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object:the Divine Force
class:power

class:God

see also :::

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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
SEE ALSO


AUTH

BOOKS
Letters_On_Yoga
Letters_On_Yoga_II
Letters_On_Yoga_III
Letters_On_Yoga_IV
Questions_And_Answers_1950-1951
Questions_And_Answers_1953
Questions_And_Answers_1954
The_Integral_Yoga

IN CHAPTERS TITLE
1.4.02_-_The_Divine_Force
1954-11-10_-_Inner_experience,_the_basis_of_action_-_Keeping_open_to_the_Force_-_Faith_through_aspiration_-_The_Mothers_symbol_-_The_mind_and_vital_seize_experience_-_Degrees_of_sincerity_-Becoming_conscious_of_the_Divine_Force
2.2.03_-_The_Divine_Force_in_Work

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
0.01_-_Letters_from_the_Mother_to_Her_Son
0.03_-_Letters_to_My_little_smile
01.03_-_The_Yoga_of_the_King_-_The_Yoga_of_the_Souls_Release
01.03_-_Yoga_and_the_Ordinary_Life
0.10_-_Letters_to_a_Young_Captain
0.11_-_Letters_to_a_Sadhak
0.14_-_Letters_to_a_Sadhak
0_1955-06-09
0_1958-07-06
0_1960-07-12_-_Mothers_Vision_-_the_Voice,_the_ashram_a_tiny_part_of_myself,_the_Mothers_Force,_sparkling_white_light_compressed_-_enormous_formation_of_negative_vibrations_-_light_in_evil
0_1961-02-11
0_1962-06-02
0_1962-11-17
0_1963-03-30
0_1963-07-27
0_1963-07-31
0_1963-08-10
0_1964-10-07
0_1966-03-26
0_1966-09-03
0_1967-10-04
0_1968-04-10
0_1969-10-18
0_1969-10-25
0_1970-03-25
0_1971-10-23
0_1971-11-20
0_1972-01-15
0_1972-03-30
0_1972-04-04
0_1972-06-07
0_1972-06-24
0_1972-07-08
0_1972-10-25
0_1973-01-10
02.01_-_The_World_War
05.05_-_Of_Some_Supreme_Mysteries
05.28_-_God_Protects
07.10_-_Diseases_and_Accidents
08.04_-_Doing_for_Her_Sake
08.33_-_Opening_to_the_Divine
1.01_-_The_Four_Aids
1.01_-_Two_Powers_Alone
1.02_-_Karmayoga
1.02_-_Self-Consecration
1.04_-_Religion_and_Occultism
1.04_-_The_Divine_Mother_-_This_Is_She
1.05_-_Morality_and_War
1.05_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Sacrifice_-_The_Psychic_Being
1.06_-_Five_Dreams
1.06_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Sacrifice_2_The_Works_of_Love_-_The_Works_of_Life
1.07_-_The_Literal_Qabalah_(continued)
1.08_-_The_Gods_of_the_Veda_-_The_Secret_of_the_Veda
1.1.02_-_Sachchidananda
1.107_-_The_Bestowal_of_a_Divine_Gift
1.11_-_Correspondence_and_Interviews
1.11_-_The_Master_of_the_Work
1.15_-_The_Possibility_and_Purpose_of_Avatarhood
1.17_-_The_Divine_Birth_and_Divine_Works
1.2.02_-_Qualities_Needed_for_Sadhana
1.2.07_-_Surrender
1.2_-_Katha_Upanishads
1.3.01_-_Peace__The_Basis_of_the_Sadhana
1.3.5.05_-_The_Path
1.4.01_-_The_Divine_Grace_and_Guidance
1.4.02_-_The_Divine_Force
1914_12_10p
1929-05-19_-_Mind_and_its_workings,_thought-forms_-_Adverse_conditions_and_Yoga_-_Mental_constructions_-_Illness_and_Yoga
1929-06-09_-_Nature_of_religion_-_Religion_and_the_spiritual_life_-_Descent_of_Divine_Truth_and_Force_-_To_be_sure_of_your_religion,_country,_family-choose_your_own_-_Religion_and_numbers
1929-08-04_-_Surrender_and_sacrifice_-_Personality_and_surrender_-_Desire_and_passion_-_Spirituality_and_morality
1951-02-12_-_Divine_force_-_Signs_indicating_readiness_-_Weakness_in_mind,_vital_-_concentration_-_Divine_perception,_human_notion_of_good,_bad_-_Conversion,_consecration_-_progress_-_Signs_of_entering_the_path_-_kinds_of_meditation_-_aspiration
1951-03-14_-_Plasticity_-_Conditions_for_knowing_the_Divine_Will_-_Illness_-_microbes_-_Fear_-_body-reflexes_-_The_best_possible_happens_-_Theories_of_Creation_-_True_knowledge_-_a_work_to_do_-_the_Ashram
1951-03-24_-_Descent_of_Divine_Love,_of_Consciousness_-_Earth-_a_symbolic_formation_-_the_Divine_Presence_-_The_psychic_being_and_other_worlds_-_Divine_Love_and_Grace_-_Becoming_consaious_of_Divine_Love_-_Finding_ones_psychic_being_-_Responsibility
1951-04-05_-_Illusion_and_interest_in_action_-_The_action_of_the_divine_Grace_and_the_ego_-_Concentration,_aspiration,_will,_inner_silence_-_Value_of_a_story_or_a_language_-_Truth_-_diversity_in_the_world
1951-04-14_-_Surrender_and_sacrifice_-_Idea_of_sacrifice_-_Bahaism_-_martyrdom_-_Sleep-_forgetfulness,_exteriorisation,_etc_-_Dreams_and_visions-_explanations_-_Exteriorisation-_incidents_about_cats
1951-04-17_-_Unity,_diversity_-_Protective_envelope_-_desires_-_consciousness,_true_defence_-_Perfection_of_physical_-_cinema_-_Choice,_constant_and_conscious_-_law_of_ones_being_-_the_One,_the_Multiplicity_-_Civilization-_preparing_an_instrument
1951-04-26_-_Irrevocable_transformation_-_The_divine_Shakti_-_glad_submission_-_Rejection,_integral_-_Consecration_-_total_self-forgetfulness_-_work
1951-05-05_-_Needs_and_desires_-_Discernment_-_sincerity_and_true_perception_-_Mantra_and_its_effects_-_Object_in_action-_to_serve_-_relying_only_on_the_Divine
1953-04-15
1953-05-20
1953-06-17
1953-09-09
1953-12-23
1954-07-07_-_The_inner_warrior_-_Grace_and_the_Falsehood_-_Opening_from_below_-_Surrender_and_inertia_-_Exclusive_receptivity_-_Grace_and_receptivity
1954-08-04_-_Servant_and_worker_-_Justification_of_weakness_-_Play_of_the_Divine_-_Why_are_you_here_in_the_Ashram?
1954-09-15_-_Parts_of_the_being_-_Thoughts_and_impulses_-_The_subconscient_-_Precise_vocabulary_-_The_Grace_and_difficulties
1954-11-03_-_Body_opening_to_the_Divine_-_Concentration_in_the_heart_-_The_army_of_the_Divine_-_The_knot_of_the_ego_-Streng_thening_ones_will
1954-11-10_-_Inner_experience,_the_basis_of_action_-_Keeping_open_to_the_Force_-_Faith_through_aspiration_-_The_Mothers_symbol_-_The_mind_and_vital_seize_experience_-_Degrees_of_sincerity_-Becoming_conscious_of_the_Divine_Force
1955-03-30_-_Yoga-shakti_-_Energies_of_the_earth,_higher_and_lower_-_Illness,_curing_by_yogic_means_-_The_true_self_and_the_psychic_-_Solving_difficulties_by_different_methods
1955-05-25_-_Religion_and_reason_-_true_role_and_field_-_an_obstacle_to_or_minister_of_the_Spirit_-_developing_and_meaning_-_Learning_how_to_live,_the_elite_-_Reason_controls_and_organises_life_-_Nature_is_infrarational
1955-06-15_-_Dynamic_realisation,_transformation_-_The_negative_and_positive_side_of_experience_-_The_image_of_the_dry_coconut_fruit_-_Purusha,_Prakriti,_the_Divine_Mother_-_The_Truth-Creation_-_Pralaya_-_We_are_in_a_transitional_period
1955-11-09_-_Personal_effort,_egoistic_mind_-_Man_is_like_a_public_square_-_Natures_work_-_Ego_needed_for_formation_of_individual_-_Adverse_forces_needed_to_make_man_sincere_-_Determinisms_of_different_planes,_miracles
1955-12-28_-_Aspiration_in_different_parts_of_the_being_-_Enthusiasm_and_gratitude_-_Aspiration_is_in_all_beings_-_Unlimited_power_of_good,_evil_has_a_limit_-_Progress_in_the_parts_of_the_being_-_Significance_of_a_dream
1956-03-07_-_Sacrifice,_Animals,_hostile_forces,_receive_in_proportion_to_consciousness_-_To_be_luminously_open_-_Integral_transformation_-_Pain_of_rejection,_delight_of_progress_-_Spirit_behind_intention_-_Spirit,_matter,_over-simplified
1956-03-14_-_Dynamic_meditation_-_Do_all_as_an_offering_to_the_Divine_-_Significance_of_23.4.56._-_If_twelve_men_of_goodwill_call_the_Divine
1956-06-06_-_Sign_or_indication_from_books_of_revelation_-_Spiritualised_mind_-_Stages_of_sadhana_-_Reversal_of_consciousness_-_Organisation_around_central_Presence_-_Boredom,_most_common_human_malady
1956-08-15_-_Protection,_purification,_fear_-_Atmosphere_at_the_Ashram_on_Darshan_days_-_Darshan_messages_-_Significance_of_15-08_-_State_of_surrender_-_Divine_Grace_always_all-powerful_-_Assumption_of_Virgin_Mary_-_SA_message_of_1947-08-15
1956-09-26_-_Soul_of_desire_-_Openness,_harmony_with_Nature_-_Communion_with_divine_Presence_-_Individuality,_difficulties,_soul_of_desire_-_personal_contact_with_the_Mother_-_Inner_receptivity_-_Bad_thoughts_before_the_Mother
1956-10-10_-_The_supramental_race__in_a_few_centuries_-_Condition_for_new_realisation_-_Everyone_must_follow_his_own_path_-_Progress,_no_two_paths_alike
1957-06-12_-_Fasting_and_spiritual_progress
1957-06-26_-_Birth_through_direct_transmutation_-_Man_and_woman_-_Judging_others_-_divine_Presence_in_all_-_New_birth
1958-03-26_-_Mental_anxiety_and_trust_in_spiritual_power
1958-05-28_-_The_Avatar
1970_02_01
2.04_-_Agni,_the_Illumined_Will
2.08_-_God_in_Power_of_Becoming
2.1.01_-_The_Central_Process_of_the_Sadhana
2.1.02_-_Combining_Work,_Meditation_and_Bhakti
2.1.2_-_The_Vital_and_Other_Levels_of_Being
2.1.4_-_The_Lower_Vital_Being
2.14_-_The_Origin_and_Remedy_of_Falsehood,_Error,_Wrong_and_Evil
2.16_-_Oneness
2.18_-_January_1939
2.2.01_-_Work_and_Yoga
2.2.02_-_Becoming_Conscious_in_Work
2.2.03_-_The_Divine_Force_in_Work
2.2.04_-_Practical_Concerns_in_Work
2.2.05_-_Creative_Activity
2.21_-_1940
2.2.3_-_Depression_and_Despondency
2.24_-_Gnosis_and_Ananda
2.25_-_The_Triple_Transformation
2.3.01_-_Aspiration_and_Surrender_to_the_Mother
2.3.02_-_Opening,_Sincerity_and_the_Mother's_Grace
2.3.04_-_The_Mother's_Force
2.3.05_-_Sadhana_through_Work_for_the_Mother
23.10_-_Observations_II
2.3.2_-_Desire
2.4.02_-_Bhakti,_Devotion,_Worship
24.05_-_Vision_of_Dante
2.4.2_-_Interactions_with_Others_and_the_Practice_of_Yoga
25.02_-_HYMN_TO_DAWN
27.03_-_The_Great_Holocaust_-_Chhinnamasta
2_-_Other_Hymns_to_Agni
3.1.2_-_Levels_of_the_Physical_Being
3.16.2_-_Of_the_Charge_of_the_Spirit
3.2.07_-_Tantra
3.20_-_Of_the_Eucharist
3.2.4_-_Sex
3.3.2_-_Doctors_and_Medicines
34.09_-_Hymn_to_the_Pillar
3.6.01_-_Heraclitus
36.08_-_A_Commentary_on_the_First_Six_Suktas_of_Rigveda
3_-_Commentaries_and_Annotated_Translations
4.01_-_Prayers_and_Meditations
4.02_-_Difficulties
4.1.1_-_The_Difficulties_of_Yoga
4.1.2.03_-_Preparation_for_the_Supramental_Change
4.2.2_-_Steps_towards_Overcoming_Difficulties
4.2.3_-_Vigilance,_Resolution,_Will_and_the_Divine_Help
4.2.4.08_-_Psychic_Sorrow
4.2.4_-_Time_and_CHange_of_the_Nature
4.2.5_-_Dealing_with_Depression_and_Despondency
4.2_-_Karma
4.3.1_-_The_Hostile_Forces_and_the_Difficulties_of_Yoga
4.3.2_-_Attacks_by_the_Hostile_Forces
4.3.3_-_Dealing_with_Hostile_Attacks
4.3.4_-_Accidents,_Possession,_Madness
4.4.1.05_-_Ascent_and_Descent_of_the_Kundalini_Shakti
4.4.4.05_-_The_Descent_of_Force_or_Power
4.4.5.03_-_Descent_and_Other_Experiences
4.4.6.01_-_Sensations_in_the_Inner_Centres
5.1.03_-_The_Hostile_Forces_and_Hostile_Beings
7.06_-_The_Body_(the_Physical)
BOOK_II._--_PART_II._THE_ARCHAIC_SYMBOLISM_OF_THE_WORLD-RELIGIONS
Conversations_with_Sri_Aurobindo
r1912_12_31
r1914_05_21
r1914_06_01
r1915_01_05a
Talks_151-175
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_1
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_2
The_Riddle_of_this_World

PRIMARY CLASS

God
power
SIMILAR TITLES
the Divine Force

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH


TERMS ANYWHERE

1. Again an equivoque on the double sense of svadhiti, an axe or other cleaving instrument and the self-ordering power of Nature, Swadha. The image is of the progress of the divine Force through the forests of the material existence as with an axe. But the axe is the natural self-arranging progression of Nature, the World-Energy, the Mother from whom this divine Force, son of Energy, is born.

Action of the Divine Force: What comes from above can come when one is In a clear mind or when the vital is disturbed, when one is in meditation or when one is moving about, when one is working or when one is doing nothing. Most often it comes when one is in a clear concentrated stale, but it may not,

Adisakti (Sanskrit) Ādiśakti [from ādi first + śakti power, energy] Primeval power; the divine force or direct energic emanation from mulaprakriti, hence the feminine aspect or clothing of any spiritually formative potency. Personified in the Hindu pantheon as the consort of a divinity, every divinity having its own sakti or formative power-substance. Also a name for maya, significant because illusion begins with manifestation (SD 1:10).

  Again an equivoque on the double sense of svadhiti, an axe or other cleaving instrument and the self-ordering power of Nature, Swadha. The image is of the progress of the divine Force through the forests of the material existence as with an axe. But the axe is the natural self-arranging progression of Nature, the World-Energy, the Mother from whom this divine Force, son of Energy, is born.

A glad and strong and helpful ^submission is demanded to the working of the Divine Force, the obedience of the Illumined disciple of thb Truth, of the inner warrior who fights against obscurity hnd falsehood, of the faithful servant of the Divine.

Agni-Vayu (Agni-Vayu; Agni Vayu) ::: Agni2, the divine Force, workAgni-Vayu ing through the vital energy of Vayu2.Agni-V Agni-Vayu-Aryaman

"Always keep in touch with the Divine Force. The best thing for you is to do that simply and allow it to do its own work; wherever necessary, it will take hold of the inferior energies and purify them; at other times it will empty you of them and fill you with itself. But if you let your mind take the lead and discuss and decide what is to be done, you will lose touch with the Divine Force and the lower energies will begin to act for themselves and all go into confusion and a wrong movement.” Letters on Yoga

“Always keep in touch with the Divine Force. The best thing for you is to do that simply and allow it to do its own work; wherever necessary, it will take hold of the inferior energies and purify them; at other times it will empty you of them and fill you with itself. But if you let your mind take the lead and discuss and decide what is to be done, you will lose touch with the Divine Force and the lower energies will begin to act for themselves and all go into confusion and a wrong movement.” Letters on Yoga

And it is the repeated and constant descent of the Divine Cons- ciousness and its Force that is the means for the transformation of the whole being and (he whole nature. Once this descent becomes habitual, the Divine Force, the Power of the Mother, begins to work, no longer from above only or from behind the veil, but consciously in the udhara itself, and deals with its diffi- culties and possibilities and carries the Yoga

An inert passivity is constantly confused with the real sur- render, but out of an inert passivity nothing true and powerful can come. It is the inert passivity of physical Nature that leaves it at the mercy of every obscure or undivlne influence. A glad and strong and helpful submission Is demanded to the working of the Divine Force, the obedience of the illumined disciple of the

Atman is for each individualized consciousness its laya-center or entrance way into cosmic manifestation. It is our self precisely because it is a link which connects us with the cosmic hierarch. Through this atmic laya-center stream the divine forces from above, which by their unfolding on the lower planes originate and become seven principles. “We say that the Spirit (the ‘Father in secret’ of Jesus), or Atman, is no individual property of any man, but is the Divine essence which has no body, no form, which is imponderable, invisible and indivisible, that which does not exist and yet is, as the Buddhists say of Nirvana. It only overshadows the mortal; that which enters into him and pervades the whole body being only its omnipresent rays, or light, radiated through Buddhi, its vehicle and direct emanation” (Key 101).

ATTITUDE. ::: A glad and strong and helpful submission is demanded to the working of the Divine Force, the obedience of the illumined disciple of the Truth, of the inner Warrior who fights against obscurity and falsehood, of the faithful servant of the Divine.

Best method of sadhana ::: To have the basis of quietude and allow the Divine Force to work in you' firmly and quietly is always the best method ; it is not necessary to proceed through a big personal effort, disturbance and struggle.

But still it is the personal effort that Is prominent and assumes most of the burden. The other way is that of the psychic being, the consciousness opening to the Divine, not only opening the psychic and bringing it forward, but opening the mind, the vital and the physical, receiving the Light, perceiving what is to be done, feeling and seeing it done by the Divine Force itself and helping constantly by its own vigilant and conscious assent to and call for the Divine working.

"By Force I mean not mental or vital energy but the Divine Force from above — as peace comes from above and wideness also, so does this Force (Shakti). Nothing, not even thinking or meditating can be done without some action of Force. The Force I speak of is a Force for illumination, transformation, purification, all that has to be done in the yoga, for removal of hostile forces and the wrong movements — it is also of course for external work, whether great or small in appearance does not matter — if that is part of the Divine Will. I do not mean any personal force egoistic or rajasic.” Letters on Yoga

“By Force I mean not mental or vital energy but the Divine Force from above—as peace comes from above and wideness also, so does this Force (Shakti). Nothing, not even thinking or meditating can be done without some action of Force. The Force I speak of is a Force for illumination, transformation, purification, all that has to be done in the yoga, for removal of hostile forces and the wrong movements—it is also of course for external work, whether great or small in appearance does not matter—if that is part of the Divine Will. I do not mean any personal force egoistic or rajasic.” Letters on Yoga

“By Force I mean not mental or vital energy but the Divine Force from above—as peace comes from above and wideness also, so does this Force (Shakti). Nothing, not even thinking or meditating can be done without some action

can we hope to be directly aware of the Divine in us and directly in touch with the Divine Light and the Divine Force. Otherwise we can feel the Divine only through external signs and external results and that is a diflicult and uncertain way and very occa- sional and inconstant, and it leads only to belief and not to knowledge, not to the direct consciousness and awareness of the constant presence.

Divine, rejecting what has to be rejected, opening oneself to the true Light and true Force, calling it down quietly, steadfastly, without tiring, without depression or impatience, until one feels the Divine Force at work and the obstacle beginning to give way.

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 (the) ::: the Divine Force, 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; in the individual it is a Force for illumination, transformation, purification, for all that has to be done in the yoga.

Force (the Mother's) ::: the higher Force of the Divine that descends from above to transform the nature; the Divine Force which works to remove the ignorance and change the nature into the divine nature.

\’ihat is the Divine Force, what is the element of personal effort, and what is brought in as a mixture from the lower cosmic forces.

INSTRUMENT. ::: To be able to receive the Divine Power and let it act through you in the things of the outward life, there are three necessary conditions ::: (I) Quietude, equality — not to be disturbed by anything that happens, to keep the mind still and firm, seeing the play of forces, but itself tranquil. (2) Absolute faith — faith that what is for the best will happen, but also that if one can make oneself a true instrument, the fruit will be that which one's will guided by the Divine Light sees as the thing to be done. (3) Receptivity — the power to receive the Divine Force and to feel its presence and the presence of the Mother in it and allow it to work, guiding one’s sight and will and action.

If this power and presence can be felt and this plasticity made the habit of the consciousness in action, — but plasticity to the Divine Force alone without bringing in any foreign clement, — the eventual result is sure.

Conditions to become an instrument of the Divine ::: A receptive silence of the mind, an effacemenl of the mental ego and the reduction of the mental being to the position of a witness, a close find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity ; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasya needed too constant and intense.


INTEGRAL YOGA ::: This yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ānanda. But for that, the surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to the Higher Consciousnessis indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this yoga.

Aim of the Integral Yoga ::: It is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter.

Conditions of the Integral Yoga ::: This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasyā needed too constant and intense.

Method in the Integral Yoga ::: To concentrate, preferably in the heart and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness. One can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is the beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.

Integral method ::: The method we have to pursue is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform Our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sādhaka of the sādhana* as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.

In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sādhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for the weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It” makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.” The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a Succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.

There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.

Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some elements or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.

Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and selfconscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.

Key-methods ::: The way to devotion and surrender. It is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of the ego that makes it possible to surrender.

The way to knowledge. Meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and fills the body and begins to take up all the movements.
Yoga by works ::: Separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. The other way of beginning the yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.

Object of the Integral Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine’s sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine.

Principle of the Integral Yoga ::: The whole principle of Integral Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ānanda of the Supramental Divine.

Central purpose of the Integral Yoga ::: Transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life.

Fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga ::: The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.

Results ::: First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.

Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujya mukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda ; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sādharmya mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.

By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.

The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. In integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ānanda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ānanda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.

Sādhanā of the Integral Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by a self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.

The yoga does not proceed by upadeśa but by inner influence.

Integral Yoga and Gita ::: The Gita’s Yoga consists in the offering of one’s work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.

Our yoga is not identical with the yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s yoga. In our yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress ; or else we make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.

Integral Yoga, Gita and Tantra ::: The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishvara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it.

The Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishvari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it.

This yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the yoga.

Integral Yoga and Hatha-Raja Yogas ::: For an integral yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. Their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psychophysical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. Integral Yoga and Kundalini Yoga: There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. It is the ascending of the lower consciousness in the ādhāra to meet the greater consciousness above. It is a movement analogous to that on which so much stress is laid in the Tantric process, the awakening of the Kundalini, the Energy coiled up and latent in the body and its mounting through the spinal cord and the centres (cakras) and the Brahmarandhra to meet the Divine above. In our yoga it is not a specialised process, but a spontaneous upnish of the whole lower consciousness sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body.

Integral Yoga and other Yogas ::: The old yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-exist- ence, absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the Supramcntal plane.

The suprcfhe supra-cosmic Sachchidananda is above all. Supermind may be described as its power of self-awareness and W’orld- awareness, the world being known as within itself and not out- side. So to live consciously in the supreme Sachchidananda one must pass through the Supermind.

Distinction ::: The realisation of Self and of the Cosmic being (without which the realisation of the Self is incomplete) are essential steps in our yoga ; it is the end of other yogas, but it is, as it were, the beginning of outs, that is to say, the point where its own characteristic realisation can commence.

It is new as compared with the old yogas (1) Because it aims not at a departure out of world and life into Heaven and Nir- vana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object.

If there is a descent in other yogas, yet it is only an incident on the way or resulting from the ascent — the ascent is the real thing. Here the ascent is the first step, but it is a means for the descent. It is the descent of the new coosdousness attain- ed by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana. Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life ; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life.

(2) Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic acbievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.

(3) Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods, but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive.

Integral Yoga and Patanjali Yoga ::: Cilia is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc.

It is these that in the Patanjali system have to be stilled altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into Samadhi.

Our yoga has a different function. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature.


In the receiving there must be no inability to contain, no breaking down of anything In the system, mind or life or nerv'e or body under the traasmudng stress. There must be an endless receptivity, an always increasing edacity to bear an ever stronger and more and more insistent action of the divine Force. Other- wise notlung great or permanent can be done ; the Yoga will end in a break-down or an inert stoppage or a stultifying or a disastrous arrest in a process which must be absolute and integral if it is not to be a failure.

Jhumur: “It is the very principle of life which is a projection and emanation of the Divine Force. Wings symbolise freedom of movement joining various planes and the coming down of the Angel bringing the divine principles with her.”

Kartikeya and Peacock ::: The peacock is the bird of Victojy and Kartikeya the leader of the divine forces.

Karttikeya ::: leader of the divine forces, represents victory over the hostile Powers.

Lilamayi: A connotative name of the divine force whom creation and dissolution are mere play or sport.

lilamayi. ::: the magical play of the creative power; the divine force whom creation and dissolution are mere play or sport

lines, that is by the Divine Will and the Divine Force, as an instrument, but never as an instrumentation of the forces and beings of the vital plane. To seek their aid for such powers is a great error.

MADNESS. ::: People go mad because they have a physical predisposition due either to heredity or to some kind of organic cause or secret illness Eke syphilis, the action being often brought up by some psychological factor (ambition turning to megalomania, hypochondria, melancholia etc.). There may be an invasion of an alien Force bringing about the upsetting, but it is not the Divine Force, it is a vital Force that invades. The

"Nothing can happen without the presence and support of the Divine, for Nature or Prakriti is the Divine Force and it is this that works out things, but it works them out according to the nature and through or with the will of each man which is full of ignorance — that goes on until men turn to the Divine and become conscious of Him and united with Him. Then only can it be said that all begins to be done in him by the direct Will of the Divine.” Letters on Yoga

“Nothing can happen without the presence and support of the Divine, for Nature or Prakriti is the Divine Force and it is this that works out things, but it works them out according to the nature and through or with the will of each man which is full of ignorance—that goes on until men turn to the Divine and become conscious of Him and united with Him. Then only can it be said that all begins to be done in him by the direct Will of the Divine.” Letters on Yoga

— one by the action of a vigilant mind and vital seeing, observ- ing, thinking and deciding what Is or is not to be done. Of course it acts with the Divine Force behind it, drawing or call- ing in that Force — for otherwise nothing much can be done.

::: "Our incapacity does not matter — there is no human being who is not in his parts of nature incapable — but the Divine Force also is there. If one puts one"s trust in that, incapacity will be changed into capacity. Difficulty and struggle themselves then become a means towards the achievement.” Letters on Yoga

“Our incapacity does not matter—there is no human being who is not in his parts of nature incapable—but the Divine Force also is there. If one puts one’s trust in that, incapacity will be changed into capacity. Difficulty and struggle themselves then become a means towards the achievement.” Letters on Yoga

"Our nature is not only mistaken in will and ignorant in knowledge but weak in power; but the Divine Force is there and will lead us if we trust in it and it will use our deficiencies and our powers for the divine purpose. If we fail in our immediate aim, it is because he has intended the failure; often our failure or ill-result is the right road to a truer issue than an immediate and complete success would have put in our reach. If we suffer, it is because something in us has to be prepared for a rarer possibility of delight. If we stumble, it is to learn in the end the secret of a more perfect walking.” The Synthesis of Yoga

“Our nature is not only mistaken in will and ignorant in knowledge but weak in power; but the Divine Force is there and will lead us if we trust in it and it will use our deficiencies and our powers for the divine purpose. If we fail in our immediate aim, it is because he has intended the failure; often our failure or ill-result is the right road to a truer issue than an immediate and complete success would have put in our reach. If we suffer, it is because something in us has to be prepared for a rarer possibility of delight. If we stumble, it is to learn in the end the secret of a more perfect walking.” The Synthesis of Yoga

pulling ::: drawing down too eagerly the divine force or a spiritual experience, instead of letting it descend quietly.

quote :::There are two forces in the universe, Qazā, the divine force that is working through all things and beings, and Qadr, the free will of the individual.

receptivity ::: the power to receive the Divine Force and to feel its presence and allow it to work, guiding one's sight and will and action; the capacity of admitting and retaining the divine workings. "One may be receptive, yet externally unaware of how things are being done and of what is being done. The force works...behind the veil; the results remain packed behind and come out afterwards, often slowly, little by little" [S24:1361]

"Remind yourself always that the Divine Force is there, that you have felt it and that, even if you seem to lose consciousness of it for a time or it seems something distant, still it is there and is sure to prevail. For those whom the Force has touched and taken up, belong thenceforth to the Divine.” Letters on Yoga

“Remind yourself always that the Divine Force is there, that you have felt it and that, even if you seem to lose consciousness of it for a time or it seems something distant, still it is there and is sure to prevail. For those whom the Force has touched and taken up, belong thenceforth to the Divine.” Letters on Yoga

Serpent ::: Symbol of energy, especially of the Kundalini Shakti which is the divine Force coiled up in the lowest centre, niufd- dhSra. Serpent with the hood over the head generally indicates future siddlii. Opening of the hood indicates the victorious or successful activity of the Energy indicated by the snake.

Tantras the Kundalini Shakti. But it is also above us, above our head as the Divine Force — not there coiled up, involved, asleep, but awake, sclent, potent, extended and wide ; it is there waiting for manifestation and to this force we have to open ourselves — ■ to the power of the Mother.

tapas ::: "concentration of power of consciousness"; will-power; the force that acts through aisvarya, isita and vasita, or the combination of these siddhis of power themselves, sometimes listed as the fourth of five members of the vijñana catus.t.aya; the divine force of action into which rajas is transformed in the liberation (mukti) of the nature from the trigun.a of the lower prakr.ti, a power "which has no desire because it exercises a universal possession and a spontaneous Ananda .. of its movements"; the force manifested by an aspect of daivi prakr.ti (see Mahakali tapas, Mahasarasvati tapas); (also called cit-tapas)"infinite conscious energy", the principle that is the basis of tapoloka; limited mental will and power. Tapas is "the will of the transcendent spirit who creates the universal movement, of the universal spirit who supports and informs it, of the free individual spirit who is the soul centre of its multiplicities. . . . But the moment the individual soul leans away from the universal and transcendent truth of its being, . . . that will changes its character: it becomes an effort, a straining". tapas ananda

"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

“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

"The Divine Force concealed in the subconscient is that which has originated and built up the worlds. At the other end in the superconscient it reveals itself as the Divine Being, Lord and Knower who has manifested Himself out of the Brahman.” The Upanishads ::: See also divine Force for additional definitions.

“The Divine Force concealed in the subconscient is that which has originated and built up the worlds. At the other end in the superconscient it reveals itself as the Divine Being, Lord and Knower who has manifested Himself out of the Brahman.” The Upanishads

The feeling that the Divine Force is working behind one s actions and leading at every moment.

The personal effort has to be transformed progressively into a movement of the Divine Force. If you feel conscious of the

The physical nature is a thing of habits ; it is out of habit that it responds to the forces of illness ; one has to get into it the contrary habit of responding to the Divine Force only. This, of course, so long as a highest consciousness does not descend to which illness Is impossible.

The power to receive the Divine Force and to feel its presence and the presence of the Mother in it and allow it to work, guid- ing one’s sight and will and action;

"The serpent is the symbol of energy — especially of the Kundalini Shakti which is the divine Force coiled up in the lowest (physical) centre, Muladhara, and when it rises it goes up through the spine and joins the higher consciousness above.” Letters on Yoga

“The serpent is the symbol of energy—especially of the Kundalini Shakti which is the divine Force coiled up in the lowest (physical) centre, Muladhara, and when it rises it goes up through the spine and joins the higher consciousness above.” Letters on Yoga

:::   "The true emptiness is the beginning of what I call in the Arya ‘sama ‘ — the rest, calm, peace of the eternal Self — which has finally to replace tamas, the physical inertia. Tamas is the degradation of sama , as rajas is the degradation of Tapas, the Divine Force.” *Letters on Yoga

“The true emptiness is the beginning of what I call in the Arya ‘sama ‘—the rest, calm, peace of the eternal Self—which has finally to replace tamas, the physical inertia. Tamas is the degradation of sama , as rajas is the degradation of Tapas, the Divine Force.” Letters on Yoga

' Th’o rvnj'J of doing the yoga ::: One by the action of a vigi- lant mind and s’ital seeing, observing, thinking and deciding wbat is or not to be done. The other way h that of the psychic being, the consciousness opening to the Divine, not only opening the psychic and bringing it forward, but opening the mind, the vital and the physical, receiving the light, perceiving what is to be done, feeling and seeing it done by the Divine Force itself and helping constantly by its own vigilant and conscious assent to and call for the Divine Worldng.

Ve (Scandinavian), Vei, Vi (Icelandic) [cognate with vigan to carry high, venerate] Sacred, holy; in Norse mythology, the brother of Odin (spirit) and Vile (will), the creative deities who bring a universe into existence. They are born of the primeval pair Bore and Bestla, karmic residue from the previous life cycle, and correspond to the Greek Logos, the Word or intelligence from which emanate the divine forces which organize kosmos out of chaos. Odin and his two brothers “slay” the frostgiant Ymer — the latent matter of worlds — transforming him into an orderly universe, into which they infuse consciousness and life from their own essence.

When there is an attack from the human instruments of adverse forces, one should try to overcome it not in a spirit of personal hatred or anger or wounded egoism, but with a calm spirit of strength and equality and a call to the Divine Force to act.



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   16 Sri Aurobindo
   5 The Mother
   1 Sri Aurobindo

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   16 Sri Aurobindo
   7 The Mother
   2 Wayne Dyer
   2 Paulo Coelho
   2 Michael A Singer

1:The Divine Force can always do more than the personal effort. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Force in Work,
2:Those whom the Force has touched and taken up, belong thenceforth to the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Force,
3:The best expenditure of energy is that which flows easily without effort at all. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Force in Work,
4:Inspiration comes from above in answer to a state of concentration which is itself a call to it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Force in Work,
5:To be able to work with full energy is necessary—but to be able not to work is also necessary. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Force in Work,
6:If there is energy, all must not be spent, some must be stored up so as to increase the permanent strength of the system. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Force in Work,
7:The idea of helping others is a subtle form of the ego. It is only the Divine Force that can help. One can be its instrument, but you should first learn to be a fit and egoless instrument. ~ Sri Aurobindo, LOY4,
8:Always indeed it is the higher Power that acts. Our sense of personal effort and aspiration comes from the attempt of the egoistic mind to identify itself in a wrong and imperfect way with the workings of the divine Force.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids, 59,
9:Remind yourself always that the Divine Force is there, that you have felt it and that, even if you seem to lose consciousness of it for a time or it seems something distant, still it is there and is sure to prevail For those whom the Force has touched and taken up, belong thenceforth to the Divine.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,
10:The Divine Grace and Power can do anything, but with the full assent of the sadhak.
   To learn to give the full assent, is the whole meaning of the sadhana. It may take time either because of ideas in the mind, desires in the vital or inertia in the physical consciousness, but these things have to be and can be removed with the aid or by calling in the action of the Divine Force.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [T9],
11:To be miserable may remind you of the defects of your external nature, but I do not see how it is going to cure them. I am not asking you to be frivolously happy, but to be quiet and quietly confident, rejecting these old movements, but for the rest trusting not in a restless self-torturing personal effort but to the Divine Force to change the external nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV, Dealing with Depression and Despondency,
12:fundamentally, all pain and suffering are the result of an insufficient consciousness-force in the surface being which makes it unable to deal rightly with self and Nature or unable to assimilate and to harmonise itself with the contacts of the universal Energy; they would not exist if in us there were an integral presence of the luminous Consciousness and the divine Force of an integral Being.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Origin of Falsehood and Evil [623],
13:What is needed is perseverance-to go on without discouragement, recognising that the process of the nature and the action of the Mother's force is working through the difficulty even and will do all that is needed. Our incapacity does not matter-there is no human being who is not in his parts of nature incapable-but the Divine Force is also there. If one puts one's trust in that, incapacity will be changed into capacity. Difficulty and struggle themselves then become a means towards the achievement.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, Letters On The Mother,
14:  If everything depends on the Divine intervention, then man is only a puppet and there is no use of sadhana, and there are no conditions, no law of things - therefore no universe, but only the Divine rolling things about at his pleasure. No doubt in the last resort all can be said to be the Divine cosmic working, but it is through persons, through forces that it works - under the conditions of Nature. Special intervention there can be and is, but all cannot be special intervention.

  The Divine Grace and Power can do everything, but with the full assent of the sadhak. To learn to give that full assent is the whole meaning of the sadhana. It may take time either because of ideas in the mind, desires in the vital or inertia in the physical consciousness, but these things have to be and can be removed with the aid or by calling in the action of the Divine Force. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga II, 1.4.01,
15:To be able to receive the Divine Power and let act through you in the things of the outward life, there are three necessary conditions:
(i) Quietude, equality - not to be disturbed by anything that happens, to keep the mind still and firm, seeing the play of forces, but itself tranquil.
(ii) Absolute faith - faith that what is for the best will happen, but also that if one can make oneself a true instrument, the fruit will be that which one's will guided by the Divine Light sees as the thing to be done - kartavyam karma.
(iii) Receptivity - the power to receive the Divine Force and to feel its presence and the presence of the Mother in it and allow it to work, guiding one's sight and will and action. If this power and presence can be felt and this plasticity made the habit of the consciousness in action, - but plasticity to the Divine force alone without bringing in any foreign element, - the eventual result is sure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,
16:The Teacher of the integral Yoga will follow as far as he may the method of the Teacher within us. He will lead the disciple through the nature of the disciple. Teaching, example, influence, - these are the three instruments of the Guru. But the wise Teacher will not seek to impose himself or his opinions on the passive acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and sure as a seed which will grow under the divine fostering within. He will seek to awaken much more than to instruct; he will aim at the growth of the faculties and the experiences by a natural process and free expansion. He will give a method as an aid, as a utilisable device, not as an imperative formula or a fixed routine. And he will be on his guard against any turning of the means into a limitation, against the mechanising of process. His whole business is to awaken the divine light and set working the divine force of which he himself is only a means and an aid, a body or a channel. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
17:I think one of the most important thing is to know why one meditates; this is what gives the quality of the meditation and makes it of one order or another.
You may meditate to open yourself to the divine Force, you may meditate to reject the ordinary consciousness, you may meditate to enter the depths of your being, you may meditate to learn how to give yourself integrally; you may meditate for all kinds of things. You may meditate to enter into peace and calm and silence - this is what people generally do, but without much success. But you may also meditate to receive the Force of transformation, to discover the points to be transformed, to trace out the line of progress. And then you may also meditate for very practical reasons: when you have a difficulty to clear up, a solution to find, when you want help in some action or another. You may meditate for that too.
I think everyone has his own mode of meditation. But if one wants the meditation to be dynamic, one must have an aspiration for progress and the meditation must be done to help and fulfill this aspiration for progress. Then it becomes dynamic. ~ The Mother,
18:Sweet Mother, how can we cut the knot of the ego?
   How to cut it? Take a sword and strike it (laughter), when one becomes conscious of it. For usually one is not; we think it quite normal, what happens to us; and in fact it is very normal but we think it quite good also. So to begin with one must have a great clear-sightedness to become aware that one is enclosed in all these knots which hold one in bondage. And then, when one is aware that there's something altogether tightly closed in there - so tightly that one has tried in vain to move it - then one imagines one's will to be a very sharp sword-blade, and with all one's force one strikes a blow on this knot (imaginary, of course, one doesn't take up a sword in fact), and this produces a result. Of course you can do this work from the psychological point of view, discovering all the elements constituting this knot, the whole set of resistances, habits, preferences, of all that holds you narrowly closed in. So when you grow aware of this, you can concentrate and call the divine Force and the Grace and strike a good blow on this formation, these things so closely held, like that, that nothing can separate them. And at that moment you must resolve that you will no longer listen to these things, that you will listen only to the divine Consciousness and will do no other work except the divine work without worrying about personal results, free from all attachment, free from all preference, free from all wish for success, power, satisfaction, vanity, all this.... All this must disappear and you must see only the divine Will incarnated in your will and making you act. Then, in this way, you are cured.
   ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954,
19:Sweet Mother, how can we cut the knot of the ego?

   How to cut it? Take a sword and strike it (laughter), when one becomes conscious of it. For usually one is not; we think it quite normal, what happens to us; and in fact it is very normal but we think it quite good also. So to begin with one must have a great clear-sightedness to become aware that one is enclosed in all these knots which hold one in bondage. And then, when one is aware that there's something altogether tightly closed in there - so tightly that one has tried in vain to move it - then one imagines one's will to be a very sharp sword-blade, and with all one's force one strikes a blow on this knot (imaginary, of course, one doesn't take up a sword in fact), and this produces a result. Of course you can do this work from the psychological point of view, discovering all the elements constituting this knot, the whole set of resistances, habits, preferences, of all that holds you narrowly closed in. So when you grow aware of this, you can concentrate and call the divine Force and the Grace and strike a good blow on this formation, these things so closely held, like that, that nothing can separate them. And at that moment you must resolve that you will no longer listen to these things, that you will listen only to the divine Consciousness and will do no other work except the divine work without worrying about personal results, free from all attachment, free from all preference, free from all wish for success, power, satisfaction, vanity, all this.... All this must disappear and you must see only the divine Will incarnated in your will and making you act. Then, in this way, you are cured.
   ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954,
20:... The first opening is effected by a concentration in the heart, a call to the Divine to manifest within us and through the psychic to take up and lead the whole nature. Aspiration, prayer, bhakti, love, surrender are the main supports of this part of the sadhana - accompanied by a rejection of all that stands in the way of what we aspire for. The second opening is effected by a concentration of the consciousness in the head (afterwards, above it) and an aspiration and call and a sustained will for the descent of the divine Peace, Power, Light, Knowledge, Ananda into the being - the Peace first or the Peace and Force together. Some indeed receive Light first or Ananda first or some sudden pouring down of knowledge. With some there is first an opening which reveals to them a vast infinite Silence, Force, Light or Bliss above them and afterwards either they ascend to that or these things begin to descend into the lower nature. With others there is either the descent, first into the head, then down to the heart level, then to the navel and below and through the whole body, or else an inexplicable opening - without any sense of descent - of peace, light, wideness or power or else a horizontal opening into the cosmic consciousness or, in a suddenly widened mind, an outburst of knowledge. Whatever comes has to be welcomed - for there is no absolute rule for all, - but if the peace has not come first, care must be taken not to swell oneself in exultation or lose the balance. The capital movement however is when the Divine Force or Shakti, the power of the Mother comes down and takes hold, for then the organisation of the consciousness begins and the larger foundation of the Yoga.

   The result of the concentration is not usually immediate - though to some there comes a swift and sudden outflowering; but with most there is a time longer or shorter of adaptation or preparation, especially if the nature has not been prepared already to some extent by aspiration and tapasya. ... ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,
21:The guiding law of spiritual experience can only come by an opening of human consciousness to the Divine Consciousness; there must be the power to receive in us the working and command and dynamic presence of the Divine Shakti and surrender ourselves to her control; it is that surrender and that control which bring the guidance. But the surrender is not sure, there is no absolute certitude of the guidance so long as we are besieged by mind formations and life impulses and instigations of ego which may easily betray us into the hands of a false experience. This danger can only be countered by the opening of a now nine-tenths concealed inmost soul or psychic being that is already there but not commonly active within us. That is the inner light we must liberate; for the light of this inmost soul is our one sure illumination so long as we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and the Truth-consciousness has not taken up the entire control of our Godward endeavour. The working of the Divine Force in us under the conditions of the transition and the light of the psychic being turning us always towards a conscious and seeing obedience to that higher impulsion and away from the demands and instigations of the Forces of the Ignorance, these between them create an ever progressive inner law of our action which continues till the spiritual and supramental can be established in our nature. In the transition there may well be a period in which we take up all life and action and offer them to the Divine for purification, change and deliverance of the truth within them, another period in which we draw back and build a spiritual wall around us admitting through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of the spiritual transformation, a third in which a free and all-embracing action, but with new forms fit for the utter truth of the Spirit, can again be made possible. These things, however, will be decided by no mental rule but in the light of the soul within us and by the ordaining force and progressive guidance of the Divine Power that secretly or overtly first impels, then begins clearly to control and order and finally takes up the whole burden of the Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 138,
22:The Teacher of the integral Yoga will follow as far as he may the method of the Teacher within us. He will lead the disciple through the nature of the disciple. Teaching, example, influence, - these are the three instruments of the Guru. But the wise Teacher will not seek to impose himself or his opinions on the passive acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and sure as a seed which will grow under the divine fostering within. He will seek to awaken much more than to instruct; he will aim at the growth of the faculties and the experiences by a natural process and free expansion. He will give a method as an aid, as a utilisable device, not as an imperative formula or a fixed routine. And he will be on his guard against any turning of the means into a limitation, against the mechanising of process. His whole business is to awaken the divine light and set working the divine force of which he himself is only a means and an aid, a body or a channel.

The example is more powerful than the instruction; but it is not the example of the outward acts nor that of the personal character which is of most importance. These have their place and their utility; but what will most stimulate aspiration in others is the central fact of the divine realisation within him governing his whole life and inner state and all his activities. This is the universal and essential element; the rest belongs to individual person and circumstance. It is this dynamic realisation that the sadhaka must feel and reproduce in himself according to his own nature; he need not strive after an imitation from outside which may well be sterilising rather than productive of right and natural fruits.

Influence is more important than example. Influence is not the outward authority of the Teacher over his disciple, but the power of his contact, of his presence, of the nearness of his soul to the soul of another, infusing into it, even though in silence, that which he himself is and possesses. This is the supreme sign of the Master. For the greatest Master is much less a Teacher than a Presence pouring the divine consciousness and its constituting light and power and purity and bliss into all who are receptive around him.

And it shall also be a sign of the teacher of the integral Yoga that he does not arrogate to himself Guruhood in a humanly vain and self-exalting spirit. His work, if he has one, is a trust from above, he himself a channel, a vessel or a representative. He is a man helping his brothers, a child leading children, a Light kindling other lights, an awakened Soul awakening souls, at highest a Power or Presence of the Divine calling to him other powers of the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:Instead of being encouraged to feel completely protected, loved, honored, and respected by the Divine Force, you've been taught that you're being judged. Because you've been taught that, you feel guilt and fear. But guilt and fear do not open you connection to the Divine; they only serve to close your heart. The reality is that God's way is love, and you can see this for yourself. ~ michael-singer, @wisdomtrove
2:Instead of being encouraged to feel completely protected, loved, honored, and respected by the Divine Force, you’ve been taught that you’re being judged. Because you’ve been taught that, you feel guilt and fear. But guilt and fear do not open your connection to the Divine; they only serve to close your heart. The reality is that God’s way is love, and you can see this for yourself. – Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself ~ michael-singer, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:Mozart is a human incarnation of the divine force of creation. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
2:"The divine force is with you - feel its presence more and more and be careful never betray it." ~ ~ The Mother,
3:The divine force is with you -- feel its presence more and more and be careful never to betray it. ~ The Mother,
4:As for true love, it is the Divine Force that allows consciousnesses to unite themselves with the Divine. ~ The Mother,
5:The Divine Force can always do more than the personal effort. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Force in Work,
6:Those whom the Force has touched and taken up, belong thenceforth to the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Force,
7:The best expenditure of energy is that which flows easily without effort at all. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Force in Work,
8:To be able to work with full energy is necessary—but to be able not to work is also necessary. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Force in Work,
9:Inspiration comes from above in answer to a state of concentration which is itself a call to it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Force in Work,
10:Violence is the divine force that everyone tries to use for his own purposes and that ends by using everyone for its own—the Dionysus of The Bacchae ~ Ren Girard,
11:If there is energy, all must not be spent, some must be stored up so as to increase the permanent strength of the system. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Divine Force in Work,
12:This force is unlimited. It is always moving and always flowing. The ancient Hawaiians, the Kahunas, used the metaphor of the flow of a running stream to represent the divine force. ~ Wayne Dyer,
13:When you put a great big obstacle (your feeling of unworthiness), in front of a running stream, it's not like it's going to stop the flow of the divine force. The divine force will just go around your unworthiness and flow someplace else. ~ Wayne Dyer,
14:The only necessity in this sadhana is to open yourself to the Divine Force; if one is open the necessary understanding or knowledge will come of itself through spiritual experience.

Sri Aurobindo
Letters on Himself and the Ashram, p.448 ~ Sri Aurobindo,
15:Always indeed it is the higher Power that acts. Our sense of personal effort and aspiration comes from the attempt of the egoistic mind to identify itself in a wrong and imperfect way with the workings of the divine Force.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids, 59,
16:Charisma- the divine force that manifests itself in men and women. The supernatural power we don't need to show to anyone because everyone can see it, even usually insensitive people. But it only happens when we're naked, when we die to the world and are reborn to ourselves. ~ Paulo Coelho,
17:Charisma -- the divine force that manifests itself in men and women. The supernatural power we don't need to show to anyone because everyone can see it, even usually insensitive people. But it only happens when we're naked, when we die to the world and are reborn to ourselves ~ Paulo Coelho,
18:Remind yourself always that the Divine Force is there, that you have felt it and that, even if you seem to lose consciousness of it for a time or it seems something distant, still it is there and is sure to prevail For those whom the Force has touched and taken up, belong thenceforth to the Divine.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,
19:Instead of being encouraged to feel completely protected, loved, honored, and respected by the Divine Force, you've been taught that you're being judged. Because you've been taught that, you feel guilt and fear. But guilt and fear do not open you connection to the Divine; they only serve to close your heart. The reality is that God's way is love, and you can see this for yourself. ~ Michael A Singer,
20:The Divine Grace and Power can do anything, but with the full assent of the sadhak.
   To learn to give the full assent, is the whole meaning of the sadhana. It may take time either because of ideas in the mind, desires in the vital or inertia in the physical consciousness, but these things have to be and can be removed with the aid or by calling in the action of the Divine Force.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [T9],
21:To be miserable may remind you of the defects of your external nature, but I do not see how it is going to cure them. I am not asking you to be frivolously happy, but to be quiet and quietly confident, rejecting these old movements, but for the rest trusting not in a restless self-torturing personal effort but to the Divine Force to change the external nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV, Dealing with Depression and Despondency,
22:fundamentally, all pain and suffering are the result of an insufficient consciousness-force in the surface being which makes it unable to deal rightly with self and Nature or unable to assimilate and to harmonise itself with the contacts of the universal Energy; they would not exist if in us there were an integral presence of the luminous Consciousness and the divine Force of an integral Being.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Origin of Falsehood and Evil [623],
23:The world does not need super-men, but supernatural men. Men who will persistently turn the self out of their lives and let Divine Power work through them. Let inspiration take the place of aspiration. Seek to grow spiritually, rather than to acquire fame and riches. Our chief ambition should be to be used by God. The Divine Force is sufficient for all the spiritual work in the world. God only needs the instruments for Him to use. His instruments can remake the world. ~ Anonymous,
24:Let us quake before the great Spirit, Who is my God, Who has made me know God, Who is God there above, and Who forms God here: almighty, imparting manifold gifts, Him Whom the holy choir hymns, Who brings life to those in heaven and on earth, and is enthroned on high, coming from the Father, the divine force, self-commandeered; He is not a Child (for there is one worthy Child of the One who is best), nor is He outside the unseen Godhead, but of identical honor. ~ Gregory of Nazianzus,
25:What is needed is perseverance-to go on without discouragement, recognising that the process of the nature and the action of the Mother's force is working through the difficulty even and will do all that is needed. Our incapacity does not matter-there is no human being who is not in his parts of nature incapable-but the Divine Force is also there. If one puts one's trust in that, incapacity will be changed into capacity. Difficulty and struggle themselves then become a means towards the achievement.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, Letters On The Mother,
26:If you’ve ever really loved anybody, then you know what true love means. It means that you love them more than you love yourself. If you truly love someone, your love sees past their humanness. It embraces their whole being, including past wrongs and current shortcomings. It is like the unconditional love of a mother. A mother devotes every moment of her life to a child who is physically or mentally challenged. She thinks the child is beautiful. She doesn’t focus on the shortcomings; in fact, she doesn’t even see them as shortcomings. What if that is how God looks upon His creation? Then you’ve lost out if you’ve been told otherwise. Instead of being encouraged to feel completely protected, loved, honored, and respected by the Divine Force, you’ve been taught that you’re being judged. Because you’ve been taught that, you feel guilt and fear. But guilt and fear do not open your connection to the Divine; they only serve to close your heart. ~ Michael A Singer,
27:To be able to receive the Divine Power and let act through you in the things of the outward life, there are three necessary conditions:
   (i) Quietude, equality - not to be disturbed by anything that happens, to keep the mind still and firm, seeing the play of forces, but itself tranquil.
   (ii) Absolute faith - faith that what is for the best will happen, but also that if one can make oneself a true instrument, the fruit will be that which one's will guided by the Divine Light sees as the thing to be done - kartavyam karma.
  (iii) Receptivity - the power to receive the Divine Force and to feel its presence and the presence of the Mother in it and allow it to work, guiding one's sight and will and action. If this power and presence can be felt and this plasticity made the habit of the consciousness in action, - but plasticity to the Divine force alone without bringing in any foreign element, - the eventual result is sure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,
28:The Teacher of the integral Yoga will follow as far as he may the method of the Teacher within us. He will lead the disciple through the nature of the disciple. Teaching, example, influence, - these are the three instruments of the Guru. But the wise Teacher will not seek to impose himself or his opinions on the passive acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and sure as a seed which will grow under the divine fostering within. He will seek to awaken much more than to instruct; he will aim at the growth of the faculties and the experiences by a natural process and free expansion. He will give a method as an aid, as a utilisable device, not as an imperative formula or a fixed routine. And he will be on his guard against any turning of the means into a limitation, against the mechanising of process. His whole business is to awaken the divine light and set working the divine force of which he himself is only a means and an aid, a body or a channel. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
29:I think one of the most important thing is to know why one meditates; this is what gives the quality of the meditation and makes it of one order or another.
   You may meditate to open yourself to the divine Force, you may meditate to reject the ordinary consciousness, you may meditate to enter the depths of your being, you may meditate to learn how to give yourself integrally; you may meditate for all kinds of things. You may meditate to enter into peace and calm and silence - this is what people generally do, but without much success. But you may also meditate to receive the Force of transformation, to discover the points to be transformed, to trace out the line of progress. And then you may also meditate for very practical reasons: when you have a difficulty to clear up, a solution to find, when you want help in some action or another. You may meditate for that too.
   I think everyone has his own mode of meditation. But if one wants the meditation to be dynamic, one must have an aspiration for progress and the meditation must be done to help and fulfill this aspiration for progress. Then it becomes dynamic. ~ The Mother,
30:Sweet Mother, how can we cut the knot of the ego?
   How to cut it? Take a sword and strike it (laughter), when one becomes conscious of it. For usually one is not; we think it quite normal, what happens to us; and in fact it is very normal but we think it quite good also. So to begin with one must have a great clear-sightedness to become aware that one is enclosed in all these knots which hold one in bondage. And then, when one is aware that there's something altogether tightly closed in there - so tightly that one has tried in vain to move it - then one imagines one's will to be a very sharp sword-blade, and with all one's force one strikes a blow on this knot (imaginary, of course, one doesn't take up a sword in fact), and this produces a result. Of course you can do this work from the psychological point of view, discovering all the elements constituting this knot, the whole set of resistances, habits, preferences, of all that holds you narrowly closed in. So when you grow aware of this, you can concentrate and call the divine Force and the Grace and strike a good blow on this formation, these things so closely held, like that, that nothing can separate them. And at that moment you must resolve that you will no longer listen to these things, that you will listen only to the divine Consciousness and will do no other work except the divine work without worrying about personal results, free from all attachment, free from all preference, free from all wish for success, power, satisfaction, vanity, all this.... All this must disappear and you must see only the divine Will incarnated in your will and making you act. Then, in this way, you are cured.
   ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954,
31:Sweet Mother, how can we cut the knot of the ego?

   How to cut it? Take a sword and strike it (laughter), when one becomes conscious of it. For usually one is not; we think it quite normal, what happens to us; and in fact it is very normal but we think it quite good also. So to begin with one must have a great clear-sightedness to become aware that one is enclosed in all these knots which hold one in bondage. And then, when one is aware that there's something altogether tightly closed in there - so tightly that one has tried in vain to move it - then one imagines one's will to be a very sharp sword-blade, and with all one's force one strikes a blow on this knot (imaginary, of course, one doesn't take up a sword in fact), and this produces a result. Of course you can do this work from the psychological point of view, discovering all the elements constituting this knot, the whole set of resistances, habits, preferences, of all that holds you narrowly closed in. So when you grow aware of this, you can concentrate and call the divine Force and the Grace and strike a good blow on this formation, these things so closely held, like that, that nothing can separate them. And at that moment you must resolve that you will no longer listen to these things, that you will listen only to the divine Consciousness and will do no other work except the divine work without worrying about personal results, free from all attachment, free from all preference, free from all wish for success, power, satisfaction, vanity, all this.... All this must disappear and you must see only the divine Will incarnated in your will and making you act. Then, in this way, you are cured.
   ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954,
32:... The first opening is effected by a concentration in the heart, a call to the Divine to manifest within us and through the psychic to take up and lead the whole nature. Aspiration, prayer, bhakti, love, surrender are the main supports of this part of the sadhana - accompanied by a rejection of all that stands in the way of what we aspire for. The second opening is effected by a concentration of the consciousness in the head (afterwards, above it) and an aspiration and call and a sustained will for the descent of the divine Peace, Power, Light, Knowledge, Ananda into the being - the Peace first or the Peace and Force together. Some indeed receive Light first or Ananda first or some sudden pouring down of knowledge. With some there is first an opening which reveals to them a vast infinite Silence, Force, Light or Bliss above them and afterwards either they ascend to that or these things begin to descend into the lower nature. With others there is either the descent, first into the head, then down to the heart level, then to the navel and below and through the whole body, or else an inexplicable opening - without any sense of descent - of peace, light, wideness or power or else a horizontal opening into the cosmic consciousness or, in a suddenly widened mind, an outburst of knowledge. Whatever comes has to be welcomed - for there is no absolute rule for all, - but if the peace has not come first, care must be taken not to swell oneself in exultation or lose the balance. The capital movement however is when the Divine Force or Shakti, the power of the Mother comes down and takes hold, for then the organisation of the consciousness begins and the larger foundation of the Yoga.

   The result of the concentration is not usually immediate - though to some there comes a swift and sudden outflowering; but with most there is a time longer or shorter of adaptation or preparation, especially if the nature has not been prepared already to some extent by aspiration and tapasya. ... ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,
33:The guiding law of spiritual experience can only come by an opening of human consciousness to the Divine Consciousness; there must be the power to receive in us the working and command and dynamic presence of the Divine Shakti and surrender ourselves to her control; it is that surrender and that control which bring the guidance. But the surrender is not sure, there is no absolute certitude of the guidance so long as we are besieged by mind formations and life impulses and instigations of ego which may easily betray us into the hands of a false experience. This danger can only be countered by the opening of a now nine-tenths concealed inmost soul or psychic being that is already there but not commonly active within us. That is the inner light we must liberate; for the light of this inmost soul is our one sure illumination so long as we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and the Truth-consciousness has not taken up the entire control of our Godward endeavour. The working of the Divine Force in us under the conditions of the transition and the light of the psychic being turning us always towards a conscious and seeing obedience to that higher impulsion and away from the demands and instigations of the Forces of the Ignorance, these between them create an ever progressive inner law of our action which continues till the spiritual and supramental can be established in our nature. In the transition there may well be a period in which we take up all life and action and offer them to the Divine for purification, change and deliverance of the truth within them, another period in which we draw back and build a spiritual wall around us admitting through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of the spiritual transformation, a third in which a free and all-embracing action, but with new forms fit for the utter truth of the Spirit, can again be made possible. These things, however, will be decided by no mental rule but in the light of the soul within us and by the ordaining force and progressive guidance of the Divine Power that secretly or overtly first impels, then begins clearly to control and order and finally takes up the whole burden of the Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 138,
34:The Teacher of the integral Yoga will follow as far as he may the method of the Teacher within us. He will lead the disciple through the nature of the disciple. Teaching, example, influence, - these are the three instruments of the Guru. But the wise Teacher will not seek to impose himself or his opinions on the passive acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and sure as a seed which will grow under the divine fostering within. He will seek to awaken much more than to instruct; he will aim at the growth of the faculties and the experiences by a natural process and free expansion. He will give a method as an aid, as a utilisable device, not as an imperative formula or a fixed routine. And he will be on his guard against any turning of the means into a limitation, against the mechanising of process. His whole business is to awaken the divine light and set working the divine force of which he himself is only a means and an aid, a body or a channel.

The example is more powerful than the instruction; but it is not the example of the outward acts nor that of the personal character which is of most importance. These have their place and their utility; but what will most stimulate aspiration in others is the central fact of the divine realisation within him governing his whole life and inner state and all his activities. This is the universal and essential element; the rest belongs to individual person and circumstance. It is this dynamic realisation that the sadhaka must feel and reproduce in himself according to his own nature; he need not strive after an imitation from outside which may well be sterilising rather than productive of right and natural fruits.

Influence is more important than example. Influence is not the outward authority of the Teacher over his disciple, but the power of his contact, of his presence, of the nearness of his soul to the soul of another, infusing into it, even though in silence, that which he himself is and possesses. This is the supreme sign of the Master. For the greatest Master is much less a Teacher than a Presence pouring the divine consciousness and its constituting light and power and purity and bliss into all who are receptive around him.

And it shall also be a sign of the teacher of the integral Yoga that he does not arrogate to himself Guruhood in a humanly vain and self-exalting spirit. His work, if he has one, is a trust from above, he himself a channel, a vessel or a representative. He is a man helping his brothers, a child leading children, a Light kindling other lights, an awakened Soul awakening souls, at highest a Power or Presence of the Divine calling to him other powers of the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga,

IN CHAPTERS [171/171]



  124 Integral Yoga
   2 Occultism
   1 Yoga


   80 Sri Aurobindo
   72 The Mother
   28 Satprem
   12 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   3 Nirodbaran
   2 Aleister Crowley
   2 A B Purani


   17 Letters On Yoga IV
   14 Letters On Yoga II
   12 The Synthesis Of Yoga
   8 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
   8 Agenda Vol 13
   6 Questions And Answers 1956
   5 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
   5 Some Answers From The Mother
   5 Questions And Answers 1955
   5 Questions And Answers 1954
   5 Questions And Answers 1953
   4 Record of Yoga
   4 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
   4 Letters On Yoga III
   4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
   4 Agenda Vol 04
   3 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
   3 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
   3 Essays On The Gita
   3 Agenda Vol 01
   2 Words Of The Mother III
   2 Words Of The Mother II
   2 The Life Divine
   2 Liber ABA
   2 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
   2 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   2 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
   2 Essays Divine And Human
   2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
   2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
   2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
   2 Agenda Vol 12
   2 Agenda Vol 10
   2 Agenda Vol 07
   2 Agenda Vol 03


0.01 - Letters from the Mother to Her Son, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  retard and hamper the action of the Divine Forces. That is why
  disaster was very close even though no human government consciously wanted it. But at any cost there was to be no war and

0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  all the Divine Forces were to concentrate on you, it would be in
  vain - you would refuse to receive them.

01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Call back to its dire need the Divine Force.
  Always the power poured back like sudden rain,

01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  There are many ways of opening to this Divine consciousness or entering into it. My way which I show to others is by a constant practice to go inward into oneself, to open by aspiration to the Divine and once one is conscious of it and its action to give oneself to It entirely. This self-giving means not to ask for anything but the constant contact or union with the Divine Consciousness, to aspire for its peace, power, light and felicity, but to ask nothing else and in life and action to be its instrument only for whatever work it gives one to do in the world. If one can once open and feel the Divine Force, the
  Power of the Spirit working in the mind and heart and body, the rest is a matter of remaining faithful to It, calling for it always, allowing it to do its work when it comes and rejecting every other and inferior Force that belongs to the lower consciousness and the lower nature.

0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  contact with the Divine Force; but when you fall heavily to sleep
  without any preliminary concentration, you sink into the inconscient and the sleep is more tiring than restful, and it is difficult
  --
  something of the Divine Truth and the Divine Force
  comes down to manifest upon earth, some change is

0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  down to the most material, bringing the Divine Force with it so
  that the Force can transform the whole being and finally divinise

0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  The remedy lies in union with the Divine Forces that are at
  work and a receptivity full of trust and peace which makes the

0 1955-06-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   If the Divine Force, if your grace, does not intervene to shatter this obscure resistance that is drawing me downwards in spite of myself, I dont know what will become of me Mother, I am not blackmailing you, I am only expressing my helplessness, my anguish.
   During the day, I live more or less calmly in my little morass, but as evening and the moment to meet you draw near, then the forces pinning me to the ground begin raging beneath your pressure, and I feel at times an unbearable tearing that burns and constricts in my throat like tears that cannot be shed. Afterwards, Truth regains possession of me but the following day it all begins again.

0 1958-07-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   There is nothing to say since the first thing done by the Divine Forces which emanated for the Creation was to take the wrong path!6 That is the origin, the seed of this marvelous spirit of independence the negation of surrender, in other words. Man said, I have the power to think; I will do with it what I want, and no one has the right to intervene. I am free, I am an independent being, IN-DE-PEN-DENT! So thats how things stand: we are all independent beings!
   But yesterday, in fact, I was looking (with all these mantras and these prayers and this whole vibration that has descended into the atmosphere, creating a state of constant calling in the atmosphere), and I remembered the old movements and how everything now has changed! I was also thinking of the old disciplines, one of which is to say, I am That.7 People were told to sit in meditation and repeat, I am That, to reach an identification. And it all seemed to me so obsolete, so childish, but at the same time a part of the whole. I looked, and it seemed so absurd to sit in meditation and say, I am That! I, what is this I who is That; what is this I, where is it? I was trying to find it, and I saw a tiny, microscopic point (to see it would almost require some gigantic instrument), a tiny, obscure point in an im-men-sity of Light, and that little point was the body. At the same timeit was absolutely simultaneous I saw the Presence of the Supreme as a very, very, very, VERY immense Being, within which was I in an attitude of (I was only a sensation, you see), an attitude (gesture of surrender) like this. There were no limits, yet at the same time, one felt the joy of being permeated, enveloped and of being able to widen, widen, widen indefinitelyto widen the whole being, from the highest consciousness to the most material consciousness. And then, at the same time, to look at this body and to see every cell, every atom vibrating with a divine, radiant Presence with all its Consciousness, all its Power, all its Will, all its Loveall, all, really and a joy! An extraordinary joy. And one did not disturb the other, nothing was contradictory and everything was felt at the same time. That was when I said, But truly! This body had to have the training it has had for more than seventy years to be able to bear all that without starting to cry out or dance or leap up or whatever it might be! No, it was calm (it was exultant, but it was very calm), and it remained in control of its movements and its words. In spite of the fact that it was really living in another world, it could apparently act normal due to this strenuous training in self-control by the REASONby the reasonover the whole being, which has tamed it and given it such a great cohesive power that I can BE in the experience, I can LIVE this experience, and at the same time respond with the most amiable of smiles to the most idiotic questions!

0 1960-07-12 - Mothers Vision - the Voice, the ashram a tiny part of myself, the Mothers Force, sparkling white light compressed - enormous formation of negative vibrations - light in evil, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   It was a force with a sparkling white light at its center, the light which is the force of the Divine Mother, and as soon as it was well packed and concentrated inside, or condensed, it took on all the colorsvibrations of every color Like a materialization these colors were like a materialization of the Divine Force when it enters matter. (Just as matter is a condensation of energy, well, this seemed to be a condensation of Divine Force. Thats really the impression it gave.)
   It reminded me of tantric things. I have seen tantric formations and how forces are systematically separated by themeach vibration, each color. Its very interesting. They are all one, and yet each is distinct. That is, they are separated in order to be distinguished and for each one to be used individually. Each one represents a particular action for obtaining something in particular. This is the special knowledge the tantrics have, I believe. Or its the reflection of their knowledge. And my impression is that when they do their pujas or say their mantras, what they are trying to do is recombine all that into the white light. Im not sure. I know they use each one separately for a separate purpose, but when they speak of their puja succeeding, it may mean that they have been able to recombine the light. But I say this very guardedly. For I would have to see X do his puja one day to really knowfrom afar Im not so sure. Its merely an impression.

0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   In the present case, of course, the body is always saying, I am ready for everything I will do anything at all; yet I still cant say that it has this. Its trying to be completely pure according to the spiritual conceptit doesnt sense its separate personality. More and more, year after year, it has been striving to feel only the divine Presence, the divine Life, the Divine Force and the divine Will, all within itself; and to feel that without them it is nothing, it doesnt exist. This is fully realized in its consciousness (the conscious part). In the subconscient and inconscient,5 obviously it is not realized otherwise, logically, it shouldnt be ill.
   The whole disorder evidently originates from the subconscient and inconscient; all the more so as it came with various indications (sent by the hostile forces but this can always be useful, provided you are careful) saying, Yes, everything is going well in your higher centers, but(because the different points of attack have clearly followed the order of the centers). Four or five days ago, or maybe a week, before this latest difficulty occurred, I saw little beings coming out of the subconscient and saying, Ah! Your legs havent had any trouble for a long time! Its the turn of the lower centers! I swept it all away, of course, but.

0 1962-06-02, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But this experience left me with a true sense of satisfaction, of fullness: his work had been perfect and his response to the Divine Force, to the Grace that came to him, was magnificent. It may be several people,3 it may be one particular person I dont know. It happened just last night.
   You remember all the difficulties I encountered in those other visions at night. Well, this was very interesting because it was just the opposite: I was in a very complicated place full of obstacles and difficulties, but someone or something was always there when I arrivedeverything would get sorted out and I would go on my way. It all sorted itself out automatically the feeling of a power putting everything in order. And I remember when the mason arrived, just as I was facing that rather big obstacle, there was someone on my right (someone very official, wearing a dark coat) who thought (the contact was through thought rather than words), Oh! Shes always calling on the workers for help instead of. And I answered, The workers are more efficient and their goodwill (all that business of caste, you know, or of society or social position). The workers have simple hearts, I said, they are efficient in their work and have more goodwill than the people who think theyre so smart! It was funny. So this made two interesting experiences yesterday, one after the other.

0 1962-11-17, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   August 15th is my own birthday and it is naturally gratifying to me that it should have assumed this vast significance. I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous accident, but as the sanction and seal of the Divine Force that guides my steps on the work with which I began life, the beginning of its full fruition. Indeed, on this day I can watch almost all the world-movements which I hoped to see fulfilled in my lifetime, though then they looked like impracticable dreams, arriving at fruition or on their way to achievement. In all these movements free India may well play a large part and take a leading position.
   The first of these dreams was a revolutionary movement which would create a free and united India. India today is free but she has not achieved unity. () The old communal division into Hindus and Muslims seems now to have hardened into a permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped that this settled fact will not be accepted as settled for ever or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. Indias internal development and prosperity may be impeded, her position among the nations weakened, her destiny impaired or even frustrated. This must not be; the partition must go.8 ()

0 1963-03-30, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There is a sort of review going on of all the elements of the body consciousness, with a sample of the circumstances of their various manifestations or expressions. All this is passed before me as if to show me all the points in the bodys cells that were contrary to or unprepared for the reception of the Divine Forces. All that comes up in the form of lived memoriesthings I had more than forgotten (I could have sworn they no longer existed), but which come back. Un-be-liev-able. And its not an egos or a persons memory, but the memory of a force in motion in the general vibrations. So I see fantastic things!
   But its erased immediately; as soon as I wake up, my first movement (gesture of offering) is to present it all to the Lord: the cause, the effect, the image, the sensationeverything. When its all seen, I tell Him, Now its Yours. And then I forgetfortunately, thank God!

0 1963-07-27, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Its repeated again and again. Its not as in the realm of ideas, where once you have seen the problem clearly and have the knowledge, its over; some doubts or absurdities may come back to you from outside, but the thing is established, the Light is there, and automatically things are either repelled or transformed. But this here isnt the same thing! Every single aggregate of cells. Not that it comes from outside: its BUILT that way! Built by an inert and stupid Ignorance. An inert and stupid automatism. And so, automatically, it deniesnot denies, theres no will to deny: it is an opposite, I mean it CANNOT understand, its an oppositean ESTABLISHED oppositeof the divine Power. And every time, there is a kind of action which really in every detail is almost miraculous: suddenly that negation is compelled compelled to recognize that the Divine Force is all-powerful. Seen from another angle, its a sort of perpetual little miracle.
   Ill give you an example: last time you were with me, I got (while you were present) a pain here (gesture to the right side), a frightful pain of the kind that makes people howl (they think theyre very sick, of course!), it came here like that. You didnt see anything, did you, I didnt show anything.

0 1963-07-31, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   A few days later, Mother added: "There is also something I left unsaid: an urgent need to cease all material activity in order to enable the body to receive fullyas fully as possible the Divine Force that will replace what has been removed. There is something absolute about that need: to stay totally still, quiet, letting the Force descendpermeate the body, rather. All physical activity must be suspended in some way, and if the material organization, or the habit, tends to make it continue, a kind of material impossibility, an excessive fatigue or discomfort, comes to oblige the body to keep still. Because simply to remove or change what shouldn't be there won't do; it must also be replaced by what SHOULD be there. Otherwise, there would be a dwindling or gradual reduction of substance resulting in dissolution. What has been sublimated or removed has to be replaced by something which is the true Vibration, the one that comes straight from the Supreme."
   Mother did not eat anything this morning.

0 1963-08-10, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   This body was built for that purpose, because I remember very well that when the war the First World Warstarted and I offered my body up in sacrifice to the Lord so that the war would not be in vain, every part of my body, one after another (Mother touches her legs, her arms etc.), or sometimes the same part several times over, represented a battlefield: I could see it, I could feel it, I LIVED it. Every time it was it was very strange, I had only to sit quietly and watch: I would see here, there, there, the whole thing in my body, all that was going on. And while it went on, I would put the concentration of the Divine Force there, so that allall that pain, all that suffering, everythingwould hasten the preparation of the earth and the Descent of the Force. And that went on consciously throughout the war.
   The body was built for that purpose.

0 1964-10-07, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   And then (Mother points to her own body), this seems to be the lesson for these aggregates (bodies, you know, seem to me to be simply aggregates). And as long as there is, behind, a will to keep this together for some reason or other, it stays together, but These last few days (yesterday or the day before), there was this: a sort of completely decentralized consciousness (I am always referring to the physical consciousness, of course, not at all to the higher consciousness), a decentralized consciousness that happened to be here, there, there, in this body, that body (in what people call this person and that person, but that notion doesnt quite exist anymore), and then there was a kind of intervention of a universal consciousness in the cells, as though it were asking these cells what their reason was for wanting to retain this combination (if we may say so) or this aggregate while in fact making them understand or feel the difficulties that come, for example, from the number of years, wear and tear, external difficultiesfrom all the deterioration caused by friction, wear and tear. But they seemed to be perfectly indifferent to that! The response of the cells was interesting enough, in the sense that they seemed to attach importance ONLY TO THE CAPACITY TO REMAIN IN CONSCIOUS CONTACT WITH THE HIGHER FORCE. It was like an aspiration (not formulated in words, naturally), and like a what in English they call yearning, a longing for that Contact with the Divine Force, the Force of Harmony, the Force of Truth and the Force of Love, and [the cells response was] that because of that, they valued the present combination.
   It was an altogether different point of view.

0 1966-03-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   So, if for some reason or other there is a disorganization (but I think the reason is one of teaching), one must have the capacity to go like this (Mother brings her two hands down in a gesture that immobilizes everything) and to stop all that instantly. But the capacity has been there for a long time, a long time (it hasnt always been used, but it has been there): the Power. And its the same with EVERYTHING: world events or natural or human upheavals, earthquakes and tidal waves, volcanic eruptions, floods, or else wars, revolutions, people killing each other without even knowing whyas they are doing at the moment: everywhere something pushes them on. Behind this quiver, there is a will for disorder that tries to prevent Harmony from being established. Its there in the individual, in the collectivity, and in Nature. And then, its such a painstaking, persistent teaching, which forgets nothing and is repeated every time something isnt totally understood, and is repeated in greater detail for you to better understand the working: the working in the hands, in the activity, in the Force going through [Mother] like this, in the use of vibrationsand which teaches the great Lesson: learning how to manifest the Divine Force.
   Its absolutely wonderful.

0 1966-09-03, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   What takes time is to prepare Matter, this cellular matter as it is now organized [since the awakening of the mind of the cells in Mother], to make it supple enough and strong enough to be able to bear and manifest the Divine Force. That takes a lot of time. It explains everything, everythingeverything is explained. The day we can describe that in detail, it will be really interesting.
   And there is a small beginning of how that being which Sri Aurobindo calls supramental will be the next creation. A small beginning. And it is, as Sri Aurobindo said, an explanation from within outward the outward, the surface, has only a quite secondary importance and it will come at the very end, when its ready. But it begins from within outward, and it begins in a rather precise and interesting way.

0 1967-10-04, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   One thing I know. Its that I deliberately (I dont know if this is what she understood), I deliberately wanted her mothers departure to take place in the most harmonious possible conditions, with the least possible wastage, so she may retain the COMPLETE fruit of her passage in life here, and What I did in reality (but this I didnt tell her), from the moment I heard the news of her stroke (it was an apoplectic seizure), from the moment I heard the news I put her in a bath of the Lord. I kept her like this (gesture of enfolding). So, for me, first of all I knew that if she was to be cured, she would recover fairly quickly, and that if she didnt recover, it would show it was really time for her to go, but then she would go with her body benefiting, so to speak, the substance benefiting from all the good of physical life, and with her inner being in the best conditions. Of course, the inner being in the best conditions is the case for everyone, for all those who pass away here (but I generally dont have the opportunity to let the inner being go out slowly, you understand4). I saw you know that when Sri Aurobindo left, we kept him for five days; I saw how it happened. I told you, while I stood beside him, it came out of his body and entered mine, and it was so material that there was a friction the body felt the friction of the Force entering. And I saw (of course, in that case it was quite different, tremendous, but for everybody its like that), I saw this: for the departure to be as harmonious as possible, it should take place like that, according to an inner RHYTHM, with the Presence (which is both a protection and a help), the Presence of the Divine Force. So I put her in that Presence. And even (I dont know if she told you), when her brother, who is a doctor came, he declared with their usual presumptuousness, Oh, shell be gone before tomorrow noon. I didnt say anything, I remained quiet. Naturally, three more days went by. And even he was forced to acknowledge that there was something there he didnt understand.
   What did she tell you?

0 1968-04-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The true attitude is this: money is a universal force meant to do the work on earth, the work needed to prepare the earth to receive the Divine Forces and manifest them, and it must come into the hands (the utilizing power, that is) of those who have the clearest vision, the most general and truest vision.
   The first thing, to begin with (this is elementary), is to have no sense of possession Its mine, what does that mean? What does it mean? I cant really understand it now. Why do people want it to be theirs?To be able to use it as they wish, do with it what they wish and handle it according to their own idea. Thats how it is. Otherwise, yes, there are people who love to keep it in a pile somewhere But thats a disease. To be sure of always having money, they heap it up. But if people understood that one must be like a receiver-transmitter set; that the vaster the set (just the contrary of personal), the more impersonal and generous and vast the set is, and the more forces it can contain (forces, that is, to translate materially, banknotes or money). And that power to contain is in proportion to the best capacity of utilization the best, that is, from the standpoint of general progress: the broadest vision, the broadest understanding and the most enlightened, exact, true utilization, not according to the egos falsified needs, but according to the earths general need in its evolution and development. In other words, the broadest vision should have the broadest capacity.

0 1969-10-18, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (A.R.) India needs water. What is necessary is to obtain harmonious waterfalls, according to the law of harmony, which will bring a sufficient amount of water for vegetation, but without causing damage. I think it is feasible. If it is not feasible, nothing is. But should one do it? Should one, for instance, divert a storm? All one has to do is ask. So should one ask the Divine Force to act one way rather than another?6
   In any case, the Divine Force will only do what it wills, and it is the Divine Force Itself which, in him, aspires to divert the storm.
   See text in addendum.

0 1969-10-25, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   He told me he was acquiring such a force that he could face any obstacle, and will thus be capable of asserting in front of people the power of the Divine Force. I first want to become absolutely sure that I can manifest this force at any time and against any obstacle. Then I will show people, in a crowd of a thousand people, through a practical demonstration, by calling ten or fifteen sick people among them and curing them with this force. Then they will perforce be convinced that there is indeed a Force that can do anything. But for that, I must be ready. For eighty percent of the people will be against me, and to convince them I must be really strong, well armed and sure! Once I am ready, no one will be able to stop me. All governments and religions will collapse. I will write to the Pope, asking him what they are preaching now. What did Christ tell us in the Gospels! He told his apostles to go and heal the sick and drive demons away. What are the priests and the Catholics doing today?
   I asked him, Are you sure that is your mission?

0 1970-03-25, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   You see, there is this fact that existence itself needs to depend on something material, which naturally brings back every time an old recurring difficulty. That question of food All that is under observation at the moment (a very minute observation, which I might almost call scientific), and, well, the cells are conscious of the Divine Force and of the power that Force gives, but they are also conscious that in order to last as they are, even in a state of transformation, they still need this complement of something coming from outsidewith that, every time you swallow a new difficulty. All that I said on the [change of] functioning is increasingly proven, but there is this thing [food] that remains, and that means stomach and blood and all the rest With that, can we conceive (I dont know), can we conceive something that works in this way yet without deteriorating? Something capable of constant progression? (One can last only if the progression is constant.) Is this capable of progress? For the moment, its like this (gesture hanging in balance).
   All that was automatic has almost disappearedwhich has caused a great reduction from the standpoint of capacities; its replaced by a consciousness with a certain power, which didnt exist previously: thats an improvement. But all things considered, well, if I take the ordinary stand, I can no longer do what I used to do when I was twenty, quite obviously. Perhaps I know a hundred thousand times more than I knew, but This body, the body itself knows: it feels, its capable of knowing all that it didnt know then. But from a purely material standpoint (Mother shakes her head, pointing to her bodys incapacity). Could it come back? I dont know. Theres a question mark there. I dont know. And it could last only if the capacities came back; as Sri Aurobindo very wisely put it, who would want to go on in a body that keeps losing all its capacities?3 You know, sight isnt clear anymore, you dont hear clearly anymore, cant speak clearly anymorev anyway you cant walk freely, you can no longer carry a weightall kinds of things.

0 1971-10-23, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It depends on the case. Theres a slight difference. There are cases when nothing comesnothing, everything is stopped. So there you have to wait until it runs its course. There are cases where you are NATURALLY led to do one thing or another, which seems totally indifferent but is part of the Action (I dont know how to say it). I have experienced both. It depends on the case. There are cases where nothing is needed. There are cases where its simply as though you put the Divine ON the thing (Mother makes a gesture of aiming a beam). You know, youre like not an intermediary, I dont know its like a power of concentration on something; then the Divine Force flows through and is focused (same gesture of aiming a beam), but you yourself do nothingyet the thing is done. Sometimes, if there is a word to be said, then the word comes to you; or if there is something to be done (it may seem like a very small, indifferent thing), you just have to do it quietlyyou are LED to do it.
   Youre led, yes, I understand.

0 1971-11-20, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The remedy lies in union with the Divine Forces which are at work and in a confident and quiet receptivity that facilitates the process.
   November 18, 1971

0 1972-01-15, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   By consciously uniting with the Divine Force, all is possible in principle. But a procedure has to be found, depending on the case and the individual.
   The first condition is to have a physical nature that gives energy rather than draws energy from others.

0 1972-03-30, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Yes, I know. I know: when I am like now, I always see the Forceit isnt my force, it is the Divine Force. I try I only try to be like this (gesture like a channel). This body tries to be simply simply a transmitter, as transparent as possible, as impersonal as possible. So the Divine can do whatever He wants.
   (silence)

0 1972-04-04, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Then well stand strong, well have all the Divine Force on our side.
   We are here to prepare a superhumanity, not to fall back into desires and easy lifeno.

0 1972-06-07, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The body is comfortable only when it is conscious of the Divine Force acting (gesture of descent through the body), but otherwise its.
   Any concentration on the body itself causes a kind of strange discomfort, a discomfort which stops only when it is conscious of the Forceof the Force working (same gesture of descent through Mother), the Force working, when That comes and flows through it. Then the I cant say the old method is gone, its not at all that, its something.

0 1972-06-24, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I continually have the feeling (fifty times a day, perhaps) of being a little baby (gesture, kicking hands and legs), completely wrapped in and tossed about by the Divine Forces! (laughter) Exactly like that.
   There are still. It isnt completely transparent, naturally, there still remain some old things, the egos old rule over the body, which causes grating and friction, but otherwise otherwise just like a baby!

0 1972-07-08, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It aspires and tries to receive nothing but the Divine Force.
   Food is still the big stumbling block. The body knows it must still eat, but it isnt hungry; food just seems. It eats out of habit and necessity.

0 1972-10-25, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Yes. You know, my impression is that the individuality is like an image to focus the attention (humans need something they have always needed something on their scale to focus their attention), so the body tries its best not to obstruct the Divine Force from passing through, it tries to suppress all its own interferences, but at the same time it sees itself as an image humans need to focus their attention.
   (At this point, Governor J. enters the room, sits silently before Mother, remains a few minutes in meditation, then does his pranam and leaves the room.)

0 1973-01-10, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But you know, at the same time, I am aware of the Divine Forces going through like this (gesture through the body). I try to obstruct as little as I can. And it gives some extraordinary results: constantly, there are what people call miracles.
   But to me, its not quiet as it could beas they SHOULD be.

02.01 - The World War, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   We believe that the war of today is a war between the Asura and men, human instruments of the gods. Man certainly is a weaker vessel in comparison with the Asuraon this material plane of ours; but in man dwells the Divine and against the Divine Force and might, no asuric power can ultimately prevail. The human being who has stood against the Asura has by that very act sided with the gods and received the support and benediction of the Divine. The more we become conscious about the nature of this war and consciously take the side of the progressive force, of the Divine Force supporting it, the more will the Asura be driven to retire, his power diminished, his hold relaxed. But if through ignorance and blind passion, through narrow vision and obscurant prejudice we fail to distinguish the right from the wrong side, the dexter from the sinister, surely we shall invite upon mankind utter misery and desolation. It will be nothing less than a betrayal of the Divine Cause.
   The fate of India too is being decided in this world-crisison the plains of Flanders, on the steppes of Ukraine, on the farthest expanses of the Pacific. The freedom of India will become inevitable and even imminent in proportion as she becomes cognizant of the underlying character and significance of the present struggle, deliberately takes the side of the evolutionary force, works for the gods, in proportion as she grows to be an instrument of the Divine Power. The instrument that the Divine chooses is often, to all appearances, faulty and defective, but since it has this higher and mightier support, it will surely outgrow all its drawbacks and lapses, it will surmount all dangers and obstacles and become unconquerable. Thisis what the spiritual seeker means by saying that the Divine Grace can make the lame leap across the mountain. India's destiny today hangs in the balance; it lies in the choice of her path.

05.05 - Of Some Supreme Mysteries, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Dark Power tries to work in the self-same way; but it cannot touch you, even though you oppose it, if from the outset you are armed with the protection of the Divine Force.
   The Dark Power too gives protection to its devotees, but it cannot maintain them long against the inexorable oncoming of the Divine.

05.28 - God Protects, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The conditions under which the Divine's protection can come are simple enough, but difficult to fulfil completely and thoroughly. The ideal conditions that ensure absolute safety are an absolute trust and reliance on the Divine Force, a tranquillity and fearlessness that nothing shakes, .whatever the appearances at the moment, the spirit and attitude of an unreserved self-giving that whatever one is and one has is God's. Between that perfect state at the peak of consciousness and the doubting and hesitant and timid mind at the lower end that of St. Peter, forexample, at his weakest moment there are various gradations of the conditions fulfilled and the protection given is variable accordingly. Not that the Divine Grace acts or has to act according to any such hard and fast rule of mechanics, there is no such mathematical Law of Protection in the scheme of Providence. And yet on the whole and generally speaking Providence, Divine Intervention, acts more or less successfully according to the degree of the soul's wakefulness on the plane that needs and possesses the protection.
   And yet there is another aspect of the thing that is to be taken into consideration. For in the supreme and ultimate view the world or creation is not divided between God and Asura : the Asura cannot be outside God's infinity, he is there because permitted by him, indeed forms part of him and serves the divine purpose. Asura represents the hard dark passage through which the ignorant human soul cuts out its forward march: it is the crucible in which the growing consciousness is purified of its dross in order to regain the fullness of its divine quality and nature.

07.10 - Diseases and Accidents, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   But you must understand it is not the working of thought, ordinary thought. The thought may be as good in one as in the other. It all depends upon the moment of choice. There are people who know to react in the right manner and at the right moment. It is the character that matters. Such people have a wakeful, alert consciousness; they are not asleep, they are on the watch constantly within themselves. And at the right moment they call for the aid, they invoke the Divine Force, yes, exactly at the right moment. And the danger is warded off. On the other hand, whenever there is something going wrong, some dislocation in the being, if you are seized by fear, dark foreboding or defeatism in the consciousness, then you are done for.
   It is not the mind, as I say, which decides. It is an inner attitude, a poise of the being, the right consciousness which reacts in the right manner. Its effect goes very far. You do not know what a power it is. Even if it is there just for a fraction of a second, it works miracles. Only it must be there already, you must be already in the state of wakefulness, you cannot order it at the moment, you have no time.

08.04 - Doing for Her Sake, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Whatever you dostudy or sportsyou must, think of the Divine in doing it. It is not a very difficult thing after all. At first you may do it as a kind of preparation to make yourself capable of receiving the Divine Force, and then as service to help in the collective work. You can do it not for personal gain but in order to be ready for the Divine Work.
   This seems to me indispensable. If you keep the ordinary point of view, you will always find yourself in conditions that are not wholly satisfactory and incapable of receiving all the forces that you can receive.
   If you are doing long jump, for example, it should not be merely for the pleasure of doing it, it is with the idea of making your body more perfect in its functioning, an instrument more fit to receive the Divine Forces and to manifest them.
   Indeed, everything that you do must be done in this spirit. Otherwise you do not profit by the opportunity, the favourable circumstances that are given to you.

08.33 - Opening to the Divine, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   You are to open yourself to the Divine and receive Him. Usually you open yourself in all directions to everything and everybody in the world. You open your surface being and receive there all sorts of influences from all quarters. So inside you there-comes about what we can call a hotch-potch of all contrary and contradictory movements: and that creates difficulties without number. Now instead of that, live away from the surface, from the outside and open up to the Divine and receive nothing hut the Divine Force. If you can do that all difficulties practically disappear. But, of course, the trouble is there. Unless one is alchemically conditioned, it is an impossibility to have relations with people, to talk to them, to deal with them, have interchanges with them and yet not absorb something out of them. If one can surround oneself with an atmosphere that acts as a filter, then all that come from outside are checked and sifted before they reach you or touch you. That needs a good training and a large experience. That is why people in ancient days who wanted an easier path took to solitude, into the depths of the forest, on the top of a hill or under a cave so that they might not have to deal with people for that naturally reduces undesirable interchanges. Only, it has also been found that such people begin to take an enormous interest in the life of animals and plants instead of men: for it is indeed difficult to do without interchange with something or other. So the best thing would be to face the problem squarely, to clo the yourself with an atmosphere totally concentrated on the Divine so that whatever passes across is filtered in its passage. And further, there is the question of food. The body is obliged to take in foreign matter in order to subsist, it would therefore absorb at the same time a fair quantity of inert and unconscious forces or that of some not very desirable consciousness. I once spoke to you of the consciousness that one absorbs with food, there is also unconsciousness that one absorbs in the same way. That is why in many systems of Yoga you are advised to offer first to the Divine your food and then eat it: it means calling down the Divine into your food before absorbing it. Offering means putting in contact: the food is put in contact with type Divine, i.e. put under His influence. This is a very good, a very useful procedure; if you knew how to do it, it would diminish very much the labour of the inner transformation that one has to do. For in the world we live in solidarity with all others. You cannot take in a single breath of air without absorbing the vibrations, the numberless vibrations that come from all kinds of movements and all kinds of people. So if you want to keep yourself intact, you must, as I have said, maintain yourself in the condition of a filter allowing nothing undesirable to enter. Or put on a mask as one does when crossing an infected and poisoned locality, or do something similar.
   One must have around oneself an atmosphere so condensed, condensed in a spirit of total surrender, that nothing can enter without being automatically filtered. There are wicked thoughts, evil will about you, harmful formations sent out by bad people. The air pullulates with these: dark noisome bacilli. It is so troublesome to be always on the look-out, at every step to be on one's guard, to move slowly with care and caution and precautions; even then one is not sure. But if you cover yourself with the cloak of light, the light of a happy, sincere surrender, and aspiration, that is a wonderful filter, that gives you automatic protection. The undesirable forces not only cannot enter, they are thrown back upon their originator, the attackers themselves become their own victims.

1.01 - The Four Aids, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  15:Always indeed it is the higher Power that acts. Our sense of personal effort and aspiration comes from the attempt of the egoistic mind to identify itself in a wrong and imperfect way with the workings of the Divine Force. It persists in applying to experience on a supernormal plane the ordinary terms of mentality which it applies to its normal experiences in the world. In the world we act with the sense of egoism; we claim the universal forces that work in us as our own; we claim as the effect of our personal will, wisdom, force, virtue the selective, formative, progressive action of the Transcendent in this frame of mind, life and body. Enlightenment brings to us the knowledge that the ego is only an instrument; we begin to perceive and feel that these things are our own in the sense that they belong to our supreme and integral Self, one with the Transcendent, not to the instrumental ego. Our limitations and distortions are our contri bution to the working; the true power in it is the Divine's. When the human ego realises that its will is a tool, its wisdom ignorance and childishness, its power an infant's groping, its virtue a pretentious impurity, and learns to trust itself to that which transcends it, that is its salvation. The apparent freedom and self-assertion of our personal being to which we are so profoundly attached, conceal a most pitiable subjection to a thousand suggestions, impulsions, forces which we have made extraneous to our little person. Our ego, boasting of freedom, is at every moment the slave, toy and puppet of countless beings, powers, forces, influences in universal Nature. The self-abnegation of the ego in the Divine is its self-fulfilment; its surrender to that which transcends it is its liberation from bonds and limits and its perfect freedom.
  16:But still, in the practical development, each of the three stages has its necessity and utility and must be given its time or its place. It will not do, it cannot be safe or effective to begin with the last and highest alone. It would not be the right course, either, to leap prematurely from one to another. For even if from the beginning we recognise in mind and heart the Supreme, there are elements of the nature which long prevent the recognition from becoming realisation. But without realisation our mental belief cannot become a dynamic reality; it is still only a figure of knowledge, not a living truth, an idea, not yet a power. And even if realisation has begun, it may be dangerous to imagine or to assume too soon that we are altogether in the hands of the Supreme or are acting as his instrument. That assumption may introduce a calamitous falsity; it may produce a helpless inertia or, magnifying the movements of the ego with the Divine Name, it may disastrously distort and ruin the whole course of the Yoga. There is a period, more or less prolonged, of internal effort and struggle in which the individual will has to reject the darkness and distortions of the lower nature and to put itself resolutely or vehemently on the side of the divine Light. The mental energies, the heart's emotions, the vital desires, the very physical being have to be compelled into the right attitude or trained to admit and answer to the right influences. It is only then, only when this has been truly done, that the surrender of the lower to the higher can be effected, because the sacrifice has become acceptable.
  --
  32:The Teacher of the integral Yoga will follow as far as he may the method of the Teacher within us. He will lead the disciple through the nature of the disciple. Teaching, example, influence, -- these are the three instruments of the Guru. But the wise Teacher will not seek to impose himself or his opinions on the passive acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and sure as a seed which will grow under the divine fostering within. He will seek to awaken much more than to instruct; he will aim at the growth of the faculties and the experiences by a natural process and free expansion. He will give a method as an aid, as a utilisable device, not as an imperative formula or a fixed routine. And he will be on his guard against any turning of the means into a limitation, against the mechanising of process. His whole business is to awaken the divine light and set working the Divine Force of which he himself is only a means and an aid, a body or a channel.
  33:The example is more powerful than the instruction; but it is not the example of the outward acts nor that of the personal character, which is of most importance. These have their place and their utility; but what will most stimulate aspiration in others is the central fact of the divine realisation within him governing his whole life and inner state and all his activities. This is the universal and essential element; the rest belongs to individual person and circumstance. It is this dynamic realisation that the Sadhaka must feel and reproduce in himself according to his own nature; he need not strive after an imitation from outside which may well be sterilising rather than productive of right and natural fruits.

1.01 - Two Powers Alone, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  13:An inert passivity is constantly confused with the real surrender, but out of an inert passivity nothing true and powerful can come. It is the inert passivity of physical Nature that leaves it at the mercy of every obscure or undivine influence. A glad and strong and helpful submission is demanded to the working of the Divine Force, the obedience of the illumined disciple of the Truth, of the inner Warrior who fights against obscurity and falsehood, of the faithful servant of the Divine.
  14:This is the true attitude and only those who can take and keep it, preserve a faith unshaken by disappointments and difficulties and shall pass through the ordeal to the supreme victory and the great transmutation.

1.02 - Karmayoga, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Yoga is communion with God for knowledge, for love or for work. The Yogin puts himself into direct relation with that which is omniscient and omnipotent within man and without him. He is in tune with the infinite, he becomes a channel for the strength of God to pour itself out upon the world whether through calm benevolence or active beneficence. When a man rises by putting from him the slough of self and lives for others and in the joys and sorrows of others; - when he works perfectly and with love and zeal, but casts away the anxiety for results and is neither eager for victory nor afraid of defeat; - when he devotes all his works to God and lays every thought, word and deed as an offering on the divine altar; - when he gets rid of fear and hatred, repulsion and disgust and attachment, and works like the forces of Nature, unhasting, unresting, inevitably, perfectly; - when he rises above the thought that he is the body or the heart or the mind or the sum of these and finds his own and true self; - when he becomes aware of his immortality and the unreality of death; - when he experiences the advent of knowledge and feels himself passive and the Divine Force working unresisted through his mind, his speech, his senses and all his organs; - when having thus abandoned whatever he is, does or has to the Lord of all, the Lover and Helper of mankind, he dwells permanently in
  Him and becomes incapable of grief, disquiet or false excitement,

1.02 - Self-Consecration, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  26:In the first movement of self-preparation, the period of personal effort, the method we have to use is this concentration of the whole being on the Divine that it seeks and, as its corollary, this constant rejection, throwing out, katharsis, of all that is not the true Truth of the Divine. An entire consecration of all that we are, think, feel and do will be the result of this persistence. This consecration in its turn must culminate in an integral self-giving to the Highest; for its crown and sign of completion is the whole nature's all-comprehending absolute surrender. In the second stage of the Yoga, transitional between the human and the divine working, there will supervene an increasing purified and vigilant passivity, a more and more luminous divine response to the Divine Force, -- but not to any other; and there will be as a result the growing inrush of a great and conscious miraculous working from above. In the last period there is no effort at all, no set method, no fixed sadhana; the place of endeavour and Tapasya will be taken by a natural, simple, powerful and happy disclosing of the flower of the Divine out of the bud of a purified and perfected terrestrial nature. These are the natural successions of the action of the Yoga.
  27:These movements are indeed not always or absolutely arranged in a strict succession to each other. The second stage begins in part before the first is completed; the first continues in part until the second is perfected; the last divine working can manifest from time to time as a promise before it is finally settled and normal to the nature. Always too there is something higher and greater than the individual which leads him even in his personal labour and endeavour. Often he may become, and remain for a time, wholly conscious, even in parts of his being permanently conscious, of this greater leading behind the veil, and that may happen long before his whole nature has been purified in all its parts from the lower indirect control. Even, he may be thus conscious from the beginning; his mind and heart, if not his other members, may respond to its seizing and penetrating guidance with a certain initial completeness from the very first steps of the Yoga. But it is the constant and complete and uniform action of the great direct control that more and more distinguishes the transitional stage as it proceeds and draws to its close. This predominance of a greater diviner leading, not personal to ourselves, indicates the nature's increasing ripeness for a total spiritual transformation. It is the unmistakable sign that the self-consecration has not only been accepted in principle but is fulfilled in act and power. The Supreme has laid his luminous hand upon a chosen human vessel of his miraculous Light and Power and Ananda.

1.04 - Religion and Occultism, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Yes, it is the symbol of the descent of the Divine Forces upon the physical plane.
  25 January 1934

1.04 - The Divine Mother - This Is She, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  Take, for instance, the construction of Golconde. I am not going to enter into an elaborate description of its development. Considering that our resources in men and money were then limited, how such a magnificent building was erected is a wonder. An American architect with his Japanese and Czechoslovakian assistants foregathered. Old buildings were demolished, our sadhaks along with the paid workers laboured night and day and as if from a void, the spectacular mansion rose silently and slowly like a giant in the air. It is a story hardly believable for Pondicherry of those days. But my wonder was at the part the Mother played in it, not inwardly which is beyond my depth but in the daylight itself. She was in constant touch with the work through her chosen instruments. As many sadhaks as possible were pressed into service there; to anyone young or old asking for work, part time, whole time, her one cry: "Go to Golconde, go to Golconde." It was one of her daily topics with Sri Aurobindo who was kept informed of the difficulties, troubles innumerable, and at the same time, of the need of his force to surmount "them. Particularly when rain threatened to impede or spoil some important part of the work, she would invoke his special help: for instance, when the roof was to be built. How often we heard her praying to Sri Aurobindo, "Lord, there should be no rain now." Menacing clouds had mustered strong, stormy west winds blowing ominously, rain imminent, and torrential Pondicherry rain! We would look at the sky and speculate on the result of the fight between the Divine Force and the natural force. the Divine Force would of course win: slowly the Fury would leash her forces and withdraw into the cave. But as soon as the intended object was achieved, a deluge swept down as if in revenge. Sri Aurobindo observed that that was often the rule. During the harvesting season too, S.O.S. signals would come to Sri Aurobindo through the Mother to stop the rain. He would smile and do his work silently. If I have not seen any other miracle, I can vouch for this one repeated more than once. During the roof-construction, work had to go on all night long and the Mother would mobilise and marshal all the available Ashram hands and put them there. With what cheer and ardour our youth jumped into the fray at the call of the Mother, using often Sri Aurobindo's name to put more love and zeal into the strenuous enterprise! We felt the vibration of a tremendous energy driving, supporting, inspiring the entire collective body. This was how Golconde, an Ashram guest house, was built, one of the wonders of modern architecture lavishly praised by many visitors. Let me quote the relevant portion of a letter from Sri Aurobindo, written in 1945 with regard to Golconde:
  "...It is on this basis that she (Mother) planned the Golconde. First, she wanted a high architectural beauty, and in this she succeeded architects and people with architectural knowledge have admired it with enthusiasm as a remarkable achievement; one spoke of it as the finest building of its kind he had seen, with no equal in all Europe or America; and a French architect, pupil of a great master, said it executed superbly the idea which his master had been seeking for but failed to realise..."2
  --
  Now to finish the medical story with one or two positive examples. A striking case of cure by the yogic force was that of Champaklal's. He had corneal ulcer and iritis. I took him to the local eye-specialist who advised him complete rest. He was obliged to stop his service of the Master, a blow much more painful to him than the illness. Awfully dejected, he passed his days in an inert resignation in bed showing no sign of improvement. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo would listen quietly to my report till one day the Mother paid him a visit. On her return, she told Sri Aurobindo, "The case is serious; he must not remain in bed one moment longer; he should resume work." I was speechless. I could not make out on what ground she made that observation. Subjective or objective? I knew of course from my previous medical experience that she sees beyond our sight. The bandage was removed and he rejoined work. Curiously enough, he became all right in two or three days without any treatment whatsoever. Apart from the Divine Force, the psychological factor, the sense of active physical nearness to Sri Aurobindo, must have counted a lot.
  It will not be out of place to mention a minor instance of yogic cure in my own case. While in actual attendance on Sri Aurobindo, I was gripped by a sudden violent colic pain. I had to leave the work and lie down. Sri Aurobindo was informed about it. I was simply tossing on the floor when suddenly I heard a voice within me, "Keep absolutely quiet." Straining all my will, I lay stiff on my back in a board-like rigidity. Insusceptibly sleep came, as if I had been given a morphia injection and I woke up in a normal state.
  We have seen cases in which the lack of proper psychological conditions prevented the effective intervention by the Divine Force. Now I shall cite a serious case where, Sri Aurobindo himself declared, the divine intervention had its full effect.
  The patient, S, a thin, wiry man of about 40, used to suffer from acidity and came to me for treatment. But being extremely greedy, he could never observe the essential part of the cure, the diet. In 1934, before I had taken up the Dispensary work, he invited me for a cup of tea. I asked the Mother's permission, for at that time we were supposed to obtain her approval for any external movement not concerned with sadhana, and Sri Aurobindo replied, "It would be better not to take S's things. This cooking has reawakened his greed of food and made him ill again after I had completely cured him."
  --
  To say a few words about the success of a case by the Divine Force or its failure Sri Aurobindo has never maintained that the Force is infallible. Only the Supramental Force is a "dead cert". But it is extremely difficult to bring it down. Short of that, everything is a play of possibility where many factors count: the doctor, the patient, the environment. The Force is not a magician, as we understand the word. It takes into account all these factors, particularly the faith and openness of the patient as in this case. If the patient's soul wants to leave the body, the Force cannot compel it to remain. In short, it is a complex tangle of forces that has to be dealt with, each case different from another and there is no universal rule that can be applied to all. Nevertheless, if two cases have failed, we have seen other serious ones where the cause of success was beyond all doubt.
  There were two small occasions when I attended on the Mother. Usually, she was not in the habit of consulting doctors. Her doctor was Sri Aurobindo. But once when her hand had swollen for no apparent reason, Sri Aurobindo asked me to have a look at it. I examined it in his presence with a certain amount of shy hesitation. Here lay the difference between myself and Dr. Manilal. He would have done the job in quite a business-like manner. The case was simple, however, and got cured with hot fomentation. The next occasion was when she was having much pain in the ear, perhaps from an insect bite. Sri Aurobindo asked if I could do something. I examined the ear and found a tiny spot of haemorrhage inside. The Mother inquired if the insect was still there. I said no, but when I suggested some ear-drops for the pain, she replied, "No, no medicine for me!" Medicines were an anathema to both the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Throughout their long yogic life they cured all their own ailments by applying the Force. Medicines were accepted only during the later stage of Sri Aurobindo's last illness and in the recent illness of the Mother. There were special reasons for this. I have given some of them in Sri Aurobindo's case in the chapter 'God Departs'.
  --
  My aim in drawing this picture of the Mother is not merely to demonstrate her dynamism. There have been quite a number of people in the world, Napoleon for example, who had a magnificent vital energy, but they are of a different category. Here all her actions are symbolic, they are the expressions of the Divine Force, chit shakti, she embodies, and that force she has given freely to the young ones as she had done to the older generation. It infiltrates everything that it comes in contact with; she leaves a part of her Divine Presence wherever she goes. She has said also she never forgets any person who has come in contact with her even for a moment! The person finds a place in her Divine Consciousness. Sri Aurobindo said to me that with each one of us here she has her emanation. I believe that would be in some sense true for all those who have come in contact with her, and it would help them through life's strenuous and perilous journey.
  I shall now finish this chapter with an account of my utter discomfiture in trying to argue with the Mother over a subject about which I had very little knowledge. The Mother was describing to Sri Aurobindo the physical features of the brothers of a particular family. At some point, I don't remember exactly when, I was foolish enough to contradict her. She replied, "Better keep quiet! You know nothing." The episode was over and I had forgotten all about it. But the surprise of surprises, later on the Mother called me out of Sri Aurobindo's room and putting her hand on my shoulder explained almost in an apologetic tone how I was wrong. I expressed my sincere regret for my interruption and said that I certainly did not mind her rebuke. I was indeed very much moved by her divine considerateness. If she would be rude or severe on occasions she once said that Sri Aurobindo was a gentleman, she was not we have seen her Mahakali aspect, freezing silence, ironical smile, cold look, her Mahalakshmi graciousness too was showered upon us often. For example, she used to give me, on my birthdays, a pair of fine dhotis from the stock meant for Sri Aurobindo. However hard she might appear outside, and it was unfortunately for us very necessary she is our true Mother and her only concern is to lead us to the Light.

1.05 - Morality and War, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Dont worry about Hitler. No asuric force can stand eternally against the Divine Force and the hour of his defeat is bound to come.
  27 May 1940

1.05 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - The Psychic Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
     In sum, it may be safely affirmed that no solution offered can be anything but provisional until a supramental Truth-Consciousness is reached by which the appearances of things are put in their place and their essence revealed and that in them which derives straight from the spiritual essence. In the meanwhile our only safety is to find a guiding law of spiritual experience -- or else to liberate a light within that can lead us on the way until that greater direct Truth-Consciousness is reached above us or born within us. For all else in us that is only outward, all that is not a spiritual sense or seeing, the constructions, representations or conclusions of the intellect, the suggestions or instigations of the Life-force, the positive necessities of physical things are sometimes half-lights, sometimes false lights that can at best only serve for a while or serve a little and for the rest either detain or confuse us. The guiding law of spiritual experience can only come by an opening of human consciousness to the Divine Consciousness; there must be the power to receive in us the working and comm and and dynamic presence of the Divine shakti and surrender ourselves to her control; it is that surrender and that control which bring the guidance. But the surrender is not sure, there is no absolute certitude of the guidance so long as we are besieged by mind formations and life impulses and instigations of ego which may easily betray us into the hands of a false experience. This danger can only be countered by the opening of a now nine-tenths concealed inmost soul or psychic being that is already there but not commonly active within us. That is the inner light we must liberate; for the light of this inmost soul is our one sure illumination so long as we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and the Truth-Consciousness has not taken up the entire control of our Godward endeavour. The working of the Divine Force in us under the conditions of the transition and the light of the psychic being turning us always towards a conscious and seeing obedience to that higher impulsion and away from the demands and instigations of the Forces of the Ignorance, these between them create an ever progressive inner law of our action which continues till the spiritual and supramental can be established in our nature. In the transition there may well be a period in which we take up all life and action and offer them to the Divine for purification, change and deliverance of the truth within them, another period in which we draw back and build a spiritual wall around us admitting through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of the spiritual transformation, a third in which a free and all-embracing action, but with new forms fit for the utter truth of the Spirit, can again be made possible. These things, however, will be decided by no mental rule but in the light of the soul within us and by the ordaining force and progressive guidance of the Divine Power that secretly or overtly first impels, then begins clearly to control and order and finally takes up the whole burden of the Yoga.
     In accordance with the triple character of the sacrifice we may divide works too into a triple order, the works of Knowledge, the works of Love, the works of the Will-in-Life, and see how this more plastic spiritual rule applies to each province and effects the transition from the lower to the higher nature.

1.06 - Five Dreams, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  August 15th is my own birthday and it is naturally gratifying to me that it should have assumed this vast significance. I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous accident, but as the sanction and seal of the Divine Force that guides my steps on the work with which I began life, the beginning of its full fruition. Indeed, on this day I can watch almost all the world-movements which I hoped to see fulfilled in my lifetime, though then they looked like impracticable dreams, arriving at fruition or on their way to achievement. In all these movements free India may well play a large part and take a leading position.
  The first of these dreams was a revolutionary movement which would create a free and united India. India today is free but she has not achieved unity. At one moment it almost seemed as if in the very act of liberation she would fall back into the chaos of separate States which preceded the British conquest. But fortunately it now seems probable that this danger will be averted and a large and powerful, though not yet a complete union will be established. Also, the wisely drastic policy of the Constituent Assembly has made it probable that the problem of the depressed classes will be solved without schism or fissure. But the old communal division into Hindus and Muslims seems now to have hardened into a permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped that this settled fact will not be accepted as settled for ever or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. India's internal development and prosperity may be impeded, her position among the nations weakened, her destiny impaired or even frustrated. This must not be; the partition must go. Let us hope that that may come about naturally, by an increasing recognition of the necessity not only of peace and concord but of common action, by the practice of common action and the creation of means for that purpose. In this way unity may finally come about under whatever form the exact form may have a pragmatic but not a fundamental importance. But by whatever means, in whatever way, the division must go; unity must and will be achieved, for it is necessary for the greatness of India's future.

1.06 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  - not merely infer from their results, but feel directly - the action of the secret world-forces, mind-forces, life-forces, subtle physical forces that constitute universal and individual existence; we shall even be able, if we will but train ourselves to it, to lay our hands on these world-forces that throw themselves on us or surround us and more and more to control or at least strongly modify their action on us and others, their formations, their very movements. Yet again, above our human mind are still greater reaches superconscient to it and from there secretly descend influences, powers, touches which are the original determinants of things here and, if they were called down in their fullness, could altogether alter the whole make and economy of life in the material universe. It is all this latent experience and knowledge that the Divine Force working upon us by our opening to it in the integral Yoga, progressively reveals to us, uses and works out the consequences as means and steps towards a transformation of our whole being and nature. Our life is thenceforth no longer a little rolling wave on the surface, but interpenetrant if not coincident with the cosmic life. Our spirit, our self rises not only into an inner identity with some wide cosmic Self but into
  The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2

1.07 - The Literal Qabalah (continued), #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  Sephiros are simply kechleem, vessels or channels through which the Divine Forces of creative evolution manifest themselves. The Sephiros to which Father and Mother are allocated are not Ain Soph. Permeated and sustained by the Infinite Life though they always are, they are realized to be but manifestations.
  The real solution of the would-be comparison is, in point of fact, a remarkably simple one, since there can be no comparison at all. So simple is this solution that insofar as

1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We are accustomed to speak of the Visvadevas as if they were a separate class of deities, like the Adityas, Maruts or Rudras; but the Veda uses the expression Vive devsah, which in the absence of any other meaning for viva, we must render simply All gods. We shall suppose for the present that when the expression is used, the gods generally and in the mass, whether apart from the great Thirty-three or including them, are invoked,the gods in their general character as supporters and agents of all internal & external activity, charshanidhritah, without distinction of names or special faculty. A rich and many-sided activity is contemplated; the mass of the Divine Forces that support the world action in man are summoned to their functions.
  The precise meaning of the words has first to be settled. Charshani is taken in the Veda to be, like krishti, a word equivalent to manushya, men. The entire correctness of the rendering may well be doubted. The gods, no doubt, can be described as upholders of men, but there are passages & uses in which the application of this significance becomes difficult. For Indra, like Agni, is called vivacharshani. Can this expression mean the Universal Man? Is Indra, like Agni, Vaivnara, in the sense of being present in all human beings? If so, the subjective capacity of Indra is indeed proved by a single epithet. But Vaivnara really means the Universal Existence or Force, from a sense of the root an which we have in anila, anala, Latin anima or else, if the combination be viv-nara, then from the Vedic sense of nara, strong, swift or bright. And what canwemake of such an expression as charshanipr?We must therefore follow our usual course & ask how charshani came to mean a human being. The root charsh or chrish is formed from the primary root char or chri (a lost form whose original presence is, however, necessary in the history of Sanscrit speech), as krish from kri. Now kri means to do, char means to do, work, practise or perform. The form krish was evidently used in the sense of action which required a prolonged or laborious effort; in the same way as the root Ar it came to mean to plough; it came to mean also to overcome or to drag or pull. From this sense of action or labour alone can krishti have been extended in significance to the idea, man; originally it must have been used like kru or keru to mean a doer, worker, and, from its form, have been capable also of meaning action. I suggest that charshani had really the same meaning & something of the same development. The other sense given to the word, swift, moving, cannot easily have led to the idea of man; strength, doing, thinking are the characteristics behind the human idea in the older languages. Charshani-dhrit applied to the Visvadevas or dhartr charshannm to Mitra & Varuna will mean the upholders of actions or activities; vivacharshani, applied to Indra or Agni, will mean the lord of all actions; charshanipr will mean filling the actions. That Indra in this sense is vivacharshani can be at once determined from two passages occurring early in the Veda,I.9.2 in Madhuchchhandas hymn to Indra, mandim Indrya mandine chakrim vivni chakraye, delight-giving for Indra the enjoyer, effective of action for the doer of all actions, where vivni chakri is a perfect equivalent to vivacharshani, and I.11.4 in another hymn to Indra, Indro vivasya karmano dhart, Indra the upholder of every action, where we have the exact idea of charshandhrit, vivacharshani & dhartr charshannm. The Visvadevas are the upholders of all our activities.

1.107 - The Bestowal of a Divine Gift, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  Nobody can say what happens. No one can go there and see what happens. Dharma-megha samadhi is only a term which is defined in various ways, but it is said to be a divine gift which is bestowed upon the seeker by the powers that be the Divine Forces that guard the cosmos. Rapturous descriptions of this condition can be found in such scriptures as the Yoga Vasishtha where we are told that even the divine beings, the guardians of the cosmos, become our servants. The guardians of the cosmos become the servants of this man. Such things are told in the Yoga Vasishtha and other scriptures of that kind.
  We will become the master. There is the shadowy persistence of the ego which has taken a cosmic form, a kind of vritti which sometimes is called, in the language of the Vedanta, as brahmakara-vritti. It is only a theoretical description of the forms that the mind has taken, and is really not a vritti at all. Merely because it has to subside afterwards, we also call it a vritti. It is a vritti which the mind puts on with a single object in front of it that is called brahmakara-vritti. The other vrittis, which are called vishayakara-vrittis,are those which have many objects in front of them the usual vrittis of the mind which are in respect of various objects of sense, as is the case with people like us at present.

1.11 - Correspondence and Interviews, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  Munshi was one of the prominent leaders of India at that time. He was to observe later: "He (Sri Aurobindo) saw into the heart of things. His perception of the political situation in India was always unerring. When the world war came in 1939 it was he of the unerring eye who said that the triumph of England and France was he triumph of the Divine Forces over the demoniac forces. He spoke again when Sir Stafford Cripps came with his first proposal. He said, 'India should accept it.' We rejected the advice... but today we realise that if the first proposal had been accepted, there would have been no partition, no refugees, and no Kashmir problem."
  There was another interview in 1950 with the Maharaja of Bhavanagar who was then Governor of Madras. Sri Aurobindo was not well at that time. Still, he did not cancel the interview. I had the impression that he would have been willing to see other people too if they had so desired and would have conferred his blessings on them.

1.11 - The Master of the Work, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
     Our nature is not only mistaken in will and ignorant in knowledge but weak in power; but the Divine Force is there and will lead us if we trust in it and will use our deficiencies and our powers for the divine purpose. If we fail in our immediate aim, it is because he has intended the failure; often our failure or ill-result is the right road to a truer issue than an immediate and complete success would have put in our reach. If we suffer, it is because something in us has to be prepared for a rarer possibility of delight. If we stumble, it is to learn in the end the secret of a more perfect walking. Let us not be in too furious a haste to acquire even peace, purity and perfection. Peace must be ours, but not the peace of an empty or devastated nature or of slam or mutilated capacities incapable of unrest because we have made them incapable of intensity and fire and force. Purity must be our aim, but not the purity of a void or of a bleak and rigid coldness. Perfection is demanded of us, but not the perfection that can exist only by confining its scope within narrow limits or putting an arbitrary full stop to the ever self-extending scroll of the Infinite. Our object is to change into the divine nature, but the divine nature is not a mental or moral but a spiritual condition, difficult to achieve, difficult even to conceive by our intelligence. The Master of our work and our Yoga knows the thing to be done, and we must allow him to do it in us by his own means and in his own manner.
     The movement of the Ignorance is egoistic at its core and nothing is more difficult for us than to get rid of egoism while yet we admit personality and adhere to action in the half-light and half-force of our unfinished nature. It is easier to starve the ego by renouncing the impulse to act or to kill it by cutting away from us all movement of personality. It is easier to exalt it into self-forgetfulness immersed in a trance of peace or an ecstasy of divine Love. But our more difficult problem is to liberate the true Person and attain to a divine manhood which shall be the pure vessel of a divine force and the perfect instrument of a divine action. Step after step has to be firmly taken; difficulty after difficulty has to be entirely experienced and entirely mastered. Only the Divine Wisdom and Power can do this for us and it will do all if we yield to it in an entire faith and follow and assent to its workings with a constant courage and patience.

1.15 - The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The idea of the Avatar is not indeed indispensable to its scheme, but it comes in naturally into it as a perfectly rational and logical conception. For all here is God, is the Spirit or Self-existence, is Brahman, ekamevadvityam, - there is nothing else, nothing other and different from it and there can be nothing else, can be nothing other and different from it; Nature is and can be nothing else than a power of the divine consciousness; all beings are and can be nothing else than inner and outer, subjective and objective soul-forms and bodily forms of the divine being which exist in or result from the power of its consciousness. Far from the Infinite being unable to take on finiteness, the whole universe is nothing else but that; we can see, look as we may, nothing else at all in the whole wide world we inhabit. Far from the Spirit being incapable of form or disdaining to connect itself with form of matter or mind and to assume a limited nature or a body, all here is nothing but that, the world exists only by that connection, that assumption. Far from the world being a mechanism of law with no soul or spirit intervening in the movement of its forces or the action of its minds and bodies, - only some original indifferent Spirit passively existing somewhere outside or above it, - the whole world and every particle of it is on the contrary nothing but the Divine Force in action and that divine force determines and governs its every movement, inhabits its every form, possesses here every soul and mind; all is in God and in him moves and has its being, in all he is, acts and displays his being; every creature is the disguised Narayana.
  Far from the unborn being unable to assume birth, all beings

1.17 - The Divine Birth and Divine Works, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  HE WORK for which the Avatar descends has like his birth a double sense and a double form. It has an outward side of the Divine Force acting upon the external world in order to maintain there and to reshape the divine law by which the Godward effort of humanity is kept from decisive retrogression and instead decisively carried forward in spite of the rule of action and reaction, the rhythm of advance and relapse by which Nature proceeds. It has an inward side of the Divine Force of the Godward consciousness acting upon the soul of the individual and the soul of the race, so that it may receive new forms of revelation of the Divine in man and may be sustained, renewed and enriched in its power of upward self-unfolding. The
  Avatar does not descend merely for a great outward action, as the pragmatic sense in humanity is too often tempted to suppose.

1.2.02 - Qualities Needed for Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The further method is, - (1) To concentrate in the heart and aspire and (2) to call to the divine Mother to enter there and purify the mind and vital and unveil the psychic being so that her constant guidance and presence in it may be felt always and (3) to concentrate in the quiet mind and (in the head) open oneself first to the Divine Force and light which is always above the mind and call to it to descend into the body and the whole being - either of these or both, according to the capacity of the sadhaka.
  Yoga must be done not for oneself or what one can get but for the sake of the Divine and to be united with the Divine.

1.2.07 - Surrender, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Self-surrender is to give up yourself and all that is yours, mind and everything else to the Divine, so that the Divine Force may take everything and change it.
  Surrender means to consecrate everything in oneself to the
  --
  To believe that one is being constantly guided by the Divine in the heart is not necessarily surrender. It is necessary to be detached, to see what are the Divine Forces and undivine and to reject the undivine forces. It is only by this discrimination that one can make a true surrender to the Divine in the heart.
  It [true surrender] begins when there is the true self-offering.
  --
  It is not by taking a mere mental attitude that this can be done or even by any number of inner experiences which leave the outer man as he was. It is this outer man who has to open, to surrender and to change. His every least movement, habit, action has to be surrendered, seen, held up and exposed to the divine Light, offered to the Divine Force for its old forms and
  Surrender
  --
  It [the idea that the sadhana is done by the Divine rather than by oneself] is a truth but a truth that does not become effective for the consciousness until or in proportion as it is realised. The people who stagnate because of it are those who accept the idea but do not realise - so they have neither the force of tapasya nor that of the Divine Grace. On the other hand those who can realise it feel even behind their tapasya and in it the action of the Divine Force.
  Surrender and Tapasya
  --
  There are always two ways of doing the Yoga - one by the action of a vigilant mind and vital seeing, observing, thinking and deciding what is or is not to be done. Of course it acts with the Divine Force behind it, drawing or calling in that Force - for otherwise nothing much can be done. But still it is the personal effort that is prominent and assumes most of the burden.
  The other way is that of the psychic being, the consciousness opening to the Divine, not only opening the psychic and bringing it forward, but opening the mind, the vital and the physical, receiving the Light, perceiving what is to be done, feeling and
  --
   seeing it done by the Divine Force itself and helping constantly by its own vigilant and conscious assent to and call for the Divine working.
  Usually there cannot but be a mixture of these two ways until the consciousness is ready to be entirely open, entirely submitted to the Divine's origination of all its action. It is then that all responsibility disappears and there is no personal burden on the shoulders of the sadhak.
  --
  Divine Grace which is usually rapid in its action. For the latter there must be a complete surrender and self-giving and for that again usually it is necessary to have a mind that can remain quite quiet and allow the Divine Force to act supporting it with its complete adhesion at every step, but otherwise remaining still and quiet. This last condition which resembles the baby cat attitude spoken of by Ramakrishna, is difficult to have. Those who are accustomed to a very active movement of their thought and will in all they do, find it difficult to still the activity and adopt the quietude of mental self-giving. This does not mean that they cannot do the Yoga or cannot arrive at self-giving - only the purification and the self-giving take a long time to accomplish and one must have the patience and steady perseverance and resolution to go through.
  If there is not a complete surrender, then it is not possible to adopt the baby cat attitude, - it becomes mere tamasic passivity calling itself surrender. If a complete surrender is not possible in the beginning, it follows that personal effort is necessary.
  --
   a movement of the Divine Force. If you feel conscious of the
  Divine Force, then call it in more and more to govern your effort, to take it up, to transform it into something not yours, but the Mother s. There will be a sort of transfer, a taking up of the forces at work in the personal adhar - a transfer not suddenly complete but progressive.
  But the psychic poise is necessary: the discrimination must develop which sees accurately what is the Divine Force, what is the element of personal effort, and what is brought in as a mixture from the lower cosmic forces. And until the transfer is complete, which always takes time, there must always be as a personal contri bution, a constant consent to the true
  Force, a constant rejection of any lower mixture - that is very important.
  --
   the necessary change. One has then to persist, to put always the will on the side of the Divine, rejecting what has to be rejected, opening oneself to the true Light and the true Force, calling it down quietly, steadfastly, without tiring, without depression or impatience, until one feels the Divine Force at work and the obstacles beginning to give way.
  You say you are conscious of your ignorance and obscurity.

1.2 - Katha Upanishads, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  3 the Divine Force concealed in the subconscient is that which has originated and built
  up the worlds. At the other end in the superconscient it reveals itself as the Divine Being,
  --
  5 Probably, the Divine Force utilised to raise to divinity the triple being of man.
  6 Possibly, the three Purushas, soul-states or Personalities of the divine Being, indicated

1.3.01 - Peace The Basis of the Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   the transformation, all the rest will be built on it. To open to the Divine Forces with a quiet and strong aspiration, to become conscious of their working, to allow quietly that working and calmly to contain it, seconding it with one's aspiration, getting more and more knowledge and understanding of what is being done as one goes on - this is the sound and natural way of the
  Yoga.

1.3.5.05 - The Path, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This opening is a throwing wide of all the nature on all its levels and in all its parts to receive into itself without limits the greater divine Consciousness which is there already above and behind and englobing this mortal half-conscious existence. In the receiving there must be no inability to contain, no breaking down of anything in the system, mind or life or nerve or body under the transmuting stress. There must be an endless receptivity, an always increasing capacity to bear an ever stronger and more and more insistent action of the Divine Force. Otherwise nothing great and permanent can be done; the Yoga will end in a break-down or an inert stoppage or a stultifying or a disastrous arrest in a process which must be absolute and integral if it is not [to] be a failure.
  But since no human system has this endless receptivity and unfailing capacity, the supramental Yoga can succeed only if the Divine Force as it descends increases the personal power and equates the strength that receives with the Force that enters from above to work in the nature. This is only possible if there is on our part a progressive surrender of the being into the hands
  170

1.4.01 - The Divine Grace and Guidance, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The Divine Grace and Power can do everything, but with the full assent of the sadhak. To learn to give that full assent is the whole meaning of the sadhana. It may take time either because of ideas in the mind, desires in the vital or inertia in the physical consciousness, but these things have to be and can be removed with the aid or by calling in the action of the Divine Force.
  There are three main possibilities for the sadhak - (1) To wait on the Grace and rely on the Divine. (2) To do everything himself like the full Adwaitin and the Buddhist. (3) To take the middle path, go forward by aspiration and rejection etc. helped by the

1.4.02 - The Divine Force, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  object:1.4.02 - the Divine Force
  author class:Sri Aurobindo
  --
   the Divine Force, not using the supramental Power, can certainly throw back the forces of Death and that has been done many times. But the Divine Force works here under conditions imposed by the Divine Will and Law; it has to take up an immense mass of conflicting forces, conditions, habits and movements of
  Nature and out of it arrive at the result of a higher consciousness on earth and a higher state. If it were to act otherwise, then all would be done by a miracle or magic, no sadhana would be needed, no way beaten out for the process of spiritual evolution to follow; there would be no real transformation of consciousness, but only a temporary feat of force which having no basis in the substance of creation here would vanish as it came. Therefore conditions have to be satisfied, the work to be done has to be wrought out step by step. The powers that held the field up to now have to be given their chance to oppose, so that the problem
  --
  Use and Misuse of the Divine Force
  All power comes from the Divine but it is more usually misused than used spiritually or rightly.
  --
  The Action of the Divine Force
  The action of the Force does not exclude tapasya, concentration and the need of sadhana. Its action rather comes as an answer or a help to these things. It is true that it sometimes acts without them; it very often wakes a response in those who have not prepared themselves and do not seem to be ready. But it does not always or usually act like that, nor is it a sort of magic that
  --
  Allow the Divine Force to Act
  It is quite true that, left to yourself, you can do nothing; that is why you have to be in contact with the Force which is there to do for you what you cannot do for yourself. The only thing you have to do is to allow the Force to act and put yourself on its side, which means to have faith in it, to rely upon it, not to trouble and harass yourself, to remember it quietly, to call upon it quietly, to let it act quietly. If you do that, all else will be done for you - not all at once, because there is much to clear away, but still it will be done steadily and more and more.
  Passivity can be only to the Divine Force when it is felt at work,
  - there can be no passivity to other forces, for that would be dangerous in the extreme. Passivity does not mean a blank mind - it means allowing the Divine Force to work without interference of the mental preferences, vital desires or physical disinclinations. As for freedom from ego or desire, that is the
   the Divine Force
  --
  Always keep in touch with the Divine Force. The best thing for you is to do that simply and allow it to do its own work; wherever necessary, it will take hold of the inferior energies and purify them; at other times it will empty you of them and fill you with itself. But if you let your mind take the lead and discuss and decide what is to be done, you will lose touch with the Divine
  Force and the lower energies will begin to act for themselves and all go into confusion and a wrong movement.
  --
  Remind yourself always that the Divine Force is there, that you have felt it and that, even if you seem to lose consciousness of it for a time or it seems something distant, still it is there and is sure to prevail. For those whom the Force has touched and taken up, belong thenceforth to the Divine.

1914 12 10p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Is it not a great folly to become identified with one form of thought, one mental construction, however vast and powerful it may be, to the point of making it the living centre of ones being, ones experience and activity? Truth is eternally beyond all that we can think or say of it. To endeavour to find the most suitable expression, the one best adapted to this truth, is of course a useful task, even an indispensable one for the integrality of ones own development and that of all humanity; but one must always feel free in front of this expression, have ones centre of consciousness above it, in the reality which, despite the grandeur, the beauty, the perfection of a mental formula, always eludes every formula. The world is not what we think it to be. The importance of the idea we have of it lies in its effect on our attitude towards action; and this attitude may come from a much deeper, truer, more unchanging inspiration than that resulting from a mental construction, however powerful it may be. To feel in oneself the will to express for men the eternal Truth in a completer, higher, more exact form than all those which have preceded it, is good; but on condition that one does not identify ones self with this work to the point of being its slave and losing before it all independence and self-control. It is just an activity and nothing more, whatever may be its importance from the earthly point of view; but it must not be forgotten that it is relative like all activities and that we should not allow it to disturb our deep peace and that immutable calm which alone lets the Divine Forces manifest through us without any deformation.
   O Lord, my prayer is not formulated, but Thou hearest it.

1929-05-19 - Mind and its workings, thought-forms - Adverse conditions and Yoga - Mental constructions - Illness and Yoga, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Where does Yoga begin and where does it end? Is not the whole of your life Yoga? The possibilities of illness are always there in your body and around you; you carry within you or there swarm about you the microbes and germs of every disease. How is it that all of a sudden you succumb to an illness which you did not have for years? You will say it is due to a depression of the vital force. But from where does the depression come? It comes from some disharmony in the being, from a lack of receptivity to the Divine Forces. When you cut yourself off from the energy and light that sustain you, then there is this depression, there is created what medical science calls a favourable ground and something takes advantage of it. It is doubt, gloominess, lack of confidence, a selfish turning back upon yourself that cuts you off from the light and divine energy and gives the attack this advantage. It is this that is the cause of your falling ill and not microbes.
  But has it not been found that by improved sanitation the health of the average citizen improves?

1929-06-09 - Nature of religion - Religion and the spiritual life - Descent of Divine Truth and Force - To be sure of your religion, country, family-choose your own - Religion and numbers, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Each time that something of the Divine Truth and the Divine Force comes down to manifest upon earth, some change is effected in the earths atmosphere. In the descent, those who are receptive are awakened to some inspiration from it, some touch, some beginning of sight. If they were capable of holding and expressing rightly what they receive, they would say, A great force has come down; I am in contact with it and what I understand of it, I will tell you. But most of them are not capable of that, because they have small minds. They get illumined, possessed, as it were, and cry, I have the Divine Truth, I possess it whole and entire. There are now upon earth at least two dozen Christs, if not as many Buddhas; India alone can supply any number of Avatars, not to speak of minor manifestations. But in this way, the whole thing begins to look grotesque; but if you see what is behind, it is not so stupid as it seems at the first glance. The truth is that the human personality has come in contact with some Being, some Power, and under the influence of education and tradition calls it Buddha or Christ or by any other familiar name. It is difficult to affirm that it was Buddha himself or the very Christ with whom there was the contact, but none can assert either that the inspiration did not come from that which inspired the Christ or the Buddha. These human vessels may very well have received the inspiration from some such source. If they were modest and simple, they would be content to say that much and no more; they would say, I have received this inspiration from such and such a Great One, but instead they proclaim, I am that Great One. I knew one who affirmed that he was both Christ and Buddha! He had received something, had experienced a truth, had seen the Divine Presence in himself and in others. But the experience was too strong for him, the truth too great. He became half crazy and the next day went out into the streets, proclaiming that in him Christ and Buddha had become one.
  One Divine Consciousness is here working through all these beings, preparing its way through all these manifestations. At this day it is here at work upon earth more powerfully than it has ever been before. There are some who receive its touch in some way, or to some degree; but what they receive they distort, they make their own thing out of it. Others feel the touch but cannot bear the force and go mad under the pressure. But some have the capacity to receive and the strength to bear, and it is they who will become the vessels of the full knowledge, the chosen instruments and agents.

1929-08-04 - Surrender and sacrifice - Personality and surrender - Desire and passion - Spirituality and morality, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  In the same way you could take all other types and trace them to some original intention in the Divine Force. Each is a diminution or caricature of the type intended by the Divine, a mental and vital distortion of things that have a greater spiritual value. It is a wrong movement that creates the distortion or the caricature. Once this false impulsion is mastered, the right attitude taken, the right movement found, all reveal their divine values. All are justified by the truth that is in them, all equally important, equally needed, different but indispensable instruments of the Divine Manifestation.
  ***

1951-02-12 - Divine force - Signs indicating readiness - Weakness in mind, vital - concentration - Divine perception, human notion of good, bad - Conversion, consecration - progress - Signs of entering the path - kinds of meditation - aspiration, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Why does the Divine Force upset people?
   Because it is too strong for them. It is as though you were in the midst of a big cyclone. It happens at times that the wind is so violent that you are not able to standyou have to lie down and wait till it blows over. Now, the Divine Forces are a thousand times stronger than a cyclonic wind. If you do not have in you a very wide receptivity, an extremely solid basis of calmness, of equality of soul and inner peace, they come and carry you away like a gale and you cannot resist them. It is the same thing with light; some people get a pain in the eyes when they look at the sun and are obliged to put on dark glasses because sunlight is too strong for them. But this is merely sunlight. When you are able to look at the supramental light, it appears to you so brilliant that sunlight seems like a black stain in comparison. One must have strong eyes and a solid brain to bear that, one must be well prepared, established in something extremely calm and vastit is as though one had such a strong basis of tranquillity that when the storm passes, when the light comes with a great intensity, one is able to remain immobile and receive what one can without being knocked over. But there is not one being in a million who can do it. Only those who have had a foretaste of inner experience can know what this means. But even if you enter consciously into the psychic, it is dazzling; and it is within your reach because it is your own psychic being, and yet it is so different from your external consciousness that the first time you enter it consciously, it seems to you truly dazzling, something infinitely more brilliant than the most brilliant sunlight.
   The psychic is what may be called the Divine within the reach of man.
  --
   How can you force it? It escapes through your fingers, so to say. Your will thinks it has caught it, and it eludes you. It is difficult to control. And force it to what? To be ready? All that you will be able to get from it is that it will become inert, that is, it will hide in a corner, not stir any longer, and let the storm pass! Because for it the contact with the Divine Forces is like a storm. And when it sees that the crisis is over, it will react: Here we are! Now, it is my turn!
   If you are upset, it means that you have still much work to do upon your vital before it can be ready, it means there is a weakness somewhere. For some, the weakness is in the mind. I knew a boy in France who was a fine musician, he used to play the violin admirably. But his brain was not very big, it was just big enough to help him in his music, nothing more. He used to come to our spiritual meetings and, all of a sudden, he had the experience of the infinite in the finite; it was an absolutely true experience; in the finite individual came the experience of the infinite. But this upset the boy so much that he could make nothing at all of it! He could not even play his music any longer. The experience had to be stopped because it was too powerful for him. This is an instance where the mind was too weak.
  --
   In the meditations we formerly used to have there [at the Ashram], when we had a morning or evening meditation, my work was to unify the consciousness of everyone and lift it as high as I could towards the Divine. Those who were able to feel the movement followed it. This was ordinary meditation with an aspiration and ascent towards the Divine. Here, at the Playground, the work is to unify all who are here, make them open and bring down the Divine Force into them. It is the opposite movement and that is why this concentration cannot replace the other, even as the other cannot replace this one. What happens here is exceptionalin the other meditation [at the Ashram] I gathered together the consciousness of all who were present and, with the power of aspiration, lifted it towards the Divine, that is, made each one of you progress a little. Here, on the other hand, I take you as you are; each one of you comes saying, Here we are with our whole days activities, we were busy with our body, here it is, we offer to you all our movements, just as they were, just as we are. And my work is to unify all that, make of it a homogeneous mass and, in answer to this offering (which each one can make in his own way), to open every consciousness, widen the receptivity, make a unity of this receptivity and bring down the Force. So at that moment each one of you, if you are very quiet and attentive, will surely receive something. You will not always be aware of it, but you will receive something.
   In March 1964, the following question was put to the Mother:

1951-03-14 - Plasticity - Conditions for knowing the Divine Will - Illness - microbes - Fear - body-reflexes - The best possible happens - Theories of Creation - True knowledge - a work to do - the Ashram, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Where does Yoga begin and where does it end? Is not the whole of your life Yoga? The possibilities of illness are always there in your body and around you; you carry within you or there swarm about you the microbes and germs of every disease. How is it that all of a sudden you succumb to an illness which you did not have for years? You will say it is due to a depression of the vital force. But from where does the depression come? It comes from some disharmony in the being, from a lack of receptivity to the Divine Forces. When you cut yourself off from the energy and light that sustain you, then there is this depression, there is created what medical science calls a favourable ground and something takes advantage of it. It is doubt, gloominess, lack of confidence, a selfish turning back upon yourself that cuts you off from the light and divine energy and gives the attack this advantage. It is this that is the cause of your falling ill and not microbes.
   Questions and Answers 1929 (19 May)

1951-03-24 - Descent of Divine Love, of Consciousness - Earth- a symbolic formation - the Divine Presence - The psychic being and other worlds - Divine Love and Grace - Becoming consaious of Divine Love - Finding ones psychic being - Responsibility, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Each one of you should be able to get into touch with your own psychic being, it is not an inaccessible thing. Your psychic being is there precisely to put you in contact with the Divine Forces. And if you are in contact with your psychic being, you begin to feel, to have a kind of perception of what Divine Love can be. As I have just said, it is not enough that one morning you wake up saying, Oh! I would like to be in contact with Divine Love, it is not like that. If, through a sustained effort, a deep concentration, a great forgetfulness of self, you succeed in coming into touch with your psychic being, you will never dream of thinking, Oh! I would like to be in contact with Divine Loveyou are in a state in which everything appears to you to be this Divine Love and nothing else. And yet it is only a covering, but a covering of a beautiful texture.
   So, Divine Love need not be sought and known apart from the psychic being?

1951-04-05 - Illusion and interest in action - The action of the divine Grace and the ego - Concentration, aspiration, will, inner silence - Value of a story or a language - Truth - diversity in the world, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But first you must will it, I believe that is quite important! There is no one method to follow. I read this and at the same time ask myself how many people would be satisfied to hear this. All the materialism and positivism in the world have been constructed just because people do not want the Divine Grace to come in at all. If they are cured they want to say, It is I who cured myself; if they make a progress, they want to think, It is I who have progressed; if they organise something, they want to proclaim, It is I who am organising. And many, many of those who try to do otherwise, if they look within themselves, would see how seldom spontaneously, sincerely (not as when one says something because one knows it should be said, or as one thinks something because it is the fashion to think like that but spontaneously, sincerely, with all their heart) they know that it is not they who have done the thing, but the Divine Force. When they have made a progress, when they have changed something in themselves, when they have learnt something, then when is it that spontaneously, without an effort of will, without thinking, without needing to tell oneself, One ought to think like this, spontaneously one knows that without the Divine Force nothing would have been done? Look into yourself, it is a very interesting thing, very interesting, how many times a day you think (without even telling yourself), I have done this, I have been able to do that, I succeeded in this, I failed in that, and when you have made a good effort, when you have obtained a result, you need a little moment for thought, or more, to tell yourself, If the Divine Force had not helped me, probably I would not have been able to do it. The spontaneous thing is, Oh! I have succeeded, isnt that true? There is indeed a part of the mind which has been educated, which has learnt, has reflected, understood, which is well-disposed and truly feels that in reality it is like that, but this is only one part of the mind, and it is not always active, sometimes it must be called up, asked its advice, What is then the best attitude to have?, What should I think? I believe all who have taken up yoga, if they are sincere, if they reflect for a moment, tell themselves, I was not aware of it, but if I have succeeded, it was probably because the Divine Forces were there to help me, otherwise I would not have been able to succeed. This is well understood. But there comes a moment when one knows that one would not have been able to lift a finger if these forces had not been there. That comes later. But to begin with, how many times, if one thinks, if one quite simply observes oneself, does one catch oneself saying, It is I! And, then, one congratulates oneself sometimes, one says, After all I can do something, I am capable! I am going further: how many people would be capable of doing anything at all if simply deprived of the pleasure of being able to tell themselves, I have done this, I have realised that, I have made a progress, how well I played this game? How many people would be able to sincerely do something if this pleasure were taken away? I have known individuals whose mind was much more developed than the rest of the being, they had understood very well (almost too well); they sat down to meditate and all their energy was gone, all vitality evaporated into a kind of peace, not unpleasant, but very still. There is no more need to do anything, no longer any need to move, one dreams. Under a tree, arms crossed, one leaves the Divine to do everything for oneself, including feeding you if you need it. This is perhaps very well, but this shows that the instrument is not ready; it is not really at the service of the Divine, it is at the service of the ego, and when the ego is taken away, it does nothing any longer. Therefore, so long as one lives in the ego this illusion is necessary to make you act; it is necessary to keep up action until one is completely transformed or, in any case, till the true consciousness is established.
   I have said this and I repeat it (Mother takes up her book):

1951-04-14 - Surrender and sacrifice - Idea of sacrifice - Bahaism - martyrdom - Sleep- forgetfulness, exteriorisation, etc - Dreams and visions- explanations - Exteriorisation- incidents about cats, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I knew Abdul Baha very well, the successor of Baha Ullah, founder of the Bahai religion; Abdul Baha was his son. He was born in prison and lived in prison till he was forty, I believe. When he came out of prison his father was dead and he began to preach his fathers religion. He told me his story and what had happened in Persia at the beginning of the religion. And I remember him telling me with what intense joy, what a sense of the divine Presence, of the Divine Force, these people went to the sacrificeit cant be called sacrifice, it was a very joyful gift of their life. He always spoke to me of someone who was, it appears, a very great poet and who had been arrested as a heretic because he followed the Bahai religion. They wanted to take him away to kill himor burn or hang or crucify him, I dont know what, the manner of death in vogue at the timeand, because he expressed his faith and said he would be happy to suffer anything for his faith and his God, people devised the plan of fixing small lighted candle-ends on his body, his arms, his shoulders. Naturally the candles melted with the hot wax all over, till the wick of the candle burnt the skin. It seems Abdul Baha was there when this man was tortured and as they came to the spot where he was to be killed, Abdul Baha went up to speak to him affectionately and he was in an ecstasy of joy. Abdul Baha spoke to him of his sufferings; he replied, Suffer! It is one of the most beautiful hours of my life. This cannot be called a sacrifice, can it?
   Generally, all those who have suffered tortures for their faith, that is, for their highest thought, their most sublime ideal, have always felt a kind of divine grace helping them and keeping them from suffering. Of course, outsiders call this a sacrifice (that is understandable, they have sacrificed their life), but one cannot use the word for what personally concerns them, because for them it was not a sacrifice, it was a joy. All depends on the inner attitude. Now, if for a single moment during the torture they had had the least idea, Why am I being tortured? they would have undergone unbearable suffering. A single passing thought suffices.

1951-04-17 - Unity, diversity - Protective envelope - desires - consciousness, true defence - Perfection of physical - cinema - Choice, constant and conscious - law of ones being - the One, the Multiplicity - Civilization- preparing an instrument, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Listen. Would you ask whether a fatal illness is favourable to health or not? It is exactly that. A civilisation, whatever it may be, is the result of very long efforts to become conscious of oneself, of Nature, and to master this Nature and draw the best possible advantage from it. We were saying a while ago that the training of the physical being consists in preparing an instrument so that the Divine may manifest Himself. A civilisation prepares an instrument so that the Divine may manifest in that instrument. The more slowly, carefully, minutely the civilisation is worked out, and succeeds in conquering the laws of Nature, the more favourable is the instrument to the manifestation of the Divine. That is why we also have this idea of the prolongation of life, it is to be able to perfect the instrument so as to manifest the Divine Force which wants to manifest. Otherwise, it would evidently be much easier, as soon as the body became a little ill or a little old or incapable of reacting as it did when young, to do what one does with an old torn dressone throws it away and gets another. Unfortunately, it is not like that. All the fruit of the work, all the accumulated effort to become conscious is lost. If, for instance, this civilisation we have built, which in a way has so considerably mastered the forces of Nature, which has succeeded in understanding laws of an altogether unique order and has accumulated so many experiences of all kinds to reach self-understanding and self-expression, if all this disappeared, it would be necessary, naturally, to begin all over again. And then, for a new-born child, how many years of slow and insipid education are needed for its brain to be ready to express even a simple general idea, for its movements to be conscious instead of being absolutely unconscious, how many years! For a civilisation, how many years would be necessary simply to get back all that is lost? There have been many civilisations on the earth, there are scientists trying to rediscover what has been, but nobody can say with certitude exactly what was there: the major part of these civilisations is completely lost (I am speaking of civilisations preceding this one which for us is historical) . Well, if thousands of years are yet needed to begin another, obviously. In any case, for our external human consciousness, it is a loss of time. But we are told that the Work to be done, the promised Realisation is going to take place now. It is going to take place now because the framework of this civilisation seems to be favourable as a platform or a base for building up. But if this civilisation is destroyed, upon what are we going to build? First a foundation platform must be made in order to be able to build. If five or ten thousand years are still needed to make this platform, this proves that it is not now that things will be donethey will be done, that is well understood, they will be done, but How many lives have you all had? What do you remember of your past lives? What is the good of all the efforts you have made in your past lives to perfect yourselves, to try to understand yourselves, to master yourselves a little, simply to make use of the instrument which has been given to you? What remains to you of all that? Will you tell me? Who here can tell me that he is consciously profiting by the experiences of his past livesunconsciously there is something which remains but not much but consciously? No one will answer?
   No, precisely, one has the impression that after having lived so long, one is only beginning to know a very little.

1951-04-26 - Irrevocable transformation - The divine Shakti - glad submission - Rejection, integral - Consecration - total self-forgetfulness - work, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   An inert passivity is constantly confused with the real surrender, but out of an inert passivity nothing true and powerful can come. It is the inert passivity of physical Nature that leaves it at the mercy of every obscure or undivine influence. A glad and strong and helpful submission is demanded to the working of the Divine Force.
   Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, pp. 4-5

1951-05-05 - Needs and desires - Discernment - sincerity and true perception - Mantra and its effects - Object in action- to serve - relying only on the Divine, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   When you act your only object is to serve, that is, instead of acting for your personal good, you act with the feeling of serving, of receiving the Divine Force, not from outside (you must not at all believe in that) but from within you, of opening yourself to the Divine Force which will use you for its action, and of fulfilling what that Force wants you to fulfil. There is no place there for egoism. It is not a matter of giving one thing and receiving another in exchange, it is not that; it is not a question of receiving from outside.
   There are disciplines which make it a rule (we dont like rules, for they are always arbitrary and artificial) that one should receive absolutely nothing from anybody except the Divine or the Guru who represents the Divine. Some people would not receive even a fruit from anybody because it does not come from the Guru. That is an exaggerationthis depends on circumstances, on conditions, and it also depends very much on the attitude one takes oneself, it depends on many things, it would take very long to explain but there is one thing you must learn, never to rely on anyone or anything whatever except the Divine. For if you lean upon anyone for support, that support will break, you may be sure of that. From the minute you start doing yoga (I always speak of those who do yoga, I do not speak about ordinary life), for those who do yoga, to depend upon someone else is like wanting to transform that person into a representative of the Divine Force; now you may be sure there is not one in a hundred millions who can carry the weight: he will break immediately. So never take the attitude of hoping for support, help, comfort from anyone except the Divine. That is absolute; I have never, not once, met anyone who tried to cling to something to find a support there (someone doing yoga or who has been put into touch with yoga) and who was not deceivedit breaks, it stops, one loses ones support. Then one says, Life is difficultit is not difficult but one must know what one is doing. Never seek a support elsewhere than in the Divine. Never seek satisfaction elsewhere than in the Divine. Never seek the satisfaction of your needs in anyone else except the Divinenever, for anything at all. All your needs can be satisfied only by the Divine. All your weaknesses can be borne and healed only by the Divine. He alone is capable of giving you what you need in everything, always, and if you try to find any satisfaction or support or help or joy or heaven knows what, in anyone else, you will always fall on your nose one day, and that always hurts, sometimes even hurts very much.
   ***

1953-04-15, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Can one pull the Divine Forces by violence?
   Yes, if you call very strongly, if you aspire very strongly, you may pull down a large number of forces into you, but you will not be able to digest them, assimilate them. It is the same thing as with food; when you swallow all that you have at hand in one gulp, that causes indigestion, it chokes you. You cannot bear it. So if you want to go fast, if you hurry, you send a kind of call and pull towards you too great a number of forces, forces which otherwise would have come less quickly.

1953-05-20, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There are many people who are not even conscious, the immense majority of people are not even conscious of the action of the Divine Force in them. If you speak to them about it, they look at you in round-eyed wonder, they think you are half mad, they dont know what you are talking about. That is the vast majority of human beings. And yet the Consciousness is at work, working all the time. It moulds them from within whether they want it or not. But then, when they become conscious of this, there are people who are shocked by it, who are so stupid as to revolt and say: Ah! no, I want it to be myself! Myself, that is, an imbecile who knows nothing. And then, that stage too passes. At last there comes a moment when one collaborates and says: Oh! What joy! And you give yourself, you want to be as passive and receptive as possible so as not to stand in the way of this divine Will, this divine Consciousness that is acting. You become more and more attentive, and exactly to the extent you become more attentive and more sincere, you feel in what direction, in what movement this divine Consciousness is working, and you give yourself to it wholly. The thing ripens more quickly. And in this way you are truly able to do in a few minutes the work that would otherwise take years. And that is the goal of yoga: one can do the work in a few hours, in a concentrated, shortened time; one can do in another way what Nature is doingNature will do it, Nature will succeed in transforming all this, but when one sees the time she has taken to do what she has done till now, if one wants to do all that in another way. Evidently, for the divine Consciousness time means very little, but for the consciousness here, it is very long. There is a point of view from which you say: Bah! That will be done, it is sure to come about, so it is all right, one has only to let things go on. But then it is not the external human consciousness, it does not take part, for this tiny consciousness which has been formed by the body (this body thats at present made in this way), well, it will have gone away long before the thing is done. Because after all the progress of Nature is not accomplished from one century to another. If we look back, we do not see that there has been really much progress in comparison with what man was some three thousand years agojust a little, something; something that happens particularly in the head which understands a little better; and then a kind of control over what Nature does, an understanding of her processes; one begins to understand her tricks. Then as one begins to learn her tricks, one begins to intervene. But as one does not have the true knowledge, when one intervenes one may very easily make a lot of blunders. Indeed, I do not know what will happen when men will know all the secrets of the formation of matter, for example. They have already invented a very fine way of destroying themselves. We shall see what is going to happen. But this is just a very small step; it happens particularly here (pointing to the head), with very relative material results.
   How should one practise this consciousness?

1953-06-17, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Whatever the part of the being, whether it be the intellect or any other part, whether it is in the mind or the vital or anywhere else, the true movement is a double movement: first, it must not intercept the divine Truth in its manifestation, and secondly, it must help in its manifestation. A negative side, consisting in not being a screen, not intercepting anything, not blocking the passage of the Divine Force seeking to express itself; on the other side, to be sufficiently clear and pure to be able to help this manifestation.
   One can apply this everywhere, it is very convenient.

1953-09-09, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Each time that something of the Divine Truth and the Divine Force comes down to manifest upon earth, some change is effected in the earths atmosphere. In the descent, those who are receptive are awakened to some inspiration from it, some touch, some beginning of sight. If they were capable of holding and expressing rightly what they receive, they would say, A great force has come down; I am in contact with it and what I understand of it, I will tell you. But most of them are not capable of that, because they have small minds. They get illumined, possessed, as it were, and cry, I have the Divine Truth, I possess it whole and entire.
   One Divine Consciousness is here working through all these beings, preparing its way through all these manifestations. At this day it is here at work upon earth more powerfully than it has ever been before. There are some who receive its touch in some way, or to some degree; but what they receive they distort, they make their own thing out of it. Others feel the touch but cannot bear the force and go mad under the pressure. But some have the capacity to receive and the strength to bear, and it is they who will become the vessels of the full knowledge, the chosen instruments and agents.
  --
   How does the Divine Force choose the instrument in which it wants to manifest itself?
   Through affinity. For the quality, the nature of the consciousness is visible in the divine domain. It has a special vibration, a special light and this can be perceived. And so, when there is an affinity (sometimes merely an affinity, sometimes an identity, depending on the beings degree of perfection), the Force goes there. Those who are still in the course of formation but whose psychic being is sufficiently developed are seen, their vibrations are seen, the being that is there is seen and accordingly the degree of manifestation is determined, the exact line of manifestation, the importance and conditions of the manifestation. All that is included in the inner vision.

1953-12-23, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   This depends absolutely on character. Some have such an awakened consciousness, so alert, that they are not asleep, they are awake within. Just at the second it is required they call the help. Or they invoke the Divine Force. But just at the second it is needed. So the danger is averted, nothing happens. They could have been killed: they come out of it absolutely unhurt. Others, on the contrary, as soon as they have the least little scratch, something gets dislocated in their being: a sort of fright or pessimism or defeatism in their consciousness which automatically comes upit was nothing, they had just twisted their leg and the next minute they break it. There is no reason for it. They could very well have not broken their leg.
   There are others who climb up to a first floor on a ladder which gives way under them. They could have collapsed they come out of that without the least hurt. How did they manage it? Apparently this seems wonderful, and still this is how things happen to them. They find themselves lying on the ground in an altogether fine state; nothing has happened to them. I could give you the names, I am telling you exact facts.

1954-07-07 - The inner warrior - Grace and the Falsehood - Opening from below - Surrender and inertia - Exclusive receptivity - Grace and receptivity, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Instead of self-opening we could put receptivity, something that opens in order to receive. Now, instead of opening and receiving from all sides and from everyone, as is usually done, one opens only to the Divine to receive only the Divine Force. It is the very opposite of what men usually do. They are always open on the surface, they receive all the influences from all sides. And then this produces inside them what we might call a pot-pourri (Mother laughs) of all kinds of contradictory movements which naturally create countless difficulties. So here, you are advised to open only to the Divine and to receive only the Divine Force to the exclusion of everything else. This diminishes all difficulties almost entirely. Only one thing remain difficult. It is One can do it and, unless one is in a state of total alchemy, well, it is difficult to be in contact with people, to speak to them, for example, to have any kind of exchange with them without absorbing something from them. It is difficult. If one is in a kind of if one is in an atmosphere thats like a filter, then everything that comes from outside is filtered before it touches you. But it is very difficult; it requires a very wide experience. That is why, also, people who wanted the easiest path went into solitude to sit under a tree, did not speak any more and saw nobody; for this helps to diminish undesirable exchanges. Only, it has been noticed that these people begin to become enormously interested in the life of little animals, the life of plants, for it is difficult not to have any exchange with anything at all. So it is much better to face the problem squarely and be surrounded by an atmosphere so totally concentrated on the Divine that what comes through this atmosphere is filtered in its passage.
  And then again, even when this has been done, there is still the problem of food; as long as our body is compelled to take in foreign matter in order to subsist, it will absorb at the same time a considerable amount of inert and unconscious forces or those having a rather undesirable consciousness, and this alchemy must take place inside the body. We were speaking of the kinds of consciousness absorbed with food, but there is also the Inconscience thats absorbed with foodquite a deal of it. And that is why in many yogas there was the advice to offer to the Divine what one was going to eat before eating it (Mother makes a gesture of offering, hands joined, palms open). It consists in calling the Divine down into the food before eating it. One offers it to Him that is, one puts it in contact with the Divine, so that it may be under the divine influence when one eats it. It is very useful, it is very good. If one knows how to do it, it is very useful, it considerably reduces the work of inner transformations which has to be done. But, you see, in the world as it is, we are all interdependent. You cannot take in the air without taking in the vibrations, the countless vibrations produced by all kinds of movements and all kinds of people, and you mustif you want to remain intactyou must constantly act like a filter, as I was saying. That is to say, nothing that is undesirable should be allowed to enter, as when one goes to infected areas, one wears a mask over the face so that the air may be purified before one breathes it in. Well, something similar has to be done. One must have around oneself so intense an atmosphere in a total surrender to the Divine, so intensified around oneself that everything that passes through is automatically filtered. Anyhow, it is very useful in life, for there arewe spoke about this toothere are bad thoughts, bad wills, people who wish you ill, who make formations. There are all kinds of absolutely undesirable things in the atmosphere. And so, if one must always be on the watch, looking around on all sides, one would think only of one thing, how to protect oneself. First of all, it is tiresome, and then, you see, it makes you waste much time. If you are well enveloped in this way, with this light, the light of a perfectly glad, totally sincere surrender, when you are enveloped with that, it serves you as a marvellous filter. Nothing that is altogether undesirable, nothing that has ill-will can pass through. So, automatically, these things return where they came from. If there is a conscious ill-will against you, it comes, but cannot pass; the door is closed, for it is open only to divine things, it is not open to anything else. So it returns very quietly to the source from where it came.
  --
    "A glad and strong and helpful submission is demanded to the working of the Divine Force, the obedience of the illumined disciple of the Truth, of the inner Warrior who fights against obscurity and falsehood, of the faithful servant of the Divine."
    Sri Aurobindo's word here is "inner". In the French translation this word translated as "intrieur" was by mistake printed as "infrieur" which means "lower". The question arises due to this mistake.

1954-08-04 - Servant and worker - Justification of weakness - Play of the Divine - Why are you here in the Ashram?, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Why? Thats a way of speaking! You feel that it is not an amusing game? There are many who dont (laughter), who find that the play is not amusing. But still, its a way of speaking One speaks ofwithout thinking that it is joyfulone speaks of the play of forces; it is the movement, the interaction. All activities are the play of forces. So one can take it in that see. But, you see, it means that the Divine Force, the divine Consciousness, has exteriorised itself to create the universe and all the play of forces in the universe. Thats what it means, nothing else. I dont mean necessarily playing in the Playground! It can mean many other things!
  (Turning to the other children to induce them to ask questions) Nothing? You dont have anything either?
  --
  It is not even very difficult. You can first do it as a preparation so as to become capable of receiving the Divine Forces, and then, as a service, so that you may help in constructing the whole organisation of the Ashram. You can do it not with any personal gain in view, but with the intention of making yourselves ready to accomplish the divine work! This seems to me even quite indispensable if you want to profit fully from the situation. If you keep the ordinary point of view, well, you will always find yourselves in conditions which are not quite satisfactory, and incapable of receiving all the forces you can receive.
  Mother, if for instance in the long jump one makes an effort to jump a greater and greater distance, how does one do the divine work?
  Eh? Excuse me, it is not for the pleasure of doing the long jump, it is to make your body more perfect in its functioning, and, therefore, a more suitable instrument for receiving the Divine Forces and manifesting them.
  Why, everything, everything one does in this place must be done in this spirit, otherwise you do not even profit by the opportunity given to you, the circumstances given to you. I explained to you the other day, didnt I, that the Consciousness is here, penetrating all things and trying to manifest in all movements? But if you, on your side, tell yourself that the effort you are making, the progress you are making, you make in order to become more capable of receiving this Consciousness and of manifesting it, the work will naturally be much better and much quicker. And this seems to me even quite elementary, to tell you the truth; I am surprised that it could be otherwise! Because your presence in an Ashram organised as it is organised would have no meaning if it were not that! Of what use would it be? There are any number of universities, schools in the world which are very well organised!

1954-09-15 - Parts of the being - Thoughts and impulses - The subconscient - Precise vocabulary - The Grace and difficulties, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  If you swallow a poison and are poisoned, it wont be Mahakalis fault. It is you who will have swallowed the poison. If one puts oneself into absolutely ridiculous conditions, one is in a state in which one is bound to break ones head or arm or back; because you are not in a state of true equilibrium, you cant accuse the Divine Forces. It is the normal mechanical consequence of the stupidity committed, of the inner state.
  What is the nature of Mahakalis blow?

1954-11-03 - Body opening to the Divine - Concentration in the heart - The army of the Divine - The knot of the ego -Streng thening ones will, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Thats when the physical body opens to the divine influence and receives the Divine Forces.
  For example, you see, theres a moment when the Divine Forces come and penetrate all the cells. To begin with, it is the physical consciousness, the body consciousness which opens first to the influence of the Divine and understands and wants nothing else but this, the divine Presence, the divine influence. There are also the bodys feelings, and the very cells of the body, which can open to receive the force. For instance, when at a certain moment one feels a kind of very intense vibrations spreading through the whole body and at that time one feels filled with a strength, an unusual force, a consciousness also, and all things become clear and perceptible, then thats an opening of the body; it is when the body knows, you see, and has succeeded in opening to the influence.
  Mother, why is it better to concentrate in the heart?1
  --
  Will and aspiration are needed to bring down the aid of the Divine Force and to keep the being on its side in its dealings with the lower powers. What is the meaning of keep the being on its side?
  To keep on its sideit is, for instance you see, there is on one sidehow shall I put it?let us take the army, the army of the Divine Forces, on the other side the army of the forces of ordinary nature; so whether to keep on the side of this army or of that, thats what it means.
  You do not understand? That is to say, to go to this side, join this or that side. If I keep on the side of the Divine Forces I join those who are fighting for the Divine Forces like an army. If I put myself on the side of the ordinary vital forces of life, I go over to that side and forsake the others, I go over to that side.
  Sweet Mother, what does the knot of the ego means?
  --
  How to cut it? Take a sword and strike it (laughter), when one becomes conscious of it. For usually one is not; we think it quite normal, what happen to us; and in fact it is very normal but we think it quite good also. So to begin with one must have a great clear-sightedness to become aware that one is enclosed in all these knots which hold one in bondage. And then, when one is aware that theres something altogether tightly closed in thereso tightly that one has tried in vain to move it then one imagines his will to be a very sharp sword-blade, and with all ones force one strikes a blow on this knot (imaginary, of course, one doesnt take up a sword in fact), and this produces a result. Of course you can do this work from the psychological point of view, discovering all the elements constituting this knot, the whole set of resistances, habits, preferences, of all that holds you narrowly closed in. So when you grow aware of this, you can concentrate and call the Divine Force and the Grace and strike a good blow on this formation, these things so closely held, like that, that nothing can separate them. And at that moment you must resolve that you will no longer listen to these things, that you will listen only to the divine Consciousness and will do no other work except the divine work without worrying about personal results, free from all attachment, free from all preference, free from all wish for success, power, satisfaction, vanity, all this All this must disappear and you must see only the divine Will incarnated in your will and making you act. Then, in this way, you are cured.
  Mother, how can one streng then ones will?

1954-11-10 - Inner experience, the basis of action - Keeping open to the Force - Faith through aspiration - The Mothers symbol - The mind and vital seize experience - Degrees of sincerity -Becoming conscious of the Divine Force, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  object:1954-11-10 - Inner experience, the basis of action - Keeping open to the Force - Faith through aspiration - The Mothers symbol - The mind and vital seize experience - Degrees of sincerity -Becoming conscious of the Divine Force
  class:chapter
  --
  I think everyone has defects. So if it were necessary not to have any defects in order to be open, nobody could be open. One always has defects, to begin with. One is not made of a single piece. This is the main reason. There are many different parts in the being which sometimes are quite independent of one another and take hold of the consciousness almost in turn and sometimes even in an altogether regular order. So, when part of the being has goodwill and already a kind of perception of what the Divine Force is, you see, this opens the being and puts it into contact with this force. But it is not always there. There are other parts which come to the front, which have defects, bad habits, and which can veil the consciousness completely. But if one keeps the memory of the part which was open, one can keep the opening all the same, though outwardly the part that is active is not particularly interested and not even able to understand. But the other part can continue to be open and receive the force.
  Can one have faith through aspiration?
  --
  The mind and vital have a very bad habit: when one has succeeded through aspiration in having an experience, being in contact with the Divine Force, immediately they rush forward to make it their own property, you see, like that (gesture), as a cat jumps on a mouse. And then they catch it and say, It is for me. And then the mind turns it into all kinds of speculations and affirmations and constructions and takes great pride in it, and the vital uses the power to fulfil its own desires.
  So, in order to avoid this it is said that they must be clear, quiet, peaceful, and must not rush at the force which is trying to manifest and make of it a tool for their personal use. For the mind to be clear it must be silentat least to a certain extent, and for the vital to be clear it must give up its desires, have no desires and impulses and passions. This indeed is the essential condition. Later, if one goes into details, neither of them should have any preferences, attachments, any particular way of being or particular set of ideas.
  --
  Sweet Mother, here it is written: The personal effort has to be transformed progressively into a movement of the Divine Force. If you feel conscious of the Divine Force, then call it in more and more to govern your effort, to take it up, to transform it into something not yours, but the Mothers. But if one is not conscious of the Divine Force?
  You must become conscious. Aspire, ask, aspire sincerely.
  You see, generally speaking, you are here, we have a class, we have just read something, you have questions to ask; while you are here you ask questions and think of the subject. But as soon as you go out or go home, you think of a thousand other things, dont you? So, how do you expect that you will become conscious of the Divine Force? We have hardly about half an hour here, thats not a very long time to become conscious of the Force.
  But if it is your sole preoccupation, if truly, with all your being, you want to become conscious of the Divine Force, you will be able to. You cant, simply because you think about it from time to time; when the subject comes up, you ask yourself, Why, it is true, how can I do it? And then, the next minute you dont think about it any more. So, how do you expect this to happen? You must be very attentive, you must be very silent, must observe yourself very clearly. And you must be very humble; that is, be willing not to play a great part in all this story. The misfortune is that usually either the vital being or the mental being or even the physical being is very anxious to play a part, very anxious. So it swells up, takes up a lot of place, covers the rest; and it covers it so well that one cant even become aware of the presence of the Divine Force because the personal movement of the physical, the body, the vital, the mind, covers everything with its own importance.
  Listen: if every evening before going to sleep you take off only a tiny minute, like that, and in this little minute, with all the concentration you are capable of you ask to become conscious of the Divine Force, simply like that, nothing more; in the morning when waking up, before beginning your day, if you do the same thing, take a minute off, concentrate as much as you can and ask to become conscious of the Divine Force, you will see, after some time, it will happen. Nothing but these small things which are nothing at all and take no time.
  One day it will happen. Only, you must do it with concentration, intensity and sincerity; that is, it must not happen that while you are asking for this, another part of your being is telling itself, After all, this has no importance. Or maybe you think of something else, what you are going to put on or the person you will meet, anything at all, a thousand desires. You must be there, fully, for one minute. Of course if you multiply the minute, it goes so much the quicker. But as I also said, if one is able not to contradict the next minute the aspiration one had the minute before, it is easier; if not, it pushes sincerity away.

1955-03-30 - Yoga-shakti - Energies of the earth, higher and lower - Illness, curing by yogic means - The true self and the psychic - Solving difficulties by different methods, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Sweet Mother, isnt it more difficult to draw the Divine Forces from below?
  I think it is absolutely useless.
  --
  It is as when one struggles physically by yogic means with a disease, it goes alternately. One can succeed in pulling himself out, so to say, from the disease, in withdrawing from it, in cutting off the relation one had with it; and then suddenly one emerges above this feeling of unease, disorder and confusion and realises that one is cured. But sometimes it is enough even to remember, a movement of wonder is enough, a memory of what it was is enough for everything to be reversed once more and for one to have to begin the same work over again. Sometimes one has to begin again thrice, four times, ten times, twenty times. And then some people can make the effort once, but the second time they no longer do it well, and the third time they dont do it at all; and they tell you, Oh! One cant be cured by occult means, the Divine Force doesnt cure you, it is better to take medicines. So for these, it is better to go to the doctor because this means that they have no spiritual perseverance and only material means can convince them of their effectiveness.
  When one wants to change something of the material life, whether the character or the functioning of the organs or habits, one must have an unfaltering perseverance, be ready to begin again a hundred times the same thing with the same intensity with which one did it the first time and as though one had never done it before.

1955-05-25 - Religion and reason - true role and field - an obstacle to or minister of the Spirit - developing and meaning - Learning how to live, the elite - Reason controls and organises life - Nature is infrarational, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  A function of preparation, as I said; it is in order to prepare for something higher which is suprarational and which must come. It is a preparation. You see, he has said, one would think, it means that it is just an impression one has that its right is indisputable. It is not indisputable. He says that its province is vast, you see, that its powers are ample, that its action is more self-confident, but it always finds itself standing between the two other powers of our being, the infrarational and the suprarational. It is an intermediary to free us from the infrarational influence that of all the instincts, all the desires, all the passions, all the impulsesto free us from this domain and prepare for the coming of the suprarational one. Therefore it is an instrument of mediation, of transition, and in this intermediating in this region, it is the best master. But it cannot go further. There is a point where it loses its power. When one is ready for the suprarational intervention, well, it has to keep quiet; and if for example, by an inner development, by a yogic action you have managed to come into contact with a divine consciousness and receive inspirations from this divine consciousness, if at this moment you want to judge these inspirations by the reason, then you are sure to make stupid mistakes, because reason understands nothing of this, and it should abdicate. But you must be sure that it is truly a contact with the Divine Force; and to be sure of this well, until one is sure of it, reason is very good for preventing you from deceiving yourself.
  Usually people who have a tendency for not altogether ordinary experiences find reason very troublesome; and even before being ready to surpass its action they reject it, and that is how usually they become absolutely unreasonable and end up by being half-mad. That is why, so long as you dont have an absolute certainty of having reached where you want to go, well, you must keep the reason very active in yourself in order to prevent yourself from becoming derailed. This is very, very important. One cannot dethrone reason unless the experience of the higher regions is so absolute, so true, so complete, that it compels recognition. It is not a very frequent thing. So I always advise people to keep their reason. But theres a point where it must cease having its superior rights thats to judge spiritual experience, because it cannot judge this, it does not understand it; but it must truly be a spiritual experience, not something which tries to imitate it; here an absolute sincerity is necessary. One must not deceive oneself through ambition, or indeed let oneself be deceived by any odd humbugs who come and tell you extraordinary stories in order to make you believe in their superiority.

1955-06-15 - Dynamic realisation, transformation - The negative and positive side of experience - The image of the dry coconut fruit - Purusha, Prakriti, the Divine Mother - The Truth-Creation - Pralaya - We are in a transitional period, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  For everything it is like that. For example, you have somewhere in your being that kind of habit of revolt, ignorant, arrogant obscure revolt, of refusing what comes from above. So, the negative side is to fight against this, to prevent it from expressing itself and reject it from your nature; and on the other side you must build positively surrender, understanding, consecration, self-giving and the sense of a complete collaboration with the Divine Forces. This is the positive side. Do you understand?
  The same thing again: people who get angry the habit of flying into a rage, of getting angry one fights against that, refuses to get angry, rejects these vibrations of anger from ones being, but this must be replaced by an imperturbable calm, a perfect tolerance, an understanding of the point of view of others, a clear and tranquil vision, a calm decisionwhich is the positive side.

1955-11-09 - Personal effort, egoistic mind - Man is like a public square - Natures work - Ego needed for formation of individual - Adverse forces needed to make man sincere - Determinisms of different planes, miracles, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Mother, I dont understand Our sense of personal effort and aspiration comes from the attempt of the egoistic mind to identify itself in a wrong and imperfect way with the workings of the Divine Force.
  What is it that you do not understand? The sentence or the idea?
  --
  From the man of art or of literature or of science, who produces something, studies something, and is absolutely convinced that it is he himself who is doing it, to the aspirant yogi who is convinced that it is the ardour of his own aspiration, his personal need for realisation which push himif someone tells these people (I have had this experience), if someone tells them a little too soon, Why, no, it is the Divine who aspires in you, it is the Divine Force which produces in you, they no longer do anything, they fall flat, it doesnt interest them at all any longer; they say, Good, I have nothing to do then, let the Divine do it.
  And this is what Sri Aurobindo means that the mind is something so egoistic and so proud that if you take away from it the satisfaction it seeks, it no longer collaborates; nor the vital either. And as the physical is very obedient to the vital and the mind, it too collaborates no longer. Then one is before an inert mass which says, Good, if it isnt I, well, let the Divine do what He likes, I am not going to do anything at all any more.

1955-12-28 - Aspiration in different parts of the being - Enthusiasm and gratitude - Aspiration is in all beings - Unlimited power of good, evil has a limit - Progress in the parts of the being - Significance of a dream, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  But this substance itself that is, this material physical substance which forms it constitutes an organism which lives for a certain length of time in a given form and then this form declines and dissolves the substance itself constituting these successive forms progresses through all these forms. That is, the molecular, cellular substanceperhaps even the cellular the molecular and atomic, is progressing in its capacity to express the Divine Force and Consciousness. Through all these organisms this substance becomes more and more conscious, more and more luminous, more and more receptive, until it reaches a perfection sufficient for it to become a possible vehicle for the Divine Force itself which will be able to use it as it uses the elements of the other parts of the creation, like the mind or the vital.
  And at that moment the physical substance will be ready to manifest in the world the new Consciousness, new Light, new Will. Through all the centuries, through countless lives, passing through innumerable organisms, using countless experiences it, so to speak, becomes refined; it is prepared, and becomes more and more receptive and open to the Divine Forces.
  So, a man as a momentary individual being may not appear to progress. But the progress is continued through him, as through all organisms.

1956-03-07 - Sacrifice, Animals, hostile forces, receive in proportion to consciousness - To be luminously open - Integral transformation - Pain of rejection, delight of progress - Spirit behind intention - Spirit, matter, over-simplified, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  That is an experiment you can make if you are just a little conscious. There is something in you which you dont want, something bad for one reason or another you dont want it, you want to pull it outwell, if you identify yourself ever so little with that thing, you feel the pain of the extraction; if, on the contrary, you identify yourself with the Divine Force which comes to liberate you, you feel the joy of the divine Grace and you experience the deep delight of the progress you have made.
  And this is a sure sign for you, a sure indication of what you identify yourself with. If you are identified with the forces from below, you suffer; if you are identified with the forces from above, you are happy. And I am not speaking about feeling pleasure; you must not think that when one jumps about, dances, shouts and plays, one is identified with the Divine Forcesone may or may not be. That is not what I am speaking of. I am speaking of the divine Joy, the inner Joy which is unalloyed.
  Each time a shadow passes, with what may be just an uneasiness or what may become a severe pain or an unbearable suffering, through the whole range, from the smallest to the greatestas soon as it appears in your being, you may tell yourself, Ah, the enemy is there!in one form or another.

1956-03-14 - Dynamic meditation - Do all as an offering to the Divine - Significance of 23.4.56. - If twelve men of goodwill call the Divine, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  You may meditate to open yourself to the Divine Force, you may meditate to reject the ordinary consciousness, you may meditate to enter the depths of your being, you may meditate to learn how to give yourself integrally; you may meditate for all kinds of things. You may meditate to enter into peace and calm and silencethis is what people generally do, but without much success. But you may also meditate to receive the Force of transformation, to discover the points to be transformed, to trace out the line of progress. And then you may also meditate for very practical reasons: when you have a difficulty to clear up, a solution to find, when you want help in some action or other. You may meditate for that too.
  I think everyone has his own mode of meditation. But if one wants the meditation to be dynamic, one must have an aspiration for progress and the meditation must be done to help and fulfil this aspiration for progress. Then it becomes dynamic.

1956-06-06 - Sign or indication from books of revelation - Spiritualised mind - Stages of sadhana - Reversal of consciousness - Organisation around central Presence - Boredom, most common human malady, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  It seems to me impossible to escape from this necessity if one wants to be and is to be a conscious instrument of the Divine Force. You may be moved, pushed into action and used as unconscious instruments by the Divine Force, if you have a minimum of goodwill and sincerity. But to become a conscious instrument, capable of identification and conscious, willed movements, you must have this inner organisation; otherwise you will always be running into a chaos somewhere, a confusion somewhere or an obscurity, an unconsciousness somewhere. And naturally your action, even though guided exclusively by the Divine, will not have the perfection of expression it has when one has acquired a conscious organisation around this divine Centre.
  It is an assiduous task, which may be done at any time and under any circumstances, for you carry within yourself all the elements of the problem. You dont need anything from outside, no outer aid to do this work. But it requires great perseverance, a sort of tenacity, for very often it happens that there are bad creases in the being, habitswhich come from all sorts of causes, which may come from atavistic malformation or also from education or from the environment you have lived in or from many other causes. And these bad creases you try to smooth out, but they wrinkle up again. And then you must begin the work over again, often, many, many, many a time, without getting discouraged, before the final result is obtained. But nothing and nobody can prevent you from doing it, nor any circumstance. For you carry within yourself the problem and the solution.

1956-08-15 - Protection, purification, fear - Atmosphere at the Ashram on Darshan days - Darshan messages - Significance of 15-08 - State of surrender - Divine Grace always all-powerful - Assumption of Virgin Mary - SA message of 1947-08-15, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  August 15th is my own birthday and it is naturally gratifying to me that it should have assumed this vast significance. I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous accident, but as the sanction and seal of the Divine Force that guides my steps on the work with which I began life, the beginning of its full fruition. Indeed, on this day I can watch almost all the world-movements which I hoped to see fulfilled in my lifetime, though then they looked like impracticable dreams, arriving at fruition or on their way to achievement. In all these movements free India may well play a large part and take a leading position.
  The first of these dreams was a revolutionary movement which would create a free and united India. India today is free but she has not achieved unity. At one moment it almost seemed as if in the very act of liberation she would fall back into the chaos of separate States which preceded the British conquest. But fortunately it now seems probable that this danger will be averted and a large and powerful, though not yet a complete union will be established. Also, the wisely drastic policy of the Constituent Assembly has made it probable that the problem of the depressed classes will be solved without schism or fissure. But the old communal division into Hindus and Muslims seems now to have hardened into a permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped that this settled fact will not be accepted as settled for ever or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. Indias internal development and prosperity may be impeded, her position among the nations weakened, her destiny impaired or even frustrated. This must not be; the partition must go. Let us hope that that may come about naturally, by an increasing recognition of the necessity not only of peace and concord but of common action, by the practice of common action and the creation of means for that purpose. In this way unity may finally come about under whatever form the exact form may have a pragmatic but not a fundamental importance. But by whatever means, in whatever way, the division must go; unity must and will be achieved, for it is necessary for the greatness of Indias future.

1956-09-26 - Soul of desire - Openness, harmony with Nature - Communion with divine Presence - Individuality, difficulties, soul of desire - personal contact with the Mother - Inner receptivity - Bad thoughts before the Mother, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  In principle it is like that, but in fact, the more the individuality is formed, the stronger is this false soul of desire. Those who have a well-formed, well-coordinated individuality, which has an existence of its own, with a minimum of dependence on the environment, have much more difficulty in coming into contact with the divine Presence than others, because they have a very coordinated, very organised separate existence, which is usually self-sufficient. One always finds it much more difficult to convert, we might say, a very living, fully realised personality than someone, for instance, who is full of goodwill but still open to all sorts of influences. When an individual is very strongly made and has the sense of his own personality, his own existence, it is much more difficult for him to think that he is nothing but an instrument of the Divine Force, than for somebody who feels a little nebulous, like this (gesture) not very precise, who has no exact limits, no well-built individuality; he understands more easily that in himself he is nothing and that it is a force other than his own which makes him act. So you cannot say that a well-developed soul has less difficulties. It depends on the case.
  What you mean, I think, is that if you are in contact with your soul the true oneit is relatively easy to get rid of the soul of desire. But that is a different situation. You must first have found your psychic being and identified yourself with it; and then, later, you may turn to the soul of desire and convince it of its stupidity.

1956-10-10 - The supramental race in a few centuries - Condition for new realisation - Everyone must follow his own path - Progress, no two paths alike, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  (After a silence) Everyone must follow his path in accordance with his own nature, and there is always a preference for one way rather than another. As we read in one of our recent classes, for one who follows the path of action, it is much more difficult to feel that the human personality does not exist and that only the Divine Force works. For one who follows the path of knowledge it is relatively very easy, it is something one discovers almost immediately. For one who follows the path of love it is elementary, since it is by giving himself that he progresses. But for one who follows the path of action it is much more difficult, and consequently for him the first step is to do what is said here in the sage of The Synthesis of Yoga which we have just read: to create in himself this complete detachment from the fruit of action, to act because this is what must be done, to do it in the best possible way, and not to be anxious about the consequences, to leave the consequences to a Will higher than his own.
  One cant make a general rule for the order of importance of the paths, it is an exclusively personal affair. And there is a time when one understands very well, it is apparent, that no two paths are alike, no two paths can be alike, and that every man follows his own path and that this is the truth of his being. One can, if one looks from a sufficient height, see a difference in the speed of advance, but it does not always conform to the external signs; and one could say a little humorously, that it is not always the wisest who goes fastest!

1957-06-12 - Fasting and spiritual progress, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  It is not by abstaining from food that you can make a spiritual progress. It is by being free, not only from all attachment and all desire and preoccupation with food, but even from all need for it; by being in the state in which all these things are so foreign to your consciousness that they have no place there. Only then, as a spontaneous, natural result, can one usefully stop eating. It could be said that the essential condition is to forget to eatforget, because all the energies of the being and all its concentration are turned towards a more total, more true inner realisation, towards this constant, imperative preoccupation with the union of the whole being, including the bodily cells, with the vibration of the Divine Forces, with the supramental force which is manifesting, so that this may be the true life: not only the purpose of life, but the essence of life, not only an imperative need of life, but all its joy and all its raison dtre.
  When that is there, when this realisation is attained, then to eat or not to eat, to sleep or not sleep, all this has no longer any importance. It is an outer rhythm left to the play of the universal forces as a whole, finding expression through the circumstances and people around you; and then the body, united, totally united with the inner truth, has a suppleness, a constant adaptability: if food is there, it takes it; if it isnt there, it doesnt think about it. And so too with all things. This is not life! They are modes of existing to which one adapts oneself without giving it any thought. This gives you the feeling of a kind of blossoming, as a flower opens on a plant, a sort of activity which does not come from a concentrated will but is in harmony with all the forces around you, a way of being which is adapted to the circumstances you live in, which have absolutely no importance in themselves.
  --
  The only thing that is truly effective is the change of consciousness; it is the inner liberation through an intimate, constant union, absolute and inevitable, with the vibration of the supramental forces. The preoccupation of every second, the will of all the elements of the being, the aspiration of the entire being, including all the cells of the body, is this union with the supramental forces, the Divine Forces. And there is no longer any need at all to be preoccupied with what the consequences will be. What has to be in the play of the universal forces and their manifestation will be, quite naturally, spontaneously, automatically, there is no need to be preoccupied with it. The only thing that matters is the constant, total, complete contactconstant, yes, constantwith the Force, the Light, the Truth, the Power, and that ineffable delight of the supramental consciousness.
  That is sincerity. All the rest is an imitation, it is almost a part one plays for oneself.

1957-06-26 - Birth through direct transmutation - Man and woman - Judging others - divine Presence in all - New birth, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  All this contact, this ordinary perception of the world loses its reality completely. This is what appears unreal, fantastic, illusory, non-existent. There is something something very material, very concrete, very physicalwhich becomes the reality of the being, and which has nothing in common with the ordinary way of seeing. When one has this perception the perception of the work of the Divine Force, of the movement being worked out behind the appearance, in the appearance, through the appearanceone begins to be ready to live something truer than the ordinary human falsehood. But not before.
  There is no compromise, you see. It is not like convalescence after an illness: you must change worlds. So long as your mind is real for you, your way of thinking something true for you, real, concrete, it proves that you are not there yet. You must first pass through to the other side. Afterwards you will be able to understand what I am telling you.

1958-03-26 - Mental anxiety and trust in spiritual power, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  This is what could be called a new aspect of the divine intervention in life, a new form of intervention of the Divine Forces in existence, a new aspect of spiritual realisation.
  ***

1958-05-28 - The Avatar, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  In every country, every tradition, the event has been presented in a special way, with different limitations, different details, particular features, but truly speaking, the origin of all these stories is the same, and that is what we could call a direct, conscious intervention of the Supreme in the darkest matter, without going through all the intermediaries, in order to awaken this Matter to the receptivity of the Divine Forces.
  The intervals separating these various incarnations seem to become shorter and shorter, as if, to the extent that Matter became more and more ready, the action could accelerate and become more and more rapid in its movement, more and more conscious too, more and more effective and decisive.

1970 02 01, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   316Fix thy soul without desire upon the end and insist on it by the Divine Force within thee; then shall the end itself create its means, nay, it shall become its own means. For the end is Brahman and already accomplished; see it always as Brahman, see it always in thy soul as already accomplished.
   Certainly, we all carry in our souls the divine end of the eternal journey, and our personal incapacity is the only thing that prevents us from being immediately aware of it.

2.04 - Agni, the Illumined Will, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Ananda; the dualities of strength and weakness, sin and virtue, action and inaction are the confusions of will, dissipators of the Divine Force. And all these confusions arise and even become necessary modes of our action because the triune powers of the divine Life are divorced from each other, Knowledge from
  Strength, Love from both, by the Ignorance which divides. It is the Ignorance, the dominant cosmic Falsehood that has to be removed. Through the Truth, then, lies the road to the true harmony, the consummated felicity, the ultimate fulfilment of love in the divine Delight. Therefore, only when the Will in man becomes divine and possessed of the Truth, amr.to r.tava, can the perfection towards which we move be realised in humanity.

2.08 - God in Power of Becoming, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Yes, he says, I will tell thee of my divine Vibhutis, but only in some of my principal pre-eminences and as an indication and by the example of things in which thou canst most readily see the power of the Godhead, pradhanyatah., uddesatah.. For there is no end to the innumerable detail of the Godhead's self-extension in the universe, nasti anto vistarasya me. This reminder begins the passage and is repeated at the end in order to give it a greater and unmistakable emphasis. And then throughout the rest of the chapter3 we get a summary description of these principal indications, these pre-eminent signs of the Divine Force present in the things and persons of the universe. It seems at first as
  X. 16-18.

2.1.01 - The Central Process of the Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The third way which is one of the two ways towards Yoga by works is the separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. But this also means living in an inner peace and silence and dealing with the activities as if they were a thing of the surface. (The other way of beginning the Yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.)
  If there is any secret or key of my Yoga which you say you have not found, it lies in these methodsand, in reality, there is nothing so mysterious, impossible or even new about them in themselves. It is only the farther development at a later stage and the aim of the Yoga that are new. But that one need not concern oneself with in the earlier stages unless one wishes to do so as a matter of mental knowledge.

2.1.02 - Combining Work, Meditation and Bhakti, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  You need not have qualms about the time you give to action and creative work. Those who have an expansive creative vital or a vital made for action are usually at their best when the vital is not held back from its movement and they can develop faster by it than by introspective meditation. All that is needed is that the action should be dedicated, so that they may grow by it more and more prepared to feel and follow the Divine Force when it moves them. It is a mistake to think that to live in introspective meditation all the time is invariably the best or the only way of Yoga.
  ***

2.1.2 - The Vital and Other Levels of Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But this must always be remembered that the vital being and the life-force in man are separated from the Divine Light and, so separated, they are an instrument for any power that can take hold of them, illumined or obscure, divine or undivine. Ordinarily, the vital energy serves the common obscure or half-conscious movements of the human mind and human life, its normal ideas, interests, passions and desires. But it is possible for the vital energy to increase beyond the ordinary limits and, if so increased, it can attain an impetus, an intensity, an excitation or sublimation of its force by which it can become, is almost bound to become an instrument either of divine powers, the powers of the gods, or of Asuric forces. Or, if there is no settled central control in the nature, its action can be a confused mixture of these opposites, or in an inconsequent oscillation serve now one and now the other. It is not enough then to have a great vital energy acting in you; it must be put in contact with the higher consciousness, it must be surrendered to the true control, it must be placed under the government of the Divine. That is why there is sometimes felt a contempt for the action of the vital force or a condemnation of it, because it has an insufficient light and control and is wedded to an ignorant undivine movement. That also is why there is the necessity of opening to inspiration and power from a higher source. The vital energy by itself leads nowhere, runs in chequered, often painful and ruinous circles, takes even to the precipice, because it has no right guidance; it must be connected with the dynamic power of the higher consciousness and with the Divine Force acting through it for a great and luminous purpose.
  There are two movements necessary for this connection to be established. One is upward; the vital rises to join with the higher consciousness and steeps itself in the light and in the impulsion of a higher force: the other is downward; the vital remains silent, tranquillised, pure, empty of the ordinary movements, waiting, till the dynamic power from above descends into it, changes it to its true self and informs its movements with knowledge as well as power. That is why the sadhak feels sometimes that he is rising up into a happier and nobler consciousness, entering into a brighter domain and purer experience, but sometimes, on the contrary, feels the necessity of going back into the vital, doing sadhana there and bringing down into it the true consciousness. There is no real contradiction between these two movements; they are complementary and necessary to each other, the ascension enabling the divine descent, the descent fulfilling that for which the ascension aspires and which it makes inevitable.
  --
  But this, too, is not sufficient for the divine life. To come into contact with the higher mind consciousness is not enough, it is only an indispensable stage. There must be a descent of the Divine Force from yet loftier and more powerful reaches. A transformation of the higher consciousness into a supramental light and power, a transformation of the vital and its life-force into a pure, wide, calm, intense and powerful instrument of the Divine Energy, a transformation of the physical itself into a form of divine light, divine action, strength, beauty and joy are impossible without this descending Force from the now invisible summits. That is why in this Yoga the ascent to the Divine which it has in common with other paths of Yoga is not enough; there must be too a descent of the Divine to transform all the energies of the mind, life and body.
  ***
  --
  As for the diminution of mental control over the vital movements, that often happens temporarily in the course of the Yoga. Mental control has to be replaced by a greater control from above and by the calm, purity and strong peace of the vital itself opened to the Divine Force and its government of the whole nature.
  Do not allow yourself to be troubled or discouraged by any difficulties, but quietly and simply open yourself to the Mothers force and allow it to change you.

2.1.4 - The Lower Vital Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is certainly possible to draw forces from below. It may be the hidden divine forces from below that rise at your pull, and then this motion upward completes the motion and effort of the Divine Force from above, helping especially to bring it into the body. Or it may be the obscure forces from below that respond to the summons, and then this kind of drawing brings either tamas or disturbance sometimes great masses of inertia or a formidable upheaval and disturbance.
  The lower vital is a very obscure plane and it can be fully opened with advantage only when the other planes above it have been thrown wide to light and knowledge. One who concentrates on the lower vital without that higher preparation and without knowledge is likely to fall into many confusions. This does not mean that experiences of this plane may not come earlier or even at the beginning; they do come of themselves, but they must not be given too large a place.
  --
  Sometimes the aspiration is felt at the navel, but that is part of the larger vital. The lower vital is below. The lower vital aspires by offering all its small movements in the fire of purification, by calling for the light and power to descend into it and rid it of its little greeds, jealousies, resistances and revolts over small matters, angers, vanities, sexualities etc. to be replaced by the right movements governed by selflessness, purity, obedience to the urge of the Divine Force in all things.
  ***

2.14 - The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   if there is an unmixed true consciousness, good alone can exist; it is no longer mixed with evil or formed in its presence. Human values of good and evil, as of truth and error, are indeed uncertain and relative: what is held as truth in one place or time is held in another place or time to be error; what is regarded as good is elsewhere or in other times regarded as evil. We find too that what we call evil results in good, what we call good results in evil. But this untoward outcome of good producing evil is due to the confusion and mixture of knowledge and ignorance, to the penetration of true consciousness by wrong consciousness, so that there is an ignorant or mistaken application of our good, or it is due to the intervention of afflicting forces. In the opposite case of evil producing good, the happier and contradictory result is due to the intervention of some true consciousness and force acting behind and in spite of wrong consciousness and wrong will or it is due to the intervention of redressing forces. This relativity, this mixture is a circumstance of human mentality and the workings of the Cosmic Force in human life; it is not the fundamental truth of good and evil. It might be objected that physical evil, such as pain and most bodily suffering, is independent of knowledge and ignorance, of right and wrong consciousness, inherent in physical Nature: but, fundamentally, all pain and suffering are the result of an insufficient consciousness-force in the surface being which makes it unable to deal rightly with self and Nature or unable to assimilate and to harmonise itself with the contacts of the universal Energy; they would not exist if in us there were an integral presence of the luminous Consciousness and the Divine Force of an integral Being. Therefore the relation of truth to falsehood, of good to evil is not a mutual dependence, but is in the nature of a contradiction as of light and shadow; a shadow depends on light for its existence, but light does not depend for its existence on the shadow. The relation between the Absolute and these contraries of some of its fundamental aspects is not that they are opposite fundamental aspects of the
  Absolute; falsehood and evil have no fundamentality, no power of infinity or eternal being, no self-existence even by latency in the Self-Existent, no au thenticity of an original inherence.

2.16 - Oneness, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This transformation cannot be complete or really executed without the awakening of the truth-mind which corresponds in the mental being to the supermind and is capable of receiving mentally its illuminations. By the opposition of Spirit and Mind without the free opening of this intermediate power the two natures, higher and lower, stand divided, and though there may be communication and influence or the catching up of the lower into the higher in a sort of luminous or ecstatic trance, there cannot be a full and perfect transfiguration of the lower nature. We may feel imperfectly by the emotional mind, we may have a sense by the sense-mind or a conception and perception by the intelligent mind of the Spirit present in Matter and all its forms, the divine Delight present in all emotion and sensation, the Divine Force behind all life-activities; but the lower will still keep its own nature and limit and divide in its action and modify in its character the influence from above. Even when that influence assumes its highest, widest, intensest power, it will be irregular and disorderly in activity and perfectly realised only in calm and stillness; we shall be subject to reactions and periods of obscuration when it is withdrawn from us; we shall be apt to forget it in the stress of ordinary life and its outward touches and the siege of its dualities and to be fully possessed of it only when alone with ourselves and God or else only in moments or periods of a heightened exaltation and ecstasy. For our mentality, a restricted instrument moving in a limited field and seizing things by fragments and parcels, is necessarily shifting, restless and mutable; it can find steadiness only by limiting its field of action and fixity only by cessation and repose.
  Our direct truth-perceptions on the other hand come from that supermind, -- a Will that knows and a Knowledge that effects, -- which creates universal order out of infinity. Its awakening into action brings down, says the Veda, the unrestricted downpour of the rain of heaven, -- the full flowing of the seven rivers from a superior sea of light and power and joy. It reveals Sachchidananda. It reveals the Truth behind the scattered and ill-combined suggestions of our mentality and makes each to fall into its place in the unity of the Truth behind; thus it can transform the half-light of our minds into a certain totality of light. It reveals the Will behind all the devious and imperfectly regulated striving of our mental will and emotional wishes and vital effort and makes each to fall into its place in the unity of the luminous Will behind; thus it can transform the half-obscure struggle of our life and mind into a certain totality of ordered force. It reveals the delight for which each of our sensations and emotions is groping and from which they fall back in movements of partially grasped satisfaction or of dissatisfaction, pain, grief or indifference, and makes each take its place in the unity of the universal delight behind; thus it can transform the conflict of our dualised emotions and sensations into a certain totality of serene, yet profound and powerful love and delight. Moreover, revealing the universal action, it shows the truth of being out of which each of its movements arises and to which each progresses, the force of effectuation which each carries with it and the delight of being for which and from which each is born, and it relates all to the universal being, consciousness, force and delight of Sachchidananda. Thus it harmonises for us all the oppositions, divisions, contrarieties of existence and shows us in them the One and the Infinite. Uplifted into this supramental light, pain and pleasure and indifference begin to be converted into joy of the one self-existent Delight, strength and weakness, success and failure into powers of the one self-effective Force and Will, truth and error, knowledge and ignorance into light of the one infinite self-awareness and universal knowledge, increase of being and diminution of being, limitation and the overcoming of limitation into waves of the one self-realising conscious existence. All our life as well as all our essential being is transformed into the possession of Sachchidananda.

2.18 - January 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: In principle it is true; for the Supreme Shakti is the Divine Force and all the Gods are from Her. It is said that even Shiva cannot act unless She gives him power to act.
   Disciple: Harnath had his decisive spiritual experience in Kashmir where, it is related, Gauranga came to him and gave him his 'mission'. But his later disciples regard him as equal to Gauranga.

2.2.01 - Work and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The feeling that the Divine Force is working behind ones actions and leading at every moment.
  A persistent faith which no circumstance or event can break. If difficulties occur, they raise not mental doubts or an inert acquiescence, but the firm belief that, with sincere consecration, the Divine Shakti will remove the difficulties, and with this belief a greater turning to her and dependence on her for that purpose. When there is full faith and consecration, there comes also a receptivity to the Force which makes one do the right thing and take the right means and then circumstances adapt themselves and the result is visible.

2.2.02 - Becoming Conscious in Work, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It [concentration of the inner consciousness] can happen in several forms. It can become concentrated in silence as the witnessit can become concentrated in the feeling of the Divine Force flowing through it, the work being a resultit can become concentrated in the feeling of the presence of the Divine or the Ananda or love of the Divine while the working goes on separately in front. All this becomes so habitual that it goes on of itself without the need of call or effort or even of the minds attentionit simply is there. There are other possibilities besides those mentioned above, but these are perhaps the most common.
  ***
  --
  It is the same with all the rest. It is by the development of the inner consciousness that all the things you speak of will be set right. For instance it is a part of the being that has utsha for the work, another that feels the pressure of quietude and is not so disposed to work. Your mood depends on which comes up at the timeit is so with all people. To combine the two is difficult, but a time comes when they do get reconciledone remains poised in an inner concentration while the other is supported by it in its push towards work. The transformation of the nature, the harmonising of all these discordant things in the being are the work of sadhana. Therefore you need not be discouraged by observing these things in you. There is hardly anybody who has not found these things in himself. All this can be arranged by the action of the inner Force with the constant consent and call of the sadhak. By himself he might not be able to do it, but with the Divine Force working within all can be done.
  ***

2.2.03 - The Divine Force in Work, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  object:2.2.03 - the Divine Force in Work
  author class:Sri Aurobindo
  --
  3) Receptivity the power to receive the Divine Force and to feel its presence and the presence of the Mother in it and allow it to work, guiding ones sight and will and action. If this power and presence can be felt and this plasticity made the habit of the consciousness in action,but plasticity to the Divine Force alone without bringing in any foreign element,the eventual result is sure.
  ***
  --
  When there is the confusion or wrong condition, then you have to call down the quiet, to try to get back to the true position, not listening to the wrong thoughts but rejecting them. If you cannot do that at once, still remain as quiet as possible and aspire and offer yourself. the Divine Force can always do more than the personal effort; so the one thing is to get quiet and call it down or back to the front for it is always there behind or above you.
  ***

2.2.04 - Practical Concerns in Work, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  From the point of view of sadhanayou must not allow yourself to be in the least disturbed by these things [lack of sympathy and support in ones work]. What you have to do, what is right to be done, should be done in perfect calmness with the support of the Divine Force. All that is necessary for a successful result, can be doneincluding the securing of the support of those who are able to help you. But if this outer support is not forthcoming, you have not to be disturbed but to proceed calmly on your way. If there is any difficulty or unsuccess anywhere not due to your own fault, you have not to be troubled. Strength, unmoved calm, quiet, straight and right dealing with all things you have to deal with must be the rule of your action.
  ***

2.2.05 - Creative Activity, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Literature, poetry, science and other studies can be a preparation of the consciousness for life. When one does Yoga they can become part of the sadhana only if done for the Divine or taken up by the Divine Force, but then one should not want to be a poet for the sake of being a poet only, or for fame, applause, etc.
  ***

2.21 - 1940, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: If the Asuric forces have incarnated in Hitler and others, are there none on the side of the Allies who incarnate the Divine Forces
   Sri Aurobindo: No, unfortunately there is none among them who can receive the Divine Force. They are all ordinary men. Mother also has not found anyone who can receive. Perhaps Marshal Petain might be able to receive but he is too old.
   Disciple: Can Weygand receive?

2.2.3 - Depression and Despondency, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is incorrect to say that the wrong key with which you were trying to open the faery palace has been taken away from you and you are left with none at all. The true key has been given to you in the right kind or condition of meditationa state of inner rest, not of straining, of quiet opening, not of eager or desperate pulling, a harmonious giving of oneself to the Divine Force for its working, and in that quietude a sense of the Force working and a restful confidence allowing it to act without any unquiet interference. Now that condition is the beginning of the psychic opening; there is of course much more that afterwards comes to complete it but this is the fundamental condition into which all the rest can most easily come. In this condition there may and will be call, prayer, aspiration. Intensity, concentration will come of themselves, not by a hard effort or tense strain on the nature. Rejection of wrong movements, frank confession of defects are not only not incompatible, but helpful to it; but this attitude makes the rejection, the confession easy, spontaneous, entirely complete and sincere and effective. That is the experience of all who have consented to take this attitude.
  Now as to the tension and stiffness. I may say in passing that consciousness and receptivity are not the same thing; one may be receptive, yet externally unaware of how things are being done and of what is being done. But for such an external unconsciousness there must be a reason, and in you it was the stiffness created by a tension and a straining which made the consciousness thus rigid and closed it up. Not that it closed you to the Force or that it took away the inner receptivity, but it did close you to the surface consciousness of what is being done. When that happens, the Force works, as I have repeatedly written, behind the veil; the results remain packed behind and come out afterwards, often slowly, little by little, until there is so much pressure that it breaks through somehow and forces open the external nature. There lies the difference between a mental and vital straining and pulling and a spontaneous psychic openness, and it is not at all the first time that we have spoken of the difference. It is not really a question of the right or the wrong key, but of putting the key in the lock in the right or the wrong way, whether because of some difficulty you try to force the lock turning the key this way and that with violence or confidently and quietly give it the right turn and the door opens.

2.24 - Gnosis and Ananda, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The bliss-soul is not bound to birth or to non-birth; it is not driven by desire of the Knowledge or harassed by fear of the Ignorance. The supreme bliss-Soul has already the Knowledge and transcends all need of knowledge. Not limited in consciousness by the form and the act, it can play with the manifestation without being imbued with the Ignorance. Already it is taking its part above in the mystery of an eternal manifestation and here, when the time comes, will descend into birth without being the slave of Ignorance, chained to the revolutions of the wheel of Nature. For it knows that the purpose and law of the birth-series is for the soul in the body to rise from plane to plane and substitute always the rule of the higher for the rule of the lower play even down to the material field. The bliss-soul neither disdains to help that ascent from above nor fears to descend down the stairs of God into the material birth and there contri bute the power of its own bliss nature to the upward pull of the Divine Forces. The time for that marvellous hour of the evolving Time-Spirit is not yet come. Man, generally, cannot yet ascend to the bliss nature; he has first to secure himself on the higher mental altitudes, to ascend from them to the gnosis, still less can he bring down all the Bliss-Power into this terrestrial Nature; he must first cease to be mental man and become superhuman. All he can do now is to receive something of its power into his soul in greater or less degree, by a diminishing transmission through an inferior consciousness; but even that gives him the sense of an ecstasy and an unsurpassable beatitude.
  And what will be the bliss nature when it manifests in a new supramental race? The fully evolved soul will be one with all beings in the status and dynamic effects of experience of a bliss-consciousness intense and illimitable. And since love is the effective power and soul-symbol of bliss-oneness he will approach and enter into this oneness by the gate of universal love, the sublimation of human love at first, a divine love afterwards, at its summits a thing of beauty, sweetness and splendour now to us inconceivable. He will be one in bliss-consciousness with all the world-play and its powers and happenings and there will be banished for ever the sorrow and fear, the hunger and pain of our poor and darkened mental and vital and physical existence. He will get that power of the bliss-freedom in which all the conflicting principles of our being shall be unified in their absolute values. All evil shall perforce change itself into good; the universal beauty of the All-beautiful will take possession of its fallen kingdoms; every darkness will be converted into a pregnant glory of light and the discords which the mind creates between Truth and Good and Beauty, Power and Love and Knowledge will disappear on the eternal summit, in the infinite extensions where they are always one.

2.25 - The Triple Transformation, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This is the first result, but the second is a free inflow of all kinds of spiritual experience, experience of the Self, experience of the Ishwara and the Divine Shakti, experience of cosmic consciousness, a direct touch with cosmic forces and with the occult movements of universal Nature, a psychic sympathy and unity and inner communication and interchanges of all kinds with other beings and with Nature, illuminations of the mind by knowledge, illuminations of the heart by love and devotion and spiritual joy and ecstasy, illuminations of the sense and the body by higher experience, illuminations of dynamic action in the truth and largeness of a purified mind and heart and soul, the certitudes of the divine light and guidance, the joy and power of the Divine Force working in the will and the conduct. These experiences are the result of an opening outward of the inner and inmost being and nature; for then there comes into play the soul's power of unerring inherent consciousness, its vision, its touch on things which is superior to any mental cognition; there is there, native to the psychic consciousness in its pure working, an immediate sense of the world and its beings, a direct inner contact with them and a direct contact with the Self and with the Divine, - a direct knowledge, a direct sight of Truth and of all truths, a direct penetrating spiritual emotion and feeling, a direct intuition of right will and right action, a power to rule and to create an order of the being not by the gropings of the superficial self, but from within, from the inner truth of self and things and the occult realities of Nature.
  Some of these experiences can come by an opening of the inner mental and vital being, the inner and larger and subtler mind and heart and life within us, without any full emergence of the soul, the psychic entity, since there too there is a power of direct contact of consciousness: but the experience might then be of a mixed character; for there could be an emergence not only of the subliminal knowledge but of the subliminal ignorance. An insufficient expansion of the being, a limitation by mental idea, by narrow and selective emotion or by the form of the temperament so that there would be only an imperfect self-creation and action and not the free soul-emergence, could easily occur. In the absence of any or of a complete psychic emergence, experiences of certain kinds, experiences of a greater knowledge and force, a surpassing of the ordinary limits, might lead to a magnified ego and even bring about instead of an outflowering of what is divine or spiritual an uprush of the titanic or demoniac, or might call in agencies and powers which, though not of this disastrous type, are of a powerful but inferior cosmic character. But the rule and guidance of the soul brings into all experience the tendency of light, of integration, of harmony and intimate rightness which is native to the psychic essence. A psychic or, more widely speaking, a psycho-spiritual transformation of this kind would be already a vast change of our mental human nature.

2.3.01 - Aspiration and Surrender to the Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In this Yoga one is supposed to go beyond every mental idealistic culture. Ideas and ideals belong to the mind and are half-truths only; the mind too is, more often than not, satisfied with merely having an ideal, with the pleasure of idealising, while life remains always the same, untransformed or changed only a little and mostly in appearance. The spiritual seeker does not turn aside from the pursuit of realisation to mere idealising; not to idealise, but to realise the Divine Truth is always his aim, either beyond or in life also - and in the latter case it is necessary to transform mind and life which cannot be done without surrender to the action of the Divine Force, the Mother.
  To seek after the Impersonal is the way of those who want to withdraw from life, but usually they try by their own effort, and not by an opening of themselves to a superior Power or by the way of surrender; for the Impersonal is not something that guides or helps, but something to be attained and it leaves each man to attain it according to the way and capacity of his nature.

2.3.02 - Opening, Sincerity and the Mother's Grace, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  What is meant by sincere sadhana? In the Mother's definition of sincere, it means "opening only to the Divine Forces", i.e. rejecting all the others even if they come.
  21 April 1936

2.3.04 - The Mother's Force, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is here asleep and coiled up in all the centres of our inner being (chakras) and is at the base what is called in the Tantras the Kundalini Shakti. But it is also above us, above our head as the Divine Force - not there coiled up, involved, asleep, but awake, scient, potent, extended and wide; it is there waiting for manifestation and to this Force we have to open ourselves - to the power of the Mother. In the mind it manifests itself as a divine mind-force or a universal mind-force and it can do everything that the personal mind cannot do; it is then the Yogic mindforce. When it manifests and works in the vital or physical in the same way, it is then apparent as a Yogic life-force or a Yogic body-force. It can awake in all these forms, bursting outwards and upwards, extending itself into wideness from below; or it can descend and become there a definite power for things; it can pour downwards into the body, working, establishing its reign, extending into wideness from above, link the lowest in us with the highest above us, release the individual into a cosmic universality or into absoluteness and transcendence.
  23 March 1933
  --
  It is the Divine Force which works to remove the ignorance and
  18 June 1933 change the nature into the divine nature.
  --
  If you cannot advance in your sadhana, it is because you are divided and do not give yourself without reserve. You speak of surrendering everything to the Mother but you have not done even the one thing which she asked of you and which you have promised more than once. If after having called the action of the Divine Force, you allow other influences to prevail, how can you expect to be free from obstruction and difficulties?
  20 November 1928
  --
  - a state of inner rest, not of straining, of quiet opening, not of eager or desperate pulling, a harmonious giving of oneself to the Divine Force for its working, and in that quietude a sense
  222
  --
  "In contact with" the Divine Force which is the force of the
  Mother - that was what I wrote, I believe.

2.3.05 - Sadhana through Work for the Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  People say, "As long as the lower nature is not fully purified, it is dangerous to do a lot of meditation. If one meditates too much before one has become purified by means of work, things might rise up from the lower nature and upset the sadhak. When the higher forces come down into a nature not sufficiently purified through work, it is difficult to bear the descent of the Divine Forces."
  It is not the descent of the higher or divine forces that upsets a sadhak, it is his acceptance of forces of falsehood through ambition, vanity, desire to be a great Yogi or an attachment to his experiences without regard to their truth or their source.

23.10 - Observations II, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   the Divine Force does not act in vacuo. Here it acts in the midst of teeming ignorances: so the net result is at best half and half which is the present world.
   The lesser half must know how to integralise itself in order that the Fullness may be full here below.

2.3.2 - Desire, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The fear is again that of the physical consciousness or of the vital element in itit is afraid if it gives up desire that it will lose everythingor everything it wantsand gain nothing in exchange or at least nothing it wants. It does not realise that it will get something far greater and more powerful and happy in place of this troubled desire and its doubtful and precarious fruits for it has been accustomed to think of desire as the only possible motive of life. It does not know that the Divine Force is there waiting to descend with its light and peace and joy bringing much greater things and a happier life. When this part can be enlightened and persuaded to want wholeheartedly the change, then a great difficulty, indeed the central difficulty will have gone.
  ***
  There was and is the opening before you of a new stage in your spiritual development. For it to realise itself you must progress first in two directions. The first we have already pressed on you the surmounting of these vital temptations and desires which linked you to the lower movements and invited the pressure of a hostile Force on your lower vital and your body and the complete surrender of life and body to the One alone. The other is the descent of a full calm and strength and equanimity into these parts so that you may conquer life and its difficulties and do your work for the Divine. This calm and strength had often descended into your mind and higher vital, but these other parts were still open to much weakness and attachment and a self-indulgent movement. That must go if one wants to become a hero and master of spiritual action. In your life at Bogra these things were too much sheltered and allowed to remain; at Shillong you have a chance to be by yourself with the Divine Force and look life in the face from the souls inner strength and become master of circumstances. Outer difficulties or inconveniences you should not allow to alarm or depress you. Inner difficulties should also be met with detachment, calm equality, the unshakable will to conquer.
  For the rest, you have rightly said, I must preserve my equanimity and have faith in Divine Guidance when falsehoodor any trouble or difficultyconfronts me. The defect that opened the way to the bodily and other troubles was the faltering in your resolution to conquer the vital and follow the straight and high path and the consequent violent despair and depression it brought in its wake. Let those disappear altogether and do not allow them to rise in that way again. The path of spiritual calm and strength and the consecration of all your forces to the Divine is the one safe way for you and that you must now consistently follow.

2.4.02 - Bhakti, Devotion, Worship, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Of course all prayer is not heard the world would be a still more disastrous affair than it is, if everybodys prayers were heard, however sincere. Even the Godward prayer is not always heardat once, even as faith is not always justified at once. Both prayer and faith are powers towards realisation which have been given to man to aid him in his strugglewithout them, without aspiration and will and faith (for aspiration is a prayer) it would be difficult for him to get anywhere. But all these things are merely means for setting the Divine Force in action and it sometimes takes long, very long even, before the forces come into action or at least before they are seen to be in action or bear their result. The ecstasist is not altogether wrong even when he overstates his case. Even the overstatements sometimes help to convince the Cosmic Power, so that it says Oh well, if it is like that all right.
  ***

24.05 - Vision of Dante, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Apart from the saints and sages and wise men (theologians) of Christendom, the higher Heavens sheltered also non-human, that is to say, godly or divine beings - angels and archangels, cherubs and seraphs - powers of Love, powers of Knowledge - Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Principalities, as Dante names them - various grades and modes of the Divine Force and energy - or, as we say, Personalities and Emanations.
   Indeed Dante's mind was full of questions and doubts and Beatrice herself had noticed it and given warnings to him. As she was purifying his heart movements lifting his human love to the divine level, so she sought to cleanse his mind too and as they moved on she was disclosing to him with her love and with her consciousness the nature of true mind and consciousness. At one place she said almost echoing an Upanishadic utterance: "Truth is not attained by debate and discussion, not by the normal intelligence and reason, but through a suspension of these faculties." In the higher Heavens Truth reveals itself spontaneously, whole and entire. Beatrice was lifting up both the mind and the heart of Dante into her knowledge and consciousness, into her own love. Indeed through her words, Dante says, Truth is visible, clear like a star in the sky.

2.4.2 - Interactions with Others and the Practice of Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It [trying to help someone through words] is a relative and partial help, of course, but it is sometimes useful. A radical help can only come from within through the action of the Divine Force and the assent of the being. It must be said of course that it is not everyone that thinks he is helping who is really doing it; also if the help is accompanied with the exercising of an influence, that influence may be of a mixed character and harm as well as help if the instrument is not pure.
  ***
  --
  The idea of helping others is a subtle form of the ego. It is only the Divine Force that can help. One can be its instrument, but you should first learn to be a fit and egoless instrument.
  ***

25.02 - HYMN TO DAWN, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Lo, dawn, the Beloved, appears in her gleaming young body. She impels all life on the path towards the goal. Fire, the Divine Force, is born to be kindled in man. Dawn drives away all Darkness and fulfils herself in creating Light.
   She, the Goddess rises lifting her forward gaze towards the Vast, the Universal. She has put on the robe of Light and displays the white brilliance of her subtle norms of Truth. Heaven-gold. is her hue, her vision is all-round seeing: verily, she is the mother of the herd of brilliances of knowledge, a leader of our bright days; her luminous body is disclosed.

27.03 - The Great Holocaust - Chhinnamasta, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   If you are in the older creation or at least are in love with it, attached to it, the destruction becomes painful even fearful and repulsive to you. But if you aspire for the new, are willing to participate in the dawning future, already belong to it, you feel the necessity of this destruction and welcome it to hasten the work and even rejoice in it. You enjoy the joy of destruction - at least Shiva does, the Divine Force does, it seems.
   Something like that, in fact the same thing is happening now.

2 - Other Hymns to Agni, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
    9. He who with the offerings approaches the Divine Force, for the Birth of the Gods, O Purifier, on him have grace.
    10. O shining flame, thou who purifiest, hither bear the Gods to our offerings and to our sacrifice.

3.1.2 - Levels of the Physical Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It depends on whether it [the body] is in tune with the vital or not. The nature of the body is tamasicit is the vital which makes it move and uses it as an instrument: If the vital is enlightened then the Divine Force can act through it on the body.
  ***

3.16.2 - Of the Charge of the Spirit, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  At no moment is it more important that the Divine Force should
  not only full, but radiate from, the Aura of the Magician.

3.2.07 - Tantra, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Sri Aurobindo1 cannot undertake to guide you as your Guru, for the reason that he takes as disciples only those who follow his special path of Yoga; your experiences follow a different line. In his Yoga there may be an occasional current in the spine as in other nerve channels or different parts of the body, but no awakening of the Kundalini in this particular and powerful fashion. There is only a quiet uprising of the consciousness from the lower centres to join the spiritual consciousness above and a descent of the Divine Force from above which does its own work in the mind and body the manner and stages varying in each sadhak. A perfect confidence in the Divine Mother and a vigilance to repel all wrong suggestions and influences is the main law of this Yoga. Your opening having once been so powerful on the more usual Tantric lines (even without your own will intervening), it is hardly probable that it could now change easily to other linesany such effort might create a serious disturbance. In speaking of a competent Guru Sri Aurobindo meant one who had himself practised this opening of the centres and become siddha in that line of Yoga. It should not be impossible to find onewhen one has the call for the Guru, the Guru sooner or later comes. Meanwhile to put away fear and have confidence in the Divine working is indispensable but no effort should be made to force the pace by concentrated meditation unless you have a guide whom you can trusta clear guidance from within or a guide from without. The inspiration about the Ida nadi and the subsequent waking of the Shakti show that there was an intervention at a critical moment and that the call to it whenever needed is likely to be effective.
  In the experiences proper related in your first letter there is absolutely nothing that should have disturbed youall was quite normal, the usual experiences of the Yogin at such a juncture and very good and powerful, such as do not come except by the grace of the Divine. Probably the opening came after slow invisible preparation as a result of the meditation on the lotus at the top of the head; for that is always an invitation to the Kundalini to awake or for the lower consciousness to rise and meet the higher. The disturbing factor came with the feeling of discomfort in the heart due to some resistance in the physical being which is very often felt and can be overcome by the working of the Force itself and the fear that came afterwards in the seats of the vital Nature, heart, navel etc. But that was no part of the experience, it was an interference by a wrong reaction from the lower or exterior consciousness. If you had not allowed yourself to be disturbed, probably nothing untoward would have disturbed the process. One must not get frightened by unusual states or movements or experiences, the Yogi must be fearless, abh; it is absurd to have a fear because one can control ones states; that is a power very much to be desired and welcomed in Yoga.

3.20 - Of the Eucharist, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  Invocations made. When the Divine Force manifests in the elements,
  they should be solemnly consumed. There is also a simpler method

3.2.4 - Sex, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  As to the sexual impulse. Regard it not as something sinful and horrible and attractive at the same time, but as a mistake and wrong movement of the lower nature. Reject it entirely, not by struggling with it, but by drawing back from it, detaching yourself and refusing your consent; look at it as something not your own, but imposed on you by a force of Nature outside you. Refuse all consent to the imposition. If anything in your vital consents, insist on that part of you withdrawing its consent. Call in the Divine Force to help you in your withdrawal and refusal. If you can do this quietly and resolutely and patiently, in the end your inner will will prevail against the habit of the outer Nature.
  ***

3.3.2 - Doctors and Medicines, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is very good if one can get rid of illness entirely by faith and Yoga-power or the influx of the Divine Force. But very often this is not altogether possible, because the whole nature is not open or able to respond to the Force. The mind may have faith and respond, but the lower vital and the body may not follow. Or if the mind and vital are ready, the body may not respond, or may respond only partially, because it has the habit of replying to the forces which produce a particular illness and habit is a very obstinate force in the material part of the nature. In such cases the use of the physical means can be resorted to,not as the main means, but as a help or material support to the action of the Force. Not strong and violent remedies, but those that are beneficial without disturbing the body.
  ***

34.09 - Hymn to the Pillar, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
   [The ritualistic or the naturalistic symbolism. of the Veda is at its minimum in this hymn of the Atharvaveda, translated almost literally. The Pillar, it is explicitly said, is the Brahman, the Supreme Reality. It is sarvadhara,the container of all, the total or integral existence. It upholds the creation, it has entered into the creation and it has become the creation. It is the tree, the Aswattha tree as the Upanishad also describes, with its branches spreading out, i.e.all the multiple aspects of the creation. Even the gods, all of them, find shelter here in one form or other. All gods it is: Agni the Divine Force, Indra the Divine Mind, Soma the Divine Delight. It is Tapas, the upward urge in the Universe, it is Satyam the Truth and Ritam the Truth-action, Vak the Truth-word.
   Day and Night also are its dual aspects, Light and Darkness - evolution and involution, expression and withdrawal, Being and Non-Being, Knowledge and Ignorance. The image of twin sisters (rivers) refers also to this double movement of consciousness, everywhere in Nature: ascent and descent, inward and outward, the two wings of the Cosmic Bird flying through eternity and infinity. To mark the progress of Time or in Time, cycles of duration (months, half months, seasons etc.) are also noted here as limbs of this Supreme total Reality. To this double movement there is to be added a third movement: if the double movement means thesis and antithesis, there is a movement of synthesis also. To the movement sideways there is to be a movement beyond. We know of this threefold movement in the mystery of the Kundalini Force: the two currents idaand pingalaon either side of the spinal cord and in between the mounts the susumnaheading towards the beyond, to the Crown of the head. The Beyond is of course the Transcendent, the supreme status of Brahman, the All Container.

3.6.01 - Heraclitus, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Does the thought of Heraclitus admit of any such hope as the Vedic seers held and hymned with so triumphant a confidence? or does it even give ground for any aspiration to some kind of a divine supermanhood such as his disciples the Stoics so sternly laboured for or as that of which Nietzsche, the modern Heraclitus, drew a too crude and violent figure? His saying that man is kindled and extinguished as light disappears into night, is commonplace and discouraging enough. But this may after all be only true of the apparent man Is it possible for man. in his becoming to raise his present fixed measures? to elevate his mental, relative, individual reason into direct communion with or direct participation in the divine and absolute reason? to inspire and raise the values of his human force to the higher values of the Divine Force? to become aware like the gods of an absolute good and an absolute beauty? to lift this mortal to the nature of immortality? Against his melancholy image of human transiency we have that remarkable and cryptic sentence, "the gods are mortals, men immortals", which, taken literally, might mean that the gods are powers that perish and replace each other and the soul of man alone is immortal, but must at least mean that there is in man behind his outward transiency an immortal spirit. We have too his saying, "thou canst not find the limits of the soul", and we have the profoundest of all Heraclitus' utterances, "the kingdom is of the child." If man is in his real being an infinite and immortal spirit, there is surely no reason why he should not awaken to his immortality, arise towards the consciousness of the universal, one and absolute, live in a higher self-realisation. "I have sought for myself" says Heraclitus; and what was it that he found?
  But there is one great gap and defect whether in his knowledge of things or his knowledge of the self of man. We see in how many directions the deep divining eye of Heraclitus anticipated the largest and profoundest generalisations of Science and Philosophy and how even his more superficial thoughts indicate later powerful tendencies of the occidental mind, how too some of his ideas influenced such profound and fruitful thinkers as Plato, the Stoics, the Neo-platonists. But in his defect also he is a forerunner; it illustrates the great deficiency of later European thought, such of it at least as has not been profoundly influenced by Asiatic religions or Asiatic mysticism. I have tried to show how often his thought touches and is almost identical with the Vedic and Vedantic. But his knowledge of the truth of things stopped with the vision of the universal reason and the universal force; he seems to have summed up the principle of things in these two first terms, the aspect of consciousness, the aspect of power, a supreme intelligence and a supreme energy. The eye of Indian thought saw a third aspect of the Self and of Brahman; besides the universal consciousness active in divine knowledge, besides the universal force active in divine will, it saw the universal delight active in divine love and joy. European thought, following the line of Heraclitus' thinking, has fixed itself on reason and on force and made them the principles towards whose perfection our being has to aspire. Force is the first aspect of the world, war, the clash of energies; the second aspect, reason, emerges out of the appearance of force in which it is at first hidden and reveals itself as a certain justice, a certain harmony, a certain determining intelligence and reason in things; the third aspect is a deeper secret behind these two, universal delight, love, beauty which taking up the other two can establish something higher than justice, better than harmony, truer than reason,-unity and bliss, the ecstasy of our fulfilled existence. Of this last secret power Western thought has only seen two lower aspects, pleasure and aesthetic beauty; it has missed the spiritual beauty and the spiritual delight. For that reason Europe has never been able to develop a powerful religion of its own; it has been obliged to turn to Asia. Science takes possession of the measures and utilities of Force; rational philosophy pursues reason to its last subtleties; but inspired philosophy and religion can seize hold of the highest secret, uttamaṁ rahasyam.

36.08 - A Commentary on the First Six Suktas of Rigveda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
   This mutual exchange of sacrifice between man and the Divine Forces leading to progression, to evolution of life, is guarded by Fire, the light and heat that signify the power born of spiritual discipline. It is this energy that enables the practicant to go forward on his way of sacrifice. The aspirant offers as an oblation every limb of his being into this energy of spiritual practice which in its turn carries the self offering of the aspirant to his divinity, and continues to work for its establishment; that is why Fire is the offerer. Fire is also called the carrier, for he brings down the divine powers into the aspirant and carries him up into their region. This work Fire has undertaken to perform without the least violation of the rhythm of Truth day after day through the evolutionary process. Hence he is called the priest. The priest is he who knows the proper time for the performance of the seasonal sacrifices. The energy born of spiritual practice too has the spontaneous tendency to determine the spiritual course of the practicant. The Fire of spiritual discipline burns up all the dross contained in the receptacle of the aspirant making him more capable and bringing down into him the divine power, knowledge and bliss - complete success. The power of Fire is no other than the dynamis of the Divine vision, the activity born of direct realisation (kavikratu); therefore Fire is called the protecting power of Truth (gopam rtasya). That which is the foundation of Truth, the Right, the Vast, the fourth world, is indeed svarloka, the own home (sva dama) of Agni and all the other gods. It is here that the gods reign supreme in their own real form, in their true nature. But, then, every god has his assigned field of activity here on earth through some suitable subtle embodiment. The seat of Fire, his field of action, is the earth, the gross sheath. The Energy of spiritual discipline first possesses the practicant in his body, the body-con- sciousness; and gradually with the help of the other gods this Fire-god leads him to the vital region and then to the sphere of the mind, thence to the Supermind, the fourth heaven. Each god represents the divine embodiment of the special virtue of a particular region or level. But Fire is the foremost God, and the aspirant who wants to have an access to the secrets of spiritual practice and is eager to progress must become a worshipper of Fire (angiras).
   This sukta (the word literally means "well spoken", the faultless speech, the infallible words of the seasoned seer of Truth) can be divided into three parts each containing three riks in accordance with the special differences in the current of thoughts. The first three riks deal with the theme: Who is Fire, what are his particulars, name and form? The second three deal with the subject: What is Fire, what his virtues, nature and innate tendencies? The third group describes the relationship between Fire and the aspirant in the matter of spiritual practice, the holy sacrifice. The mantras are composed in the metre called Gayatri, which too has three feet. Thus every rik too has three metrical divisions.
  --
   In the present hymn we can notice one speciality of Vedic discipline. Vedic discipline was not something personal and individual. It was essentially collective, i.e.,for the community as a whole. That is why we often hear an aspirant of the Vedas calling his friends to assemble in spiritual practice and bring down the Divine Force with a collective effort. The collective life flourished in those days with the help of companions and helpers in sadhana. The gods too were companions and helpers in the spiritual endeavour. Hence they were addressed as friends.
   THE FIFTH SUKTA

3 - Commentaries and Annotated Translations, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  words, whatever we surrender to the Divine Force, it returns to
  us in an increased wealth, in viryam, sahas, posha etc. Te with
  --
  which is supposed to be purified by the Divine Force entering
  Mandala Three
  --
  Agni, the Divine Force, is able to pour out these liberated
  rivers of being, these showers of richness & sweetness, because
  --
  are full of the Divine Force, when our nature is liberated, then
  the higher principles of Sat, Chit, Ananda & Tapas, the four
  --
  The awakening of the Divine Force and its action in a man is in
  this hymn rather indicated than described. The sukta is purely
  --
  in perception, light and calm in the emotional parts, - the bhandishthasya sumatim of the tenth rik, - which the Divine Force
  dwelling in us abidingly assures to our conscious being. The
  --
  its mission when Agni, the Divine Force, manifests in the Prana
  and manas and uplifts her to the ideal plane of consciousness.
  --
  essential relation of the Divine Force and the purified mind is
  brought out in a more general thought and figure in the first line
  --
  are attaining this nature of godhead, devayatam, their senseminds strain towards Agni, the Divine Force of Right Being &
  Right Action, satyam ritam, - they tend that is to say to have
  --
  establishes & supports as the Divine Force that divine bliss in its
  seven forms in whatever houses of our being, whatever worlds of
  --
  vital energy supporting it, blissful in the Divine Force working in
  the mind, blissful in the easy & auspicious self-expressions of
  --
  the Flame of the Divine Force marches himself and impels the
  human being. It is the great march which was undertaken by
  --
  to say, in the full flame of the Divine Force and Knowledge on its
  own divine plane,
  --
  bright and vast, a visible or a seeing might of the Divine Force
  and consciousness, full of the body and substance (vpAv\t\, vp;q\,

4.01 - Prayers and Meditations, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Insofar as the activities of the physical organism are egocentric, it is both legitimate and necessary to separate the consciousness from it and to regard the body as a servant to be directed, guided and made obedient. As the terrestrial being grows more receptive to the Divine Forces and manifests them in its illumined activities, one can identify oneself with it once more and cease to distinguish between the instrument and the Doer. But since, by the very necessity of preservation, these two modes of activity inevitably coexist, both these points of view, both these ways of feeling must also coexist.
  24 July 1914

4.02 - Difficulties, #Words Of The Mother II, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  The grace and protection are always with you. When in any inner or outer difficulty or trouble, do not allow it to oppress you; take refuge with the Divine Force that protects.
  If you do that always with faith and sincerity, you will find something opening in you which will always remain calm and peaceful in spite of all superficial disturbances.

4.1.1 - The Difficulties of Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Still, if the call of the soul is there, although not yet full, however great and obstinate the difficulties, there can be no final and irretrievable failure; even when the thread is broken it is taken up again and reunited and carried to its end. There is a working in the nature itself in response to the inner need which, however slowly, brings about the result. But a certain inner consent is needed; the progress that you have marked in yourself is due to the fact that there was this consent in the soul and also in part of the nature; the change was insisted on by the mind and desired by part of the vital; the resistance in part of the mind and part of the vital made it slow and difficult but could not prevent it. The strong development you have observed in your powers with its proof in the response of others is due to the same reason; part of your being consented to it, wanted and needed it as a self-fulfilment of the nature and the soul wanted it as a means of service to the Divine; the rest was due to the pressure of the Divine Force and my pressure. As for the distaste, the lack of interest etc. all this is temporary and belongs only to a part of you. In so far as it comes from a kind of vairgya, it may have helped you in overcoming some of your attachments, but it is defective in so far as the element of tamas and apravtti is there; it is not so fundamental as to resist the victorious drive of the pressure of the Divine Force.
  You ask what I want you to do. What I want is that you should persist and give more and more that assent in you which brought about the progress you have made so that here too the resistance may diminish and eventually disappear.
  --
  It is quite true that falsehood reigns in this world; that is the reason why these difficulties manifest. But you have not to allow yourself to be shaken. You must remain calm and strong and go straight, using the power of Truth and the Divine Force supporting you to overcome the difficulties and set straight what has been made crooked by the falsehood.
  ***

4.1.2.03 - Preparation for the Supramental Change, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  These are the main conditions of preparation for the supramental change, but none of them is easy, and they must be complete before the nature can be said to be ready. If the true attitude (psychic, unegoistic, open only to the Divine Force) can be established, then the process can go on much more quickly. To take and keep the true attitude, to further the change in oneself, is the help that can be given, the one thing needed to assist the general change.
  1. Loss of egoism - including all ambition (even "spiritual" ambition), pride, desire, self-centred life, mind, will.

4.2.2 - Steps towards Overcoming Difficulties, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This sadhana is a Yoga of transformation of the human consciousness into the divine consciousness. The sadhaks who come here are human beings with all the human weaknesses, but with a possibility of the transformation and an aspiration for it. For getting rid of their human weaknessessuch as lust, greed, vanity, pride, falsehood they must become conscious of them, must always reject them, must call in the Mothers presence, the divine Consciousness, the Divine Force to help them in rejecting their defects and to transform them. If they do that, then all that is necessary for the change will be done.
  ***
  --
  This is the right attitude, to have faith and not mind the difficulties. Difficultiesand serious onesthere cannot fail to be in the path of Yoga, because it is not easy to change all at once the ignorant human consciousness and make it a spiritual consciousness open to the Divine. But with faith one need not mind the difficulties; the Divine Force is there and will overcome them.
  ***
  --
  It is an undoubted fact proved by hundreds of instances that for many the exact statement of their difficulties to us is the best and often, though not always, an immediate, even an instantaneous means of release. This has often been seen by sadhaks not only here, but far away, and not only for inner difficulties, but for illness and outer pressure of unfavourable circumstances. But for that a certain attitude is necessaryei ther a strong faith in the mind and vital or a habit of reception and response in the inner being. Where this habit has been established, I have seen it to be almost unfailingly effective, even when the faith was uncertain or the outer expression in the mind vague, ignorant or in its form mistaken or inaccurate. Moreover, this method succeeds most when the writer can write as a witness of his own movements and state them with an exact and almost impartial precision as a phenomenon of his nature or the movement of a force affecting him from which he seeks release. On the other hand if in writing his vital gets seized by the thing he is writing of, and takes up the pen for him,expressing and often supporting doubt, revolt, depression, despair, it becomes a very different matter. Even here sometimes the expression acts as a purge; but also the statement of the condition may lend energy to the attack at least for the moment and may seem to enhance and prolong it, exhausting it by its own violence perhaps for the time and so bringing in the end a relief, but at a heavy cost of upheaval and turmoil and at the risk of the recurring decimal movement, because the release has come by temporary exhaustion of the attacking force, not by rejection and purification through the intervention of the Divine Force with the unquestioning assent and support of the sadhak. There has been a confused fight, an intervention in a hurly-burly, not a clear alignment of forcesand the intervention of the helping force is not felt in the confusion and the whirl. This is what used to happen in your crises; the vital in you was deeply affected and began supporting and expressing the reasonings of the attacking forcein place of a clear observation and expression of the difficulty by the vigilant mind laying the state of things in the Light for the higher Light and Force to act upon it, there was a vehement statement of the case for the Opposition. Many sadhaks (even advanced) had made a habit of this kind of expression of their difficulties and some still do it; they cannot even yet understand that it is not the way. At one time it was a sort of gospel in the Asram that this was the thing to be done,I dont know on what ground, for it was never part of my teaching about the Yoga,but experience has shown that it does not work; it lands one in the recurring decimal notation, an unending round of struggle. It is quite different from the movement of self-opening that succeeds, (here too not necessarily in a moment, but still sensibly and progressively) and of which those are thinking who insist on everything being opened to the Guru so that the help may be more effectively there.
  It is inevitable that doubts and difficulties should arise in so arduous an undertaking as the transformation of the normal nature of man into the spiritual nature, the replacement of his system of externalised values and surface experience into profounder inner values and experience. But the doubts and difficulties cannot be overcome by giving them their full force; it can be rather done by learning to stand back from them and to refuse to be carried away; then there is a chance of the still small voice from within getting itself heard and pushing out these louder clamorous voices and movements from outside. It is the light from within that you have to make room for; the light of the outer mind is quite insufficient for the discovery of the inner values or to judge the truth of spiritual experience.
  --
  When vital difficulties assail a sadhak, he has not to identify his consciousness with them, but to stand back and remaining quiet in the observing part of his being call down persistently the Divine Force. The help will then come through this steady and silent part of the being.
  ***

4.2.3 - Vigilance, Resolution, Will and the Divine Help, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Will and the Divine Force or Power
  There are always two elements in spiritual successones own steady will and endeavour and the Power that in one way or another helps and gives the result of the endeavour.
  --
  Hardly anyone is strong enough to overcome by his own unaided aspiration and will the forces of the lower nature; even those who do it get only a certain kind of control, but not a complete mastery. Will and aspiration are needed to bring down the aid of the Divine Force and to keep the being on its side in its dealings with the lower powers. the Divine Force fulfilling the spiritual will and the hearts psychic aspiration can alone bring about the conquest.
  ***
  --
  Personal Effort and the Divine Force or Power
  If there is no personal effort, if the sadhak is too indolent and tamasic to try, why should the Grace act?
  --
  It does not matter what defects you may have in your nature. The one thing that matters is your keeping yourself open to the Force. Nobody can transform himself by his own unaided efforts; it is only the Divine Force that can transform him. If you keep yourself open, all the rest will be done for you.
  ***
  --
  The grace and protection are always with you. When in any inner or outer difficulty or trouble do not allow it to oppress you; take refuge with the Divine Force that protects.
  If you do that always with faith and sincerity, you will find something opening in you which will always remain calm and peaceful in spite of all superficial disturbances.

4.2.4.08 - Psychic Sorrow, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is the soul, the psychic being in you, behind the heart, that is awake and wants to concentrate the mind on the Divine. It is the nature of the mind to go out to other things, but now when it does that, there is the unease in the heart, the psychic sorrow because the heart feels at once that this is wrong and the head also aches because of the resistance to the Divine Force at work.
  This is a thing that often happens at an early stage, after the opening of the consciousness to the sadhana.

4.2.4 - Time and CHange of the Nature, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is no doubt the pressure of the psychic in you which you express in the letter. That is how the psychic being wants it to be. But it is a mistake to accept any suggestion of self-distrust or incapacity on the ground that it is not like that yet or is not always like that. These things always take time; even after they have begun, they always take time. It is impossible to expect from the mixed and confused nature of the human being that it should be constantly in a state of ardent aspiration, perfect faith and love or full and constant openness to the Divine Force. There is the mental with its limited knowledge and its hesitations, there is the vital with its desires, unwillingnesses and its struggles; there is the physical with its obscurity, slowness and inertia. Even to clear the field sufficiently for a beginning of experience is usually a very long labour. But afterwards if the peace begins or any other right condition, it comes and stays for a time then what is left of the lower nature surges up on some excuse or with no excuse and veils the condition. Peace and opening may come so strongly that it seems all difficulties are gone and can never return but that is only an indication, a promise. It shows that it will be so when the peace and opening are irrevocably settled in all the nature. For that what is needed is perseveranceto go on without discouragement, recognising that the process of the nature and the action of the Mothers force is working through the difficulty even and will do all that is needed. Our incapacity does not matter there is no human being who is not in his parts of nature incapable but the Divine Force also is there. If one puts ones trust in that, incapacity will be changed into capacity. Difficulty and struggle themselves then become a means towards the achievement.
  ***

4.2.5 - Dealing with Depression and Despondency, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  To be miserable may remind you of the defects of your external nature, but I do not see how it is going to cure them. I am not asking you to be frivolously happy, but to be quiet and quietly confident, rejecting these old movements, but for the rest trusting not in a restless self-torturing personal effort but to the Divine Force to change the external nature.
  ***
  --
  In your dealing with your difficulties and the wrong movements that assail you, you are probably making the mistake of identifying yourself with them too much and regarding them as part of your own nature. You should rather draw back from them, detach and dissociate yourself from them, regard them as movements of the universal lower imperfect and impure nature, forces that enter into you and try to make you their instrument for their self-expression. By so detaching and dissociating yourself it will be more possible for you to discover and to live more and more in a part of yourself, your inner or your psychic being, which is not attacked or troubled by these movements, finds them foreign to itself and automatically refuses assent to them and feels itself always turned to or in contact with the Divine Forces and the higher planes of consciousness. Find that part of your being and live in it; to be able to do so is the true foundation of the Yoga.
  By so standing back it will be easier also for you to find a quiet poise in yourself, behind the surface struggle, from which you can more effectively call in our help to deliver you. The Divine presence, calm, peace, purity, force, light, joy, wideness are above, waiting to descend in you. Find this quietude behind and your mind also will become quieter and through the quiet mind you can call down the descent first of the purity and peace and then of the Divine Force. If you can feel this peace and purity descending into you, you can then call it down again and again till it begins to settle; you will feel too the Force working in you to change the movements and transform the consciousness. In this working you will be aware of the presence and power of the Mother. Once that is done, all the rest will be a question of time and of the progressive evolution in you of your true and divine nature.
  ***
  --
  In the physical it is much more dangerous, because here it is the physical adhar itself that is attacked and a too great mass of physical difficulties may destroy or disable or permanently injure. The only thing to do here is to get the physical consciousness (down to the most material parts) open to the Power, then to make it accustomed to respond and obey and to each physical difficulty as it arises, apply or call in the divine Power to throw out the attacking force. The physical nature is a thing of habits; it is out of habit that it responds to the forces of illness; one has to get into it the contrary habit of responding to the Divine Force only. This of course so long as a highest consciousness does not descend to which illness is impossible.
  ***
  --
  If sadhana is a struggle between the higher will and the old forces of nature bringing suffering and inner torment, we do not want you to do that kind of sadhana. That is not the spirit of our Yoga. What we want you to do is to recover your quietude and go on in that. To have the basis of quietude and allow the Divine Force to work in you firmly and quietly is always the best methodit is not necessary to proceed through a big personal effort, disturbance and struggle. Come back to thisopen yourself once more, as you did before then you could get back sleep or health in a day or two and were growing inwardly without excessive trouble and let the Mothers Power and Grace lead you.
  I shall do all to help you and pull you out, but that which has closed itself in you must open for the help to work quickly as it did before. Otherwise too it can pull you out, but if there is this strong obstruction that has to be undone, time is needed. A central change of attitude in your mind would, I believe, make all the differenceit has done so before.

4.2 - Karma, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  315. Fix thy soul without desire upon the end and insist on it by the Divine Force within thee; then shall the end itself create its means, nay, it shall become its own means. For the end is
  Brahman and already accomplished; see it always as Brahman, see it always in thy soul as already accomplished.

4.3.1 - The Hostile Forces and the Difficulties of Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Do you not know the story of the Elephant Brahman? All is Brahman, but in action you have to treat the elephant as the Elephant Brahman and the Asura as the Asura Brahman and neither as merely Brahman pure and simple. One has either to avoid the Rakshasa or overcome him; otherwise the Rakshasa may eat up the man, all Brahman though both be. The Brahman realisation is an inner static realisation, until one has become the dynamic instrument of the Divine Consciousness and Force then the problem of the elephant and the Rakshasa wont arise, for the Divine Consciousness will know and the Divine Force will execute what is to be done in each case. There is no need to have vaira inside, but to be friendly with the Rakshasa is not prudent, as the Rakshasa is impervious to that kind of thinghe will take advantage of it to farther his own purpose.
  ***
  --
  Your statement about the Shakti. The mere intensity of the force does not show that it is a bad power; the Divine Force often works with a great intensity. Everything depends on the nature of the force and its working; what does it do, what seems to be its purpose? If it works to purify or open the system, or brings with it light or peace or prepares the change of the thoughts, ideas, feelings, character in the sense of a turning towards a higher consciousness, then it is the right force. If it is dark or obscure, or perturbs the being with rajasic or egoistic suggestions or excites the lower nature, then it is an adverse Force.
  ***

4.3.2 - Attacks by the Hostile Forces, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  When there is an attack from the human instruments of adverse forces, one should try to overcome it not in a spirit of personal hatred or anger or wounded egoism, but with a calm spirit of strength and equanimity and a call to the Divine Force to act. Success or failure lies with the Divine.
  In dealing with others there is a way of speaking and doing which gives most offence and opens one most to misunderstanding and there is also a way which is quiet and firm but conciliatory to those who can be conciliatedall who are not absolutely of bad will. It is better to use the latter than the former. No weakness, no arrogance or violence, this should be the spirit.

4.3.3 - Dealing with Hostile Attacks, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is sufficient if you can keep in touch with the Force and reject any strong attack of the confusion. The rest will be done by the Force itself for no one is really strong enough to change himself, it is the Divine Force called down that does it.
  ***
  --
  You ask whether the adverse Force is stronger than the Divine Force. The implication is that a man has no responsibility for his action and whatever he does or however he errs and falls in consequence, the Divine Force is to blame. It may be so, but in that case there is no need or utility in doing sadhana. One has only to sit still and let the adverse Force or the Divine Force do what they like! According to that theory the Devil was quite right in telling Christ, Cast thyself down from this mountain and let His angels come and upbear thee and Christ was quite wrong in rejecting the suggestion and saying, It is written Thou shalt not tempt (put to a test) the Lord thy God. He ought to have jumped and if he got smashed, it would only have proved that the adverse forces were greater than the Divine Force!
  If an adverse Force comes, one has not to accept and welcome its suggestions, but to turn to the Mother and refuse to turn away from her. Whether one can open or not, one has to be loyal and faithful. Loyalty and fidelity are not qualities for which one has to do Yoga; they are very simple things which any man or woman who aspires to the Truth ought to be able to accomplish.

4.3.4 - Accidents, Possession, Madness, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The idea that Y was sent mad by a descent of Divine Force is an absurdity and an irrational superstition. People go mad because they have a physical predisposition due either to heredity (as in the case of Y and A) or to some kind of organic cause or secret illness, like syphilis gone to the head or colon bacillus similarly misdirected or brain lesion or other material cause, the action being often brought up by some psychological factor (ambition turning to megalomania, hypochondria, melancholia etc.) or on the contrary itself bringing these to the surface. All that happens in ordinary life and not only in Yoga; the same causes work here. The one thing is that there may be an invasion of an alien Force bringing about the upsetting, but it is not the Divine Force, it is a vital Force that invades. the Divine Force cannot by its descent be the cause of madness any more than it can be of apoplexy or any other physical illness. If there is no predisposition one may have all kinds of attacks from vital or other forces or from ones own movements of the lower nature, as violent as possible, but there will be no madness.
  ***
  As to Xs collapse, I did not intend to say anything about it just now,for mental discussion of causes and consequences is not of much help at this juncture. I must say however that it is not the push for union with the Divine nor is it the Divine Force that leads to madnessit is the way in which people themselves act with regard to their claim for these things. To be more precise, I have never known a case of collapse in Yogaas opposed to mere difficulty or negative failure,a case of dramatic disaster in which there was not one of three causes, or more than one of the three at work. First, some sexual aberration I am not speaking of mere sexuality which can be very strong in the nature without leading to collapseor an attempt to sexualise spiritual experience on an animal or gross material basis; second, an exaggerated ambition, pride or vanity trying to seize on spiritual force or experience and turn it to ones own glorificationending in megalomania; third, an unbalanced vital and a weak nervous system apt to follow its own imaginations and unruled impulses without any true mental will or strong vital will to steady or restrain it, and so at the mercy of the imaginations and suggestions of the adverse vital world when carried over the border into the intermediate zone of which I spoke in a recent message.1 All the cases of collapse in this Asram have been due to these three causesto the first two mostly. Only three or four of them have ended in madnessand in these the sexual aberration was invariably present; usually a violent fall from the Way is the consequence. Xs is no exception to the rule. It is not because she pushed for union with the Divine that she went mad, but because she misused what came down for a mystic sexuality and the satisfaction of megalomaniac pride, in spite of my repeated and insistent warnings. For the moment that is all the light I can give on the matternaturally I generalise and avoid details.
  ***

4.4.4.05 - The Descent of Force or Power, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  By Force I mean not mental or vital energy but the Divine Force
  from above - as peace comes from above and wideness also, so
  --
  into the body of the Divine Force from above. Up to now it
  must have been working unfelt by you from behind the heart.

4.4.6.01 - Sensations in the Inner Centres, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The pressure is that of the Divine Force which he calls by his
  prayer descending to do its work in the Adhar, its passage being

5.1.03 - The Hostile Forces and Hostile Beings, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The mere intensity of the force does not show that it is a bad power; the Divine Force often works with a great intensity.
  Everything depends on the nature of the force and its working; what does it do, what seems to be its purpose? If it works to purify or open the system, or brings with it light or peace or

7.06 - The Body (the Physical), #Words Of The Mother II, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  The inner progress has been sufficiently rapid for the exterior being to find it difficult to follow. Now the body must learn to receive the Divine Force and to keep it.
  Transparency in the physical: the physical prepares itself for transformation.

BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  between white and black magic, for the supremacy of the Divine Forces, or of the lower terrestrial or
  cosmic powers. If the student would understand better the last statement, let him turn to the Anugita

Conversations with Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  I see the way clearly. And I know that if I could make the total and definitive surrender to the Divine Force, it would itself take charge of the Yoga. This self-giving is made in my soul my mind has accepted it, but there are certain points in the vital being which hinder the perfection of the gift and pull me down at times. But now, even these defections I see with an equal eye and offer to the Divine Force the good movements and the bad, all are parts of the process. Formerly I used to be easily upset now I am more calm.
  Good you have but to continue. Isn't there anything else? As to Z's letter, what are you going to say to her?
  --
  Some days ago I had an experience during the night. I woke up about half an hour after midnight and, whilst coming back into my physical consciousness, the memory was transformed into a dream; here it is. I was driving a car on a great wide road. In the car, several people, among others Mother and X. It was Mother who was directing me past ambushes with which the road was sown. Carriages passing in all directions, men ambushed to fire at us. "Take care of this", "Look out there", she was saying. I had a revolver within my reach. It seems to me that this symbolises a passage through hostile forces. In this passage, I remember that at one moment X said, looking at me, "He is drowning, he is drowning". Immediately I perceived that I was being dragged away by these forces. At once I called the Divine Force which descended through the Sahasrara right down to the two lower chakras. With the help of this force, I pushed back the hostile forces and set myself afloat again. A little later I woke up. But for some time I was aware that the hostile forces were trying to force the wall and I pushed them back in the same way. The two lower centres were vibrating rapidly.
  Carriages, horses and other symbols of movement indicate progress in occult evolution. This is a symbol of the vital plane.
  --
  It may be that, or possibly it is a modification which is generally produced when the Divine Force transforms gradually even the physical substance. This substance is impure and cannot receive the impulsion without a previous transformation.
  Is it the physical matter itself which changes or the life of this matter?
  --
  There is an obstacle in the form of the physical mind. It is often the case with minds accustomed to be too active. They are not plastic enough, and they must wear out till they become fully passive to the Divine Force. Gradually this opposition will be overcome if you go on surrendering to the force.
  Sometimes the force, coming down, does not permeate all the chakras and the light only descends up to what is ready. There is a partial enlightenment, which improves afterwards. That may be the case if some chakras remain untouched.
  --
  You spoke of a broadening of consciousness. That is an important part of the process. If that were firmly established, it would go all right. The essential thing to do is to watch closely the forces, to follow the Divine Force in its workings and see how it works, to see what happens and how it happens.
  The force may come down for organising the vehicles, it may work from above or it may organise experiences. All this has to be watched.
  --
  When in meditation, the Divine Force comes readily down. It works through the navel centre on the vital and also it seems on the physical. There is not any powerful vibration of the lowest centre, but I feel as if a force was expanding in the physical itself. It seems to me quite distinct from the vital.
  You say it expands?
  --
  Now there is something I don't understand. When I meditated with Mother last Tuesday the Divine Force came down. But what is the part of either you or Mother in such a coming down?
  I don't understand !
  Well ! the Divine Force comes from inside. How can it be brought down by somebody else? It is not a mere tuning of the vehicles, a quieting of the mind which could be done from outside, but a real call
  The explanation!? It is a fact, is it not?
  --
  Yes. Krishna is generally depicted as blue. It is his colour. It means that it is one aspect of the Divine. All these colours are aspects of the Divine Force.
  Is it a force of Knowledge?

r1912 12 31, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   On the other hand the theory of the Yoga has been proved. The perfectibility of the human being, trikaldrishti, Power, the play of the Divine Force in the individual, the existence of the other worlds, & of extra-mental influences, even the possibility of the physical siddhis are established factsvijnana, the Vedic psychology, the seven streams, everything is established. What is wanting is the perfect application, free from the confusions of the anritam which result from the play of mind. It has been seen that in repose, in nivritti[,] in udasinata, perfect peace and ananda are possible; but the thing the Yoga has set out to establish is the perfect harmony of Nivritti & Pravritti, of desirelessness & Lipsa, of Guna & Nirguna, complete Ananda, Tapas, Knowledge, Love, Power & Infinite Egoless Being, consummating in the full and vehement flow of the Pravritti. By the fulfilment or failure of this harmony the Yoga stands or falls. The siddhi has now reached a stage when the test of its positive worldward side has to be undertaken. Tyaga is finished; shama & shanti & udasinata have had their fulfilment; but in that resting place there can be no abiding. It is the starting point of the Lila, not its goal. Therefore during the next three months it has to be seen whether, the harmony in nivritti being definitely thrown aside, the harmony in pravritti, which has always been attacked & denied by the enemy, can be prepared or accomplished. Only then can there be a settled peace and a perfected action.
   MS Maheshwari

r1914 05 21, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   ie. the Divine Force (Tapas) has now to become entirely pure in its action, pure in the mental illuminations, pure in the idealities, pure in the sacrificial offering of all the energies to Krishna. So all the thoughts & their expressions in internal & external speech have to increase into an universal activity. It has also to open out in the personal relation with Krishna.
   2)  

r1914 06 01, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
       ie. the Divine Force at work manifesting in luminous activity is to take possession of the whole subjective consciousness internal & external in this world; having already extended in the nervous consciousness it has to take possession of the rest.
   This separate record has not been found.Ed.

r1915 01 05a, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   Agni, the Divine Force, precedes the present movement of action by the concealed creative & formative Maya of the Master of the Yoga holding in himself a thought pure in form of vision & exalted to the Vijnana. This is the sense of the present obstruction & its eventualities.
   2) Any person must be able to trace his past, present and future.

Talks 151-175, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  D.: How to take in the Divine Force?
  M.: It is already there. No need to take it in. It can be done only if it is out of you. But it is only you. There is no taking in or giving out.

Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  be behind the Khaksar movement also. the Divine Force is everywhere.
  NIRODBARAN: I told Dilip all that you had said about poetry.

Talks With Sri Aurobindo 2, #Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
  the Cosmic Force is also the Divine Force or the Mother's Force. True, but
  the Mother's Force is acting through it under certain conditions for a certain
  --
  SRI AUROBINDO (taking up the passage): "Names" means ideas, significances, and as for "might after might", the Divine Force is of various kinds,
  each of which one takes up just as one wears a robe; all very simple. Ask
  --
  SRI AUROBINDO: the Divine Force is great but the force of chicken
  seems to be greater! (Laughter)
  --
  silent Brahman, one does not go back to the old way of work. By this liberation one becomes free from the ego; one becomes an instrument of the Divine Force by receiving the Force and feels its working, then inertia goes
  away and work in a new way becomes possible. Until that can be, one has to

The Riddle of this World, #unknown, #Unknown, #unset
  consciousness and with the Divine Force acting through it for a great
  and luminous purpose.
  --
  indispensable stage. There must be a descent of the Divine Force from
  yet loftier and more powerful reaches. A transformation of the higher

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