwards the life of man best and most surely begins to become divine.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Akshara, the immobile, the immutable, is the silent and inactive self, it is the unity of the divine Being, Witness of Nature, but not involved in its movement; it is the inactive Purusha free from Prakriti and her works.” Essays on the Gita
Sri Aurobindo: "A life of gnostic beings carrying the evolution to a higher supramental status might fitly be characterised as a divine life; for it would be a life in the Divine, a life of the beginnings of a spiritual divine light and power and joy manifested in material Nature.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . all cosmic and real Law is a thing not imposed from outside, but from within, all development is self-development, all seed and result are seed of a Truth of things and result of that seed determined out of its potentialities. For the same reason no Law is absolute, because only the infinite is absolute, and everything contains within itself endless potentialities quite beyond its determined form and course, which are only determined through a self-limitation by Idea proceeding from an infinite liberty within.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "All philosophy is concerned with the relations between two things, the fundamental truth of existence and the forms in which existence presents itself to our experience.” *The Hour of God
*(Sri Aurobindo: "And finally all is lifted up and taken into the supermind and made a part of the infinitely luminous consciousness, knowledge and experience of the supramental being, the Vijnana Purusha.” The Synthesis of Yoga*) ::: Angel of the House. The guardian spirit of the home.
Sri Aurobindo: "And though this Spirit of the universe, this One who is all, seems to be turning us on the wheel of the world as if mounted on a machine by the force of Maya, shaping us in our ignorance as the potter shapes a pot, as the weaver a fabric, by some skilful mechanical principle, yet is this spirit our own greatest self and it is according to the real idea, the truth of ourselves, that which is growing in us and finding always new and more adequate forms in birth after birth, in our animal and human and divine life, in that which we were, that which we are, that which we shall be, — it is in accordance with this inner soul-truth that, as our opened eyes will discover, we are progressively shaped by this spirit within us in its all-wise omnipotence.” *Essays on the Gita
*Sri Aurobindo: "Aspiration is a call to the Divine.” Letters on Yoga*
Sri Aurobindo: "A spiritual atmosphere is more important than outer conditions; if one can get that and also create one"s own spiritual air to breathe in and live in it, that is the true condition of progress.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "As there are Powers of Knowledge or Forces of the Light, so there are Powers of Ignorance and tenebrous Forces of the Darkness whose work is to prolong the reign of Ignorance and Inconscience. As there are Forces of Truth, so there are Forces that live by the Falsehood and support it and work for its victory; as there are powers whose life is intimately bound up with the existence, the idea and the impulse of Good, so there are Forces whose life is bound up with the existence and the idea and the impulse of Evil. It is this truth of the cosmic Invisible that was symbolised in the ancient belief of a struggle between the powers of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil for the possession of the world and the government of the life of man; — this was the significance of the contest between the Vedic Gods and their opponents, sons of Darkness and Division, figured in a later tradition as Titan and Giant and Demon, Asura, Rakshasa, Pisacha; the same tradition is found in the Zoroastrian Double Principle and the later Semitic opposition of God and his Angels on the one side and Satan and his hosts on the other, — invisible Personalities and Powers that draw man to the divine Light and Truth and Good or lure him into subjection to the undivine principle of Darkness and Falsehood and Evil.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "As there is an inner sight other than the physical, so there is an inner hearing other than that of the external ear, and it can listen to voices and sounds and words of other worlds, other times and places, or those which come from supraphysical beings.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Atheism is the shadow or dark side of the highest perception of God.” *Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "Avatarhood would have little meaning if it were not connected with the evolution. The Hindu procession of the ten Avatars is itself, as it were, a parable of evolution. First the Fish Avatar, then the amphibious animal between land and water, then the land animal, then the Man-Lion Avatar, bridging man and animal, then man as dwarf, small and undeveloped and physical but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence, then the rajasic, sattwic, nirguna Avatars, leading the human development from the vital rajasic to the sattwic mental man and again the overmental superman. Krishna, Buddha and Kalki depict the last three stages, the stages of the spiritual development — Krishna opens the possibility of overmind, Buddha tries to shoot beyond to the supreme liberation but that liberation is still negative, not returning upon earth to complete positively the evolution; Kalki is to correct this by bringing the Kingdom of the Divine upon earth, destroying the opposing Asura forces. The progression is striking and unmistakable.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Aware of the Divine as the Master of our being and action, we can learn to become channels of his Shakti, the Divine Puissance, and act according to her dictates or her rule of light and power within us.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Beauty is the special divine Manifestation in the physical as Truth is in the Mind, Love in the heart, Power in the vital.” *The Future Poetry
Sri Aurobindo: "Birth is the first spiritual mystery of the physical universe, death is the second which gives its double point of perplexity to the mystery of birth; for life, which would otherwise be a self-evident fact of existence, becomes itself a mystery by virtue of these two which seem to be its beginning and its end and yet in a thousand ways betray themselves as neither of these things, but rather intermediate stages in an occult processus of life.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Brahma is the Power of the Divine that stands behind formation and the creation.” Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "But first we must understand what we mean by planes of consciousness, planes of existence. We mean a general settled poise or world of relations between Purusha and Prakriti, between the Soul and Nature.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "But if the individual is a persistent reality, an eternal portion or power of the Eternal, if his growth of consciousness is the means by which the Spirit in things discloses its being, the cosmos reveals itself as a conditioned manifestation of the play of the eternal One in the being of Sachchidananda with the eternal Many.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "But what do we mean by the individual? What we usually call by that name is a natural ego, a device of Nature which holds together her action in the mind and body. This ego has to be extinguished, otherwise there is no complete liberation possible; but the individual self or soul is not this ego. The individual soul is the spiritual being which is sometimes described as an eternal portion of the Divine, but can also be described as the Divine himself supporting his manifestation as the Many. This is the true spiritual individual which appears in its complete truth when we get rid of the ego and our false separative sense of individuality, realise our oneness with the transcendent and cosmic Divine and with all beings.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "But when I speak of the Divine Will, I mean something different, — something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will be not an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the law of the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty and Ananda, for these are the Divine Nature.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "By aesthesis is meant a reaction of the consciousness, mental and vital and even bodily, which receives a certain element in things, something that can be called their taste, Rasa, which, passing through the mind or sense or both, awakes a vital enjoyment of the taste, Bhoga, and this can again awaken us, awaken even the soul in us to something yet deeper and more fundamental than mere pleasure and enjoyment, to some form of the spirit"s delight of existence, Ananda.” *Letters on Savitri
Sri Aurobindo: "By immortality we mean the absolute life of the soul as opposed to the transient and mutable life in the body which it assumes by birth and death and rebirth and superior also to its life as the mere mental being who dwells in the world subjected helplessly to this law of death and birth or seems at least by his ignorance to be subjected to this and to other laws of the lower Nature.” *The Upanishads
Sri Aurobindo: "Chance is not *in this universe; the idea of illusion is itself an illusion. There was never illusion yet in the human mind that was not the concealing [?shape] and disfigurement of a truth.” Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "Concentration is a gathering together of the consciousness and either centralising at one point or turning on a single object, e.g., the Divine; there can also be a gathered condition throughout the whole being, not at a point. In meditation it is not indispensable to gather like this, one can simply remain with a quiet mind thinking of one subject or observing what comes in the consciousness and dealing with it.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Confidence — the sense of security that goes with trust.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Consciousness is a fundamental thing, the fundamental thing in existence — it is the energy, the motion, the movement of consciousness that creates the universe and all that is in it — not only the macrocosm but the microcosm is nothing but consciousness arranging itself.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Consecration becomes in its fullness a devoting of all our being to the Divine; therefore also of all our thoughts and our works.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Conviction — intellectual belief held on what seems to be good reasons.” Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "Creation is not a making of something out of nothing or of one thing out of another, but a self-projection of Brahman into the conditions of Space and Time. Creation is not a making, but a becoming in terms and forms of conscious existence.” The Upanishads*
Sri Aurobindo: "Cruelty transfigured becomes Love that is intolerable ecstasy; . . . .”
*Sri Aurobindo: "Dawn always means an opening of some kind — the coming of something that is not yet fully there.” Letters on Yoga ::: "As the Sun is image and godhead of the golden Light of the divine Truth, so Dawn is image and godhead of the opening out of the supreme illumination on the night of our human ignorance. Dawn daughter of Heaven and Night her sister are obverse and reverse sides of the same eternal Infinite.” The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "Day and Night, – the latter the state of Ignorance that belongs to our material Nature, the former the state of illumined Knowledge that belongs to the divine Mind of which our mentality is a pale and dulled reflection.” The Secret of the Veda
*Sri Aurobindo: ". . . desires come from outside, enter the subconscious vital and rise to the surface. It is only when they rise to the surface and the mind becomes aware of them, that we become conscious of the desire. It seems to us to be our own because we feel it thus rising from the vital into the mind and do not know that it came from outside.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Destiny in the rigid sense applies only to the outer being so long as it lives in the Ignorance. What we call destiny is only in fact the result of the present condition of the being and the nature and energies it has accumulated in the past acting on each other and determining the present attempts and their future results. But as soon as one enters the path of spiritual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new factor, the Divine Grace, the help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma, which can lift the sadhak beyond the present possibilities of his nature. One"s spiritual destiny is then the divine election which ensures the future.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Destruction in itself is neither good nor evil. It is a fact of Nature, a necessity in the play of forces, as things are in this world. The Light destroys the Darkness and the Powers of Darkness, and that is not a movement of Ignorance!” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: " . . . Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Doubt cannot be convinced, because by its very nature it does not want to be convinced; . . . .” *Letters on Yoga
::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . Durga, the conquering and protecting aspect of the Universal Mother.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Each nation is a Shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity and lives by the principle which it embodies.” The Renaissance in India
*Sri Aurobindo: "Ego is only a faculty put forward by the discriminative mind to centralise round itself the experiences of the sense-mind and to serve as a sort of lynch-pin in the wheel which keeps together the movement. It is no more than an instrument, although it is true that so long as we are limited by our normal mentality, we are compelled by the nature of that mentality and the purpose of the instrument to mistake our ego-function for our very self.” The Upanishads
*Sri Aurobindo: "Emotion itself is not a bad thing; it is a necessary part of the nature, and psychic emotion is one of the most powerful helps to the sadhana. Psychic emotion, bringing tears of love for the Divine or tears of Ananda, ought not to be suppressed: . . . .” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Equality is to remain unmoved within in all conditions.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Essence can never be defined — it simply is.” *Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "Even if there is much darkness — and this world is full of it and the physical nature of man also — yet a ray of the true Light can prevail eventually against a tenfold darkness. Believe that and cleave to it always.” Letters on Yoga*
Sri Aurobindo: "Every man is knowingly or unknowingly the instrument of a universal Power and, apart from the inner Presence, there is no such essential difference between one action and another, one kind of instrumentation and another as would warrant the folly of an egoistic pride. The difference between knowledge and ignorance is a grace of the Spirit; the breath of divine Power blows where it lists and fills today one and tomorrow another with the word or the puissance. If the potter shapes one pot more perfectly than another, the merit lies not in the vessel but the maker. The attitude of our mind must not be ‘This is my strength" or ‘Behold God"s power in me", but rather ‘A Divine Power works in this mind and body and it is the same that works in all men and in the animal, in the plant and in the metal, in conscious and living things and in things apparently inconscient and inanimate."” The Synthesis of Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: ". . . every weakness and failure is a first sounding of gulfs of power and potentiality. . . .” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Existence is an infinite and therefore indefinable and illimitable Reality which figures itself out in multiple values of life.” *Social and Political Thought
*Sri Aurobindo: "Experience is a word that covers almost all the happenings in yoga; only when something gets settled, then it is no longer an experience but part of the siddhi; e.g. peace when it comes and goes is an experience — when it is settled and goes no more it is a siddhi.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Faith is a necessary means for arriving at realisation, because we are ignorant and do not yet know that which we are seeking to realise; faith is indeed knowledge giving the ignorance an intimation of itself previous to its own manifestation, it is the gleam sent before by the yet unrisen Sun. When the Sun shall rise, there will be no longer any need of the gleam.” *Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "Fear is a creation of the vital plane, an instinct of the ignorance, a sense of danger with a violent vital reaction that replaces and usually prevents or distorts the intelligence of things. It might almost be considered as an invention of the hostile forces.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Fifty, hundred, a thousand are numbers symbolic of completeness.” The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "Finally, we have the goddess Dakshina who may well be a female form of Daksha, himself a god and afterwards in the Purana one of the Prajapatis, the original progenitors, — we have Dakshina associated with the manifestation of knowledge and sometimes almost identified with Usha, the divine Dawn, who is the bringer of illumination. I shall suggest that Dakshina like the more famous Ila, Saraswati and Sarama, is one of four goddesses representing the four faculties of the Ritam or Truth-consciousness, — Ila representing truth-vision or revelation, Saraswati truth-audition, inspiration, the divine word, Sarama intuition, Dakshina the separative intuitional discrimination.” *The Secret of the Veda
*Sri Aurobindo: "Force is nothing but the power of being in motion.” Hymns to the Mystic Fire
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . for each individual is in himself the Eternal who has assumed name and form and supports through him the experiences of life turning on an ever-circling wheel of birth in the manifestation. The wheel is kept in motion by the desire of the individual, which becomes the effective cause of rebirth and by the mind"s turning away from the knowledge of the eternal self to the preoccupations of the temporal becoming.” The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "For from the divine Bliss, the original Delight of existence, the Lord of Immortality comes pouring the wine of that Bliss, the mystic Soma, into these jars of mentalised living matter; eternal and beautiful, he enters into these sheaths of substance for the integral transformation of the being and nature.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Form is the basic means of manifestation and without it it may be said that the manifestation of anything is not complete. Even if the Formless logically precedes Form, yet it is not illogical to assume that in the Formless, Form is inherent and already existent in a mystic latency, otherwise how could it be manifested?” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: " For the highest intuitive Knowledge sees things in the whole, in the large and details only as sides of the indivisible whole; its tendency is towards immediate synthesis and the unity of knowledge.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: " . . . for what we inappropriately call revolution, is only a rapidly concentrated movement of evolution — a yet remote end which in the ordinary course of events could only be realised, if at all, in the far distant future.” The Human Cycle, etc.
Sri Aurobindo: "Freedom is the law of being in its illimitable unity, secret master of all Nature: . . . .” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Further, vision is of value because it is often a first key to inner planes of one"s own being and one"s own consciousness as distinguished from worlds or planes of the cosmic consciousness. Yoga-experience often begins with some opening of the third eye in the forehead (the centre of vision in the brows) or with some kind of beginning and extension of subtle seeing which may seem unimportant at first but is the vestibule to deeper experience.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Genius is one attempt of the universal Energy to so quicken and intensify our intellectual powers that they shall be prepared for those more puissant, direct and rapid faculties which constitute the play of the supra-intellectual or divine mind. It is not, then, a freak, an inexplicable phenomenon, but a perfectly natural next step in the right line of her [Nature"s] evolution.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Gnosis or true supermind is a power above mind working in its own law, out of the direct identity of the supreme Self, his absolute self-conscious Truth knowing herself by her own power of absolute Light without any need of seeking, even the most luminous seeking.” The Upanishads (footnote)
Sri Aurobindo: "God and Man, World and Beyond-world become one when they know each other. Their division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is the cause of suffering.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Hatred is the sign of a secret attraction that is eager to flee from itself and furious to deny its own existence. That too is God"s play in His creature.” *Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "He is the Cosmic Spirit and all-creating Energy around us; he is the Immanent within us. All that is is he, and he is the More than all that is, and we ourselves, though we know it not, are being of his being, force of his force, conscious with a consciousness derived from his; even our mortal existence is made out of his substance and there is an immortal within us that is a spark of the Light and Bliss that are for ever. No matter whether by knowledge, works, love or any other means, to become aware of this truth of our being, to realise it, to make it effective here or elsewhere is the object of all Yoga.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Hell and heaven are often imaginary states of the soul or rather of the vital which it constructs about it after its passing. What is meant by hell is a painful passage through the vital or lingering there, as for instance, in many cases of suicide where one remains surrounded by the forces of suffering and turmoil created by this unnatural and violent exit. There are, of course, also worlds of mind and vital worlds which are penetrated with joyful or dark experiences. One may pass through these as the result of things formed in the nature which create the necessary affinities, but the idea of reward or retribution is a crude and vulgar conception which is a mere popular error.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "History teaches us nothing; it is a confused torrent of events and personalities or a kaleidoscope of changing institutions. We do not seize the real sense of all this change and this continual streaming forward of human life in the channels of Time. What we do seize are current or recurrent phenomena, facile generalisations, partial ideas. We talk of democracy, aristocracy and autocracy, collectivism and individualism, imperialism and nationalism, the State and the commune, capitalism and labour; we advance hasty generalisations and make absolute systems which are positively announced today only to be abandoned perforce tomorrow; we espouse causes and ardent enthusiasms whose triumph turns to an early disillusionment and then forsake them for others, perhaps for those that we have taken so much trouble to destroy. For a whole century mankind thirsts and battles after liberty and earns it with a bitter expense of toil, tears and blood; the century that enjoys without having fought for it turns away as from a puerile illusion and is ready to renounce the depreciated gain as the price of some new good. And all this happens because our whole thought and action with regard to our collective life is shallow and empirical; it does not seek for, it does not base itself on a firm, profound and complete knowledge. The moral is not the vanity of human life, of its ardours and enthusiasms and of the ideals it pursues, but the necessity of a wiser, larger, more patient search after its true law and aim.” *The Human Cycle etc.
Sri Aurobindo: "Human life is itself only a term in a graded series, through which the secret Spirit in the universe develops gradually his purpose and works it out finally through the enlarging and ascending individual soul-consciousness in the body. This ascent can only take place by rebirth within the ascending order; an individual visit coming across it and progressing on some other line elsewhere could not fit into the system of this evolutionary existence.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . *ideals and idealists are necessary; ideals are the savour and sap of life, idealists the most powerful diviners and assistants of its purposes.” The Human Cycle
Sri Aurobindo: "If this higher buddhi {{understanding in the profoundest sense] could act pure of the interference of these lower members, it would give pure forms of the truth; observation would be dominated or replaced by a vision which could see without subservient dependence on the testimony of the sense-mind and senses; imagination would give place to the self-assured inspiration of the truth, reasoning to the spontaneous discernment of relations and conclusion from reasoning to an intuition containing in itself those relations and not building laboriously upon them, judgment to a thought-vision in whose light the truth would stand revealed without the mask which it now wears and which our intellectual judgment has to penetrate; while memory too would take upon itself that larger sense given to it in Greek thought and be no longer a paltry selection from the store gained by the individual in his present life, but rather the all-recording knowledge which secretly holds and constantly gives from itself everything that we now seem painfully to acquire but really in this sense remember, a knowledge which includes the future(1) no less than the past. ::: Footnote: In this sense the power of prophecy has been aptly called a memory of the future.]” *The Synthesis of Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "If thou think defeat is the end of thee, then go not forth to fight, even though thou be the stronger. For Fate is not purchased by any man nor is Power bound over to her possessors. But defeat is not the end, it is only a gate or a beginning.” Essays Human and Divine*
Sri Aurobindo: "If we believe that the soul is repeatedly reborn in the body, we must believe also that there is some link between the lives that preceded and the lives that follow and that the past of the soul has an effect on its future; and that is the spiritual essence of the law of Karma.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: " In all Yoga the first requisites are faith and patience. The ardours of the heart and the violences of the eager will that seek to take the kingdom of heaven by storm can have miserable reactions if they disdain to support their vehemence on these humbler and quieter auxiliaries. And in the long and difficult integral Yoga there must be an integral faith and an unshakable patience.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "In considering the action of the Infinite we have to avoid the error of the disciple who thought of himself as the Brahman, refused to obey the warning of the elephant-driver to budge ::: from the narrow path and was taken up by the elephant"s trunk and removed out of the way; ‘You are no doubt the Brahman," said the master to his bewildered disciple, ‘but why did you not obey the driver Brahman and get out of the path of the elephant Brahman?"” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "In fact it [the world] is not an illusion in the sense of an imposition of something baseless and unreal on the consciousness, but a misinterpretation by the conscious mind and sense and a falsifying misuse of manifested existence.” Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "In other words, ethics is a stage in evolution. That which is common to all stages is the urge of Sachchidananda towards self-expression. This urge is at first non-ethical, then infra-ethical in the animal, then in the intelligent animal even anti-ethical for it permits us to approve hurt done to others which we disapprove when done to ourselves. In this respect man even now is only half-ethical. And just as all below us is infra-ethical, so there may be that above us whither we shall eventually arrive, which is supra-ethical, has no need of ethics. The ethical impulse and attitude, so all-important to humanity, is a means by which it struggles out of the lower harmony and universality based upon inconscience and broken up by Life into individual discords towards a higher harmony and universality based upon conscient oneness with all existences. Arriving at that goal, this means will no longer be necessary or even possible, since the qualities and oppositions on which it depends will naturally dissolve and disappear in the final reconciliation.” The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "In our world error is continually the handmaid and pathfinder of Truth; for error is really a half-truth that stumbles because of its limitations; often it is Truth that wears a disguise in order to arrive unobserved near to its goal.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: [in reference to the following lines of Virgil] ::: Largior hic campos aether et lumine vestit
Sri Aurobindo: "Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge; it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses.” *The Hour of God
Sri Aurobindo: "Intellectual activities are not part of the inner being – the intellect is the outer mind.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Intelligence does not depend on the amount one has read, it is a quality of the mind. Study only gives it material for its work as life also does. There are people who do not know how to read and write who are more intelligent than many highly educated people and understand life and things better. On the other hand, a good intelligence can improve itself by reading because it gets more material to work on and grows by exercise and by having a wider range to move in. But book-knowledge by itself is not the real thing, it has to be used as a help to the intelligence but it is often only a help to stupidity or ignorance — ignorance because knowledge of facts is a poor thing if one cannot see their true significance.” Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "In the ancient Indian system there is only one triune supernal, Sachidananda. Or if you speak of the upper hemisphere as the supernal, there are three, Sat plane, Chit plane and Ananda plane. The Supermind could be added as a fourth, as it draws upon the other three and belongs to the supper hemisphere.” Letters on Yoga and On Himself*
Sri Aurobindo: "In the very atom there is a subconscious will and desire which must also be present in all atomic aggregates because they are present in the Force which constitutes the atom.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "I suppose the golden child is the Truth-Soul which follows after the silver light of the spiritual. When it plunges into the black waters of the subconscient, it releases from it the spiritual light and the sevenfold streams of the Divine Energy and, clearing itself of the stains of the subconscient, it prepares its flight towards the supreme Divine (the Mother).” (Reply to a question in the chapter Visions and Symbols.) Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "I take upon myself the right to coin new words. ‘Immensitudes" is not any more fantastic than ‘infinitudes" to pair ‘infinity".” immensitude, Immensitudes.
Sri Aurobindo: "It could be affirmed as a consequence that there is one all-pervading Life or dynamic energy — the material aspect being only its outermost movement — that creates all these forms of the physical universe, Life imperishable and eternal which, even if the whole figure of the universe were quite abolished, would itself still go on existing and be capable of producing a new universe in its place, must indeed, unless it be held back in a state of rest by some higher Power or hold itself back, inevitably go on creating. In that case Life is nothing else than the Force that builds and maintains and destroys forms in the world; it is Life that manifests itself in the form of the earth as much as in the plant that grows upon the earth and the animals that support their existence by devouring the life-force of the plant or of each other. All existence here is a universal Life that takes form of Matter. It might for that purpose hide life-process in physical process before it emerges as submental sensitivity and mentalised vitality, but still it would be throughout the same creative Life-principle.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "It [falsehood] is created by an Asuric (hostile) power which intervenes in this creation and is not only separated from the Truth and therefore limited in knowledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power, the dark Asuric Shakti or Rakshasic Maya, puts forward its own perverted consciousness as true knowledge and its wilful distortions or reversals of the Truth as the verity of things. It is the powers and personalities of this perverted and perverting consciousness that we call hostile beings, hostile forces. Whenever these perversions created by them out of the stuff of the Ignorance are put forward as the Truth of things, that is the Falsehood, in the yogic sense, . . . .” Letters on Yoga
"Sri Aurobindo: "It has been held that ecstasy is a lower and transient passage, the peace of the Supreme is the supreme realisation, the consummate abiding experience. This may be true on the spiritual-mind plane: there the first ecstasy felt is indeed a spiritual rapture, but it can be and is very usually mingled with a supreme happiness of the vital parts taken up by the Spirit; there is an exaltation, exultation, excitement, a highest intensity of the joy of the heart and the pure inner soul-sensation that can be a splendid passage or an uplifting force but is not the ultimate permanent foundation. But in the highest ascents of the spiritual bliss there is not this vehement exaltation and excitement; there is instead an illimitable intensity of participation in an eternal ecstasy which is founded on the eternal Existence and therefore on a beatific tranquillity of eternal peace. Peace and ecstasy cease to be different and become one. The Supermind, reconciling and fusing all differences as well as all contradictions, brings out this unity; a wide calm and a deep delight of all-existence are among its first steps of self-realisation, but this calm and this delight rise together, as one state, into an increasing intensity and culminate in the eternal ecstasy, the bliss that is the Infinite.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "I think you said in a letter that in the line
Sri Aurobindo: "It is an achievement to have got rid so rapidly and decisively of the shimmering mists and fogs which modern intellectualism takes for Light of Truth. The modern mind has so long and persistently wandered – and we with it – in the Valley of the False Glimmer that it is not easy for anyone to disperse its mists with the sunlight of clear vision.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . it is this emptiness inward and outward that often in yoga becomes the first step towards a new consciousness.” *Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "It is true that when Matter first emerges it becomes the dominant principle; it seems to be and is within its own field the basis of all things, the constituent of all things, the end of all things: but Matter itself is found to be a result of something that is not Matter, of Energy, and this Energy cannot be something self-existent and acting in the Void, but can turn out and, when deeply scrutinised, seems likely to turn out to be the action of a secret Consciousness and Being: when the spiritual knowledge and experience emerge, this becomes a certitude, — it is seen that the creative Energy in Matter is a movement of the power of the Spirit.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "It might be said again that, even so, in Sachchidananda itself at least, above all worlds of manifestation, there could be nothing but the self-awareness of pure existence and consciousness and a pure delight of existence. Or, indeed, this triune being itself might well be only a trinity of original spiritual self-determinations of the Infinite; these too, like all determinations, would cease to exist in the ineffable Absolute. But our position is that these must be inherent truths of the supreme being; their utmost reality must be pre-existent in the Absolute even if they are ineffably other there than what they are in the spiritual mind"s highest possible experience. The Absolute is not a mystery of infinite blankness nor a supreme sum of negations; nothing can manifest that is not justified by some self-power of the original and omnipresent Reality.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "[‘Its passive flower of love and doom it gave."] Good Heavens! how did Gandhi come in there? Passion-flower, sir — passion, not passive.” Letters on Savitri [in reference to a typographical error]
Sri Aurobindo: "I used the word ‘mystic" in the sense of a certain kind of inner seeing and feeling of things, a way which to the intellect would seem occult and visionary — for this is something different from imagination and its work with which the intellect is familiar.” *On Himself
Sri Aurobindo: " Karma is nothing but the will of the Spirit in action, consequence nothing but the creation of will. What is in the will of being, expresses itself in karma and consequence. When the will is limited in mind, karma appears as a bondage and a limitation, consequence as a reaction or an imposition. But when the will of the being is infinite in the spirit, karma and consequence become instead the joy of the creative spirit, the construction of the eternal mechanist, the word and drama of the eternal poet, the harmony of the eternal musician, the play of the eternal child.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Krishna is the Eternal"s Personality of Ananda; because [of] him all creation is possible, because of his play, because of his delight, because of his sweetness.” *Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "Krishna with Radha is the symbol of the Divine Love.” Letters on Yoga
::: Sri Aurobindo: "Lakshmi is usually golden, not white. Saraswati is white.” Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: ". . . liberty is at once the condition of vigorous variation and the condition of self-finding.” The Human Cycle
Sri Aurobindo: "Life itself here [on earth] is Being at labour in Matter to express itself in terms of conscious force; human life is the human being at labour to impress himself on the material world with the greatest possible force and intensity and extension.” *Social and Political Thought
Sri Aurobindo: " Love? It is not Love who meets the burdened great and governs the fate of men! Nor is it Pain. Time also does not do these things — it only provides the field and movement of events. If I had wanted to give a name, I would have done it, but it has purposely to be left nameless because it is indefinable. He may use Love or Pain or Time or any of these powers but is not any of them. You can call him the Master of the Evolution, if you like. Letters of Savitri
Sri Aurobindo: "Lust is the perversion or degradation which prevents love from establishing its reign: . . . .” Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "Man cannot by his own effort make himself more than man; the mental being cannot by his own unaided force change himself into a supramental spirit. A descent of the Divine Nature can alone divinise the human receptacle.” Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "Material Nature is not ethical; the law which governs it is a co-ordination of fixed habits which take no cognisance of good and evil, but only of force that creates, force that arranges and preserves, force that disturbs and destroys impartially, non-ethically, according to the secret Will in it, according to the mute satisfaction of that Will in its own self-formations and self-dissolutions.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Matter, body is only a massed motion of force of conscious being employed as a starting-point for the variable relations of consciousness working through its power of sense.” *Essays on the Gita
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . memory is only a process of consciousness, a utility; it cannot be the substance of being or the whole of our personality: it is simply one of the workings of consciousness as radiation is one of the workings of Light.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: " Mental intelligence thinks out because it is merely a reflecting force of consciousness which does not know, but seeks to know; it follows in Time step by step the working of a knowledge higher than itself, a knowledge that exists always, one and whole, that holds Time in its grasp, that sees past, present and future in a single regard.: The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "Mind has its own realms and life has its own realms just as matter has. In the mental realms life and substance are entirely subordinated to Mind and obey its dictates. Here on earth there is the evolution with matter as the starting-point, life as the medium, mind emerging from it. There are many grades, realms, combinations in the cosmos — there are even many universes. Ours is only one of many.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Mind is not sufficient to explain existence in the universe. Infinite Consciousness must first translate itself into infinite faculty of Knowledge or, as we call it from our point of view, omniscience.” The Life Divine
::: Sri Aurobindo: "Narada stands for the expression of the Divine Love and Knowledge.” Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "Nihil is the void, where there can be no potentialities; . . . .” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . obedience is necessary so as to get away from one"s own mind and vital and learn to follow the Truth. . . . Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Of course you can [do yoga without being great]. There is no need of being great. On the contrary humility is the first necessity, for one who has ego and pride cannot realise the Highest.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . one can be free only by living in the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "One seated in the sleep of Superconscience, a massed Intelligence, blissful and the enjoyer of Bliss…. This is the omnipotent, this is the omniscient, this is the inner control, this is the source of all.” The Upanishads
Sri Aurobindo: "Only those thoughts are true the opposite of which is also true in its own time and application; indisputable dogmas are the most dangerous kind of falsehoods.” Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "On the other hand, Pranayama awakens the coiled-up serpent of the Pranic dynamism in the vital sheath and opens to the Yogin fields of consciousness, ranges of experience, abnormal faculties denied to the ordinary human life while it puissantly intensifies such normal powers and faculties as he already possesses. These advantages can be farther secured and emphasised by other subsidiary processes open to the Hathayogin.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . our imperfection is the sign of a transitional state, a growth not yet completed, an effort that is finding its way; . . . .” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . our mind has the faculty of imagination; it can create and take as true and real its own mental structures: . . . . Our mental imagination is an instrument of Ignorance; it is the resort or device or refuge of a limited capacity of knowledge, a limited capacity of effective action. Mind supplements these deficiencies by its power of imagination: it uses it to extract from things obvious and visible the things that are not obvious and visible; it undertakes to create its own figures of the possible and the impossible; it erects illusory actuals or draws figures of a conjectured or constructed truth of things that are not true to outer experience. That is at least the appearance of its operation; but, in reality, it is the mind"s way or one of its ways of summoning out of Being its infinite possibilities, even of discovering or capturing the unknown possibilities of the Infinite.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision"s limited range.” *Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: ::: "O Wisdom-Splendour, Mother of the universe,
*Sri Aurobindo: "Pain is the key that opens the gates of strength; it is the high-road that leads to the city of beatitude.” Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "Personality is only a temporary mental, vital, physical formation which the being, the real Person, the psychic entity, puts forward on the surface, — it is not the self in its abiding reality.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "Pity may be reserved, so long as thy soul makes distinctions, for the suffering animals; but humanity deserves from thee something nobler; it asks for love, for understanding, for comradeship, for the help of the equal & brother.” Essays Divine and Human
*Sri Aurobindo: "Pleasure, joy and delight, as man uses the words, are limited and occasional movements which depend on certain habitual causes and emerge, like their opposites pain and grief which are equally limited and occasional movements, from a background other than themselves. Delight of being is universal, illimitable and self-existent, not dependent on particular causes, the background of all backgrounds, from which pleasure, pain and other more neutral experiences emerge. When delight of being seeks to realise itself as delight of becoming, it moves in the movement of force and itself takes different forms of movement of which pleasure and pain are positive and negative currents.” The Life Divine*
Sri Aurobindo: "Pride is only one form of ego — there are ten thousand others. Every action of man is full of ego — the good ones as well as the bad, his humility as much as his pride, his virtues as much as his vices.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Quiet is a condition in which there is no restlessness or disturbance.” ::: "Quiet is rather negative — it is the absence of disturbance.” Letters on Yoga
::: Sri Aurobindo: "Radha is the personification of the absolute love for the Divine, total and integral in all parts of the being from the highest spiritual to the physical, bringing the absolute self-giving and total consecration of all the being and calling down into the body and the most material nature the supreme Ananda.” *Letters on Yoga
**Sri Aurobindo: [referring to the following lines]
Sri Aurobindo: "Revelation is a part of the intuitive consciousness.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Sacrifice means an inner offering to the Divine and the real spiritual sacrifice is a very joyful thing.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Satyavan is the soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance; . . .” (Author"s note at the preface to Savitri.)
Sri Aurobindo: ” See God everywhere and be not frightened by masks. Believe that all falsehood is truth in the making or truth in the breaking, all failure an effectuality concealed, all weakness strength hiding itself from its own vision, all pain a secret & violent ecstasy. If thou believest firmly & unweariedly, in the end thou wilt see & experience the All-true, Almighty & All-blissful.” Essays Divine and Human*
*Sri Aurobindo: ". . . sheaths is simply a term for bodies, because each is superimposed on the other and acts as a covering and can be cast off. Thus the physical body itself is called the food sheath and its throwing off is what is called death.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: " Sin is the working of the lower nature for the crude satisfaction of its own ignorant, dull or violent rajasic and tamasic propensities in revolt against any high self-control and self-mastery of the nature by the spirit.” *Essays on the Gita
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . some things are suppressed in the ordinary life and remain lying in the nature, suppressed but not eliminated; they may rise up any day or they may express themselves in various nervous forms or other disorders of the mind or vital or body without it being evident what is their real cause. This has been recently discovered by European psychologists and much emphasised, even exaggerated in a new science called psycho-analysis.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "So the possibility of the sunlit path is not a discovery or original invention of mine. The very first books on yoga I read more than thirty years ago spoke of the dark and sunlit way and emphasised the superiority of the latter over the former.” *Letters on Yoga
::: Sri Aurobindo: "Spiritual force has its own concreteness; it can take a form (like a stream, for instance) of which one is aware and can send it quite concretely on whatever object one chooses. This is a statement of fact about the power inherent in spiritual consciousness. But there is also such a thing as a willed use of any subtle force — it may be spiritual, mental or vital — to secure a particular result at some point in the world. Just as there are waves of unseen physical forces (cosmic waves etc.) or currents of electricity, so there are mind-waves, thought-currents, waves of emotion, — for example, anger, sorrow, etc., — which go out and affect others without their knowing whence they come or that they come at all, they only feel the result. One who has the occult or inner senses awake can feel them coming and invading him.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "‘Spiritual" has not a necessary connection with the Absolute. Of course the experience of the Absolute is spiritual. All contacts with self, the higher consciousness, the Divine above are spiritual.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Substance, then, as we know it, material substance, is the form in which Mind acting through sense contacts the Conscious Being of which it is itself a movement of knowledge.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: " Suffering is due first to the Ignorance, secondly to the separation of the individual consciousness from the Divine Consciousness and Being, a separation created by the Ignorance — when that ceases, when one lives in the Divine and no more in one"s separated smaller self, then only suffering can altogether cease.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "That (‘to blend and blur shades owing to technical exigencies"] might be all right for mental poetry — it won"t do for what I am trying to create — in that, one word won"t do for the other. Even in mental poetry I consider it an inferior method. ‘Gleam" and ‘glow" are two quite different things and the poet who uses them indifferently has constantly got his eye upon words rather than upon the object.” Letters on Savitri *
Sri Aurobindo: "The anarchic is the true divine state of man in the end as in the beginning; but in between it would lead us straight to the devil and his kingdom.” Essays Divine and Human*
Sri Aurobindo: "The ancient knowledge in all countries was full of the search after the hidden truths of our being and it created that large field of practice and inquiry which goes in Europe by the name of occultism, — we do not use any corresponding word in the East, because these things do not seem to us so remote, mysterious and abnormal as to the occidental mentality; they are nearer to us and the veil between our normal material life and this larger life is much thinner.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The Being is one, but this oneness is infinite and contains in itself an infinite plurality or multiplicity of itself: the One is the All; it is not only an essential Existence, but an All-Existence. The infinite multiplicity of the One and the eternal unity of the Many are the two realities or aspects of one reality on which the manifestation is founded.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "the black dragon of the Inconscience sustains with its vast wings and its back of darkness the whole structure of the material universe; its energies unroll the flux of things, its obscure intimations seem to be the starting-point of consciousness itself and the source of all life-impulse.” The Life Divine ::: **Unused, guarded beneath Night"s dragon paws,**
Sri Aurobindo: "The centres or Chakras are seven in number: ::: The thousand-petalled lotus on the top of the head.
Sri Aurobindo: "The contact of mind with its objects creates what we call sense.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The cosmic consciousness is that of the universe, of the cosmic spirit and cosmic Nature with all the beings and forces within it. All that is as much conscious as a whole as the individual separately is, though in a different way. The consciousness of the individual is part of this, but a part feeling itself as a separate being. Yet all the time most of what he is comes into him from the cosmic consciousness. But there is a wall of separative ignorance between. Once it breaks down he becomes aware of the cosmic Self, of the consciousness of the cosmic Nature, of the forces playing in it, etc. He feels all that as he now feels physical things and impacts. He finds it all to be one with his larger or universal self.” *Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the divine Ananda, the principle of Bliss [is that] from which, in the Vedic conception, the existence of Man, this mental being, is drawn. A secret Delight is the base of existence, its sustaining atmosphere and almost its substance. This Ananda is spoken of in the Taittiriya Upanishad as the ethereal atmosphere of bliss without which nothing could remain in being. In the Aitareya Upanishad Soma, as the lunar deity, is born from the sense-mind in the universal Purusha and, when man is produced, expresses himself again as sense-mentality in the human being. For delight is the raison d"être of sensation, or, we may say, sensation is an attempt to translate the secret delight of existence into the terms of physical consciousness.” The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "The Divinity in man dwells veiled in his spiritual centre; there can be no such thing as self-exceeding for man or a higher issue for his existence if there is not in him the reality of an eternal Self and Spirit.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The duality is a position taken up, a double status accepted for the operations of the self-manifestation of the being; but there is no eternal and fundamental separateness and dualism of Being and its Consciousness-Force, of the Soul and Nature.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "The earth is a material field of evolution. Mind and life, supermind, Sachchidananda are in principle involved there in the earth-consciousness; but only Matter is at first organized; then life descends from the life plane and gives shape and organization and activity to the life principle in Matter, creates the plant and animal; then mind descends from the mind plane, creating man. Now supermind is to descend so as to create a supramental race.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The faith in the divine Shakti must be always at the back of our strength and when she becomes manifest, it must be or grow implicit and complete. There is nothing that is impossible to her who is the conscious Power and universal Goddess all-creative from eternity and armed with the Spirit"s omnipotence.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The first is the discovery of the soul, not the outer soul of thought and emotion and desire, but the secret psychic entity, the divine element within us. When that becomes dominant over the nature, when we are consciously the soul and when mind, life and body take their true place as its instruments, we are aware of a guide within that knows the truth, the good, the true delight and beauty of existence, controls heart and intellect by its luminous law and leads our life and being towards spiritual completeness.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "The flute is the call of the Divine Love;” Letters on Yoga ::: "The flute is the symbol of a call — usually the spiritual call.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: ".The Herds and the Waters are the two principal images of the Veda; the former are the trooping Rays of the divine Sun, herds of the luminous Consciousness;” The Secret of the Veda
*Sri Aurobindo: "The highest aim of the aesthetic being is to find the Divine through beauty; the highest Art is that which by an inspired use of significant and interpretative form unseals the doors of the spirit.” The Human Cycle etc.*
Sri Aurobindo: "The hostile forces are those whose very raison d"être is revolt against the Divine, against the Light and Truth and enmity to the Divine Work.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The idea is the realisation of a truth in Consciousness as the fact is its realisation in Power.” *The Supramental Manifestation
*Sri Aurobindo: "The Indian explanation of fate is Karma. We ourselves are our own fate through our actions, but the fate created by us binds us; for what we have sown, we must reap in this life or another. Still we are creating our fate for the future even while undergoing old fate from the past in the present. That gives a meaning to our will and action and does not, as European critics wrongly believe, constitute a rigid and sterilising fatalism. But again, our will and action can often annul or modify even the past Karma, it is only certain strong effects, called utkata karma, that are non-modifiable. Here too the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul Karma. For we enter into union with the Will Divine, cosmic or transcendent, which can annul what it had sanctioned for certain conditions, new-create what it had created, the narrow fixed lines disappear, there is a more plastic freedom and wideness. Neither Karma nor Astrology therefore points to a rigid and for ever immutable fate.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The Infinite is not a sum of things, it is That which is all things and more.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The Life Heavens are the heavens of the vital gods and there is there a perfect harmony but a harmony of the sublimated satisfied senses and vital desires only.” Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "The Mask is mentioned not twice but four times in this opening passage and it is purposely done to keep up the central connection of the idea running through the whole. The ambassadors wear this grey Mask, so your criticism cannot stand since there is no separate mask coming as part of a new idea but a very pointed return to the principal note indicating the identity of the influence throughout. It is not a random recurrence but a purposeful touch carrying a psychological meaning.” — 1948 Letters on Savitri*
Sri Aurobindo: "The Master and Mover of our works is the One, the Universal and Supreme, the Eternal and Infinite. He is the transcendent unknown or unknowable Absolute, the unexpressed and unmanifested Ineffable above us; but he is also the Self of all beings, the Master of all worlds, transcending all worlds, the Light and the Guide, the All-Beautiful and All-Blissful, the Beloved and the Lover. He is the Cosmic Spirit and all-creating Energy around us; he is the Immanent within us. All that is is he, and he is the More than all that is, and we ourselves, though we know it not, are being of his being, force of his force, conscious with a consciousness derived from his; even our mortal existence is made out of his substance and there is an immortal within us that is a spark of the Light and Bliss that are for ever. No matter whether by knowledge, works, love or any other means, to become aware of this truth of our being, to realise it, to make it effective here or elsewhere is the object of all Yoga.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass though the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.” The Mother
Sri Aurobindo: "The motion of the world works under the government of a perpetual stability. Change represents the constant shifting of apparent relations in an eternal Immutability.” The Upanishads
Sri Aurobindo: ". The mystic Muse is more of an inspired Bacchante of the Dionysian wine than an orderly housewife.” Letters on Savitri
Sri Aurobindo: "The nature of Bhakti is adoration, worship, self-offering to what is greater than oneself; the nature of love is a feeling or a seeking for closeness and union. Self-giving is the character of both; both are necessary in the yoga and each gets its full force when supported by the other.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The omniscient is not born, nor dies, nor has he come into being from anywhere, nor is he anyone. He is unborn, he is constant and eternal, he is the Ancient of Days who is not slain in the slaying of the body. . . .” *The Upanishads
Sri Aurobindo: "The One is Four for ever in his supramental quaternary of Being, Consciousness, Force and Ananda.
Sri Aurobindo: "The ordinary mind in man is not truly the thinking mind proper, it is a life-mind, a vital mind as we may call it, which has learned to think and even to reason but for its own ends and on its own lines, not on those of a true mind of knowledge.” The Human Cycle (footnote).
Sri Aurobindo: "The peacock is the bird of Victory.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The physical nerves are part of the material body but they are extended into the subtle body and there is a connection between the two.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The prophetic or revealing power sees the substance; the inspiration perceives the right expression. Neither is manufactured; nor is poetry really a poiesis or composition, nor even a creation, but rather the revelation of something that eternally exists. The ancients knew this truth and used the same word for poet and prophet, creator and seer, sophos, vates, kavi.” Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "The Purusha, the inner Self, no larger than the size of a man"s thumb.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The quest of man for God, which becomes in the end the most ardent and enthralling of all his quests, begins with his first vague questionings of Nature and a sense of something unseen both in himself and her. Even if, as modern Science insists, religion started from animism, spirit-worship, demon-worship, and the deification of natural forces, these first forms only embody in primitive figures a veiled intuition in the subconscient, an obscure and ignorant feeling of hidden influences and incalculable forces, or a vague sense of being, will, intelligence in what seems to us inconscient, of the invisible behind the visible, of the secretly conscious spirit in things distributing itself in every working of energy. The obscurity and primitive inadequacy of the first perceptions do not detract from the value or the truth of this great quest of the human heart and mind, since all our seekings, — including Science itself, — must start from an obscure and ignorant perception of hidden realities and proceed to the more and more luminous vision of the Truth which at first comes to us masked, draped, veiled by the mists of the Ignorance. Anthropomorphism is an imaged recognition of the truth that man is what he is because God is what He is and that there is one soul and body of things, humanity even in its incompleteness the most complete manifestation yet achieved here and divinity the perfection of what in man is imperfect.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The real subconscious is a nether diminished consciousness close to the Inconscient; the subliminal is a consciousness larger than our surface existence. But both belong to the inner realm of our being of which our surface is unaware, so both are jumbled together in our common conception and parlance.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "There are some who often or almost invariably have the contact whenever they worship, the Deity may become living to them in the picture or other image they worship, may move and act through it; others may feel him always present, outwardly, subtle-physically, abiding with them where they live or in the very room, but sometimes this is only for a period. Or they may feel the Presence with them, see it frequently in a body (but not materially except sometimes), feel its touch or embrace, converse with it constantly — that is also a kind of milana. The greatest milana is one in which one is constantly aware of the Deity abiding in oneself, in everything in the world, holding all the world in him, identical with existence and yet supremely beyond the world — but in the world too one sees, hears, feels nothing but him, so that the very senses bear witness to him alone — . . . .” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The reason itself is only a special kind of application, made by a surface regulating intelligence, of suggestions which actually come from a concealed, but sometimes partially overt and active power of the intuitive spirit.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "There is an inner vision that opens when one does sadhana and all sorts of images rise before it or pass. Their coming does not depend upon your thought or will; it is real and automatic. Just as your physical eyes see things in the physical world, so the inner eyes see things and images that belong to the other worlds and subtle images of things of this physical world also.” *Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "There is a Reality, a truth of all existence which is greater and more abiding than all its formations and manifestations; . . . . This Reality is there within each thing and gives to each of its formations its power of being and value of being.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "There is no difference between the terms ‘universal" and ‘cosmic" except that ‘universal" can be used in a freer way than ‘cosmic". Universal may mean ‘of the universe", cosmic in that general sense. But it may also mean ‘common to all", e.g., ‘This is a universal weakness" — but you cannot say ‘This is a cosmic weakness".” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "There is no ignorance that is not part of the Cosmic Ignorance, only in the individual it becomes a limited formation and movement, while the Cosmic Ignorance is the whole movement of world consciousness separated from the supreme Truth and acting in an inferior motion in which the Truth is perverted, diminished, mixed and clouded with falsehood and error.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "There is no necessity in the essential nature of mind, sense, life that they should be so limited: for the physical sense-organs are not the creators of sense-perceptions, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic sense; the nervous system and vital organs are not the creators of life"s action and reaction, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Life-force; the brain is not the creator of thought, but itself the creation, the instrument and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Mind. The necessity then is not absolute, but teleological; it is the result of a divine cosmic Will in the material universe which intends to posit here a physical relation between sense and its object, establishes here a material formula and law of Conscious-Force and creates by it physical images of Conscious-Being to serve as the initial, dominating and determining fact of the world in which we live. It is not a fundamental law of being, but a constructive principle necessitated by the intention of the Spirit to evolve in a world of Matter.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The Rishi hymns the Sun-God as the source of divine knowledge and the creator of the inner worlds.” *The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "The robbers are as in the Veda vital beings who come to steal away the good condition or else to steal the gains of the sadhana.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: *"The seer does not need the aid of thought in its process as a means of knowledge, but only as a means of representation and expression, — thought is to him a lesser power and used for a secondary purpose. If a further extension of knowledge is required, he can come at it by new seeing without the slower thought processes that are the staff of support of the mental search and its feeling out for truth, — even as we scrutinise with the eye to find what escaped our first observation” The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the Self that creates all these forms is Hiranyagarbha, the luminous or creatively perceptive Soul; . . . . ” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The sense of release as if from jail always accompanies the emergence of the psychic being or the realisation of the self above. It is therefore spoken of as a liberation, mukti. It is a release into peace, happiness, the soul"s freedom not tied down by the thousand ties and cares of the outward ignorant existence.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The Sphinx is a symbol of the eternal quest that can only be answered by the secret knowledge.” *Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "The Spirit is the consciousness above mind, the Atman or Self, which is always in oneness with the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "The superconscient, not the subconscient, is the true foundation of things. The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light above.” Letters on Yoga*
*Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the terrible Kali is also the loving and beneficent Mother; . . . .” Essays on the Gita
*Sri Aurobindo: "The timeless Spirit is not necessarily a blank; it may hold all in itself, but in essence, without reference to time or form or relation or circumstance, perhaps in an eternal unity. Eternity is the common term between Time and the Timeless Spirit. What is in the Timeless unmanifested, implied, essential, appears in Time in movement, or at least in design and relation, in result and circumstance. These two then are the same Eternity or the same Eternal in a double status; they are a twofold status of being and consciousness, one an eternity of immobile status, the other an eternity of motion in status.” The Life Divine ::: "The spiritual fullness of the being is eternity; . . . ” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The Truth-being is the Hara-Gauri (the biune body of the Lord and his Spouse, Ishwara and Shakti, the right half male, the left half female) of the Indian iconological symbol; it is the double Power masculine-feminine born from and supported by the supreme Shakti of the Supreme.” The Synthesis of Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "The typal worlds do not change. In his own world a god is always a god, the Asura always an Asura, the demon always a demon. To change they must either migrate into an evolutionary body or else die entirely to themselves that they may be new born into other Nature.” Essays Divine and Human*
Sri Aurobindo: "The universe is a manifestation of the Reality, and there is a truth of the universal existence, a Power of cosmic being, an all-self or world-spirit. Humanity is a formation or manifestation of the Reality in the universe, and there is a truth and self of humanity, a human spirit, a destiny of human life.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘descend" has various meanings according to the context — I used it here in the sense of the psychic being coming down into the human consciousness and body ready for it.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘ghost" as used in popular parlance covers an enormous number of distinct phenomena which have no necessary connection with each other. To name a few only: ::: An actual contact with the soul of a human being in its subtle body and transcribed to our mind by the appearance of an image or the hearing of a voice.
Sri Aurobindo: "This descent is felt as a pouring in of calm and peace, of force and power, of light, of joy and ecstasy, of wideness and freedom and knowledge, of a Divine Being or a Presence — sometimes one of these, sometimes several of them or all together.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "This material universe is itself only existence as we see it when the soul dwells on the plane of material movement and experience in which the spirit involves itself in form, and therefore all the framework of things in which it moves by the life and which it embraces by the consciousness is determined by the principle of infinite division and aggregation proper to Matter, to substance of form.” The Upanishads
Sri Aurobindo: "This mind of pure intelligence has behind it our inner or subliminal mind which senses directly all the things of the mind-plane, is open to the action of a world of mental forces, and can feel the ideative and other imponderable influences which act upon the material world and the life-plane but which at present we can only infer and cannot directly experience: . . . .” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "This truth of Karma has been always recognised in the East in one form or else in another; but to the Buddhists belongs the credit of having given to it the clearest and fullest universal enunciation and the most insistent importance. In the West too the idea has constantly recurred, but in external, in fragmentary glimpses, as the recognition of a pragmatic truth of experience, and mostly as an ordered ethical law or fatality set over against the self-will and strength of man: but it was clouded over by other ideas inconsistent with any reign of law, vague ideas of some superior caprice or of some divine jealousy, — that was a notion of the Greeks, — a blind Fate or inscrutable Necessity, Ananke, or, later, the mysterious ways of an arbitrary, though no doubt an all-wise Providence.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga *Ananke"s.
Sri Aurobindo: "To act according to a standard of Truth or a rule or law of action (dharma) or in obedience to a superior authority or to the highest principles discovered by the reason and intelligent will and not according to one"s own fancy, vital impulses and desires. In yoga obedience to the Guru or to the Divine and the law of the Truth as declared by the Guru is the foundation of discipline.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "To be entirely sincere means to desire the divine Truth only, to surrender yourself more and more to the Divine Mother, to reject all personal demand and desire other than this one aspiration, to offer every action in life to the Divine and do it as the work given without bringing in the ego. This is the basis of the divine life.” Bases of Yoga*
Sri Aurobindo: "True reconciliation proceeds always by a mutual comprehension leading to some sort of intimate oneness. It is therefore through the utmost possible unification of Spirit and Matter that we shall best arrive at their reconciling truth and so at some strongest foundation for a reconciling practice in the inner life of the individual and his outer existence.” The Life Divine*
Sri Aurobindo: "Universal love is the spiritual founded on the sense of the One and the Divine everywhere and the change of the personal into a wide universal consciousness, free from attachment and ignorance.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo uses the word in the sense of the definition for imager.
Sri Aurobindo: "Very usually, altruism is only the sublimest form of selfishness.” *Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: "We have distinguished a fourfold principle of divine Being creative of the universe, — Existence, Conscious-Force, Bliss and Supermind.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . we insist so much on sincerity in the yoga — and that means to have all the being consciously turned towards the one Truth, the one Divine.” *Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: ". . . we live in a false relation with our environment, because we know neither the universe nor ourselves for what they really are . . .” The Synthesis of Yoga*
Sri Aurobindo: "We mean by the Absolute something greater than ourselves, greater than the cosmos which we live in, the supreme reality of that transcendent Being which we call God, something without which all that we see or are conscious of as existing, could not have been, could not for a moment remain in existence. Indian thought calls it Brahman, European thought the Absolute because it is a self-existent which is absolved of all bondage to relativities . . . The Absolute is for us the Ineffable.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "We see at once that if such an Existence is, it must be, like the Energy, infinite. Neither reason nor experience nor intuition nor imagination bears witness to us of the possibility of a final terminus. All end and beginning presuppose something beyond the end or beginning. An absolute end, an absolute beginning is not only a contradiction in terms, but a contradiction of the essence of things, a violence, a fiction. Infinity imposes itself upon the appearances of the finite by its ineffugable self-existence.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "What is meant by hell is a painful passage through the vital or lingering there, as for instance, in many cases of suicide where one remains surrounded by the forces of suffering and turmoil created by this unnatural and violent exit.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "What the "void" feels as a clutch is felt by the Mother only as a reminding finger laid on her cheek. It is one advantage of the expression ‘as if" that it leaves the field open for such variation. It is intended to suggest without saying it that behind the sombre void is the face of a mother. The two other ‘as if"s have the same motive and I do not find them jarring upon me. The second is at a sufficient distance from the first and it is not obtrusive enough to prejudice the third which more nearly follows. . . .” Letters on Savitri
Sri Aurobindo: "When all is in agreement with the one Truth or an expression of it that is harmony.” Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "When there is some lowering or diminution of the consciousness or some impairing of it at one place or another, the Adversary — or the Censor — who is always on the watch presses with all his might wherever there is a weak point lying covered from your own view, and suddenly a wrong movement leaps up with unexpected force. Become conscious and cast out the possibility of its renewal, that is all that is to be done.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Who is the superman? He who can rise above this matter-regarding broken mental human unit and possess himself universalised and deified in a divine force, a divine love and joy and a divine knowledge.” *The Hour of God
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . wrong will and falsehood of the steps, . . . separative egoism inflicting by its ignorance and separate contrary will harm on oneself or harm on others, self-driven to a wrong dealing with one"s own soul, mind, life or body or a wrong dealing with the soul, mind, life, body of others, . . . is the practical sense of all human evil.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Yes: the purpose is to create a large luminous trailing repetitive movement like the flight of the Bird with its dragon tail of white fire.” *Letters on Savitri
Sri Aurobindo: "Yet all the time the universal forces are pouring into him without his knowing it. He is aware only of thoughts, feelings, etc., that rise to the surface and these he takes for his own. Really they come from outside in mind waves, vital waves, waves of feeling and sensation, etc., which take particular form in him and rise to the surface after they have got inside. But they do not get into his body at once. He carries about with him an environmental consciousness (called by the Theosophists the Aura) into which they first enter. If you can become conscious of this environmental self of yours, then you can catch the thought, passion, suggestion or force of illness and prevent it from entering into you. If things in you are thrown out, they often do not go altogether but take refuge in this environmental atmosphere and from there they try to get in again. Or they go to a distance outside but linger on the outskirts or even perhaps far off, waiting till they get an opportunity to attempt entrance.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Your ‘barely enough", instead of the finer and more suggestive ‘hardly", falls flat upon my ear; one cannot substitute one word for another in this kind of poetry merely because it means intellectually the same thing; ‘hardly" is the mot juste in this context and, repetition or not, it must remain unless a word not only juste but inevitable comes to replace it… . On this point I may add that in certain contexts ‘barely" would be the right word, as for instance, ‘There is barely enough food left for two or three meals", where ‘hardly" would be adequate but much less forceful. It is the other way about in this line. Letters on Savitri
cabbala ::: 1 A body of mystical Jewish teachings based on an interpretation of hidden meanings in the Hebrew Scriptures. Among its central doctrines are, all creation is an emanation from the Deity and the soul exists from eternity. 2. Any secret or occult doctrine or science. 3. "Esoteric system of interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures based on the assumption that every word, letter, number, and accent in them has an occult meaning. The system, oral at first, claimed great antiquity, but was really the product of the Middle Ages, arising in the 7th century and lasting into the 18th. It was popular chiefly among Jews, but spread to Christians as well. (Col. Enc.)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
call ::: Sri Aurobindo: "All Yoga is in its nature a new birth; it is a birth out of the ordinary, the mentalised material life of man into a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner being. No Yoga can be successfully undertaken and followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of that larger spiritual existence. The soul that is called to this deep and vast inward change, may arrive in different ways to the initial departure. It may come to it by its own natural development which has been leading it unconsciously towards the awakening; it may reach it through the influence of a religion or the attraction of a philosophy; it may approach it by a slow illumination or leap to it by a sudden touch or shock; it may be pushed or led to it by the pressure of outward circumstances or by an inward necessity, by a single word that breaks the seals of the mind or by long reflection, by the distant example of one who has trod the path or by contact and daily influence. According to the nature and the circumstances the call will come.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
calm ::: n. 1. Serenity; tranquillity; peace. 2. Nearly or completely motionless as a condition of no wind. Calm, Calm"s, calms, calmness. adj. 3. Not excited or agitated; composed; tranquil; 4. Without rough motion; still or nearly still. calmer, calm-lipped, stone-calm. *adv. calmly.
Sri Aurobindo: "Calm is a still unmoved condition which no disturbance can affect — it is a less negative condition than quiet.” Letters on Yoga*
"Calm is a positive tranquillity which can exist in spite of superficial disturbances.” *Letters on Yoga
"Calm is a strong and positive quietude, firm and solid — ordinary quietude is mere negation, simply the absence of disturbance.” *Letters on Yoga
"But more powerful still is the giving up of the fruit of one"s works, because that immediately destroys all causes of disturbance and brings and preserves automatically an inner calm and peace, and calm and peace are the foundation on which all else becomes perfect and secure in possession by the tranquil spirit.” Essays on the Gita
The Mother: "Calm is self-possessed strength, quiet and conscious energy, mastery of the impulses, control over the unconscious reflexes.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 14*.
child, the ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The gnostic soul is the child.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
cipher ::: n. 1. Something having no influence or value; a zero; a nonentity. 2. A secret method of writing, as by transposition or substitution of letters, specially formed symbols, or the like. unintelligible to all but those possessing the key; a cryptograph. ciphers. *v. 3. To put in secret writing; encode. *ciphers. Note: Sri Aurobindo also spelled the word as Cypher, the old English spelling.
clamped ::: 1. Fastened with or fixed in a clamp (a device for binding, holding, compressing or fastening objects together); hence, fig. Restricted, repressed, tightened down, restrained. 2. Established by authority; imposed clamps. (Sri Aurobindo also employs clamped as an adj.)
coilas ::: (Most often spelled Kailas.) "One of the highest and most rugged mountains of the Himalayan range, located in the southwestern part of China. It is an important holy site both to the Hindus, who identify it with the paradise of Shiva and also regard it as the abode of Kubera, and to the Tibetan Buddhists, who identify it with Mount Sumeru, cosmic centre of the universe.” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
"Concentration simply means a fixing of consciousness on something.” Guidance from Sri Aurobindo by Nagin Doshi - Vol. 1
conscious force ::: Sri Aurobindo: "For the Force that builds the worlds is a conscious Force, . . .” *The Life Divine
*consciousforce. ::: Sri Aurobindo: "In actual fact Mind measures Time by event and Space by Matter; but it is possible in pure mentality to disregard the movement of event and the disposition of substance and realise the pure movement of Conscious-Force which constitutes Space and Time; these two are then merely two aspects of the universal force of Consciousness which in their intertwined interaction comprehend the warp and woof of its action upon itself. And to a consciousness higher than Mind which should regard our past, present and future in one view, containing and not contained in them, not situated at a particular moment of Time for its point of prospection, Time might well offer itself as an eternal present. And to the same consciousness not situated at any particular point of Space, but containing all points and regions in itself, Space also might well offer itself as a subjective and indivisible extension, — no less subjective than Time.” The Life Divine
cosmic force ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . universal force and universal consciousness are one, — cosmic force is the operation of cosmic consciousness.” *The Life Divine
cosmicity ("s) ::: a word coined by Sri Aurobindo. The suffix ity is used to form abstract nouns expressing state or condition. Hence, cosmicity refers to a cosmic state or condition.
cosmic mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Nevertheless, the fact of this intervention from above, the fact that behind all our original thinking or authentic perception of things there is a veiled, a half-veiled or a swift unveiled intuitive element is enough to establish a connection between mind and what is above it; it opens a passage of communication and of entry into the superior spirit-ranges. There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego limitation, to see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; universality, non-limitation by the single or limiting point of view, is the character of cosmic perception and knowledge: this tendency is therefore a widening, however rudimentary, of these restricted mind areas towards cosmicity, towards a quality which is the very character of the higher mental planes, — towards that superconscient cosmic Mind which, we have suggested, must in the nature of things be the original mind-action of which ours is only a derivative and inferior process.” *The Life Divine
"If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, . . . we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition; . . . At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies, — not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality.” The Life Divine
"There is one cosmic Mind, one cosmic Life, one cosmic Body. All the attempt of man to arrive at universal sympathy, universal love and the understanding and knowledge of the inner soul of other existences is an attempt to beat thin, breach and eventually break down by the power of the enlarging mind and heart the walls of the ego and arrive nearer to a cosmic oneness.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"[The results of the opening to the cosmic Mind:] One is aware of the cosmic Mind and the mental forces that move there and how they work on one"s mind and that of others and one is able to deal with one"s own mind with a greater knowledge and effective power. There are many other results, but this is the fundamental one.” Letters on Yoga
"The cosmic consciousness has many levels — the cosmic physical, the cosmic vital, the cosmic Mind, and above the higher planes of cosmic Mind there is the Intuition and above that the overmind and still above that the supermind where the Transcendental begins. In order to live in the Intuition plane (not merely to receive intuitions), one has to live in the cosmic consciousness because there the cosmic and individual run into each other as it were, and the mental separation between them is already broken down, so nobody can reach there who is still in the separative ego.” Letters on Yoga*
cosmic Self ::: Sri Aurobindo: "When one has the cosmic consciousness, one can feel the cosmic Self as one"s own self, one can feel one with other beings in the cosmos, one can feel all the forces of Nature as moving in oneself, all selves as one"s own self. There is no why except that it is so, since all is the One.” Letters on Yoga (See also Cosmic Spirit)
"Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; . . . .” *The Life Divine
"An eternal infinite self-existence is the supreme reality, but the supreme transcendent eternal Being, Self and Spirit, — an infinite Person, we may say, because his being is the essence and source of all personality, — is the reality and meaning of self-existence: so too the cosmic Self, Spirit, Being, Person is the reality and meaning of cosmic existence; the same Self, Spirit, Being or Person manifesting its multiplicity is the reality and meaning of individual existence.” The Life Divine
"But this cosmic self is spiritual in essence and in experience; it must not be confused with the collective existence, with any group soul or the life and body of a human society or even of all mankind.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"It is the Cosmic Self and Spirit that is in and behind all things and beings, from which and in which all is manifested in the universe — although it is now a manifestation in the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga*
cosmic Spirit ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Cosmic Spirit or Self contains everything in the cosmos — it upholds cosmic Mind, universal Life, universal Matter as well as the overmind. The Self is more than all these things which are its formulations in Nature.” *Letters on Yoga
"[The Divine in one of its three aspects] . . . is the Cosmic Self and Spirit that is in and behind all things and beings, from which and in which all is manifested in the universe - although it is now a manifestation in the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
". . . the cosmic spirit, the one self inhabiting the universe, . . . .” *The Life Divine
"For the cosmic Spirit inhabits each and all, but is more than all; . . . .”The Life Divine
cosmic Truth ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Cosmic Truth is the view on things of a cosmic consciousness in which things are seen in their true essence and their true relation to the Divine and to each other.” *Letters on Yoga
cosmic vision ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Cosmic vision is the seeing of the universal movements — it has nothing to do with the psychic necessarily. It can be in the universal mind, the universal vital, the universal physical or anywhere.” Letters on Yoga*
cosmic Will ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Agni is the Deva, the All-Seer, manifested as conscious-force or, as it would be called in modern language, Divine or Cosmic Will, first hidden and building up the eternal worlds, then manifest, ``born"", building up in man the Truth and the Immortality.” *The Secret of the Veda
creator ::: 1. The Divine Being, creator of all things. 2. A person, force or thing that creates. Creator, creator"s, Creator"s, creators, world-creators. (Sri Aurobindo also employs creator as an adjective.)
creatrix ::: the Divine Mother, the creatress. creatrix. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
cross ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the cross is the sign of the Divine Descent barred and marred by the transversal line of a cosmic deformation which turns it into a stake of suffering and misfortune. Only by the ascent to the original Truth can the deformation be healed and all the works of love, as too all the works of knowledge and of life, be restored to a divine significance and become part of an integral spiritual existence.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
death ::: Sri Aurobindo: "For the spiritual seeker death is only a passage from one form of life to another, and none is dead but only departed.” *Letters on Yoga
dense ::: 1. Having the component parts closely compacted together; crowded or compact. 2. Relatively opaque; transmitting little light. 3. Intense; extreme. 4. Impenetrable. denser, dense-maned. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as a n.)
detached ::: 1. Impartial or objective; disinterested; unbiased. 2. Not involved or concerned; aloof. ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Detachment means that one stands back from [imperfections and weakness of the nature, etc.] , does not identify oneself with them or get upset or troubled because they are there, but rather looks on them as something foreign to one"s true consciousness and true self, rejects them and calls in the Mother"s Force into these movements to eliminate them and bring the true consciousness and its movements there.” Letters on Yoga
divine ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Divine is the Supreme Truth because it is the Supreme Being from whom all have come and in whom all are.” *Letters on Yoga
divine Force ::: Sri Aurobindo: "That there is a divine force asleep or veiled by Inconscience in Matter and that the Higher Force has to descend and awaken it with the Light and Truth is a thing that is well known; it is at the very base of this yoga.” *Letters on Yoga.
divine life ::: Sri Aurobindo: "A life of gnostic beings carrying the evolution to a higher supramental status might fitly be characterised as a divine life; for it would be a life in the Divine, a life of the beginnings of a spiritual divine light and power and joy manifested in material Nature.” *The Life Divine ::: "The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man"s real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect crawling among other ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe.” The Life Divine
divine love ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Divine Love, in my view of it, is again not something ethereal, cold and far, but a love absolutely intense, intimate and full of unity, closeness and rapture using all the nature for its expression.” *Letters on Yoga
divine Mother ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates.” *The Mother
divine Reality ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Divine Reality is infinite in its being; in this infinite being, we find limited being everywhere, — that is the apparent fact from which our existence here seems to start and to which our own narrow ego and its ego-centric activities bear constant witness. But, in reality, when we come to an integral self-knowledge, we find that we are not limited, for we also are infinite.” *The Life Divine
dragon ::: a mythical monster traditionally represented as a gigantic reptile having a lion"s claws, the tail of a serpent, wings, and a scaly skin. (Also employed by Sri Aurobindo as an adjective.)
dragon of the dark foundation ::: Sri Aurobindo: "All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother, Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement. Vayu, Master of life, links them together by the mid-air, the region of vital force. And there are other deities, — Parjanya, giver of the rain of heaven; Dadhikravan, the divine war-horse, a power of Agni; the mystic Dragon of the Foundations; Trita Aptya who on the third plane of existence consummates our triple being; and more besides.” The Secret of the Veda
dungeon ::: a dark, often underground chamber or cell used to confine prisoners. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adjective.)
durga ::: "In Hindu religion, the goddess who is the Energy of Shiva and the conquering and protecting aspect of the Universal Mother. She is the slayer of many demons including Mahisasura. Durga is usually depicted in painting and sculpture riding a lion, having eight or ten arms, each holding the special weapon of one or another of the gods who gave them to her for her battles with demons. (A; Enc. Br.)” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works.
dyumatsena ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Dyumatsena, Lord of the Shining Hosts, father of Satyavan, is the Divine Mind here fallen blind, losing its celestial kingdom of vision, and through that loss its kingdom of glory.” Author"s note at beginning of Savitri.
eagle ::: any of several large, soaring birds of prey belonging to the hawk family. The strength, keen vision, graceful and powerful flight of the eagle are proverbial, and have given to him the title of the king of birds. eagle"s, eagles, eagle-peaks, eagle-poised, eagle-winged, she-eagle. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
earthly life ::: Sri Aurobindo: "This earthly life need not be necessarily and for ever a wheel of half-joyous half-anguished effort; attainment may also be intended and the glory and joy of God made manifest upon earth.” The Life Divine
elements ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The first ripple or vibration in causal matter creates a new and exceedingly fine and pervasive condition of matter called Akasha or Ether; more complex motion evolves out of Ether a somewhat intenser condition which is called Vayu, Air; and so by ever more complex motion with increasing intensity of condition for result, yet three other matter-states are successively developed, Agni or Fire, Apah or Water and Prithvi or Earth.” *Supplement to the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library
ensleeved ::: a word coined by Sri Aurobindo. The prefix en, occurring originally in loanwords from French, forms verbs with the general sense "to cause (a person or thing) to be in” a place, condition, or state. Hence, ensleeved in this instance is "held within a sleeve”.
enthusiast ::: ardent; eager; fervent; impassioned. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as a synonym for enthusiastic.)
::: "Erinyes, in Greek mythology, the goddesses of vengeance, usually represented as three winged maidens, with snakes in their hair. They pursued criminals, drove them mad, and tormented them in Hades. They were spirits of punishment, avenging wrongs done especially to kindred. In Roman literature they were called Furies.” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works*
Eternal"s. Sri Aurobindo: ". . . that which is, cannot perish; it can only lose itself. All is eternal in the eternal spirit.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
evangelist ::: 1. A preacher of the Christian gospel. 2. Any zealous advocate of a cause. (Employed by Sri Aurobindo as an adjective.)
evolution ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Evolution is nothing but the progressive unfolding of spirit out of the density of material consciousness and the gradual self-revelation of God out of this apparent animal being.” *The Hour of God
Flamelike, inscrutable the almighty Guest” From: The Guest - Collected Poems of Sri Aurobindo
flasque ::: Sri Aurobindo: "‘Flasque" is a French word meaning ‘slack", ‘loose", ‘flaccid" etc. I have more than once tried to thrust in a French word like this, for instance, ‘A harlot empress in a bouge" – somewhat after the manner of Eliot and Ezra Pound.” Letters on Savitri.
flower-symbol ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Flowers are the moment"s representations of things that are in themselves eternal.” On Himself
force, divine ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Divine Force can act on any plane — it is not limited to the supramental Force. The supramental is only one aspect of the power of the Divine.” *Letters on Yoga
force, universal ::: Sri Aurobindo: "This force that we feel is the universal Force of the Divine, which, veiled or unveiled, acting directly or permitting the use of its powers by beings in the cosmos, is the one Energy that alone exists and alone makes universal or individual action possible. For this force is the Divine itself in the body of its power; all is that, power of act, power of thought and knowledge, power of mastery and enjoyment, power of love. Conscious always and in everything, in ourselves and in others, of the Master of Works possessing, inhabiting, enjoying through this Force that is himself, becoming through it all existences and all happenings, we shall have arrived at the divine union through works and achieved by that fulfilment in works all that others have gained through absolute devotion or through pure knowledge.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
forewilled ::: a word coined by Sri Aurobindo. As a prefix, fore (with or without hyphen) denotes beforehand, previously, in advance; hence, willed in advance.
formed ::: given form or shape to; fashioned, constructed, framed. Formed (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as a n.).
formless ::: having no definite form; shapeless. Also fig. Formless (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as a n.), formlessness, formlessly.
gandhamadan ::: "In Hindu mythology, a mountain and forest in Ilavrta, the central region of the world which contains Mount Meru. Gandhamadan dorms the division between Ilavrta and Bhadrasva, to the east of Meru. The forest of Gandhamadan is renowned for its fragrance. (Dow.; Enc. Br.)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works.
gandharva ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Gandharvas are of the vital plane but they are vital Gods, not Asuras.” *Letters on Yoga
god ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the Absolute, the Spirit, the Self spaceless and timeless, the Self manifest in the cosmos and Lord of Nature, — all this is what we mean by God, . . . .” *The Life Divine
godhead ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the Godhead is all that is universe and all that is in the universe and all that is more than the universe. The Gita lays stress first on his supracosmic existence. For otherwise the mind would miss its highest goal and remain turned towards the cosmic only or else attached to some partial experience of the Divine in the cosmos. It lays stress next on his universal existence in which all moves and acts. For that is the justification of the cosmic effort and that is the vast spiritual self-awareness in which the Godhead self-seen as the Time-Spirit does his universal works. Next it insists with a certain austere emphasis on the acceptance of the Godhead as the divine inhabitant in the human body. For he is the Immanent in all existences, and if the indwelling divinity is not recognised, not only will the divine meaning of individual existence be missed, the urge to our supreme spiritual possibilities deprived of its greatest force, but the relations of soul with soul in humanity will be left petty, limited and egoistic. Finally, it insists at great length on the divine manifestation in all things in the universe and affirms the derivation of all that is from the nature, power and light of the one Godhead.” *Essays on the Gita
gods ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Gods are Brahman representing Itself in cosmic Personalities expressive of the one Godhead who, in their impersonal action, appear as the various play of the principles of Nature.” *The Upanishads
golden Child ::: Sri Aurobindo: "I suppose the golden child is the Truth-Soul which follows after the silver light of the spiritual. When it plunges into the black waters of the subconscient, it releases from it the spiritual light and the sevenfold streams of the Divine Energy and, clearing itself of the stains of the subconscient, it prepares its flight towards the supreme Divine (the Mother).” (Reply to a question in the chapter Visions and Symbols.) Letters on Yoga
golden Sphinx ::: Sri Aurobindo: "…the luminous veiled Sphinx of the infinite Consciousness and eternal Wisdom.” The Life Divine
good ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Below [the ethical] hides that secret of good in all things which the human being approaches and tries to deliver partially through ethical instinct and ethical idea; above is hidden the eternal Good which exceeds our partial and fragmentary ethical conceptions.” *Social and Political Thought
grace ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Grace is something spontaneous which wells out from the Divine Consciousness as a free flow of its being. ::: It is a power that is superior to any rule, even to the Cosmic Law — for all spiritual seers have distinguished between the Law and Grace. Yet it is not indiscriminate — only it has a discrimination of its own which sees things and persons and the right times and seasons with another vision than that of the Mind or any other normal Power. A state of Grace is prepared in the individual often behind thick veils by means not calculable by the mind and when the state of Grace comes, then the Grace itself acts. ” *Letters on Yoga
guest ::: Sri Aurobindo: " When the Rishis speak of Indra or Agni or Soma in men, they are speaking of the god in his cosmic presence, power or function. This is evident from the very language when they speak of Agni as the immortal in mortals, the immortal Light in men, the inner Warrior, the Guest in human beings.” *Letters on Yoga
harmonist ::: one who brings everything into harmony. (Here referring to the Divine) Sri Aurobindo capitalises the word.
heart ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The heart in Vedic psychology is not restricted to the seat of the emotions; it includes all that large tract of spontaneous mentality, nearest to the subconscient in us, out of which rise the sensations, emotions, instincts, impulses and all those intuitions and inspirations that travel through these agencies before they arrive at form in the intelligence.” *The Secret of the Veda
herald ::: Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adjective pertaining to an aspect of heraldry, i.e. a heraldic emblazonment or device; armorial bearings; heraldic symbolism.
herculean ::: requiring tremendous effort, strength, etc. (Sri Aurobindo capitalises the word.)
hero ::: 1. One who is distinguished by exceptional courage, nobility, fortitude, etc. 2. A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.) hero"s, heroes.
"He whose self has become all existences, for he has the knowledge, how shall he be deluded, whence shall he have grief, he who sees everywhere oneness? — Isha Upanishad.” [Sri Aurobindo"s translation] ::: *oneness"
"High beyond the Intelligence is the Great Self, beyond the Great Self is the Unmanifest, beyond the Unmanifest is the Conscious Being. There is nothing beyond the Being, — that is the extreme ultimate, that the supreme goal.” — Katha Upanishad. (4) (Sri Aurobindo"s translation) The Life Divine
ignorance ::: the state or fact of being ignorant; lack of knowledge, learning, information. Ignorance, ignorance"s, Ignorance"s, ignorance", world-ignorance, World-Ignorance.
Sri Aurobindo: "Ignorance is the absence of the divine eye of perception which gives us the sight of the supramental Truth; it is the non-perceiving principle in our consciousness as opposed to the truth-perceiving conscious vision and knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"Ignorance is the consciousness of being in the successions of Time, divided in its knowledge by dwelling in the moment, divided in its conception of self-being by dwelling in the divisions of Space and the relations of circumstance, self-prisoned in the multiple working of the unity. It is called the Ignorance because it has put behind it the knowledge of unity and by that very fact is unable to know truly or completely either itself or the world, either the transcendent or the universal reality.” The Life Divine
"Ignorance means Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life. This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth, — truth of being, truth of divine consciousness, truth of force and action, truth of Ananda. As a result, instead of a world of integral truth and divine harmony created in the light of the divine Gnosis, we have a world founded on the part truths of an inferior cosmic Intelligence in which all is half-truth, half-error. . . . All in the consciousness of this creation is either limited or else perverted by separation from the integral Light; even the Truth it perceives is only a half-knowledge. Therefore it is called the Ignorance.” The Mother
". . . all ignorance is a penumbra which environs an orb of knowledge . . . .”The Life Divine
"This world is not really created by a blind force of Nature: even in the Inconscient the presence of the supreme Truth is at work; there is a seeing Power behind it which acts infallibly and the steps of the Ignorance itself are guided even when they seem to stumble; for what we call the Ignorance is a cloaked Knowledge, a Knowledge at work in a body not its own but moving towards its own supreme self-discovery.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"Knowledge is no doubt the knowledge of the One, the realisation of the Being; Ignorance is a self-oblivion of Being, the experience of separateness in the multiplicity and a dwelling or circling in the ill-understood maze of becomings: . . . .” The Life Divine*
illumined mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"The Illumined Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision; . . . .” The Life Divine
"As the Higher Mind brings a greater consciousness into the being through the spiritual idea and its power of truth, so the Illumined Mind brings in a still greater consciousness through a Truth-sight and Truth-light and its seeing and seizing power.” The Life Divine*
impersonal ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Impersonal is not He, it is It. . . . The Impersonal Brahman is inactive, aloof, indifferent, not concerned with what happens in the universe.” *Letters on Yoga
incalculable ::: 1. Too great to be calculated or reckoned. 2. Impossible to foresee; unpredictable. Incalculable, incalculable"s. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as a n.)
incapable of being measured; limitless; immense. Immeasurable. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
incarnation ::: Sri Aurobindo: "An incarnation is the Divine Consciousness and Being manifesting through the body.” *Letters on Yoga
incertitude ::: absence of confidence; doubt; uncertainty. incertitudes. ::: Sri Aurobindo: [referring to the line] "The incertitude of man"s proud confident thought.” ::: "‘Uncertainty" would mean that the thought was confident but uncertain of itself, which would be a contradiction. ‘Incertitude" means that its truth is uncertain in spite of its proud confidence in itself.” Letters on Savitri — 1936
inconscience ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Inconscience is an inverse reproduction of the supreme superconscience: it has the same absoluteness of being and automatic action, but in a vast involved trance; it is being lost in itself, plunged in its own abyss of infinity.” *The Life Divine
"All aspects of the omnipresent Reality have their fundamental truth in the Supreme Existence. Thus even the aspect or power of Inconscience, which seems to be an opposite, a negation of the eternal Reality, yet corresponds to a Truth held in itself by the self-aware and all-conscious Infinite. It is, when we look closely at it, the Infinite"s power of plunging the consciousness into a trance of self-involution, a self-oblivion of the Spirit veiled in its own abysses where nothing is manifest but all inconceivably is and can emerge from that ineffable latency. In the heights of Spirit this state of cosmic or infinite trance-sleep appears to our cognition as a luminous uttermost Superconscience: at the other end of being it offers itself to cognition as the Spirit"s potency of presenting to itself the opposites of its own truths of being, — an abyss of non-existence, a profound Night of inconscience, a fathomless swoon of insensibility from which yet all forms of being, consciousness and delight of existence can manifest themselves, — but they appear in limited terms, in slowly emerging and increasing self-formulations, even in contrary terms of themselves; it is the play of a secret all-being, all-delight, all-knowledge, but it observes the rules of its own self-oblivion, self-opposition, self-limitation until it is ready to surpass it. This is the Inconscience and Ignorance that we see at work in the material universe. It is not a denial, it is one term, one formula of the infinite and eternal Existence.” *The Life Divine
"Once consciousnesses separated from the one consciousness, they fell inevitably into Ignorance and the last result of Ignorance was Inconscience.” Letters on Yoga
*inconscience.
inconscient ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Inconscient and the Ignorance may be mere empty abstractions and can be dismissed as irrelevant jargon if one has not come in collision with them or plunged into their dark and bottomless reality. But to me they are realities, concrete powers whose resistance is present everywhere and at all times in its tremendous and boundless mass.” *Letters on Savitri
". . . in its actual cosmic manifestation the Supreme, being the Infinite and not bound by any limitation, can manifest in Itself, in its consciousness of innumerable possibilities, something that seems to be the opposite of itself, something in which there can be Darkness, Inconscience, Inertia, Insensibility, Disharmony and Disintegration. It is this that we see at the basis of the material world and speak of nowadays as the Inconscient — the Inconscient Ocean of the Rigveda in which the One was hidden and arose in the form of this universe — or, as it is sometimes called, the non-being, Asat.” Letters on Yoga
"The Inconscient itself is only an involved state of consciousness which like the Tao or Shunya, though in a different way, contains all things suppressed within it so that under a pressure from above or within all can evolve out of it — ‘an inert Soul with a somnambulist Force".” Letters on Yoga
"The Inconscient is the last resort of the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
"The body, we have said, is a creation of the Inconscient and itself inconscient or at least subconscient in parts of itself and much of its hidden action; but what we call the Inconscient is an appearance, a dwelling place, an instrument of a secret Consciousness or a Superconscient which has created the miracle we call the universe.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga :::
"The Inconscient is a sleep or a prison, the conscient a round of strivings without ultimate issue or the wanderings of a dream: we must wake into the superconscious where all darkness of night and half-lights cease in the self-luminous bliss of the Eternal.” The Life Divine
"Men have not learnt yet to recognise the Inconscient on which the whole material world they see is built, or the Ignorance of which their whole nature including their knowledge is built; they think that these words are only abstract metaphysical jargon flung about by the philosophers in their clouds or laboured out in long and wearisome books like The Life Divine. Letters on Savitri :::
"Is it really a fact that even the ordinary reader would not be able to see any difference between the Inconscient and Ignorance unless the difference is expressly explained to him? This is not a matter of philosophical terminology but of common sense and the understood meaning of English words. One would say ‘even the inconscient stone" but one would not say, as one might of a child, ‘the ignorant stone". One must first be conscious before one can be ignorant. What is true is that the ordinary reader might not be familiar with the philosophical content of the word Inconscient and might not be familiar with the Vedantic idea of the Ignorance as the power behind the manifested world. But I don"t see how I can acquaint him with these things in a single line, even with the most. illuminating image or symbol. He might wonder, if he were Johnsonianly minded, how an Inconscient could be teased or how it could wake Ignorance. I am afraid, in the absence of a miracle of inspired poetical exegesis flashing through my mind, he will have to be left wondering.” Letters on Savitri
**inconscient, Inconscient"s.**
"In Greek mythology, a giant with a hundred arms, a son of Uranus and Ge, who fought against the gods. He was hurled down by Athene and imprisoned beneath Mt. Aetna in Sicily. When he stirs, the mountain shakes; when he breathes, there is an eruption. (M.I.; Web.)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
intermediate zone ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The intermediate zone means simply a confused condition or passage in which one is getting out of the personal consciousness and opening into the cosmic (cosmic Mind, cosmic vital, cosmic physical, something perhaps of the cosmic higher Mind) without having yet transcended the human mind levels. One is not in possession of or direct contact with the divine Truth on its own levels , but one can receive something from them, even from the overmind, indirectly. Only, as one is still immersed in the cosmic Ignorance, all that comes from above can be mixed, perverted, taken hold of for their purposes by lower, even by hostile Powers. ::: It is not necessary for everyone to struggle through the intermediate zone. If one has purified oneself, if there is no abnormal vanity, egoism, ambition or other strong misleading element, or if one is vigilant and on one"s guard, or if the psychic is in front, one can either pass rapidly and directly or with a minimum of trouble into the higher zones of consciousness where one is in direct contact with the Divine Truth.
internatal ::: a word coined by Sri Aurobindo. A combination of inter, meaning between, and natal, referring to birth; hence, between births.
". . . in the Veda, Lord of the hosts of delight; in later mythology, the Gandharvas are musicians of heaven, ‘beautiful, brave and melodious beings, the artists, musicians, poets and shining warriors of heaven". . . .” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works ::: *Gandharvas.
intuition ::: direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process. intuition"s, intuitions, half-intuition.
Sri Aurobindo: "Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude.” *The Life Divine
"Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind-substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of ``stable lightnings"". When this original or native Intuition begins to descend into us in answer to an ascension of our consciousness to its level or as a result of our finding of a clear way of communication with it, it may continue to come as a play of lightning-flashes, isolated or in constant action; but at this stage the judgment of reason becomes quite inapplicable, it can only act as an observer or registrar understanding or recording the more luminous intimations, judgments and discriminations of the higher power. To complete or verify an isolated intuition or discriminate its nature, its application, its limitations, the receiving consciousness must rely on another completing intuition or be able to call down a massed intuition capable of putting all in place. For once the process of the change has begun, a complete transmutation of the stuff and activities of the mind into the substance, form and power of Intuition is imperative; until then, so long as the process of consciousness depends upon the lower intelligence serving or helping out or using the intuition, the result can only be a survival of the mixed Knowledge-Ignorance uplifted or relieved by a higher light and force acting in its parts of Knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"I use the word ‘intuition" for want of a better. In truth, it is a makeshift and inadequate to the connotation demanded of it. The same has to be said of the word ‘consciousness" and many others which our poverty compels us to extend illegitimately in their significance.” *The Life Divine - Sri Aurobindo"s footnote.
"For intuition is an edge of light thrust out by the secret Supermind. . . .” The Life Divine
". . . intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data.” The Life Divine
"Intuition is above illumined Mind which is simply higher Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and inspiration.” Letters on Yoga
"Intuition sees the truth of things by a direct inner contact, not like the ordinary mental intelligence by seeking and reaching out for indirect contacts through the senses etc. But the limitation of the Intuition as compared with the supermind is that it sees things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. Also in coming into the mind it gets mixed with the mental movement and forms a kind of intuitive mind activity which is not the pure truth, but something in between the higher Truth and the mental seeking. It can lead the consciousness through a sort of transitional stage and that is practically its function.” Letters on Yoga
intuitive knowledge ::: Sri Aurobindo: " For the highest intuitive Knowledge sees things in the whole, in the large and details only as sides of the indivisible whole; its tendency is towards immediate synthesis and the unity of knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"The intuitive knowledge on the contrary, however limited it may be in its field or application, is within that scope sure with an immediate, a durable and especially a self-existent certitude.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"All intuitive knowledge comes more or less directly from the light of the self-aware spirit entering into the mind, the spirit concealed behind mind and conscious of all in itself and in all its selves, omniscient and capable of illumining the ignorant or the self-forgetful mind whether by rare or constant flashes or by a steady instreaming light, out of its omniscience.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
inview ::: a word coined by Sri Aurobindo. A sight afforded of something from a position stated or qualified, i.e. from within.
knowledge ::: Sri Aurobindo: "A concentration which culminates in a living realisation and the constant sense of the presence of the One in ourselves and in all of which we are aware, is what we mean in Yoga by knowledge and the effort after knowledge.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
labyrinth ::: an intricate structure of interconnecting passages through which it is difficult to find one"s way; a maze. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adj.)
lakshmi ::: ". . . in Hindu mythology, the goddess of wealth and good fortune, consort of Vishnu. According to a legend she sprang from the froth of the Ocean when it was churned, in full beauty, with a lotus in her hand. (Dow.)” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
life-self ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . our self-view is vitiated by the constant impact and intrusion of our outer life-self, our vital being, which seeks always to make the thinking mind its tool and servant: for our vital being is not concerned with self-knowledge but with self-affirmation, desire, ego.” *The Life Divine
light ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy.” *The Life Divine
"Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision"s limited range.
For do not imagine that light is created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere.
God is everywhere and wherever God is, there is Light.” *The Hour of God
"Light is a general term. Light is not knowledge but the illumination that comes from above and liberates the being from obscurity and darkness.” The Mother
The Mother: "The light is everywhere, the force is everywhere. And the world is so small.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15. ::: *Light, light"s, lights, light-petalled, light-tasselled, half-light.
light, divine ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . there is a Divine Light that leans over the world and is not only a far-off incommunicable Lustre.” *Letters on Yoga
"The opening of the consciousness to the Divine Light and Truth and Presence is always the one important thing in the yoga.” *Letters on Yoga
"In the Veda the Cow is the Divine Light — . . . .” Letters on Yoga*
lord ::: Sri Aurobindo: "There is one Lord and Self and the many are only His representations and becomings.” *The Life Divine
lotus (as chakra) ::: Sri Aurobindo: "This arrangement of the psychic body is reproduced in the physical with the spinal column as a rod and the ganglionic centres as the chakras which rise up from the bottom of the column, where the lowest is attached, to the brain and find their summit in the brahmarandhra at the top of the skull. These chakras or lotuses, however, are in physical man closed or only partly open, with the consequence that only such powers and only so much of them are active in him as are sufficient for his ordinary physical life, and so much mind and soul only is at play as will accord with its need. This is the real reason, looked at from the mechanical point of view, why the embodied soul seems so dependent on the bodily and nervous life, — though the dependence is neither so complete nor so real as it seems. The whole energy of the soul is not at play in the physical body and life, the secret powers of mind are not awake in it, the bodily and nervous energies predominate. But all the while the supreme energy is there, asleep; it is said to be coiled up and slumbering like a snake, — therefore it is called the kundalinî sakti, — in the lowest of the chakras, in the mûlâdhâra.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
love ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Love is an intense self-expression of the soul of Ananda.” *Letters on Yoga
madra ::: "Name of an ancient country and its people in northwestern India, mentioned in the Mahabaharata. The territory extended from the River Beas to the Chenab or perhaps as far as the Jhelum. Savitri"s father Asvapati was king of this country. (Dow.)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works ::: **Madra"s.**
mage ::: Sri Aurobindo: " . . . the supreme Mage, the divine Magician, . . .” [the Lord] The Life Divine
magnet ::: a thing or person that attracts. Magnet. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
man ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Man is pre-eminently the mental being.” *Social and Political Thought
mantra ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The mantra as I have tried to describe it in The Future Poetry is a word of power and light that comes from the Overmind inspiration or from some very high plane of Intuition. Its characteristics are a language that conveys infinitely more than the mere surface sense of the words seems to indicate, a rhythm that means even more than the language and is born out of the Infinite and disappears into it, and the power to convey not merely the mental, vital or physical contents or indications or values of the thing uttered, but its significance and figure in some fundamental and original consciousness which is behind all these and greater.” *The Future Poetry
master of Existence ::: Sri Aurobindo: "I am here with thee in thy chariot of battle revealed as the Master of Existence within and without thee and I repeat the absolute assurance, the infallible promise that I will lead thee to myself through and beyond all sorrow and evil. Whatever difficulties and perplexities arise, be sure of this that I am leading thee to a complete divine life in the universal and an immortal existence in the transcendent Spirit.” Essays on the Gita
master of Nature ::: Sri Aurobindo: "There is a divine Master of Nature and her works, above her though inhabiting her, who is our highest being and our universal self; to be one with him is to make ourselves divine. By union with God we enter into a supreme freedom and a supreme mastery.” *Essays on the Gita
master of the worlds ::: Sri Aurobindo: " If we suppose a supreme consciousness, master of the world, which really conducts behind the veil all the operations the mental gods attribute to themselves, it will be obvious that that consciousness will be the entire Knower and Lord. *The Upanishads
material form ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Material form is only a support and means for the progressive manifestation of the Spirit.” *Essays Divine and Human
material world ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Our material world is the result of all the others, for the other principles have all descended into Matter to create the physical universe, and every particle of what we call Matter contains all of them implicit in itself; their secret action, as we have seen, is involved in every moment of its existence and every movement of its activity. And as Matter is the last word of the descent, so it is also the first word of the ascent; as the powers of all these planes, worlds, grades, degrees are involved in the material existence, so are they all capable of evolution out of it. It is for this reason that material being does not begin and end with gases and chemical compounds and physical forces and movements, with nebulae and suns and earths, but evolves life, evolves mind, must evolve eventually Supermind and the higher degrees of the spiritual existence.” The Life Divine
matter ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Matter is by no means fundamentally real; it is a structure of Energy.” *The Life Divine
maya ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Maya in its original sense meant a comprehending and containing consciousness capable of embracing, measuring and limiting and therefore formative; it is that which outlines, measures out, moulds forms in the formless, psychologises and seems to make knowable the Unknowable, geometrises and seems to make measurable the limitless. Later the word came from its original sense of knowledge, skill, intelligence to acquire a pejorative sense of cunning, fraud or illusion, and it is in the figure of an enchantment or illusion that it is used by the philosophical systems.” *The Life Divine
meditation ::: Sri Aurobindo: "There are two words used in English to express the Indian idea of dhyana , ‘meditation" and ‘contemplation". Meditation means properly the concentration of the mind on a single train of ideas which work out a single subject. Contemplation means regarding mentally a single object, image, idea so that the knowledge about the object, image or idea may arise naturally in the mind by force of the concentration. Both these things are forms of dhyana , for the principle of dhyana is mental concentration whether in thought, vision or knowledge. *Letters on Yoga
mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The ‘Mind" in the ordinary use of the word covers indiscriminately the whole consciousness, for man is a mental being and mentalises everything; but in the language of this yoga the words ‘mind" and ‘mental" are used to connote specially the part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental vision and will, etc., that are part of his intelligence.” *Letters on Yoga
"Mind in its essence is a consciousness which measures, limits, cuts out forms of things from the indivisible whole and contains them as if each were a separate integer.” The Life Divine
"Mind is an instrument of analysis and synthesis, but not of essential knowledge. Its function is to cut out something vaguely from the unknown Thing in itself and call this measurement or delimitation of it the whole, and again to analyse the whole into its parts which it regards as separate mental objects.” The Life Divine
"The mind proper is divided into three parts — thinking Mind, dynamic Mind, externalising Mind — the former concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right, the second with the putting out of mental forces for realisation of the idea, the third with the expression of them in life (not only by speech, but by any form it can give).” Letters on Yoga
"The difference between the ordinary mind and the intuitive is that the former, seeking in the darkness or at most by its own unsteady torchlight, first, sees things only as they are presented in that light and, secondly, where it does not know, constructs by imagination, by uncertain inference, by others of its aids and makeshifts things which it readily takes for truth, shadow projections, cloud edifices, unreal prolongations, deceptive anticipations, possibilities and probabilities which do duty for certitudes. The intuitive mind constructs nothing in this artificial fashion, but makes itself a receiver of the light and allows the truth to manifest in it and organise its own constructions.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"He [man] has in him not a single mentality, but a double and a triple, the mind material and nervous, the pure intellectual mind which liberates itself from the illusions of the body and the senses, and a divine mind above intellect which in its turn liberates itself from the imperfect modes of the logically discriminative and imaginative reason.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"Our mind is an observer of actuals, an inventor or discoverer of possibilities, but not a seer of the occult imperatives that necessitate the movements and forms of a creation. . . .” *The Life Divine
"The human mind is an instrument not of truth but of ignorance and error.” Letters on Yoga
"For Mind as we know it is a power of the Ignorance seeking for Truth, groping with difficulty to find it, reaching only mental constructions and representations of it in word and idea, in mind formations, sense formations, — as if bright or shadowy photographs or films of a distant Reality were all that it could achieve.” The Life Divine
The Mother: "The true role of the mind is the formation and organization of action. The mind has a formative and organizing power, and it is that which puts the different elements of inspiration in order for action, for organizing action. And if it would only confine itself to that role, receiving inspirations — whether from above or from the mystic centre of the soul — and simply formulating the plan of action — in broad outline or in minute detail, for the smallest things of life or the great terrestrial organizations — it would amply fulfil its function. It is not an instrument of knowledge. But is can use knowledge for action, to organize action. It is an instrument of organization and formation, very powerful and very capable when it is well developed.” Questions and Answers 1956, MCW Vol. 8.*
mind, Ideal Mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The link between the spiritual and the lower planes of the being is that which is called in the old Vedantic phraseology the vijñâna and which we may describe in our modern turn of language as the Truth-plane or the ideal mind or supermind. There the One and the Many meet and our being is freely open to the revealing light of the divine Truth and the inspiration of the divine Will and Knowledge.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
mind, illumined ::: Sri Aurobindo: "This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge.” *The Life Divine
mind, inner ::: Sri Aurobindo: "This mind of pure intelligence has behind it our inner or subliminal mind which senses directly all the things of the mind-plane, is open to the action of a world of mental forces, and can feel the ideative and other imponderable influences which act upon the material world and the life-plane but which at present we can only infer and cannot directly experience:” *The Life Divine
mind of light ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Mind of Light is a subordinate action of Supermind, dependent upon it even when not apparently springing direct from it, . . . .” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
mind, physical ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The physical mind is that part of the mind which is concerned with the physical things only — it depends on the sense-mind, sees only objects, external actions, draws its ideas from the data given by external things, infers from them only and knows no other Truth until it is enlightened from above.” *Letters on Yoga
mind, Self of ::: Sri Aurobindo: "If one stands back from the mind and its activities so that they fall silent at will or go on as a surface movement of which one is the detached and disinterested witness, it becomes possible eventually to realise oneself as the inner Self of mind, the true and pure mental being, the Purusha; . . . .” The Life Divine
mind, silent ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The first thing to do in the sadhana is to get a settled peace and silence in the mind. Otherwise you may have experiences, but nothing will be permanent. It is in the silent mind that the true consciousness can be built. ::: A quiet mind does not mean that there will be no thoughts or mental movements at all, but that these will be on the surface and you will feel your true being within separate from them, observing but not carried away, able to watch and judge them and reject all that has to be rejected and to accept and keep to all that is true consciousness and true experience.” *Letters on Yoga
mind, spiritual ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The spiritual mind is a mind which, in its fullness, is aware of the Self, reflecting the Divine, seeing and understanding the nature of the Self and its relations with the manifestation, living in that or in contact with it, calm, wide and awake to higher knowledge, not perturbed by the play of the forces. When it gets its full liberated movement, its central station is very usually felt above the head, though its influence can extend downward through all the being and outward through space.” Letters on Yoga
mother ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates.” The Mother ::: "The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine.
"That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her [the Mother"s] most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life.” *The Mother
: "The Mother comes in order to bring down the Supramental and it is the descent which makes her full manifestation here possible.” *Letters on the Mother
"When one does sadhana, the inner consciousness begins to open and one is able to go inside and have all kinds of experiences there. As the sadhana progresses, one begins to live more and more in this inner being and the outer becomes more and more superficial. At first the inner consciousness seems to be the dream and the outer the waking reality. Afterwards the inner consciousness becomes the reality and the outer is felt by many as a dream or delusion, or else as something superficial and external. The inner consciousness begins to be a place of deep peace, light, happiness, love, closeness to the Divine or the presence of the Divine, the Mother.” Letters on Yoga ::: **mighty Mother, World-Mother, World-Mother"s.**
mother of the worlds ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Aditi, the infinite Consciousness, Mother of the worlds.” *The Secret of the Veda
" She is the first Radiance, Aditi, the infinite Consciousness of the infinite conscious Being which is the mother of the worlds.” The Secret of the Veda*
mother, universal ::: Sri Aurobindo: "What people mean by the formless svarûpa of the Mother, — they means usually her universal aspect. It is when she is experienced as a universal Existence and Power spread through the universe in which and by which all live. When one feels that Presence one begins to feel a universal peace, light, power, bliss without limits — that is her svarûpa.” *The Mother
"The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist.” The Mother
movement ::: 1. The act or an instance of moving; a change in place or position. A particular manner of moving. 2. Usually, movements, actions or activities, as of a person or a body of persons. ::: movement"s, movements, many-movemented.
Sri Aurobindo: "When we withdraw our gaze from its egoistic preoccupation with limited and fleeting interests and look upon the world with dispassionate and curious eyes that search only for the Truth, our first result is the perception of a boundless energy of infinite existence, infinite movement, infinite activity pouring itself out in limitless Space, in eternal Time, an existence that surpasses infinitely our ego or any ego or any collectivity of egos, in whose balance the grandiose products of aeons are but the dust of a moment and in whose incalculable sum numberless myriads count only as a petty swarm." *The Life Divine
". . . the purest, freest form of insight into existence as it is shows us nothing but movement. Two things alone exist, movement in Space, movement in Time, the former objective, the latter subjective.” The Life Divine
"The world is a cyclic movement (samsâra ) of the Divine Consciousness in Space and Time. Its law and, in a sense, its object is progression; it exists by movement and would be dissolved by cessation of movement. But the basis of this movement is not material; it is the energy of active consciousness which, by its motion and multiplication in different principles (different in appearance, the same in essence), creates oppositions of unity and multiplicity, divisions of Time and Space, relations and groupings of circumstance and Causality. All these things are real in consciousness, but only symbolic of the Being, somewhat as the imaginations of a creative Mind are true representations of itself, yet not quite real in comparison with itself, or real with a different kind of reality.” The Upanishads*
mysteried ::: a word coined by Sri Aurobindo. See mystery. million-mysteried.
mysteries ::: Sri Aurobindo: "It is ‘Mysteries" with capital M and means ‘mystic symbolic rites" as in the Orphic and Eleusinian ‘Mysteries". When written with capital M it does not mean secret mysterious things, but has this sense, e.g. a ‘Mystery play".” Letters on Savitri **Mystery, Mystery"s.**
mystery ::: 1. A spiritual truth that is incomprehensible to reason and knowable only through divine revelation. 2. Something that is not fully understood or that baffles or eludes the understanding; an enigma. 3. A mysterious character or quality. 4. The skills, lore, practices and secret rites that are peculiar to a particular activity or group and are regarded as the special province of initiates. Mystery, mystery"s, Mystery"s, mysteries, mystery-altar"s. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
name ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Name in its deeper sense is not the word by which we describe the object, but the total of power, quality, character of the reality which a form of things embodies and which we try to sum up by a designating sound, a knowable name, Nomen. Nomen in this sense, we might say, is Numen; the secret Names of the Gods are their power, quality, character of being caught up by the consciousness and made conceivable. The Infinite is nameless, but in that namelessness all possible names, Numens of the gods, the names and forms of all realities, are already envisaged and prefigured, because they are there latent and inherent in the All-Existence.” The Life Divine
narad ::: "A well-known Rishi and Vaishnava Bhakta who moves about in the various worlds playing on a lute and having a special role in bringing about events according to the Divine Will.” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names In Sri Aurobindo"s Works
nature ::: Sri Aurobindo: "An active force of conscious-being which realises itself in its powers of self-experience, its powers of knowledge, will, self-delight, self-formulation with all their marvellous variations, inversions, conservations and conversions of energy, even perversions, is what we call Prakriti or Nature, in ourselves as in the cosmos.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
necessity ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . Necessity is the child of the spirit"s free self-determination. What affects us as Necessity, is a Will which works in sequence and not a blind Force driven by its own mechanism.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
nescient. ::: *Sri Aurobindo: "Nescience in Nature is the complete self-ignorance; . . . .” The Life Divine*
night ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Night is the symbol of the Ignorance or Avidya in which men live just as Light is the symbol of Truth and Knowledge.” *Letters on Yoga
"In the way that one treads with the greater Light above, even every difficulty gives its help and has its value and Night itself carries in it the burden of the Light that has to be.” Letters on Yoga **Night, Night"s.
nirvana ::: Sri Aurobindo: "[Nirvana means] extinction, not necessarily of all being, but of being as we know it; extinction of ego, desire and egoistic action and mentality.” *The Life Divine
No-man"s-land. ::: Sri Aurobindo: "As to the two lines with ‘no man"s land" there can be no capital in the first line because there it is a description while the capital is needed in the other line, because the phrase has acquired there the force of a name or appellation. I am not sure about the hyphen; it could be put but the no hyphen might be better as it suggests that no one in particular has as yet got possession.” Letters on Savitri.
non-Being ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Non-Being is only a word. When we examine the fact it represents, we can no longer be sure that absolute non-existence has any better chance than the infinite Self of being more than an ideative formation of the mind. We really mean by this Nothing something beyond the last term to which we can reduce our purest conception and our most abstract or subtle experience of actual being as we know or conceive it while in this universe. This Nothing then is merely a something beyond positive conception. And when we say that out of Non-Being Being appeared, we perceive that we are speaking in terms of Time about that which is beyond Time.” The Life Divine ::: Non-Being"s, Non-being"s, non-being, non-being"s,
numbers ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Fifty, hundred, a thousand are numbers symbolic of completeness.” The Secret of the Veda
ocean ::: 1. The vast body of salt water that covers three fourths of the surface of the globe. 2. A vast expanse or quantity. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj. in this sense.) Ocean, ocean"s, oceans, ocean-silence, ocean-ecstasy, world-ocean"s. adj. 3. Of or pertaining to the ocean in its natural and physical relations. Also fig. ::: oceans. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as a v.)
oceaned ::: a word coined by Sri Aurobindo and used as an adj.
OM ::: Sri Aurobindo: "OM is the one universal formulation of the energy of sound and speech, that which contains and sums up, synthesises and releases all the spiritual power and all the potentiality of Vak and Shabda and of which the other sounds, out of whose stuff words of speech are woven, are supposed to be the developed evolutions.” *Essays on the Gita
oneness ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . for to be at one with God is to be at one with oneself, at one with the universe and at one with all beings. This oneness is the secret of a right and a divine existence.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
one who is versed in or practices alchemy. Pertaining to one who studies or practises alchemy. alchemist (employed as an adj. by Sri Aurobindo).
outsurging ::: a word coined by Sri Aurobindo who adds a prefix to surging. See surging.
outview ::: a word coined by Sri Aurobindo. A sight afforded of something from a position stated or qualified, i.e. from without.
overarching ::: spanning with or like an arch; forming an arch over something. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as a n.)
overmind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The overmind is a sort of delegation from the supermind (this is a metaphor only) which supports the present evolutionary universe in which we live here in Matter. If supermind were to start here from the beginning as the direct creative Power, a world of the kind we see now would be impossible; it would have been full of the divine Light from the beginning, there would be no involution in the inconscience of Matter, consequently no gradual striving evolution of consciousness in Matter. A line is therefore drawn between the higher half of the universe of consciousness, parardha , and the lower half, aparardha. The higher half is constituted of Sat, Chit, Ananda, Mahas (the supramental) — the lower half of mind, life, Matter. This line is the intermediary overmind which, though luminous itself, keeps from us the full indivisible supramental Light, depends on it indeed, but in receiving it, divides, distributes, breaks it up into separated aspects, powers, multiplicities of all kinds, each of which it is possible by a further diminution of consciousness, such as we reach in Mind, to regard as the sole or the chief Truth and all the rest as subordinate or contradictory to it.” *Letters on Yoga
"The overmind is the highest of the planes below the supramental.” *Letters on Yoga
"In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light.” The Life Divine
"The Overmind is a principle of cosmic Truth and a vast and endless catholicity is its very spirit; its energy is an all-dynamism as well as a principle of separate dynamisms: it is a sort of inferior Supermind, — although it is concerned predominantly not with absolutes, but with what might be called the dynamic potentials or pragmatic truths of Reality, or with absolutes mainly for their power of generating pragmatic or creative values, although, too, its comprehension of things is more global than integral, since its totality is built up of global wholes or constituted by separate independent realities uniting or coalescing together, and although the essential unity is grasped by it and felt to be basic of things and pervasive in their manifestation, but no longer as in the Supermind their intimate and ever-present secret, their dominating continent, the overt constant builder of the harmonic whole of their activity and nature.” The Life Divine
"The overmind sees calmly, steadily, in great masses and large extensions of space and time and relation, globally; it creates and acts in the same way — it is the world of the great Gods, the divine Creators.” *Letters on Yoga
"The Overmind is essentially a spiritual power. Mind in it surpasses its ordinary self and rises and takes its stand on a spiritual foundation. It embraces beauty and sublimates it; it has an essential aesthesis which is not limited by rules and canons, it sees a universal and an eternal beauty while it takes up and transforms all that is limited and particular. It is besides concerned with things other than beauty or aesthetics. It is concerned especially with truth and knowledge or rather with a wisdom that exceeds what we call knowledge; its truth goes beyond truth of fact and truth of thought, even the higher thought which is the first spiritual range of the thinker. It has the truth of spiritual thought, spiritual feeling, spiritual sense and at its highest the truth that comes by the most intimate spiritual touch or by identity. Ultimately, truth and beauty come together and coincide, but in between there is a difference. Overmind in all its dealings puts truth first; it brings out the essential truth (and truths) in things and also its infinite possibilities; it brings out even the truth that lies behind falsehood and error; it brings out the truth of the Inconscient and the truth of the Superconscient and all that lies in between. When it speaks through poetry, this remains its first essential quality; a limited aesthetical artistic aim is not its purpose.” *Letters on Savitri
"In the overmind the Truth of supermind which is whole and harmonious enters into a separation into parts, many truths fronting each other and moved each to fulfil itself, to make a world of its own or else to prevail or take its share in worlds made of a combination of various separated Truths and Truth-forces.” Letters on Yoga
*Overmind"s.
oversoul ::: Sri Aurobindo: "But with the extension of our knowledge we discover what this Spirit or Oversoul is: it is ultimately our own highest deepest vastest Self, it is apparent on its summits or by reflection in ourselves as Sachchidananda creating us and the world by the power of His divine Knowledge-Will, spiritual, supramental, truth-conscious, infinite.” *The Life Divine.
pactise ::: Sri Aurobindo combines the word pact [an agreement or covenant] with ise, a noun suffix occurring in loanwords from French, indicating quality, condition, or function.
panergy ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The ‘Panergy" suggested is a self-existent total power which may carry the cosmic energies in it and is their cause but is not constituted by them.” Letters on Savitri.
peace ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Peace is the very basis of all the siddhi in the yoga . . . .” *Letters on Yoga
perfection ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Perfection in the sense in which we use it in Yoga, means a growth out of a lower undivine into a higher divine nature. In terms of knowledge it is a putting on the being of the higher self and a casting away of the darker broken lower self or a transforming of our imperfect state into the rounded luminous fullness of our real and spiritual personality. In terms of devotion and adoration it is a growing into a likeness of the nature or the law of the being of the Divine, to be united with whom we aspire, . . . .” *The Synthesis of Yoga
person ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The human birth in this world is on its spiritual side a complex of two elements, a spiritual Person and a soul of personality; the former is man"s eternal being, the latter is his cosmic and mutable being.” *The Life Divine
pilgrim ::: someone who journeys to different places in distant lands. (Sri Aurobindo often employs the word as an adjective.) pilgrim"s.
piston ::: a solid cylinder or disk that fits snugly into a hollow cylinder and moves back and forth under the pressure of a fluid (typically a hot gas formed by combustion, as in many engines), or moves or compresses a fluid, as in a pump or compressor. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adjective.)
poetry ::: Sri Aurobindo: "All poetry is an inspiration, a thing breathed into the thinking organ from above; it is recorded in the mind, but is born in the higher principle of direct knowledge or ideal vision which surpasses mind. It is in reality a revelation. The prophetic or revealing power sees the substance; the inspiration perceives the right expression. Neither is manufactured; nor is poetry really a poiesis or composition, nor even a creation, but rather the revelation of something that eternally exists. The ancients knew this truth and used the same word for poet and prophet, creator and seer, sophos, vates, kavi.” Essays Human and Divine
pointillage ::: a word coined by Sri Aurobindo. The suffix age, originally in words adopted from Fr., is typically used in abstract nouns to indicate "aggregate”. Hence, pointillage indicates something made up of minute details; particularized. The root word, pointillism, refers to a method, invented by French impressionist painters, of producing luminous effects by crowding a surface with small spots of various colours, which are blended by the eye.
pour ::: Sri Aurobindo [in reference to the following lines]: ::: **Here too the gracious mighty Angel poured
power ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Power means strength and force, Shakti, which enables one to face all that can happen and to stand and overcome, also to carry out what the Divine Will proposes. It can include many things, power over men, events, circumstances, means etc. But all this not of the mental or vital kind, but by an action through unity of consciousness with the Divine and with all things and beings. It is not an individual strength depending on certain personal capacities, but the Divine Power using the individual as an instrument.” *Letters on Yoga
powers ::: Sri Aurobindo: "These are the forces and beings that are interested in maintaining the falsehoods they have created in the world of the Ignorance and in putting them forward as the Truth which men must follow. In India they are termed Asuras, Rakshasas, Pishachas (beings respectively of the mentalised vital, middle vital and lower vital planes) who are in opposition to the Gods, the Powers of Light. These too are Powers, for they too have their cosmic field in which they exercise their function and authority and some of them were once divine Powers (the former gods, purve devah , as they are called somewhere in the Mahabharata) who have fallen towards the darkness by revolt against the divine Will behind the cosmos.” Letters on Yoga
prayer ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Prayer is only a particular form given to that will, aspiration and faith. Its forms are very often crude and not only childlike, which is in itself no defect, but childish; but still it has a real power and significance. Its power and sense is to put the will, aspiration and faith of man into touch with the divine Will as that of a conscious Being with whom we can enter into conscious and living relations.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
presence ::: 1. The state or fact of being present; current existence or occurrence. 2. A divine, spiritual, or supernatural spirit or influence felt or conceived as present. 3. The immediate proximity of someone or something.
Sri Aurobindo: "It is intended by the word Presence to indicate the sense and perception of the Divine as a Being, felt as present in one"s existence and consciousness or in relation with it, without the necessity of any further qualification or description. Thus, of the ‘ineffable Presence" it can only be said that it is there and nothing more can or need be said about it, although at the same time one knows that all is there, personality and impersonality, Power and Light and Ananda and everything else, and that all these flow from that indescribable Presence. The word may be used sometimes in a less absolute sense, but that is always the fundamental significance, — the essential perception of the essential Presence supporting everything else.” *Letters on Yoga
"Beyond mind on spiritual and supramental levels dwells the Presence, the Truth, the Power, the Bliss that can alone deliver us from these illusions, display the Light of which our ideals are tarnished disguises and impose the harmony that shall at once transfigure and reconcile all the parts of our nature.” Essays Divine and Human
"But if we learn to live within, we infallibly awaken to this presence within us which is our more real self, a presence profound, calm, joyous and puissant of which the world is not the master — a presence which, if it is not the Lord Himself, is the radiation of the Lord within.” *The Life Divine
"The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” *The Life Divine
"If we need any personal and inner witness to this indivisible All-Consciousness behind the ignorance, — all Nature is its external proof, — we can get it with any completeness only in our deeper inner being or larger and higher spiritual state when we draw back behind the veil of our own surface ignorance and come into contact with the divine Idea and Will behind it. Then we see clearly enough that what we have done by ourselves in our ignorance was yet overseen and guided in its result by the invisible Omniscience; we discover a greater working behind our ignorant working and begin to glimpse its purpose in us: then only can we see and know what now we worship in faith, recognise wholly the pure and universal Presence, meet the Lord of all being and all Nature.” *The Life Divine
"The presence of the Spirit is there in every living being, on every level, in all things, and because it is there, the experience of Sachchidananda, of the pure spiritual existence and consciousness, of the delight of a divine presence, closeness, contact can be acquired through the mind or the heart or the life-sense or even through the physical consciousness; if the inner doors are flung sufficiently open, the light from the sanctuary can suffuse the nearest and the farthest chambers of the outer being.” *The Life Divine
"There is a secret divine Will, eternal and infinite, omniscient and omnipotent, that expresses itself in the universality and in each particular of all these apparently temporal and finite inconscient or half-conscient things. This is the Power or Presence meant by the Gita when it speaks of the Lord within the heart of all existences who turns all creatures as if mounted on a machine by the illusion of Nature.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"For what Yoga searches after is not truth of thought alone or truth of mind alone, but the dynamic truth of a living and revealing spiritual experience. There must awake in us a constant indwelling and enveloping nearness, a vivid perception, a close feeling and communion, a concrete sense and contact of a true and infinite Presence always and everywhere. That Presence must remain with us as the living, pervading Reality in which we and all things exist and move and act, and we must feel it always and everywhere, concrete, visible, inhabiting all things; it must be patent to us as their true Self, tangible as their imperishable Essence, met by us closely as their inmost Spirit. To see, to feel, to sense, to contact in every way and not merely to conceive this Self and Spirit here in all existences and to feel with the same vividness all existences in this Self and Spirit, is the fundamental experience which must englobe all other knowledge.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"One must have faith in the Master of our life and works, even if for a long time He conceals Himself, and then in His own right time He will reveal His Presence.” *Letters on Yoga
"They [the psychic being and the Divine Presence in the heart] are quite different things. The psychic being is one"s own individual soul-being. It is not the Divine, though it has come from the Divine and develops towards the Divine.” *Letters on Yoga
"For it is quietness and inwardness that enable one to feel the Presence.” *Letters on Yoga
"Beyond mind on spiritual and supramental levels dwells the Presence, the Truth, the Power, the Bliss that can alone deliver us from these illusions, display the Light of which our ideals are tarnished disguises and impose the harmony that shall at once transfigure and reconcile all the parts of our nature.” *Essays Divine and Human
The Mother: "For, in human beings, here is a presence, the most marvellous Presence on earth, and except in a few very rare cases which I need not mention here, this presence lies asleep in the heart — not in the physical heart but the psychic centre — of all beings. And when this Splendour is manifested with enough purity, it will awaken in all beings the echo of his Presence.” Words of the Mother, MCW, Vol. 15.
prophet ::: 1. A person who speaks by divine inspiration or as the interpreter through whom the will of a god is expressed. 2. A person who predicts the future. prophet"s, prophets. (Sri Aurobindo often employs the word as an adjective.) prophet-passion, prophet-speech.
psyche ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . that spark of the Divine which is the true psyche.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
pupilled ::: became like the pupil of an eye. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as a v.)
purity ::: Sri Aurobindo: "It [purity] is more a condition than a substance. Peace helps to purity — since in peace disturbing influences cease and the essence of purity is to respond only to the Divine Influence and not to have an affinity with other movements.” *Letters on Yoga
purpose ::: the object toward which one strives or for which something exists; an aim or a goal. Purpose, purposes. ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Purpose means the intention, the object in view towards which the Divine is working.” *The Mother
python ::: any of various nonvenomous snakes of the family Pythonidae, that coil around and suffocate their prey. Also fig. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adj.)
quality ::: Sri Aurobindo: "A quality is the character of a power of conscious being; or we may say that the consciousness of being expressing what is in it makes the power it brings out recognisable by a native stamp on it which we call quality or character.” The Life Divine
radha ::: "In Hindu religion, the chief of the Gopis or milkmaids, the favourite of Krishna while he lived among the cowherds in Vrindavana.” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works.
real, the ::: Sri Aurobindo: " From our ascending point of view we may say that the Real is behind all that exists; it expresses itself intermediately in an Ideal which is a harmonised truth of itself; the Ideal throws out a phenomenal reality of variable conscious-being which, inevitably drawn towards its own essential Reality, tries at last to recover it entirely whether by a violent leap or normally through the Ideal which put it forth. It is this that explains the imperfect reality of human existence as seen by the Mind, the instinctive aspiration in the mental being towards a perfectibility ever beyond itself, towards the concealed harmony of the Ideal, and the supreme surge of the spirit beyond the ideal to the transcendental.” *The Life Divine
refugee ::: one who flees in search of refuge, as in times of war, political oppression, or religious persecution. Also fig. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
religion ::: Sri Aurobindo: "There is no word so plastic and uncertain in its meaning as the word religion. The word is European and, therefore, it is as well to know first what the Europeans mean by it. In this matter we find them, — when they can be got to think clearly on the matter at all, which is itself unusual, — divided in opinion. Sometimes they use it as equivalent to a set of beliefs, sometimes as equivalent to morality coupled with a belief in God, sometimes as equivalent to a set of pietistic actions and emotions. Faith, works and pious observances, these are the three recognised elements of European religion . . . . ::: Religion in India is a still more plastic term and may mean anything from the heights of Yoga to strangling your fellowman and relieving him of the worldly goods he may happen to be carrying with him. It would therefore take too long to enumerate everything that can be included in Indian religion. Briefly, however, it is Dharma or living religiously, the whole life being governed by religion.” *From an unpublished essay
resiled ::: Sri Aurobindo: "It is a perfectly good English word, meaning originally to leap back, rebound (like an elastic) — so to draw back from, recoil, retreat (in military language it means to fall back from a position gained or to one"s original position): but it is specially used for withdrawing from a contract, agreement, previous statement.” Letters on Savitri.
rhapsodist ::: one who recited epic and other poetry, especially professionally, in ancient Greece. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adj.)
rhythm ::: 1. Procedure marked by the regular recurrence of particular elements, phases, etc.; flow, pulse, cadence. 2. Regular recurrence of elements in a system of motion. 3. Music. The pattern of regular or irregular pulses caused in music by the occurrence of strong and weak melodic and harmonic beats. 4. Measured movement, as in dancing. 5. Physiol. The regular recurrence of an action of function, as of the beat of the heart. 6. The arrangement of words into a more or less regular sequence of stressed and unstressed or long and short syllables. 7. Pros. Metrical or rhythmical form; metre; a particular kind of metrical form or metrical movement. rhythms, rhythm-beats, fire-rhythm, jewel-rhythm, world-rhythms. (Sri Aurobindo also employs rhythms as a v., rhythmed as a v. and an adj., and rhythming as a v. and an adj.)
rishi ("s) ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The spiritual man who can guide human life towards its perfection is typified in the ancient Indian idea of the Rishi, one who has lived fully the life of man and found the word of the supra-intellectual, supramental, spiritual truth.” *Social and Political Thought
rose ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The rose is among the first of flowers because of the richness of its colour, the intensity of sweetness of its scent and the grace and magnificence of its form.”
satyavan ::: "Son of King Dyumatsena; the tale of Satyavan and Savitri is told in the Mahabharata as a story of conjugal love conquering death.” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
saviour ::: 1. One who or that which delivers or rescues from peril. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adjective.) Saviour"s. 2. One who saves from sin and perdition; as God or Christ.
savitri ::: "In the Mahabharata, the heroine of the tale of Satyavan and Savitri; . . . . She was the daughter of King Ashwapati, and lover of Satyavan, whom she married although she was warned by Narada that he had only one year to live. On the fatal day, when Yama carried off Satyavan"s spirit, she followed him with unswerving devotion. Ultimately Yama was constrained to restore her husband to life.” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
Sri Aurobindo: "Savitri is the Divine Word, daughter of the Sun, goddess of the supreme Truth who comes down and is born to save; . . . .” (Author"s note at beginning of Savitri.)
"Savitri is represented in the poem as an incarnation of the Divine Mother . . . .” Letters on Savitri
The Mother: "Savitri [the poem] is a mantra for the transformation of the world.” Spoken to Udar
scholiast ::: one of the ancient commentators who annotated or wrote explanatory notes on classical authors. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adjective.)
science ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The beginning of Science is the examination of the truths of the world-force that underlie its apparent workings such as our senses represent them to be; . . .” *The Synthesis of Yoga
scrawl ::: something written or drawn in a sprawling, awkward manner; a careless sketch. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adj.)
seed-sounds ::: Sri Aurobindo: "My researches first convinced me that words, like plants, like animals, are in no sense artificial products, but growths, — living growths of sound with certain seed-sounds as their basis. Out of these seed-sounds develop a small number of primitive root-words with an immense progeny which have their successive generations and arrange themselves in tribes, clans, families, selective groups each having a common stock and a common psychological history. For the factor which presided over the development of language was the association, by the nervous mind of primitive man, of certain general significances or rather of certain general utilities and sense-values with articulate sounds. The process of this association was also in no sense artificial but natural, governed by simple and definite psychological laws.” *The Secret of the Veda
segment ::: any of the parts into which something can be divided. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adj.)
self ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Self is our self-existent being.” *Essays on the Gita
self-knowledge ::: knowing of oneself, without help from another.
Sri Aurobindo: The possibility of a cosmic consciousness in humanity is coming slowly to be admitted in modern Psychology, like the possibility of more elastic instruments of knowledge, although still classified, even when its value and power are admitted, as a hallucination. In the psychology of the East it has always been recognised as a reality and the aim of our subjective progress. The essence of the passage over to this goal is the exceeding of the limits imposed on us by the ego-sense and at least a partaking, at most an identification with the self-knowledge which broods secret in all life and in all that seems to us inanimate. *The Life Divine
"Therefore the only final goal possible is the emergence of the infinite consciousness in the individual; it is his recovery of the truth of himself by self-knowledge and by self-realisation, the truth of the Infinite in being, the Infinite in consciousness, the Infinite in delight repossessed as his own Self and Reality of which the finite is only a mask and an instrument for various expression.” The Life Divine
"The Truth-Consciousness is everywhere present in the universe as an ordering self-knowledge by which the One manifests the harmonies of its infinite potential multiplicity.” The Life Divine
sentinel ::: 1. A tower used by the military to watch for the enemy and defend a camp, etc. 2. A person or thing that watches or stands as if watching. 3. A soldier stationed as a guard to challenge all comers and prevent a surprise attack; a sentry. (Sri Aurobindo often employs the word as an adjective.) sentinels.
seraph ::: a member of the highest order of angels, often represented as a child"s head with wings above, below, and on each side. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.) seraph"s, seraph-winged.
seraphim ::: "Hybrid celestial beings [including Cherubim] with human, animal, or birdlike characteristics that are depicted in Jewish, Christian and Islamic literature. They act as throne bearers or throne guardians of the deity. In later theology Cherubim is an angel of the second order, and Seraphim of the first. They correspond, according to Sri Aurobindo, to the Gandharvas and Venas of India tradition. (Enc. Br.)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
seried ::: a word coined by Sri Aurobindo from series and used as an adj.
serpent ::: a snake. Serpent, serpents, serpent-force, serpent-watched. (Sri Aurobindo most often employs the word as an adj.)
shadow ::: n. 1. A dark figure or image cast on the ground or some surface by a body intercepting light. 2. Shade or comparative darkness, as in an area. 3. Darkness that is caused by the interception of light. 4. A phantom; a ghost. 5. An obscure indication; a symbol, type; a prefiguration, foreshadowing. 6. A hint or faint, indistinct image or idea; intimation. 7. A mere semblance. 8. A mirrored image or reflection. 9. Shelter; protection. 10. A dominant or pervasive threat, influence, or atmosphere, esp. one causing gloom, fear, doubt, or the like. Shadow, shadow"s, shadows. v. 11. To represent faintly, prophetically; to indicate obscurely or in slight outline; to symbolize, typify, prefigure. (Often followed by forth.) shadowed. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.) shadowlike, shadow-hung, shadow-self, shadow-soul, shadow-Sphinx.
shalwa ::: "In the Mahabarata, name of a country in western India; also the name of its king or its people.” (Dow.) Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
shepherd ::: n. 1. In combination, denoting a thing such as is used by or is characteristic of shepherds, as a shepherd"s staff. shepherd"s. 2. One who protects, guides, or watches over a person or group of people. Fig. a spiritual guardian. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word in this sense as an adj.) v. 3. To tend, watch over carefully, guard or guide as a shepherd does his sheep. shepherds.
shiva ::: "The ‘auspicious one"; a name of the third deity of the Hindu Trinity; . . . represented mostly as ‘the pure and white, the ascetic, the still, contemplative Yogin". The name Shiva is not found in the Vedas; however, the name Rudra occurs both in the singular and the plural. This Rudra of the Vedas developed in the course of time into Shiva, considered in the Puranic tradition mainly as the destroying or dissolving Power. He has a third eye in the middle of the forehead, a fiery glance from which once reduced Kamadeva to ashes. In his creative aspect he is represented as a Linga (phallus), symbolising the male procreative energy in nature. It is under the form of the Linga that Shiva is mostly worshipped. His abode is on Mt. Kailash, Parvati is his spouse and the Trisula (the trident) his weapon.” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
silence ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Silence is a state in which either there is no movement of the mind or vital or else a great stillness which no surface movement can pierce or alter.” *Letters on Yoga
siren ::: classical Mythol. One of several fabulous sea nymphs, part woman, part bird, who were supposed to lure sailors to destruction by their enchanting singing. Fig. One who, or that which, sings sweetly, charms, allures, or deceives, like the Sirens. (Sri Aurobindo uses the word in its adjectival sense: Seductive, tempting.)
sleep ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Sleep like trance opens the gate of the subliminal to us; for in sleep, as in trance, we retire behind the veil of the limited waking personality and it is behind this veil that the subliminal has its existence.” The Life Divine
slumber ::: 1. Sleep. often poet. **2. A natural and periodic state of rest during which consciousness of the world is suspended. 3. Fig. A dormant or quiescent state. slumber"s. v. 4. To pass time in sleep or drowse. 5. To be in a state of inactivity, negligence, or dormancy. slumbers, slumbered.* (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.*)
snake ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The snake indicates some kind of energy always — oftener bad, but it also can indicate some luminous or divine energy.” *Letters on Yoga
soft ::: 1. Mild and pleasant; in a relaxed manner. 2. Smooth and agreeable to the touch; not rough or coarse. 3. Not hard or sharp. 4. Mild and pleasant weather. 5. Not loud, harsh, or irritating to the ear; melodious. 6. Of a gentle disposition; tender. 7. Not burdensome or demanding; borne or done easily and without hardship. 8. Of words, speech, etc.: Smooth, soothing; expressive of what is tender or peaceful. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adv.: Gently, carefully, tenderly; in such a manner as to avoid causing pain or injury; without force or violence; with gentle action.) soft-winged.
somnambulist ::: n. 1. A person who walks in his/her sleep. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.) 2. Pertaining to somnambulism, i.e. walking during sleep.)
songster ::: a song-bird. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adjective.)
soul ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘soul", as also the word ‘psychic", is used very vaguely and in many different senses in the English language. More often than not, in ordinary parlance, no clear distinction is made between mind and soul and often there is an even more serious confusion, for the vital being of desire — the false soul or desire-soul — is intended by the words ‘soul" and ‘psychic" and not the true soul, the psychic being.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul is very vaguely used in English — as it often refers to the whole non-physical consciousness including even the vital with all its desires and passions. That was why the word psychic being has to be used so as to distinguish this divine portion from the instrumental parts of the nature.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul has various meanings according to the context; it may mean the Purusha supporting the formation of Prakriti, which we call a being, though the proper word would be rather a becoming; it may mean, on the other hand, specifically the psychic being in an evolutionary creature like man; it may mean the spark of the Divine which has been put into Matter by the descent of the Divine into the material world and which upholds all evolving formations here.” *Letters on Yoga
"A distinction has to be made between the soul in its essence and the psychic being. Behind each and all there is the soul which is the spark of the Divine — none could exist without that. But it is quite possible to have a vital and physical being supported by such a soul essence but without a clearly evolved psychic being behind it.” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul and the psychic being are practically the same, except that even in things which have not developed a psychic being, there is still a spark of the Divine which can be called the soul. The psychic being is called in Sanskrit the Purusha in the heart or the Chaitya Purusha. (The psychic being is the soul developing in the evolution.)” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul or spark is there before the development of an organised vital and mind. The soul is something of the Divine that descends into the evolution as a divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the Ignorance into the Light. It develops in the course of the evolution a psychic individual or soul individuality which grows from life to life, using the evolving mind, vital and body as its instruments. It is the soul that is immortal while the rest disintegrates; it passes from life to life carrying its experience in essence and the continuity of the evolution of the individual.” *Letters on Yoga
". . . for the soul is seated within and impervious to the shocks of external events. . . .” *Essays on the Gita
". . . the soul is at first but a spark and then a little flame of godhead burning in the midst of a great darkness; for the most part it is veiled in its inner sanctum and to reveal itself it has to call on the mind, the life-force and the physical consciousness and persuade them, as best they can, to express it; ordinarily, it succeeds at most in suffusing their outwardness with its inner light and modifying with its purifying fineness their dark obscurities or their coarser mixture. Even when there is a formed psychic being able to express itself with some directness in life, it is still in all but a few a smaller portion of the being — ‘no bigger in the mass of the body than the thumb of a man" was the image used by the ancient seers — and it is not always able to prevail against the obscurity or ignorant smallness of the physical consciousness, the mistaken surenesses of the mind or the arrogance and vehemence of the vital nature.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
". . . the soul is an eternal portion of the Supreme and not a fraction of Nature.” The Life Divine
"The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” The Life Divine
*Soul, soul"s, Soul"s, souls, soulless, soul-bridals, soul-change, soul-force, Soul-Forces, soul-ground, soul-joy, soul-nature, soul-range, soul-ray, soul-scapes, soul-scene, soul-sense, soul-severance, soul-sight, soul-slaying, soul-space,, soul-spaces, soul-strength, soul-stuff, soul-truth, soul-vision, soul-wings, world-soul, World-Soul.
Space. Sri Aurobindo: "It is possible in pure mentality to disregard the movement of event and the disposition of substance and realise the pure movement of Conscious-Force which constitutes Space and Time; these two are then merely two aspects of the universal force of Consciousness which in their intertwined interaction comprehend the warp and woof of its action upon itself. And to a consciousness higher than Mind which should regard our past, present and future in one view, containing and not contained in them, not situated at a particular moment of Time for its point of prospection, Time might well offer itself as an eternal present. And to the same consciousness not situated at any particular point of Space, but containing all points and regions in itself, Space also might well offer itself as a subjective and indivisible extension, — no less subjective than Time.” The Life Divine
spectator ::: 1. A person viewing anything; onlooker; observer. 2. An observer or an event. spectators. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
spirit of Delight ::: Sri Aurobindo: " Now, that a conscious Infinite is there in physical Nature, we are assured by every sign, though it is a consciousness not made or limited like ours. All her constructions and motions are those of an illimitable intuitive wisdom too great and spontaneous and mysteriously self-effective to be described as an intelligence, of a Power and Will working for Time in eternity with an inevitable and forecasting movement in each of its steps, even in those steps that in their outward or superficial impetus seem to us inconscient. And as there is in her this greater consciousness and greater power, so too there is an illimitable spirit of harmony and beauty in her constructions that never fails her, though its works are not limited by our aesthetic canons. An infinite hedonism too is there, an illimitable spirit of delight, of which we become aware when we enter into impersonal unity with her; and even as that in her which is terrible is a part of her beauty, that in her which is dangerous, cruel, destructive is a part of her delight, her universal Ananda. Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
stable ::: 1. Resistant to change of position or condition; not easily moved or disturbed 2. Able or likely to continue or last; firmly established; enduring or permanent. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as a n.) stable-seeming, Ever-stable"s.
stars ::: Sri Aurobindo: "But it does not follow that the stars rule our destiny; the stars merely record a destiny that has been already formed, they are a hieroglyph, not a Force, — or if their action constitutes a force, it is a transmitting energy, not an originating Power. Someone is there who has determined or something is there which is Fate, let us say; the stars are only indicators.” Letters on Yoga
startled ::: frightened; surprised greatly; shocked. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
statuesque ::: like or suggesting a statue, as in massive or majestic dignity, grace, or beauty. statuesques. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as a v.)
student ::: one who studies, investigates, or examines thoughtfully. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
subconscience ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Matter, the medium of all this evolution, is seemingly inconscient and inanimate; but it so appears to us only because we are unable to sense consciousness outside a certain limited range, a fixed scale or gamut to which we have access. Below us there are lower ranges to which we are insensible and these we call subconscience or inconscience. Above us are higher ranges which are to our inferior nature an unseizable superconscience.” Essays Divine and Human
subconscient ::: Sri Aurobindo: "In our yoga we mean by the subconscient that quite submerged part of our being in which there is no wakingly conscious and coherent thought, will or feeling or organised reaction, but which yet receives obscurely the impressions of all things and stores them up in itself and from it too all sorts of stimuli, of persistent habitual movements, crudely repeated or disguised in strange forms can surge up into dream or into the waking nature. No, subliminal is a general term used for all parts of the being which are not on the waking surface. Subconscient is very often used in the same sense by European psychologists because they do not know the difference. But when I use the word, I mean always what is below the ordinary physical consciousness, not what is behind it. The inner mental, vital, physical, the psychic are not subconscious in this sense, but they can be spoken of as subliminal.” *The Synthesis of Yoga.
"The subconscient is a concealed and unexpressed inarticulate consciousness which works below all our conscious physical activities. Just as what we call the superconscient is really a higher consciousness above from which things descend into the being, so the subconscient is below the body-consciousness and things come up into the physical, the vital and the mind-nature from there.
Just as the higher consciousness is superconscient to us and supports all our spiritual possibilities and nature, so the subconscient is the basis of our material being and supports all that comes up in the physical nature.” Letters on Yoga
"That part of us which we can strictly call subconscient because it is below the level of mind and conscious life, inferior and obscure, covers the purely physical and vital elements of our constitution of bodily being, unmentalised, unobserved by the mind, uncontrolled by it in their action. It can be held to include the dumb occult consciousness, dynamic but not sensed by us, which operates in the cells and nerves and all the corporeal stuff and adjusts their life process and automatic responses. It covers also those lowest functionings of submerged sense-mind which are more operative in the animal and in plant life.” *The Life Divine
"The subconscient is a thing of habits and memories and repeats persistently or whenever it can old suppressed reactions, reflexes, mental, vital or physical responses. It must be trained by a still more persistent insistence of the higher parts of the being to give up its old responses and take on the new and true ones.” Letters on Yoga
"About the subconscient — it is the sub-mental base of the being and is made up of impressions, instincts, habitual movements that are stored there. Whatever movement is impressed in it, it keeps. If one impresses the right movement in it, it will keep and send up that. That is why it has to be cleared of old movements before there can be a permanent and total change in the nature. When the higher consciousness is once established in the waking parts, it goes down into the subconscient and changes that also, makes a bedrock of itself there also.” Letters on Yoga
"The sub-conscious is the evolutionary basis in us, it is not the whole of our hidden nature, nor is it the whole origin of what we are. But things can rise from the subconscient and take shape in the conscious parts and much of our smaller vital and physical instincts, movements, habits, character-forms has this source.” Letters on Yoga
"The subconscient is the support of habitual action — it can support good habits as well as bad.” Letters on Yoga
"For the subconscient is the Inconscient in the process of becoming conscious; it is a support and even a root of our inferior parts of being and their movements.” The Life Divine *subconscient"s.
subconscious ::: not wholly conscious; partially or imperfectly conscious; existing or operating in the mind beneath or beyond consciousness.
Sri Aurobindo: "The subconscious in us is the extreme border of our secret inner existence where it meets the Inconscient, it is a degree of our being in which the Inconscient struggles into a half consciousness. . . .” The Life Divine
substratum ::: 1. A foundation or groundwork. (of something material or immaterial). 2. That which is spread or laid under something else; a stratum or layer lying under another. (Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adj.)
subtle body ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The terminology of Yoga recognises besides the status of our physical and vital being, termed the gross body and doubly composed of the food sheath and the vital vehicle, besides the status of our mental being, termed the subtle body and singly composed of the mind sheath or mental vehicle, a third, supreme and divine status of supra-mental being, termed the causal body and composed of a fourth and a fifth vehicle which are described as those of knowledge and bliss.” The Synthesis of Yoga
subtle images ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Subtle images can be images of all things in all worlds.” *Letters on Yoga
"These are not mental images. There is an inner vision that opens when one does sadhana and all sorts of images rise before it or pass. Their coming does not depend upon your thought or will; it is real and automatic. Just as your physical eyes see things in the physical world, so the inner eyes see things and images that belong to the other worlds and subtle images of things of this physical world also.” Letters on Yoga
subtle Matter ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Much more than half our thoughts and feelings are not our own in the sense that they take form out of ourselves; of hardly anything can it be said that it is truly original to our nature. A large part comes to us from others or from the environment, whether as raw material or as manufactured imports; but still more largely they come from universal Nature here or from other worlds and planes and their beings and powers and influences; for we are overtopped and environed by other planes of consciousness, mind planes, life planes, subtle matter planes, from which our life and action here are fed, or fed on, pressed, dominated, made use of for the manifestation of their forms and forces.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"Mind therefore is held by the Hindus to be a species of subtle matter in which ideas are waves or ripples, and it is not limited by the physical body which it uses as an instrument.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"All that manifested from the Eternal has already been arranged in worlds or planes of its own nature, planes of subtle Matter, planes of Life, planes of Mind, planes of Supermind, planes of the triune luminous Infinite. But these worlds or planes are not evolutionary but typal. A typal world is one in which some ruling principle manifests itself in its free and full capacity and energy and form are plastic and subservient to its purpose. Its expressions are therefore automatic and satisfying and do not need to evolve; they stand so long as need be and do not need to be born, develop, decline and disintegrate.” Essays Divine and Human*
subtle vision ("s) ::: Sri Aurobindo: " This power of vision is sometimes inborn and habitual even without any effort of development, sometimes it wakes up of itself and becomes abundant or needs only a little practice to develop; it is not necessarily a sign of spiritual attainment, but usually when by practice of yoga one begins to go inside or live within, the power of subtle vision awakes to a greater or less extent; . . . .”*Letters on Yoga
"It is not necessary to have the mind quiet in order to see the lights — that depends only on the opening of the subtle vision in the centre which is in the forehead between the eyebrows. Many people get that as soon as they start sadhana. It can even be developed by effort and concentration without sadhana by some who have it to a small extent as an inborn faculty.” Letters on Yoga
"When the centres begin to open, inner experiences such as the seeing of light or images through the subtle vision in the forehead centre or psychic experiences and perceptions in the heart, become frequent — gradually one becomes aware of one"s inner being as separate from the outer, and what can be called a yogic consciousness with all its deeper movements develops in the place of the ordinary superficial mental and vital movements.” Letters on Yoga
summit ::: 1. The highest point or part, as of a hill, a line of travel, or any object; top; apex. 2. The highest state or degree; acme; zenith. 3. The highest point of attainment or aspiration. summits, summit-glories, crypt-summit, seer-summit. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
sun ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The sun is the symbol of the concentrated light of Truth.” *Letters on Yoga
suntracks ::: a word coined by Sri Aurobindo. Lines of travel, passage, or motion; the actual courses or routes followed (which need not be any beaten or visible path, or leave any traces, as the paths of ships, birds in the air, comets, etc.).
superconscience ::: Sri Aurobindo: "But a third power or possibility of the Infinite Consciousness can be admitted, its power of self-absorption, of plunging into itself, into a state in which self-awareness exists but not as knowledge and not as all-knowledge; the all would then be involved in pure self-awareness, and knowledge and the inner consciousness itself would be lost in pure being. This is, luminously, the state which we call the Superconscience in an absolute sense, — although most of what we call superconscient is in reality not that but only a higher conscient, something that is conscious to itself and only superconscious to our own limited level of awareness.” The Life Divine
superconscient ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the superconscient is consciousness taken up into an absolute of being.” The Life Divine
superlife ::: a word coined by Sri Aurobindo. super. A prefix occurring originally in loanwords from Latin with the basic meaning "above, beyond.” An individual, thing, or property that exceeds customary norms or levels.
supermind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Supermind is the total Truth-Consciousness; the Overmind draws down the truths separately and gives them a separate activity — e.g. in the Supermind the Divine Peace and Power, Knowledge and Will are one. In the Overmind each of these becomes a separate aspect which can exist or act on its own lines apart from the others.
"The earth is a conscious being and the world is only the form it takes to manifest.” Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume 1*
The Ineffable: *Sri Aurobindo: "It is this essential indeterminability of the Absolute that translates itself into our consciousness through the fundamental negating positives of our spiritual experience, the immobile immutable Self, the Nirguna Brahman, the Eternal without qualities, the pure featureless One Existence, the Impersonal, the Silence void of activities, the Non-being, the Ineffable and the Unknowable. On the other side it is the essence and source of all determinations, and this dynamic essentiality manifests to us through the fundamental affirming positives in which the Absolute equally meets us; for it is the Self that becomes all things, the Saguna Brahman, the Eternal with infinite qualities, the One who is the Many, the infinite Person who is the source and foundation of all persons and personalities, the Lord of creation, the Word, the Master of all works and action; it is that which being known all is known: these affirmatives correspond to those negatives. For it is not possible in a supramental cognition to split asunder the two sides of the One Existence, — even to speak of them as sides is excessive, for they are in each other, their co-existence or one-existence is eternal and their powers sustaining each other found the self-manifestation of the Infinite.” The Life Divine
The Word has its seed-sounds – suggesting the eternal syllable of the Veda, AUM. ::: Sri Aurobindo - A note on the Chhandogya Upanishad *
"Vamana, the Dwarf, in Hindu mythology, one of the ten incarnations of Vishnu, born as a son of Kashyapa and Aditi. The titan King Bali had by his austerities acquired dominion of all the three worlds. To remedy this, Vishnu came to him in the form of a dwarf and begged of him as much land as he could step over in three paces. Bali complied. In two strides the dwarf covered heaven and earth, and with the third step, on Bali"s head, pushed him down to Patala, the infernal regions.” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
KEYS (10k)
1471 Sri Aurobindo
14 The Mother
9 Sri Aurobindo
2 A B Purani
1 Sri Aurobindo?
1 Daniel Albuquerque
1 02.14 - The World-Soul
1 ?
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
1457 Sri Aurobindo
15 The Mother
5 Sri Aurobindo.
3 Sri Aurobindo(Thoughts and Aphorisms)
2 Sri Aurobindo[Gems from Sri Aurobindo]
1:Whether I live or die, I am always ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
2:02.14 - The World-Soul, #KEYS
3:Until life finds Him pain can never end. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
4:All life is Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T5],#KEYS
5:All Art is interpretation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, Art, #KEYS
6:Character is nothing but habit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Book III, #KEYS
7:All renews itself, nothing perishes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Life, #KEYS
8:There are muffled throbs of laughter's undertones, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, #KEYS
9:Turn all things to honey; this is the law of divine living. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
10:It is the supermind we have to bring down, manifest, realise. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
11:The criterion is within. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
12:When spirituality is lost all is lost. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Ourselves, #KEYS
13:Light, endless Light! darkness has room no more... ~ Sri Aurobindo, cwsa, 2:618, #KEYS
14:Most sensitiveness is the result or sign of ego. ~ Sri Aurobindo, (CWSA 31:211), #KEYS
15:Grace is not an invention, it is a fact of spiritual experience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
16:A powerless spirit is no spirit ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
17:A voice cried, 'Go where none have gone! Dig deeper, deeper yet
~ Sri Aurobindo,#KEYS
18:Prayers should be full of confidence without sorrow or lamenting. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
19:Read Sri Aurobindo and follow his discipline. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I, #KEYS
20:The difficult is not the impossible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Faith, #KEYS
21:All things too great end soon. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I, #KEYS
22:There is no fear in the higher Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Fear, #KEYS
23:Thy youth is but a noon, of night take heed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Translations, Appeal, #KEYS
24:For others' bliss who lives, he lives indeed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Translations, Appeal, #KEYS
25:Ignorance is not a state of innocence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Purity, #KEYS
26:Surrender is the best way of opening. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Opening, #KEYS
27:The enemy of faith is doubt. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
28:Habit is nothing but an operation of memory. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Book III, #KEYS
29:No eyes demanded her replying eyes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 4:2, #KEYS
30:The inmost is the infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Power of the Spirit, #KEYS
31:Death has no reality except as a process of life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Life, #KEYS
32:Dare greatly and thou shalt be great. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I, #KEYS
33:Detect the magic bride in her disguise ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 1:3 #KEYS
34:Life always seeks immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Threefold Life, #KEYS
35:Our plans may fail, God's purpose cannot. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Facts and Opinions, #KEYS
36:The world being what it is, it could not be otherwise.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
37:Truth of oneness creates its own order. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
38:Work without ideals is a false gospel. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II: Work and Ideal #KEYS
39:Force is a self-expression of Existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Maya, #KEYS
40:Work without ideals is a false gospel. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Work and Ideal, #KEYS
41:Adore and what you adore attempt to be. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act V, #KEYS
42:Knowledge is power and mastery. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Ego and the Dualities, #KEYS
43:The dreaming deities look beyond the seen
And fashion in their thoughts the ideal worlds ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri,#KEYS
44:Unity is a means and not an end in itself. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, About Unity, #KEYS
45:Aversion is not equality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Perfection of Equality, #KEYS
46:Harmony is the natural rule of the spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
47:Love must be turned singly towards the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Desire, #KEYS
48:Man is fortunately inconsistent. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Materialism, #KEYS
49:See God everywhere and be not frightened by masks
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human,#KEYS
50:You must feel that Sri Aurobindo is looking at you.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, [T5],#KEYS
51:And builds to hope her altars of despair, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 4:3, #KEYS
52:An outer renunciation by itself does not liberate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Sex, #KEYS
53:Even if there is real danger, fear does not help. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Fear, #KEYS
54:Her depths remember what she came to do, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02:06 #KEYS
55:If even then we make mistakes, yet God makes none.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human,#KEYS
56:If there is no creation, there must be disintegration. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Ourselves, #KEYS
57:Limitation is mortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, The Doctrine of the Mystics, #KEYS
58:Often the idea creates the need. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Oligarchy or Democracy?, #KEYS
59:Only a consciousness full of light can be pure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Purity, #KEYS
60:A godhead sculptured on a wall of thought, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 4:3, #KEYS
61:Her greatest progress is a deepened need. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, [T5], #KEYS
62:Let us be prepared for death but work for life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, The Crisis, #KEYS
63:One age has seen the dreams another lives. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I, #KEYS
64:... a single word that breaks the seals of the mind...
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
65:Many high gods dwelt in one beautiful home; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 4:1, #KEYS
66:Sorrow if indulged becomes a habit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Jainism and Buddhism, #KEYS
67:Spiritually there is nothing big or small. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Work and Yoga, #KEYS
68:The Knowledge brings also the Power and the Joy.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T5],#KEYS
69:Thou who hast come to this transcient and unhappy world, turn to Me. ~ Sri Aurobindo, TLD, Gita, #KEYS
70:What should I read at present?
Sri Aurobindo's books.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
71:Even the body has its intuitions. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Personality, #KEYS
72:Its shadows gleaming with the birth of gods, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 1:5, #KEYS
73:Mind is a passage, not a culmination. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Supermind as Creator, #KEYS
74:Hope not to hear truth often in royal courts. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I, #KEYS
75:It is the East that must conquer in India's uprising. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, In Either Case, #KEYS
76:Missing its aim is all that it can speak ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 1:4, 360, #KEYS
77:The gnosis does not seek, it possesses. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Vijnana or Gnosis, #KEYS
78:The past cannot bind the future. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Call and the Capacity, #KEYS
79:Uniformity is death, not life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Inadequacy of the State Idea, #KEYS
80:Asia has always initiated, Europe completed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, The Asiatic Role, #KEYS
81:Death is our road to immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate, #KEYS
82:Devotion is the key which opens the door to liberation.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human,#KEYS
83:Experience comes through many errors. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Spiritual Aim and Life, #KEYS
84:God is at once impersonal and personal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Secret of Secrets, #KEYS
85:Inner happiness can only come by right living. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Deva and Asura, #KEYS
86:Man out of Nature wakes to God's complexities, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I, #KEYS
87:Nothing in this world is created, all is manifested. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, Art, #KEYS
88:Peace is a sign of mukti—Ananda moves towards siddhi. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Peace, #KEYS
89:Rhythm is the subtle soul of poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Recent English Poetry - I, #KEYS
90:Savitri
the supreme revelation
of Sri Aurobindo's
vision.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I,#KEYS
91:The eye of Faith is not one with the eye of Knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, In Either Case, #KEYS
92:The spiritual fullness of the being is eternity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
93:What devours must also be devoured. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Death, Desire and Incapacity, #KEYS
94:While life remains, action is unavoidable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Work, #KEYS
95:All stability is a fixed equilibrium of rhythm. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, The Isha Upanishad, #KEYS
96:Death fosters life that life may suckle death. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act II, #KEYS
97:Knowledge is incomplete without action. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Action and the Divine Will, #KEYS
98:Life ran to gaze from every gate of sense: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Satyavan, #KEYS
99:Material Nature is not ethical. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Delight of Existence, The Problem, #KEYS
100:One should read Sri Aurobindo and know the answer.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, [T0],#KEYS
101:One who loves God finds the object of his love everywhere.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, [T4],#KEYS
102:Quality and quantity differ, the self is equal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Pure Existent, #KEYS
103:The intellectual ages sing less easily. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Form and the Spirit, #KEYS
104:The perfect man is a divine child! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Heraclitus - VII, #KEYS
105:The simple approach means trust. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Bhakti Yoga and Vaishnavism, #KEYS
106:' . . . the supreme Mage, the divine Magician, . . .' [the Lord]
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
107:Truth is the secret of life and power. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Civilisation and Barbarism, #KEYS
108:Action solves the difficulties which action creates. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Facts and Opinions, #KEYS
109:A Godhead stands behind the brute machine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue, #KEYS
110:All quarrels proceed from egoism. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Problems in Human Relations, #KEYS
111:A look, a turn decides our ill-poised fate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Satyavan, #KEYS
112:Even in inanimate Matter Mind is at work. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Threefold Life, #KEYS
113:If you pray, trust that he hears. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Bhakti Yoga and Vaishnavism, #KEYS
114:Men have made kings that folly might have food. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act II, #KEYS
115:One can be free only by living in the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Occult Knowledge, #KEYS
116:Sight is the essential poetic gift. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS
117:The godhead greater by a human fate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn, #KEYS
118:The Mind creates the chain and not the body. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Conclusion and Summary, #KEYS
119:The pure intellect cannot create poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, New Birth or Decadence?, #KEYS
120:The vital does not like waiting. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Wrong Movements of the Vital, #KEYS
121:A fathomless zero occupied the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn, #KEYS
122:All absoluteness is pure delight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Delight of Existence, The Problem, #KEYS
123:All in the cosmos has a divine origin. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Personality, #KEYS
124:Each dawn opens into a larger Light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate, #KEYS
125:Ego is the principal knot. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Perfection of the Mental Being, #KEYS
126:He laid experience at the Godhead's feet;
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Satyavan,#KEYS
127:If desire comes up, the Ananda is obliged to draw back. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Desire, #KEYS
128:In the divine consciousness there is no ego. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Ego and Its Forms, #KEYS
129:Love is a seeking for mutual possession. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Godward Emotions, #KEYS
130:One cannot demand or compel grace. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Bhakti Yoga and Vaishnavism, #KEYS
131:Only a little the god-light can stay: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn, #KEYS
132:Our sympathies become our torturers. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate, #KEYS
133:The heart is wiser than the thought. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Love and the Triple Path, #KEYS
134:The mind pre-eminently is man; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Perfection of the Body, #KEYS
135:The moments are Fate's thoughts
Watching me. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act III,#KEYS
136:When Love desires Love,
Then Love is born. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
137:Words are but ghosts unless they speak the heart. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I, #KEYS
138:Compassion to all creatures is the condition of sainthood. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Swaraj, #KEYS
139:Death stays the journeying discoverer, Life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue, #KEYS
140:In Islam
All men are equal underneath the King. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
141:It is from unsatisfied desire that all suffering arises. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Desire, #KEYS
142:Love is the hoop of the gods
Hearts to combine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
143:Love itself is sweet enough
Though unreturned. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act II,#KEYS
144:Mind is born from that which is beyond mind. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Vijnana or Gnosis, #KEYS
145:Only those who sympathise can help. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Problems in Human Relations, #KEYS
146:The Supermind alone commands unity in diversity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Problem of Life, #KEYS
147:The Yogi eats not out of desire, but to maintain the body. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Food, #KEYS
148:Aggression is necessary for self-preservation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, The Awakening Soul of India, #KEYS
149:God is love and beauty as well as purity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Religion as the Law of Life, #KEYS
150:Liberation is self-possession, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Involution and Evolution, #KEYS
151:Man lifted up the burden of his fate
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,#KEYS
152:Poetry like everything else in man evolves. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, New Birth or Decadence?, #KEYS
153:Realisations are the essence of knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Thought and Knowledge, #KEYS
154:Spiritual force can always raise up material force to defend it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Ourselves, #KEYS
155:Sri Aurobindo's Savitri is a vast ocean and one may, upon reflection, go in pursuit of the choicest of pearls. ~ Daniel Albuquerque, #KEYS
156:The eye of man outside matters nothing; the eye within is all.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
157:The master of my stars is he
Who owns no master. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act V,#KEYS
158:The occult is a part of existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #KEYS
159:To know is best, however hard to bear. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate, #KEYS
160:Vision only opens, it does not embrace. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Status of Knowledge, #KEYS
161:All existence here is a universal Life that takes form of Matter. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Life, #KEYS
162:All self-fulfilment is satisfaction of being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Supermind as Creator, #KEYS
163:All things Vary to keep the secret witness pleased. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act II, #KEYS
164:A still identity their way to know, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #KEYS
165:Each year a mile upon the heavenly Way, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate, #KEYS
166:It is the essentials alone that matter. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Call and the Capacity, #KEYS
167:Sincerity in Yoga means to respond to the Divine alone. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Sincerity, #KEYS
168:The greatest have their limitations. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #KEYS
169:The key to the flaming doors of ecstasy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn, #KEYS
170:There should be no big I, not even a small one. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Ego and Its Forms, #KEYS
171:We can construct nothing which goes beyond our nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
172:We think according to what we are. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Poetry and Art, Russell, Eddington, Jeans, #KEYS
173:Yet when he is most near, she feels him far. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.06, [T5], #KEYS
174:A formless spirit became the soul of form. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Soul, #KEYS
175:A gate of dreams ajar on mystery's verge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn, #KEYS
176:All evil is in travail of the eternal good. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine and the Undivine, #KEYS
177:All great poetic utterance is discovery. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS
178:But all power is in the end one, all power is really soul-power.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
179:ekas tisthati viras tisthati - he stands alone, he stands as a hero.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Glossary of terms,#KEYS
180:Faith is not intellectual belief but a function of the soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Faith, #KEYS
181:Knowledge is not complete without works. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Love and the Triple Path, #KEYS
182:Mortal delight has its mortal danger. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, The Guardians of the Light, #KEYS
183:Must fire always test the great of soul? ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate, #KEYS
184:The spiritual man is one who has discovered his soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being, #KEYS
185:Time is a manifestation of the Eternal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Cosmic Illusion, #KEYS
186:Accord and concord are the true normality of the spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
187:All action is surrounded by a complexity of forces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Occult Knowledge, #KEYS
188:All evil shall perforce change itself into good. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Gnosis and Ananda, #KEYS
189:All impurity is a confusion of working. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Purified Understanding, #KEYS
190:By men is mightiness achieved ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Baji Prabhou, #KEYS
191:Doubt is the mind's persistent assailant. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Patience and Perseverance, #KEYS
192:Ego is the reason of the difficulty in everybody. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Ego and Its Forms, #KEYS
193:Even fall has its perverted joy ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and Fall of Life, #KEYS
194:He who is himself in bonds cannot easily free others. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
195:It reveals itself rather than is learned. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Eternal and the Individual, #KEYS
196:Never out of evil one plucked good: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent into Night, #KEYS
197:On the bare peak where Self is alone with Nought ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue, #KEYS
198:Space is himself and Time is only he. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #KEYS
199:Successful assimilation depends on mastery. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine and Human, On Original Thinking, #KEYS
200:The end of all Science is Agnosticism. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #KEYS
201:The goal of evolution is also its cause. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Three Steps of Nature, #KEYS
202:The gods make use of our forgotten deeds. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate, #KEYS
203:Unity is as strong a principle in Nature as division. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Ascent of Life, #KEYS
204:We must live as a nation before we can live in humanity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Opinion and Comments, #KEYS
205:A dire duality is our way to be. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and Fall of Life, #KEYS
206:All the world's possibilities in man
Are waiting as the tree waits in its seed: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri,#KEYS
207:Equality is the very sign of liberation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Perfection of Equality, #KEYS
208:Everything is a poise of contrary energies. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Heraclitus - IV, #KEYS
209:He who chooses the Infinite has been chosen by the Infinite.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T5],#KEYS
210:Ignorance is a self-oblivion of Being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #KEYS
211:man carries the seed of the divine life in himself ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
212:Only in human limits man lives safe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Towards the Black Void, #KEYS
213:Perhaps the blindness of our will is Fate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate, #KEYS
214:Swift and easy is the downward path. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent into Night, #KEYS
215:The gods cannot, if they would, give themselves unasked. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, Bhawani Mandir, #KEYS
216:To be equal is to be infinite and universal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Action of Equality, #KEYS
217:True knowledge is not attained by thinking. It is what you are; it is what you become.
~ A B Purani, EVENING TALKS WITH SRI AUROBINDO,#KEYS
218:what matters in a symbol is what it means for you. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, The Animal World, #KEYS
219:When a force ceases to conquer, it ceases to live. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, The Awakening Soul of India, #KEYS
220:All awareness is power and all power conceals awareness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, RV I.1.1, #KEYS
221:All can be done if the god-touch is there
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,#KEYS
222:A new ordeal always brings with it a new awakening. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Ideals Face to Face, #KEYS
223:Desire, the troubled seed of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #KEYS
224:Faith fights for God, while Knowledge is waiting for fulfilment. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, In Either Case, #KEYS
225:He sees within the face of deity, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, [T5], #KEYS
226:Limited and divided being is ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, The Doctrine of the Mystics, #KEYS
227:Our life is a paradox with God for key. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #KEYS
228:Out of the darkness we still grow to light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate, #KEYS
229:Prayer is not a form of words but an aspiration. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, The Need of the Moment, #KEYS
230:The characteristic energy of pure Mind is change. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Threefold Life, #KEYS
231:The Divinity in man dwells veiled in his spiritual centre. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
232:The gnostic soul is the child, but the king-child. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Gnosis and Ananda, #KEYS
233:There can be no firm foundation in sadhana without equality, samata.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
234:The supreme faith is that which sees God in all. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Way and the Bhakta, #KEYS
235:A gossiping spirit is always an obstacle. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, Avoiding Gossip, #KEYS
236:All, even pain, was the soul's pleasure here; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair, #KEYS
237:And in her bosom nursed a greater dawn
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Return to Earth,#KEYS
238:Hard is it to persuade earth-nature's change; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn, #KEYS
239:Let Him choose for thee a king's palace or the bowl of the beggar.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human,#KEYS
240:Space is a stillness of God building his earthly abode. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Trance of Waiting, #KEYS
241:The knot of the Ignorance is egoism. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad: The Inhabiting Godhead, Life and Action, #KEYS
242:The law of the supermind is unity fulfilled in diversity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being, #KEYS
243:The ordinary man is not yet a rational being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Curve of the Rational Age, #KEYS
244:To the soul and Shakti in man nothing is impossible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti, #KEYS
245:Unity the race moves towards and must one day realise. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Diversity in Oneness, #KEYS
246:A dual Nature covered the Unique. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death, #KEYS
247:All life is either consciously or subconsciously a Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Life and Yoga, #KEYS
248:All that we meet is a symbol and gateway ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana, #KEYS
249:All this is the Brahman; this Self is the Brahman and the Self is fourfold.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
250:By itself the intelligence can only achieve talent. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Suprarational Beauty, #KEYS
251:Every man is not only himself, he is that which he represents. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Facts and Opinions, #KEYS
252:Imagination the free-will of Truth, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and Fall of Life, #KEYS
253:It is vision that sees Truth, not logic. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Poetry and Art, Russell, Eddington, Jeans, #KEYS
254:Mind flowed unknowing in the sap of life ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair, [T5], #KEYS
255:Soul determines Form & Action & is not determined by them. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, The Isha Upanishad, #KEYS
256:Study cannot take the same or a greater importance than sadhana.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV, [T2],#KEYS
257:The laws of the Unknown create the known. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #KEYS
258:The palace woke to its own emptiness;
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Call to the Quest,#KEYS
259:The psychic is the support of the individual evolution ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, The Psychic Being, #KEYS
260:The real truth of man is to be found in his soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Spiritual Aim and Life, #KEYS
261:The Unknown is not the Unknowable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Two Negations, The Materialist Denial, #KEYS
262:A deep surrender is their source of might, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #KEYS
263:Charm is the seal of the gods upon woman. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion, #KEYS
264:Each victory gained over oneself means new strength to gain more victories. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga IV, #KEYS
265:Equality does not include inert acceptance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Equality - The Chief Support, #KEYS
266:He moves there as the Soul, as Nature she. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #KEYS
267:Love in Her was wider than the universe. The whole world could take refuge in Her single heart. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
268:Man's conscience is a creation of his evolving nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Suprarational Good, #KEYS
269:Out of the unknown we move to the unknown. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #KEYS
270:Soonest is always best
When noble deeds are to be done. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act II,#KEYS
271:Strong poisons are the only salvation in desperate diseases. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, The New Ideal, #KEYS
272:The Bliss that is creation's splendid grain ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, In the Self of Mind, #KEYS
273:The principle of the Yoga is rejection-throwing out of the being.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [T5],#KEYS
274:The tongue is always an easily erring member. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Depression and Despondency, #KEYS
275:Without a great ideal there can be no great movement. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, The Leverage of Faith, #KEYS
276:A faith she craves that can survive defeat, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #KEYS
277:After 'tis cold, none heeds, none hinders. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion, #KEYS
278:A god come down and greater by the fall. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #KEYS
279:Always the Ideal beckoned from afar.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Heavens of the Ideal,#KEYS
280:A mutual giving and receiving is the law of Life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Lord of the Sacrifice, #KEYS
281:Behind everything in life there is an Absolute. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Reason as Governor of Life, #KEYS
282:By Truth is the progress towards the Truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, The Ashwins, Lords of Bliss, #KEYS
283:It is the soul in us which turns always towards Truth, Good and Beauty.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, [T5],#KEYS
284:Life is to be found in the recesses of its own being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, The One Thing Needful, #KEYS
285:Man is a creature blinded by the sun
Who errs by seeing ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act III,#KEYS
286:Mind is only a preparatory form of our consciousness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Supermind as Creator, #KEYS
287:One has sometimes to deny God in order to find him. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Spiritual Aim and Life, #KEYS
288:Perfect knowledge indeed leads to perfect love. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Love and the Triple Path, #KEYS
289:The Divine Grace comes in to help and save. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Grace and Guidance, #KEYS
290:The Enigma's knot is tied in human kind. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #KEYS
291:The intuitive mentality is still mind and not gnosis. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Intuitive Mind, #KEYS
292:The lyric is a moment of heightened soul experience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Form and the Spirit, #KEYS
293:There is no such thing as a mere accident. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Accidents, Possession, Madness, #KEYS
294:The speech that labels more than it lights; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #KEYS
295:The Supermind using the Word is the creative Logos. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads, The Supreme Word, #KEYS
296:To be able to be regular is a great force, one becomes master of one's time and one's movements. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
297:Vision is the characteristic power of the poet. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS
298:All knowledge is in oneself, in the knower. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, Things Seen in Symbols - II, #KEYS
299:Almighty powers are shut in Nature's cells. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Call to the Quest, #KEYS
300:A struggling ignorance is his wisdom's mate: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #KEYS
301:At play with him as with her child or slave, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #KEYS
302:Eternity speaks, none understands its word; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Call to the Quest, #KEYS
303:God is the one stable and eternal Reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad: Brahman, Oneness of God and the World, #KEYS
304:Her acts became gestures of sacrifice.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Growth of the Flame,#KEYS
305:Immortality assured itself by death; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death, #KEYS
306:Night a process of the eternal light ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death, #KEYS
307:No one I am, I who am all that is. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Liberation - I, #KEYS
308:Speak not my secret name to hostile Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #KEYS
309:The body is the chrysalis of a soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death, #KEYS
310:The eternal Truth can manifest its truths in Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Master of the Work, #KEYS
311:The help of Sri Aurobindo is constant; it is for us to know how to receive it.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I,#KEYS
312:Vital desire grows by being indulged, it does not become satisfied. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Desire, #KEYS
313:We cannot get strength unless we adore the Mother of strength. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, Bhawani Mandir, #KEYS
314:Yoga demands mastery over the nature, not subjection to the nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Desire, #KEYS
315:299. Turn all things to honey; this is the law of divine living.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
316:A casual passing phrase can change our life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Call to the Quest, #KEYS
317:A million lotuses swaying on one stem,
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Heavens of the Ideal,#KEYS
318:A prey to the staring phantoms of the gloom ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent into Night, #KEYS
319:Faith divines in the large what Knowledge sees distinctly and clearly. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, In Either Case, #KEYS
320:Faith is only a will aiming at greater truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Power of the Instruments, #KEYS
321:Heal from above instead of struggling from below. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Cosmic Consciousness, #KEYS
322:Its faith is perfectibility, its watchword is progress. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Threefold Life, #KEYS
323:She has a secret of will power which no other nation possesses. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, The New Ideal, #KEYS
324:Supermind is the vast self-extension of the Brahman that contains and develops.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
325:The child of the Void shall be reborn in God, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Satyavan and Savitri, #KEYS
326:The intelligent are intelligent only in patches. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Three Modes of Nature, #KEYS
327:The mind is a thing that dwells in diffusion, in succession. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Concentration, #KEYS
328:The Wise who know see but one half of Truth, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Call to the Quest, #KEYS
329:The Word expresses that which is self-hidden in the Silence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality Omnipresent, #KEYS
330:To copy on earth's copies is his art. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdom of Subtle Matter, #KEYS
331:Without being possessed one does not possess oneself utterly. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Ascent of Life, #KEYS
332:You have only to keep yourself open and whatever you need and can receive at the moment will come. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
333:All Nature is a display and a play of God, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Involution and Evolution, #KEYS
334:A saviour gesture stretched her lifted arm, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul, #KEYS
335:Assent to thy high self, create, endure.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
336:A subtle link of union joins all life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdom of Subtle Matter, #KEYS
337:Commercialism is still the heart of modern civilisation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Civilisation and Culture, #KEYS
338:God is a hard master and will not be served by halves. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, The Wheat and the Chaff, #KEYS
339:If all forms, quantities, qualities were to disappear, this would remain. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 1.09-08, #KEYS
340:Infinity wore a boundless zero's form. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death, #KEYS
341:In relation to the universe the Supreme is Brahman. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge, #KEYS
342:Nothing can be done by the weak and so nothing is given to the weak. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Bhawanipur Speech, #KEYS
343:Our outward happenings have their seed within, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #KEYS
344:Real faith is something spiritual, a knowledge of the soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Morality and Yoga, #KEYS
345:Renunciation is an indispensable instrument of our perfection. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
346:Solitude wrapped him in its voiceless folds. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent into Night, #KEYS
347:The Jiva is a spirit and self, superior to Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Release from the Ego, #KEYS
348:Time is a convention of movement, not a condition of existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, The Isha Upanishad, #KEYS
349:Vision is not sufficient; one must become what inwardly one sees. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Self-Realisation, #KEYS
350:Everything becomes, nothing is made. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Stress of the Hidden Spirit, #KEYS
351:First we must live, afterwards we can learn to live well. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, The One Thing Needful, #KEYS
352:He has need of death to find a greater life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #KEYS
353:It is only through life that one can reach to immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Karmayoga, #KEYS
354:IT was for delight
He sought existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Rishi,#KEYS
355:Once kindled, never can its flamings cease. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Heavens of the Ideal, #KEYS
356:Only the one who can give everything, enjoys the Divine All everywhere. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T3], #KEYS
357:Sadhana can go on in the dream or sleep state as well as in the waking. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Sleep, #KEYS
358:That is the divine Brahman and not this which men here adore.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T0],#KEYS
359:The brain is impotent without the right arm of strength. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, The Writing on the Wall, #KEYS
360:The Eternal's quiet holds the cosmic act: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and Fall of Life, #KEYS
361:The final demand of the Bhakta is simply that his bhakti may never cease or diminish. ~ Sri Aurobindo, cwsa, 24, 569, #KEYS
362:The gods use instruments,
Not ask their consent. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Short Stories - I, Act Five,#KEYS
363:The law of the body arises from the subconscient or inconscient. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being, #KEYS
364:The lyric which is poetry's native expression. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Course of English Poetry - II, #KEYS
365:The principle of division is not proper to Matter, but to Mind. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Knot of Matter, #KEYS
366:The reason understands itself, but not what is beyond it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Intuitive Mind, #KEYS
367:The supermind lives in the light of spiritual certitudes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Intuitive Mind, #KEYS
368:The supreme divine nature is founded on equality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Perfection of Equality, #KEYS
369:We move as we must,
Not as we choose, whatever we may think. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act II,#KEYS
370:Without indomitable Faith or inspired Wisdom no great cause can conquer. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, In Either Case, #KEYS
371:All is eternal in the eternal spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Stress of the Hidden Spirit, #KEYS
372:All problems of existence are essentially problems of harmony. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Human Aspiration, #KEYS
373:All spiritual life is in its principle a growth into divine living. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
374:But still the invisible Magnet drew his soul
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair, [T5],#KEYS
375:By contact with the facts of life Art attains to vitality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Threefold Life, #KEYS
376:By its breath of grace our lives abide. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Pursuit of the Unknowable, #KEYS
377:Comparison with others brings in a wrong standard of values. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Ego and Its Forms, #KEYS
378:Falsehood is merely a wrong placing of the Truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, The Victory of the Fathers, #KEYS
379:..His mind was like a fire assailing heaven,
His will a hunter in the trails of light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri,#KEYS
380:His thought labours, a bullock in Time's fields; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #KEYS
381:How beautiful is the day when one can offer one's devotion to Sri Aurobindo.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, [T2],#KEYS
382:I am stronger than death and greater than my fate
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,#KEYS
383:In Death's realm repatriate immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death, #KEYS
384:My life is a throb of Thy eternity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Bliss of Identity, #KEYS
385:Our life is a paradox with God for key.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, [T5],#KEYS
386:Peace was a thrilled voluptuous purity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Paradise of the Life-Gods, #KEYS
387:Perfection cannot come without self-knowledge and God-knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Above the Gunas, #KEYS
388:Pride is only one form of ego—there are ten thousand others. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Ego and Its Forms, #KEYS
389:The condition of freedom is the search for truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, The Revival of Indian Art, #KEYS
390:The Divine is the unborn Eternal who has no origin. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Supreme Word of the Gita, #KEYS
391:The heart is the meeting place of God and the Soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, The Soul and India's Mission, #KEYS
392:We renounce ourselves in order to find ourselves. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads, The Supramental Godhead, #KEYS
393:What we are, we know not; what we know, we cannot effect. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Action and the Divine Will, #KEYS
394:All that is is the manifestation of a Divine Infinite. The universe has no other reason for existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
395:A thousand aspects point back to the One. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death, #KEYS
396:But thou hast come and all will surely change:
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Satyavan and Savitri,#KEYS
397:Convincing the abyss by heavenly form
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdom of Subtle Matter,#KEYS
398:Each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Synthesis of the Systems, #KEYS
399:Evolution is an inverse action of the involution. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #KEYS
400:For a subject people there is no royal road to emancipation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, The Leverage of Faith, #KEYS
401:He who seeks the Divine must consecrate himself to God and to God only.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [T5],#KEYS
402:His business is to suggest and not to impose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, A System of National Education, #KEYS
403:In this immoral and imperfect world even sin has sometimes its rewards. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Mantra, #KEYS
404:Knowledge will not come without self-communion, without light from within. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, In Either Case, #KEYS
405:Man is too weak to bear the Infinite's weight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #KEYS
406:Music and thunder are the rhythmic chords
Of one majestic harp. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
407:One man's perfection still can save the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul, #KEYS
408:Only the Eternal's strength in us can dare
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Heavens of the Ideal,#KEYS
409:The moon floated, a luminous waif through heaven ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Call to the Quest, #KEYS
410:The pure intellectual direction travels away from life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Personality, #KEYS
411:There is no other way than to persevere. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Human Relations and the Spiritual Life, #KEYS
412:Time's sun-flowers' gaze at gold Eternity:
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Heavens of the Ideal,#KEYS
413:Without heroism man cannot grow into the Godhead. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Suprarational Ultimate of Life, #KEYS
414:Action solves the difficulties which action creates. Inaction can only paralyse and slay.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin,#KEYS
415:All our existence is a constant creation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, Surya Savitri, Creator and Increaser, #KEYS
416:All pain and suffering are a sign of imperfection, of incompleteness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
417:all suffering in the evolution is a preparation of strength and bliss ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Self-Realisation, #KEYS
418:All the values of the mind are constructions of ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Thought and Knowledge, #KEYS
419:And leaves its huge white stamp upon our lives.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
420:An immutable Power has made this mutable world; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #KEYS
421:Beauty of our dim soul is amorous. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Our godhead calls us, #KEYS
422:Brahman is one, not numerically, but in essence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad: Brahman, Oneness of God and the World, #KEYS
423:Calling the adventure of consciousness and joy
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn, [T5],#KEYS
424:For the physical plane the work always repeated is the foundation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Work and Yoga, #KEYS
425:Good, not utility, must be the principle and standard of good. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Suprarational Good, #KEYS
426:He who seeks the Divine must consecrate himself to God and -- to God only. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 1.02, #KEYS
427:Ignorance was a thin shade protecting light, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and Fall of Life, #KEYS
428:It is always the business of man the thinker to know. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #KEYS
429:It is the going inward that most helps to deliver the nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Anger and Violence, #KEYS
430:Once one is in full sadhana, sleep becomes as much a part of it as waking. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Sleep, #KEYS
431:Power can abase as well as elevate; nothing is more liable to misuse. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
432:Renunciation must be for us merely an instrument and not an objec. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
433:The individual cannot be perfect until he has surrendered all he now calls himself to the divine Being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
434:The mind forms or accepts the theories that support the turn of the being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Faith, #KEYS
435:There is a zero sign of the Supreme. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Adoration of the Divine Mother, #KEYS
436:The zero covers an immortal face.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Adoration of the Divine Mother,#KEYS
437:When man is free in spirit, all other freedom is at his command. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Asiatic Democracy, #KEYS
438:Will coloured by desire is an impure will. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Purification - Intelligence and Will, #KEYS
439:All sentience is ultimately self-sentience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, #KEYS
440:All things are in Nature and all things are in God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Synthesis of the Systems, #KEYS
441:All was a limitless sea that heaved to the moon. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #KEYS
442:And drinks experience like a strengthening wine.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
443:By Light we live and to the Light we go. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Ideal, #KEYS
444:Equality, not indifference is the basis. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Release from the Heart and the Mind, #KEYS
445:God's long nights are justified by dawn. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Ideal, #KEYS
446:It becomes itself in the world by knowing itself; it knows itself by becoming itself.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
447:Necessity rules all the infinite world, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Birth of Sin, #KEYS
448:Not only Spirit is one, but Mind, Life, Matter are one. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Cosmic Consciousness, #KEYS
449:Our chains are either a play or an illusion or both play & illusion. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, The Isha Upanishad, #KEYS
450:Our waking thoughts the output of its dreams. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent of Night, [T5], #KEYS
451:Pain grew a trembling undertone of bliss ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Ideal, #KEYS
452:The body has an unexpressed knowledge of its own. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Supermind and Humanity, #KEYS
453:The inner must change before the outermost can follow. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Transformation and the Body, #KEYS
454:The life-work of a great man often does not begin till he dies. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Mustafa Kamal Pasha, #KEYS
455:The lower is for us the first condition of the higher. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #KEYS
456:The mind and the vital are much more full of ego than the body. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Ego and Its Forms, #KEYS
457:The song that nerves the nation's heart is in itself a deed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, The Writing on the Wall, #KEYS
458:The stumbling-block of romanticism is falsity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Movement of Modern Literature - I, #KEYS
459:This world is God fulfilled in outwardness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death, #KEYS
460:To each his own difficulties seem enormous and radical. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Call and the Capacity, #KEYS
461:Unity is sweet substance of the heart
And not a chain that binds. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
462:All is one in self, but all is variation in the phenomenon. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Divine Truth and Way, #KEYS
463:All spiritual experience is experience of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Cosmic Illusion, #KEYS
464:By identity alone can complete and real knowledge exist. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Love and the Triple Path, #KEYS
465:He has need of darkness to perceive some light
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
466:It is by the thought that we dissipate ourselves in the phenomenal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Concentration, #KEYS
467:It is the seeing mind that is the master of poetic utterance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Word and the Spirit, #KEYS
468:It is when one mixes up sex and spirituality that there is the greatest havoc. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Sex, #KEYS
469:Life here is God, the materials of Life here are God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #KEYS
470:Man's mind is the dupe of his animal self. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A God's Labour, #KEYS
471:No Law is absolute, because only the infinite is absolute. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Sevenfold Chord of Being, #KEYS
472:Oneness and multiplicity are poles of the same Reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #KEYS
473:One should not think too much of food either to indulge or unduly to repress. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Food, #KEYS
474:Order is indeed the law of life, but not an artificial regulation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Diversity in Oneness, #KEYS
475:Problems are the creations of mental ignorance seeking for knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being, #KEYS
476:Reason is science, it is conscious art, it is invention. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Reason as Governor of Life, #KEYS
477:Some day surely
The world too shall be saved from death by love. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act III,#KEYS
478:The growth of the god in man is man's proper business. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Works, Devotion and Knowledge, #KEYS
479:The universe is a self-creative process of a supreme Reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Philosophy of Rebirth, #KEYS
480:The wisdom of the Lover is justified and supported by the wisdom of the Seer. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, In Either Case, #KEYS
481:To be in full union with the Divine is the final aim. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Aim of the Integral Yoga, #KEYS
482:To lift our hopes heaven-high and to extend them
As wide as earth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
483:What it knew was an image in a broken glass,
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, In the Self of Mind, [T5],#KEYS
484:A cave of darkness guards the eternal Light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Pursuit of the Unknowable, #KEYS
485:Desire always creates perturbation and even its fulfilment does not satisfy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Desire, #KEYS
486:God in man is the whole revelation and the whole of religion. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, The Glory of God in Man, #KEYS
487:India must remain India if she is to fulfil her destiny. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Indian Resurgence and Europe, #KEYS
488:It was to amuse himself God made the world.
For He was dull alone! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act II,#KEYS
489:Love is the power and passion of the divine self-delight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Love and the Triple Path, #KEYS
490:Mankind is still no more than semi-civilised. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, Indian Spirituality and Life - IV, #KEYS
491:No anti-vital culture can survive. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, A Rationalistic Critic on Indian Culture - V, #KEYS
492:Nothing can evolve out of Matter which is not therein already contained. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Conscious Force, #KEYS
493:Nothing can exist which is not substance and power of Brahman. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Philosophy of Rebirth, #KEYS
494:Pain is the key that opens the gates of strength; it is the high-road that leads to the city of beatitude. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
495:Purity is to accept no other influence but only the influence of the Divine.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [T5],#KEYS
496:Religion has to be lived, not learned as a creed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, A System of National Education, #KEYS
497:Religion is the seeking after the spiritual, the suprarational. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Suprarational Beauty, #KEYS
498:Sheer objectivity brings us down from art to photography. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS
499:The absolute immunity can only come with the supramental change. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Illness and Health, #KEYS
500:The beginning of Ignorance is a limitation of Knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #KEYS
501:The earth you tread is a border screened from heaven ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Call to the Quest, #KEYS
502:The One by whom all live, who lives by none, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Pursuit of the Unknowable, #KEYS
503:The one thing that man sees above the intellect is the spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Power of the Spirit, #KEYS
504:There is no last certitude in which thought can pause ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, #KEYS
505:The true individual is behind veiled by the activities of the outer nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Silence, #KEYS
506:To grieve is an insult to Sri Aurobindo who is here with us, conscious and alive.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, [T5],#KEYS
507:Truth is bare like stone and hard like death; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death, #KEYS
508:All end and beginning presuppose something beyond the end or beginning. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Pure Existent, #KEYS
509:An integral knowledge presupposes an integral Reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #KEYS
510:An unseen Presence moulds the oblivious clay.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, [T5],#KEYS
511:As the darkness disappears, the inner doors too will open. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Patience and Perseverance, #KEYS
512:Dreams that are hints of unborn Reality, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries, #KEYS
513:Essential mentality is idealistic and a seeker after perfection. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Threefold Life, #KEYS
514:Here to fulfil himself was God's desire. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Adoration of the Divine Mother, #KEYS
515:I am an epitome of opposites. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Man, the Despot of Contraries, #KEYS
516:Its signs stare at us like an unknown script,
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge, [T5],#KEYS
517:Plastic and passive to the all-shaping Fire
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdom of Subtle Matter,#KEYS
518:Religion is in the human mind the first native. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, Indian Spirituality and Life - I, #KEYS
519:That Godhead's seed might flower in mindless Space.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
520:The animal prepares human intelligence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolutionary Process - Ascent and Integration, #KEYS
521:To be alone with the Divine is the highest of all privileged states for the sadhak.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
522:According to the status of the soul is the status of the Prakriti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Vijnana or Gnosis, #KEYS
523:A diversity in oneness is the law of the manifestation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #KEYS
524:And all grows beautiful because Thou art. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Divine Hearing, #KEYS
525:As knowledge grows Light flames up from within. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death, #KEYS
526:A vast surrender was his only strength
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Adoration of the Divine Mother,#KEYS
527:Death is his mask and immortality is his self-revelation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Works, Devotion and Knowledge, #KEYS
528:Delight, God's sweetest sign and Beauty's twin. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death, #KEYS
529:Existence is a fundamental unity under a superficial diversity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, The Eternal in His Universe, #KEYS
530:Few are always of one kind and none is entire in his kind. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Three Modes of Nature, #KEYS
531:Here was a quiet country of fixed mind
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,#KEYS
532:Himself was to himself his only scene. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms of the Greater Knowledge, #KEYS
533:If one learns all by oneself, the chances are that one will learn all wrong. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Guru, #KEYS
534:Life is an infinite Force working in the terms of the finite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Death, Desire and Incapacity, #KEYS
535:Man, human, follows in God's human steps. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries, #KEYS
536:Mind-Energy, Life-Energy, material Energy are different dynamisms of one World-Force. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Life, #KEYS
537:Most people do not really choose—they undergo the play of the forces. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Occult Knowledge, #KEYS
538:Nature is God's power of various self-becoming, ātma-vibhūti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Theory of the Vibhuti, #KEYS
539:Of what use are the gods
If they crown not our just desires on earth? ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
540:One has to persevere until the light conquers there. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Peace - The Basis of the Sadhana, #KEYS
541:Sraddha: the soul's belief in the Divine's existence, wisdom, power, love and grace.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
542:The form is phenomenon, the idea is reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Stress of the Hidden Spirit, #KEYS
543:There can be no physical life without an order and rhythm. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Practical Concerns in Work, #KEYS
544:There none was weak, so falsehood could not live; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and Fall of Life, #KEYS
545:The sentinel love in man ever imagines
Strange perils for its object. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
546:The vital and physical life, a human edition of the animal round. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Civilisation and Culture, #KEYS
547:To feed death with her works is here life's doom. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and Fall of Life, #KEYS
548:Truth born too soon might break the imperfect earth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #KEYS
549:Whatever our hearts conceive, our heads create, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdom of Subtle Matter, #KEYS
550:All existences are instinct with the life of the one indivisible Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Two Natures, #KEYS
551:All ignorance is a penumbra which environs an orb of knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine and the Undivine, #KEYS
552:All is a wager and danger, all is a chase and a battle. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana, #KEYS
553:All variations resolve themselves into an unity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, #KEYS
554:An awful Silence watches tragic Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #KEYS
555:Divine compassion which strengthens the arm and clarifies the knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
556:Energy distributes itself, but never really dissipates itself. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Heraclitus - V, #KEYS
557:Faith is the first condition of success in every great undertaking. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, The Leverage of Faith, #KEYS
558:Having once seen God, man can have no farther object in life than to reach and possess Him.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad,#KEYS
559:Immortal bliss lives not in human air. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real, #KEYS
560:My body a dot in the soul's vast expanse. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Self's Infinity, #KEYS
561:Nature must flower into art
And science, or else wherefore are we men? ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
562:None who has not been prodigal of his best has ever risen to greatness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, More about Unity, #KEYS
563:One step firmly taken makes easier all the others. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Purification - The Lower Mentality, #KEYS
564:Reduce your ideal to a system and it at once begins to fail. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Reason as Governor of Life, #KEYS
565:The Divine Force can always do more than the personal effort. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Force in Work, #KEYS
566:The mighty perish in their might;
The slain survive the slayer. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Tiger and the Deer,#KEYS
567:The self of things is an infinite indivisible existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Delight of Existence, The Solution, #KEYS
568:Truth is followed as the path to the divine beatitude. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, To Bhaga Savitri, the Enjoyer, #KEYS
569:Vital forces want neither liberation nor transformation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Attacks by the Hostile Forces, #KEYS
570:Where there is life, there is always a hope of better things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Curve of the Rational Age, #KEYS
571:All the hundred separate paths meet in the Eternal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, #KEYS
572:Alone she is equal to her mighty task. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #KEYS
573:An entry into the gnostic consciousness would be an entry into the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
574:An integral knowledge is the aim of the conscious evolution. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Memory, Ego and Self-Experience, #KEYS
575:Apparent evil is often the shortest way to the good. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Strength of Stillness, #KEYS
576:Development into forms is an imperative rule of effective manifestation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Life and Yoga, #KEYS
577:Even when you cannot aspire actively, keep yourself turned to the Mother for the help to come—that is the one thing to do always. ~ Sri Aurobindo, TMWLOTM, #KEYS
578:Here and not elsewhere the highest Godhead has to be found. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Works, Devotion and Knowledge, #KEYS
579:If we cannot define the Eternal, we can unify ourselves with it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Modes of the Self, #KEYS
580:In every being and object God dwells concealed and discoverable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, God in Power of Becoming, #KEYS
581:In my heart's chamber lives the unworshipped God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Omnipresence, #KEYS
582:It is only through consciousness that we can approach Being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #KEYS
583:Joy that throbs behind
The marvel and the mystery of pain. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,#KEYS
584:No human law is the absolute expression of the divine justice, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Heraclitus - VI, #KEYS
585:One cannot cease to be individually except by being infinitely. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Death, Desire and Incapacity, #KEYS
586:Only in the spiritual self can we possess the true unity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Liberation of the Spirit, #KEYS
587:Open God's door, enter into his trance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul, #KEYS
588:Our lives are God's messengers beneath the stars. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death, #KEYS
589:Regard the nation as a necessary unit but no more in a common humanity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, The Doctrine of Sacrifice, #KEYS
590:Rely on the Mother always. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Experiences on the Subtle Physical, Vital and Mental Planes, #KEYS
591:The earliest formula of Wisdom promises to be its last, -- God, Light, Freedom, Immortality
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
592:The ideal never yet was real made. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal, #KEYS
593:The Inconscient is the Superconscient's sleep. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Ideal, #KEYS
594:The Lord is there, not only in that self, but in Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Fullness of Spiritual Action, #KEYS
595:The realisation of the Self as Sachchidananda is the aim of human existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Self-Realisation, #KEYS
596:The soul is a figure of the Unmanifest, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real, #KEYS
597:The strength of Europe is in details, the strength of Asia in synthesis. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, The Asiatic Role, #KEYS
598:They also are triple, tisraḥ pṛthivīḥ, the three earths. And of all these worlds Surya Savitri is the creator.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda,#KEYS
599:What we call the Ignorance is a cloaked Knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Supermind and Mind of Light, #KEYS
600:You can say that the Supermind is harder than diamond and yet more fluid than gas.
~ A B Purani, Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo by A B Purani, p. 478.,#KEYS
601:You must persevere in your concentration till you come to the point when you no longer lose the inner contact. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
602:Aspiring he transcends his earthly self. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul, #KEYS
603:Brahman self-extended in Space and Time is the universe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad: Brahman, Oneness of God and the World, #KEYS
604:Calm is self's victory overcoming fate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #KEYS
605:Escape, however high, redeems not life, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #KEYS
606:Eternal truth lives not with mortal men. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real, #KEYS
607:Fear is more even of a nervous sensation than an emotion. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Instruments of the Spirit, #KEYS
608:From light lips and casual thoughts
The gods speak best as if by chance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
609:Grief too long continued does not help but delays the journey of the departed soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Death, #KEYS
610:Identification with the body is an error, not an illusion. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Adwaita of Shankaracharya, #KEYS
611:Knowledge and Ignorance are in their nature subjective. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Inner Experience and Outer Life, #KEYS
612:Love, joy and happiness come from the psychic. The Self gives peace or a universal Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, #KEYS
613:Masked the high gods act; the doer is hid by his working. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion, #KEYS
614:Mountains and trees stood there like thoughts from God.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Satyavan and Savitri,#KEYS
615:Nature creates and acts, the Soul enjoys her creation and action. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Field and its Knower, #KEYS
616:Necessity fashions
All that the unseen eye has beheld. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
617:Self-conscious existence is the essential nature of the Being; that is Sat or Purusha.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
618:The Absolute is everywhere; it has to be seen and found everywhere. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Soul and Nature, #KEYS
619:The business of poetry is to express the soul of man to himself. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Ideal Spirit of Poetry, #KEYS
620:The dim subconscient is his cavern base. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul, #KEYS
621:The golden virgin, Usha, mother of life,
Yet virgin. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Urvasie,#KEYS
622:The main business of the heart, its true function is love. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Power of the Instruments, #KEYS
623:The reason deals with the finite and is helpless before the infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Vijnana or Gnosis, #KEYS
624:There is a power in the idea—a force of which the idea is a shape. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Thought and Knowledge, #KEYS
625:There is no I nor thou, but only one divine Self equal in all embodiments. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
626:The supreme greatness cannot come in poetry without the supreme beauty. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Victorian Poets, #KEYS
627:The truth of ourselves lies within and not on the surface. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Delight of Existence, The Solution, #KEYS
628:All is an episode in a meaningless tale. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #KEYS
629:A progressively perfect realisation in the body is the aim of human evolution. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Self-Realisation, #KEYS
630:Division of consciousness is the basis of the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya, #KEYS
631:Every individual man must be in little what the Cosmos is in large. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, The Eternal in His Universe, #KEYS
632:Form has a certain fixity which limits. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, A Rationalistic Critic on Indian Culture - VI, #KEYS
633:In absolute silence sleeps an absolute Power. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Adoration of the Divine Mother, #KEYS
634:It is not possible really to possess what is not-self to us. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads, The Supramental Godhead, #KEYS
635:Knowledge is the foundation of a constant living in the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Love and the Triple Path, #KEYS
636:Man's consciousness can be nothing else than a form of Nature's consciousness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Conscious Force, #KEYS
637:Men work almost always without knowing for what they have worked. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Peril of the World-State, #KEYS
638:Perfection is progressive, evolutive in Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom, #KEYS
639:Rhythm is the most potent, founding element of poetic expression. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Recent English Poetry - II, #KEYS
640:Rise with the world in thy bosom,
O Word gathered into the heart of the Ineffable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Ascent,#KEYS
641:She is the golden bridge, the wonderful fire. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Adoration of the Divine Mother, #KEYS
642:Spiritual power in the present creates material power in the future. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, One More for the Altar, #KEYS
643:The guru is always ready to give what can be given, if the disciple can receive. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Guru, #KEYS
644:The materialist idea mistakes a creation for the creative Power. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge, #KEYS
645:The poet is a magician who hardly knows the secret of his own spell. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Word and the Spirit, #KEYS
646:The rational being is only a middle term of Nature's evolution. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The End of the Curve of Reason, #KEYS
647:Thou art thyself the author of thy pain. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #KEYS
648:We must be governed by the guide within rather than by the opinions of men. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
649:What gives the force and joy of the work is however not physical but vital. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Work and Yoga, #KEYS
650:Where there is no limitation, there can be no pain. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, #KEYS
651:With pain and labour all creation comes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #KEYS
652:A mental knowledge can always be blinded by the tricks of the vital. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Thought and Knowledge, #KEYS
653:A perfected community also can exist only by the perfection of its individuals. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
654:A whole mysterious world is locked within. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul, #KEYS
655:Deep in our being inhabits the voiceless invisible Teacher; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana, #KEYS
656:Each soul is the great Father's crucified Son, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries, #KEYS
657:For each his difficult goal
Hewn out of infinite possibility. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,#KEYS
658:In all action there is an imperative of existence that seeks to be fulfilled. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being, #KEYS
659:In the full realisation the body is within us, not we in it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Adwaita of Shankaracharya, #KEYS
660:It is a truth of the Infinite, one in an infinite diversity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #KEYS
661:What is the Divine?
The Divine is what you adore in Sri Aurobindo.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, [T2],#KEYS
662:Lust is the perversion or degradation which prevents love from establishing its reign. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Sex, #KEYS
663:Necessity is the child of the spirit's free self-determination. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Karma and Freedom, #KEYS
664:One must persist however long it takes, so only one can achieve. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Patience and Perseverance, #KEYS
665:One should be able to see the faults of others without hatred. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Problems in Human Relations, #KEYS
666:Prakriti has to reveal itself as shakti of the Purusha. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Psychology of Self-Perfection, #KEYS
667:Ravenous waves that march
With blue fierce nostrils quivering for prey, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Prologue,#KEYS
668:Taste is natural and quite permissible so long as one is not the slave of the palate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Food, #KEYS
669:The characteristic of Life is desire and the instinct of possession. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Civilisation and Barbarism, #KEYS
670:The complete soul possesses all its self and all Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Involution and Evolution, #KEYS
671:The evening sky,
God's canopy of blue sheltering our lives ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Return to Earth,#KEYS
672:The mind can hardly conceive unity except as an abstraction, a sum or a void. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, The Worlds - Surya, #KEYS
673:The mind labours to think the Unthinkable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real, #KEYS
674:The soul cannot act by itself, it can only act through Nature and her modes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Above the Gunas, #KEYS
675:The soul suffering is not eternity's key, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #KEYS
676:The sunlight was a great god's golden smile. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Birth and Childhood of the Flame, #KEYS
677:The supreme Self is one, but the souls of the Self are many. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #KEYS
678:The true quiet is within and no other will give you the condition you want. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Quiet and Calm, #KEYS
679:this ego-centrism is our rock of safety against the cosmic and the infinite, our defense.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 241,#KEYS
680:those who rely on the Divine will arrive in spite of all difficulties, stumbles or falls.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
681:Thought the great-winged wanderer paraclete ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Thought the Paraclete, #KEYS
682:To our gaze God's light is a darkness, His plan is a chaos. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion, #KEYS
683:Truth and error live always together in the human evolution. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #KEYS
684:When mind is still, then Truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the silence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, #KEYS
685:Without reason life is a tangle of dreams, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real, #KEYS
686:Yoga of Bhakti is a matter of the heart and not of the intellect. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Motives of Devotion, #KEYS
687:You must know what you want and want it with your whole will. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Wrong Movements of the Vital, #KEYS
688:A Calm that cradles Fate upon its knees. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Universal Incarnation, #KEYS
689:All error is a disfiguration of some misunderstood fragments of truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Way of Equality, #KEYS
690:All that we internally are is not ego, but consciousness, soul or spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, #KEYS
691:All this infinite becoming is a birth of the Spirit into form. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Ascending Unity, #KEYS
692:Alone the wise Can walk through fire with unblinking eyes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Epigram, #KEYS
693:A man must be strong and free in himself before he can live usefully for others. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, Opinion and Comments, #KEYS
694:An idiot hour destroys what centuries made ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #KEYS
695:A sincere heart is worth all the extraordinary powers in the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Occult Powers or Siddhis, #KEYS
696:Error is the comrade of our mortal thought ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #KEYS
697:Errors are permitted to the mind because they open doors upon truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Origin of the Ignorance, #KEYS
698:Even the animal is more in touch with a certain harmony in things than man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Science and Yoga, #KEYS
699:Eviller fate there is none than life too long among mortals. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion, #KEYS
700:Falsehood lurks in the deep bosom of truth ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #KEYS
701:God having entirely become Nature, Nature seeks to become progressively God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man in the Universe, #KEYS
702:If one reads Sri Aurobindo carefully one finds the answers to all that one wants to know.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, [T5],#KEYS
703:Karma is only a machinery, it is not the fundamental cause of terrestrial existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, Rebirth, #KEYS
704:Like one who wakes to find his dreams were true
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Ideal,#KEYS
705:Men die that man may live and God be born. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #KEYS
706:Mental knowledge is not true knowledge; true knowledge is that which is based on the true sight, the sight of the Seer, of Surya, of the Kavi. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
707:The body of God,
The link of the finite with the Infinite, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Satyavan and Savitri,#KEYS
708:The essence of consciousness is the power to be aware of itself and its objects. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
709:The Formless and the Formed were joined in her: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Adoration of the Divine Mother, #KEYS
710:The highest heavens of the cosmic plan are subject to a return to rebirth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Supreme Divine, #KEYS
711:The ideal creates the means of attaining the ideal, if it is itself true. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Ideals Face to Face, #KEYS
712:The joy of the soul in the dualities is the secret of the mind's pleasure in living. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Equality, #KEYS
713:The malady of the world is that the individual cannot find his real soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Double Soul in Man, #KEYS
714:The mind is an inveterate divider of the indivisible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Difficulties of the Mental Being, #KEYS
715:The real difficulty is always in ourselves, not in our surroundings. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, The Real Difficulty, #KEYS
716:The root of the past is the source from which the future draws its sap. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, The One Thing Needful, #KEYS
717:Through the shocks of difficulty and death
Man shall attain his godhead. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Prologue,#KEYS
718:Time was Eternity's transparent robe. ~ Sri Aurobindo,