The Mother's victory is essentially a victory of each Sadhak over himself. It can only be then that any external form of work can come to a harmonious perfection.

12-11-1937 - The Mother -volume -25 - SABCL

Why should the Mother be obliged to treat everybody in the same way? It would be a most imbecile thing for her to do that.

Page 859 , Letters On Yoga Volume-23 , SABCL

Since the beginning of the earth, wherever and whenever there was the possibility of manifesting a ray of the Consciousness, I was there.


That which is speaking to you now, is a faithful servant of the Divine. From all time, since the beginning of the earth, as a faithful servant of the Divine, it has spoken in the name of its Master. And as long as earth and men exist, it will be there in a body to preach the divine word.

So, wherever I am asked to speak, I do my best, as a servant of the Divine.

But to speak in the name of a particular doctrine or of a man, however great he may be, that I cannot do!

The Eternal Transcendent forbids me.

1912

Myself and My Creed


I belong to no nation, no civilisation, no society, no race, but to the Divine.

I obey no master, no ruler, no law, no social convention, but the Divine.

To Him I have surrendered all, will, life, self; for Him I am ready to give all my blood, drop by drop, if such is His Will, with complete joy; and nothing in His service can be sacrifice, for all is perfect delight.*

Japan, February 1920

On Sri Aurobindo

(From a meditation written on the day after the Mother first saw Sri Aurobindo)

It matters little that there are thousands of beings plunged in the densest ignorance, He whom we saw yesterday is on earth; his presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, and Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth.

O Lord, Divine Builder of this marvel, my heart overflows with joy and gratitude when I think of it, and my hope has no bounds.

My adoration is beyond all words, my reverence is silent.

30 March 1914

*Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to announce the manifestation of the supramental world. And not only did he announce this manifestation but he also embodied in part the supramental force and gave us the example of what we must do to prepare ourselves for this manifestation. The best thing we can do is to study all he has told us, strive to follow his example and prepare ourselves for the new manifestation. *

*This gives life its true meaning and will help us to overcome all obstacles. *

*Let us live for the new creation and we shall grow stronger and stronger while remaining young and progressive. *

30 January 1972

page 430, Some Answers from the Mother - vol -16

In the world's history, what Sri Aurobindo represents is not a teaching nor even a revelation, but a decisive ACTION direct from the Supreme.

(silence)

Mother's Agenda , 18th February , volume - 2 , 1961

*Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to announce the manifestation of the supramental world. And not only did he announce this manifestation but he also embodied in part the supramental force and gave us the example of what we must do to prepare ourselves for this manifestation. The best thing we can do is to study all he has told us, strive to follow his example and prepare ourselves for the new manifestation. *

*This gives life its true meaning and will help us to overcome all obstacles. *

*Let us live for the new creation and we shall grow stronger and stronger while remaining young and progressive. *

30 January 1972


page 430, Some Answers from the Mother - vol -16

What Sri Aurobindo represents in the world's history is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a decisive action direct from the Supreme.

14 February1961

(Message for broadcast by All India/ /Radio, Tiruchirappalli)


*What Sri Aurobindo represents in the history of the earth's spiritual progress is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a mighty action straight from the Supreme. *

15 August 1964

(Message for the issuance of a Sri Aurobindo commemorative stamp)


*He has come to bid the earth to prepare for its luminous future.*

15 August 1964


Sri Aurobindo has brought to the world the assurance of a divine future.


Sri Aurobindo has come on earth not to bring a teaching or a creed in competition with previous creeds or teachings, but to show the way to overpass the past and to open concretely the route towards an imminent and inevitable future.

22 February 1967

Sri Aurobindo does not belong to the past nor to history.

Sri Aurobindo is the Future advancing towards its realisation.

Thus we must shelter the eternal youth required for a speedy advance, in order not to become laggards on the way.

2nd April1967


Page – 5, vol -13

Without him, I exist not;

without me, he is unmanifest.

6 May 1957


When in your heart and thought you will make no difference between Sri Aurobindo and me, when to think of Sri Aurobindo will be to think of me and to think of me will mean to think of Sri Aurobindo inevitably, when to see one will mean inevitably to see the other, like one and the same Person, – then you will know that you begin to be open to the supramental force and consciousness.

4 March 1958

mothersriaurobindo is my refuge

Page – 32, 7, vol -13, Words of The Mother

REASON FOR FORMING THE ASHRAM

There was no Ashram at first, only a few people came to live near Sri Aurobindo and practise Yoga. It was only some time after the Mother came from Japan that it took the form of the Ashram, more from the wish of the Sadhaks who desired to entrust their whole inner and outer life to the Mother than from any intention or plan of hers or of Sri Aurobindo.

The facts are: In the meantime, the Mother, after a long stay in France and Japan, returned to Pondicherry on the 24th April, 1920. The number of disciples then showed a tendency to increase rather rapidly. When the Ashram began to develop, it fell to the Mother (to organise it; Sri Aurobindo soon retired into seclusion and the whole material and spiritual charge of it devolved on her

*TWO FOUNDATIONS OF THE ASHRAM'S MATERIAL LIFE*


What your vital being seems to have kept all along is the "bargain" or the "mess" attitude in these matters. One gives some kind of commodity which he calls devotion or surrender and in return the Mother is under obligation to supply satisfaction for all demands and desires spiritual, mental, vital and physical, and, if she falls short in her task, she has broken her contract. *The Ashram is a sort of communal hotel or mess, the Mother is the hotel-keeper or mess-manager.* One gives what one can or chooses to give, or it may be nothing at all except the aforesaid commodity; in return the palate, *the stomach and all the physical demands have to be satisfied to the full; if not, one has every right to keep one's money and to abuse the defaulting hotel-keeper or mess-manager. This attitude has nothing whatever to do with Sadhana or Yoga and I absolutely repudiate the right of anyone to impose it as a basis for my work or for the life of the Ashram.*


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


*If on the other hand one is not ready to be a member of the Ashram or bear the discipline and is still admitted to some place in the Yoga, he remains apart and meets his own expenses.* There is no discipline for him on the material plane, except the rules necessary for the safety of the work; there is no material responsibility for the Mother.


Page 234 - The Mother - volume - 25, SABCL

Sadhana in the Ashram and Outside

THIS Ashram has been created with another object than that ordinarily common to such institutions, not for the renunciation of the world but as a centre and a field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life which would in the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness and embody a greater life of the spirit. There is no general rule as to the stage at which one may leave the ordinary life and enter here; in each case it depends on the personal need and impulsion and the possibility or the advisability for one to take the step.

This is not an Ashram like others – the members are not Sannyasis; it is not mokşa that is the sole aim of the yoga here. What is being done here is a preparation for a work – a work which will be founded on yogic consciousness and Yoga-Shakti, and can have no other foundation. Meanwhile, every member here is expected to do some work in the Ashram as part of this spiritual preparation.

Page 847 , Letters On Yoga Volume-23 , SABCL

This is not an Ashram like others – the members are not Sannyasis; it is not /mokşa/ that is the sole aim of the yoga here. What is being done here is a preparation for a work – a work which will be founded on yogic consciousness and Yoga-Shakti, and can have no other foundation. Meanwhile, every member here is expected to do some work in the Ashram as part of this spiritual preparation.

page 847, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

All disease is a means towards some new joy of health, all evil & pain a tuning of Nature for some more intense bliss & good, all death an opening on widest immortality. Why and how this should be so, is God's secret which only the soul purified of egoism can penetrate.

Home

The Supermind

THERE are three layers of the Supermind corresponding to three activities of the intuitive mind:

1. Interpretative Supermind

First is what I call Interpretative Supermind, corresponding to Intuition. I call it interpretative, because what is a possibility on the mental plane becomes a potentiality on the supramental plane and the Interpretative puts all the potentialities before you. It shows the root cause of events that may become true on the physical plane. When Intuition is changed into its supramental value, it becomes Interpretative Supermind.

2. Representative Supermind

First is what I call Interpretative Supermind, corresponding to Intuition. I call it interpretative, because what is a possibility on the mental plane becomes a potentiality on the supramental plane and the Interpretative puts all the potentialities before you. It shows the root cause of events that may become true on the physical plane. When Intuition is changed into its supramental value, it becomes Interpretative Supermind.

3. Imperative Supermind

There is the Imperative Supermind which corresponds to Revelation. That is always true. Nothing can stand against it. It is knowledge fulfilling itself by its own inherent power.

page 26 , The Hour Of God - Volume-17 , SABCL

Seven Suns of the Supermind

1. The Sun of Supramental Truth, — Knowledge-Power originating the supramental creation.

Descent into the Sahasradala.

2. The Sun of Supramental Light and Will-Power, transmitting the Knowledge-Power as dynamic vision and command to create, found and organise the supramental creation.

Descent into the Ajna Chakra, the centre between the eyes.

3. The Sun of Supramental Word, embodying the Knowledge-Power, empowered to express and arrange the supramental creation.

Descent into the Throat Centre.

4. The Sun of Supramental Love, Beauty, and Bliss, releasing the Sou lof the Knowledge-Power to vivify and harmonise the supramental creation.

Descent into the Heart-Lotus.

5. The Sun of Supramental Force dynamised as a power and source of life to support the supramental creation.

Descent into the Navel Centre.

6. The Sun of Life-Radiances (Power-Rays) distributing the dynamis and pouring it into concrete formations.

Descent into the Navel Centre.

7. The Sun of Supramental Substance-Energy and Form-Energy empowered to embody the supramental life and stabilise the creation.

Descent into the Muladhara.

page 27 , The Hour Of God - Volume-17 , SABCL

The cosmic Force is under the control of the overmind. The supermind does not act on it directly – whatever comes down from there is modified so as to pass through the overmind and take a lesser form suitable to the plane on which it acts, mental, vital or physical. But this intervention is exceptional in the ordinary play of the cosmic forces.



The cosmic spirit contains the supermind, but it keeps it above and works for the present between the overmind and the physical. It is only when the Ignorance is removed that the supramental becomes directly a dynamic part of the workings of cosmic Nature here. Till then there are only reflections of it.


page 1082, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

It is only the Indian who can believe everything, dare everything, sacrifice everything. First , therefore become Indians. Recover the patrimony of your forefathers, recover the Aryan thoughts, the Aryan discipline , the Aryan character, the Aryan life. Recover the Vedanta, the Gita, the Yoga. Recover them not only in intellect or sentiment but in your lives. Live them and you will be great and strong, mighty, invincible and fearless. Neither life nor death will have any terror for you. Difficulty and impossibility will vanish from your vocabularies.

Sri Aurobindo

OM is the mantra, the expressive sound-symbol of the Brahman Consciousness in its four domains from the Turiya to the external or material plane. The function of a mantra is to create vibrations in the inner consciousness that will prepare it for the realisation of what the mantra symbolises and is supposed indeed to carry within itself. The mantra OM should therefore lead to

wards the opening of the consciousness to the sight and feeling of the One Consciousness in all material things, in the inner being and in the supraphysical worlds, in the causal plane above now superconscient to us and, finally, the supreme liberated transcendence above all cosmic existence. The last is usually the main preoccupation with those who use the mantra.


page 745, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

Both of these [OM and the sound of church-bells] are usually sounds that indicate the opening or attempt to open to the cosmic consciousness.


page 1083, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

AMONG the great company of remarkable figures that will appear to the eye of posterity at the head of the Indian Renascence, one stands out by himself with peculiar and solitary distinctness, one unique in his type as he is unique in his work. It is as if one were to walk for a long time amid a range of hills rising to a greater or lesser altitude, but all with sweeping contours, green-clad, flattering the eye even in their most bold and striking elevation. But amidst them all, one hill stands apart, piled up in sheer strength, a mass of bare and puissant granite, with verdure on its summit, a solitary pine jutting out into the blue, a great cascade of pure, vigorous and fertilising water gushing out from its strength as a very fountain of life and health to the valley. Such is the impression created on my mind by Dayananda.
It was Kathiawar that gave birth to this puissant renovator and new-creator. And something of the very soul and temperament of that peculiar land entered into his spirit, something of Girnar and the rocks and hills, something of the voice and puissance of the sea that flings itself upon those coasts, something of that humanity which seems to be made of the virgin and unspoilt stuff of Nature, fair and robust in body, instinct with a fresh and primal vigour, crude but in a developed nature capable of becoming a great force of genial creation.
When I seek to give an account to myself of my sentiment and put into precise form the impression I have received, I find myself starting from two great salient characteristics of this man's life and work which mark him off from his contemporaries and compeers. Other great Indians have helped to make India of today by a self-pouring into the psychological material of the race, a spiritual infusion of themselves into the fluent and indeterminate mass which will one day settle into consistency and appear as a great formal birth of Nature. They have entered in as a sort of leaven, a power of unformed stir and ferment out of which forms must result. One remembers them as great souls and great influences who live on in the soul of India. They are in us and we would not be what we are without them. But of no precise form can we say that this was what the man meant, still less that this form was the very body of that spirit.

page 331-32 - The Hour OF God , volume 17 , SABCL

The crown indicates the higher consciousness in its static condition, the wheel its dynamic action. The red light is the Power sent down to change the physical.

The book indicates some kind of knowledge.


The ears signify usually the place of inspired knowledge or else of inspired expression – red and gold mean truth and power joined together.


page 982, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

The building is the symbol of a new creation.


The pyramid is usually a symbol of aspiration – reddish perhaps because it is in the physical.


The Sphinx is a symbol of the eternal quest that can only be answered by the secret knowledge.


The cross is the sign of the triple being, transcendent, universal and individual.


The cross indicates the triple Divine (transcendent, universal, individual); the shield means protection.


Yes, the circular movement and the Chakra are always signs of energy in action, generally creative action.


The [Sudarshan] Chakra symbolises the action of Sri Krishna's force.


page 983, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

A revolving disc means a force in action on the nature. The whitish blue light is known as Krishna's light, also as Sri Aurobindo's light. White is the Mother's. Perhaps here it is a combination.


page 984, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

The wheel is the sign of an action of Force (whatever force may be indicated by the nature of the symbol) and as it was surging upwards it must be the fire of aspiration rising from the vital (navel centre) to the Higher Consciousness above.


The bow is a symbol of the force sent out to reach its mark.


The incense stick is the symbol of self-consecration.


Tobacco is associated with tamas and incense-sticks with adoration.


page 984, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

The image of journeying always signifies a movement in life or a progress in sadhana.


A journey in a boat or other conveyance means always a movement in the yoga – often an advance or progress.


Journeying on a horse or in a conveyance, if symbolic, means a progress or a movement in life, work or sadhana.


A journey in carriage, train, motor car, steamer, boat, aeroplane etc. indicates a movement in the sadhana. The white horse may be the sattwic mind and the red horse the vital rajas giving energy and both combining to make a progress.


Aeroplane, steamer and train are always symbols of a rapid progress or forward movement.


The railway line is a symbol of rapid progress.


When you find yourself flying it is always the vital being in the subtle body in the vital world that is doing it.



page 984-985, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

The diamond in your heart was a formation of the light of Mother's consciousness there, – for the Mother's light is of a white and at its most intense of a diamond radiance. The light is a sign of the Mother's presence in your heart and that is what you saw once and felt for a moment.


page 1015, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

Do not trouble your mind about food. Take it in the right quantity (neither too much nor too little), without greed or repulsion, as the means given you by the Mother for the maintenance of the body, in the right spirit, offering it to the Divine in you; then it need not create tamas.

⁂

What is necessary is to take enough food and think no more about it, taking it as a means for the maintenance of the physical instrument only. But just as one should not overeat, so one should not diminish unduly − it produces a reaction which defeats the object − for the object is not to allow either the greed for food or the heavy tamas of the physical which is the result of excessive eating to interfere with the concentration on the spiritual experience and progress. If the body is left insufficiently nourished, it will think of food more than otherwise.

Taste is no more a guilty thing than sight or hearing. It is the desire that it awakens that has to be thrown away.

It is possible to get rid of taste like Chaitanya, for it is something that depends on the consciousness and so inhibition is possible. In hypnotic experiments it is found that suggestion can make sugar taste bitter or bitter things sweet. Berkeley and physiology are both right. There is a certain usually fixed relation between the consciousness in the palate and the guņa of the food, but the consciousness can alter the relation if it wants or inhibit it altogether. There are yogis who make themselves insensitive to pain also and that too can be done by hypnosis.

The normal allowance of sleep is said to be 7 to 8 hours except in advanced age when it is said to be less. If one takes less (5 to 6 for instance) the body accommodates itself somehow, but if the control is taken off it immediately wants to make up for its lost arrears of the normal 8 hours. So often when one has tried to live on too little food, if one relaxes, the body becomes enormously rapacious for food until it has set right the credit and loss account. At least it often happens like that.

⁂

It is not possible to do at once what you like with the body. If the body is told to sleep only 2 or 3 hours, it may follow if the will is strong enough − but afterwards it may get exceedingly strained and even break down for want of needed rest. The yogis who minimise their sleep succeed only after a long tapasya in which they learn how to control the forces of Nature governing the body.

You must not try to avoid sleep at night − if you persist in doing that, the bad results may not appear immediately, but the body will get strained and there will be a breakdown which may destroy what you have gained in your sadhana.

If you want to remain conscious at night, train yourself to make your sleep conscious − not to eliminate sleep altogether, but to transform it.

⁂

Sleep cannot be replaced, but it can be changed; for you can become conscious in sleep. If you are thus conscious, then the night can be utilised for a higher working − provided the body gets its due rest; for the object of sleep is the body's rest and the renewal of the vital-physical force. It is a mistake to deny to the body food and sleep, as some from an ascetic idea or impulse want to do − that only wears out the physical support and although either the yogic or the vital energy can long keep at work an overstrained or declining physical system, a time comes when this drawing is no longer so easy nor perhaps possible. The body should be given what it needs for its own efficient working. Moderate but sufficient food (without greed or desire), sufficient sleep, but not of the heavy tamasic kind, this should be the rule.

Advice to National College Students

~ Sri Aurobindo

I have the deepest respect for Indian languages and continue to study Sanskrit when I have time.

The Sanskrit ought to be the national language of India.

Blessings.

19 April 1971

Page 383

French will continue to be taught in the Ashram, at least so long as I am here, because Sri Aurobindo, who loved French very much and knew it very well, considered it to be an essential part of the knowledge of languages.

Sri Aurobindo loved French very much. He used to say that it was a clear and precise language, whose use encouraged clarity of mind. From the point of view of the development of the consciousness, that is precious. In French, one can say exactly what one wants to say.

Blessings.

19 October 1971

Page – 322, vol -12, On Education

To unite East and West, to give the best of one to the other and make a true synthesis, a university will be established for all kinds of studies. Our school will form a nucleus of that university.

*In our school I have put French as the medium of instruction. One of the reasons is that French is the cultural language of the world.* The children can learn the Indian languages at a later stage. If more stress is laid upon Indian languages at present, then the natural tendency of the Indian mind will be to fall back upon the ancient literature, culture and religion. You know very well that we realise the value of ancient Indian things, but we are here to create something new, to bring down something that will be quite fresh for the earth. In this endeavour, if your mind is tied down to the ancient things, then it will refuse to go forward. The study of the past has its place, but it must not hamper the work for the future.


Should French be considered as a special language, to bring the children into contact first with you and then with a certain vibration of beauty?
Something like that.

All I can say is that we are considered to be one of the best – perhaps the very best – school in India for teaching French and I think it would be a good thing to deserve this appreciation.

In my relations with the children here, I always speak to them in French.


Page – 218, vol -12, On Education

A movement in the case of a work like mine means the founding of a school or a sect or some other damned nonsense. It means that hundreds or thousands of useless people join in and corrupt the work or reduce it to a pompous farce from which the Truth that was coming down recedes into secrecy and silence. It is what has happened to the “religions” and is the reason of their failure.

520 − Kali is Krishna revealed as dreadful Power and wrathful Love. She slays with her furious blows the self in body, life and mind in order to liberate it as spirit eternal. /

Page 358, On Thoughts and Aphorisms - vol - 10

When Srijut Chidambaram Pillai set himself to the task of establishing a Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company between Tuticorin and Colombo, he was taking a step which meant the beginning of the end for the British commercial monopoly in India. There are three departments of Swadeshi which have to be developed in order to make India commercially independent, first, the creation of manufactures, secondly, the retail supply, thirdly, the security of carriage from the place of manufacture to the place of supply. Of all these the third is the most essential, because the others are bound to lead a precarious existence if all the means of carriage are in the hands of the enemies of Swadeshi.


Page 803-04, Bande Mataram , volume 1, SABCL

Death is not a way to succeed in sadhana. If you die in that way, you will only have the same difficulties again with probably less favourable circumstances.

The way to succeed in sadhana is to refuse to be discouraged, to aspire simply and sincerely so that the Mother's force may work in you and bring down what is above. No man ever succeeded in this sadhana by his own merit. To become open and plastic to the Mother is the one thing needed.

Letters On Yoga , Volume-24 , SABCL

A: I am not aware of any "development of mental" etc. in their planes; the development takes place on earth. The mental and other planes are not evolutionary.

The one who dies here is assisted in his passage to the psychic world and helped in his future evolution towards the Divine.

14-12-1936

* WE* published yesterday among our selections a full account of the life and death of Mustafa Kamil Pasha, the great Nationalist leader in Egypt, who has regenerated Nationalism in his motherland and will be remembered in history as the chief among the creators of modern Egypt. The early death of this extraordinary man will be a blow to the movement, but we must remember what we are apt to forget that the life-work of a great man often does not begin till he dies.


Page 721-23, Bande Mataram , volume 1, SABCL

Home

Mother India is not a piece of earth; she is a Power, a Godhead, for all nations have such a Devi supporting their separate existence and keeping it in being.


page 424 , Letters on Yoga , volume - 22 , SABCL

So with India rests the future of the world. Whenever she is aroused from her sleep, she gives forth some wonderful shining ray of light to the world which is enough to illuminate the nations. Others live for centuries on what is to her the thought of a moment. God gave to her the book of Ancient Wisdom and bade her keep it sealed in her heart, until the time should come for it to be opened. Sometimes a page or a chapter is revealed, sometimes only a single sentence. Such sentences have been the inspiration of ages and fed humanity' for many hundreds of years. So too when India sleeps, materialism grows apace and the light is covered up in darkness. But when materialism thinks herself about to triumph, lo and behold! a light rushes out from the East and where is Materialism? Returned to her native night.


Page 713, Bande Mataram , volume 1, SABCL

AN EARLY PREDICTION

Since 1907, we are living in a new era which is full of hope for India. Not only India, but the whole world will see sudden upheavals and revolutionary changes. The high will become low and the low high. The oppressed and the depressed shall be elevated. The nation and humanity will be animated by a new consciousness, new thought and new efforts will be made to reach new ends. Amidst these revolutionary changes, India will become free.

January, 1910

¹ Given in response to a request from the Bombay Chronicle on the occasion of C. R. Das's death and published in its issue of 22.6.1925. .

There is no incontrovertible proof. 400 years is an exaggeration. It is known however that he lived on the banks of the Narmada for 80 years and when he arrived there, he was already in appearance at the age when maturity turns toward overripeness. He was when I met him just before his death a man of magnificent physique showing no signs of old age except white beard and hair,

extremely tall, robust, able to walk any number of miles a day and tiring out his younger disciples, walking too so swiftly that they tended to fall behind, a great head and magnificent face that seemed to belong to men of more ancient times. He never spoke of his age or of his past either except for an occasional almost accidental utterance. One of these was spoken to a disciple of his well known to me, a Baroda Sardar, Mazumdar (it was on the top storey of his house by the way that I sat with Lele in Jan. 1909 and had a decisive experience of liberation and Nirvana). Mazumdar learned that he was suffering from a bad tooth and brought him a bottle of Floriline, a toothwash then much in vogue. The Yogi refused saying, "I never use medicines. My one medicine is Narmada water. As for the tooth I have suffered from it since the days of Bhao Girdi." Bhao Girdi was the Maratha General Sadashiv Rao Bhao who disappeared in the Battle of Panipat¹ and his body was never found. Many formed the conclusion that Brahmananda was himself Bhao Girdi, but this was an imagination. Nobody who knew Brahmananda would doubt any statement of his — he was a man of perfect simplicity and truthfulness and did not seek fame or to impose himself. When he died he was still in full strength and his death came not by decay but by the accident of blood-poisoning through a rusty nail that entered into his foot as he walked on the sands of the Narmada. I had spoken to the Mother about him, that was why she mentioned him in her Conversations² which were not meant for the public — otherwise she might not have said anything, as the longevity of Brahmananda to more than 200 years depends only on his own casual word and is a matter of faith in his word. There is no "legal" proof of it. I may say that three at least of his disciples to my knowledge kept an extraordinary aspect and energy of youth to a comparatively late or quite advanced age — but this perhaps may be not uncommon among those who practise both Raja and Hatha Yoga together.

The origin of the word shudra

The deeper truth of these things was reserved for the initiates, for those who were ready to understand and practise the inner sense, the esoteric meaning hidden in the Vedic scripture. For the Veda is full of words which, as the Rishis themselves express it, are secret words that give their inner meaning only to the seer, /kavaye nivacan/ā/ni niny/ā/ni vac/ā/msi. / This is a feature of the ancient sacred hymns which grew obscure to later ages; it became a dead tradition and has been entirely ignored by modem scholarship in its laborious attempt to read the hieroglyph of the Vedic symbols. *Yet its recognition is essential to a right understanding of almost all the ancient religions; for mostly they started on their upward curve through an esoteric element of which the key was not given to all*. In all or most there was a surface cult for the common physical man who was held yet unfit for the psychic and spiritual life and an inner secret of the Mysteries carefully disguised by symbols whose sense was opened only to the initiates. *This was the origin of the later distinction between the Shudra, the undeveloped physical-minded man and the twice-born, those who were capable of entering into the second birth by initiation and to whom alone the Vedic education could be given without danger.* This too actuated the later prohibition of any reading or teaching of the Veda by the Shudra. It was this inner meaning, it was the higher psychic and spiritual. truths concealed by the outer sense, that gave to these hymns the name by which they are still known the Veda, the Book of Knowledge. Only by penetrating into the esoteric sense of this worship can we understand the full flowering of the Vedic religion in the Upanishads and in the long later evolution of Indian spiritual seeking and experience. For it is all there in its luminous seed, preshadowed or even prefigured in the verses of the early seers.

The Foundations of India Culture , page 143, SABCL

*Politics is always limited by party, by ideas, by duties also *− unless we prepare a government that has no party, a government that admits all ideas because it is above parties. party is limitation; it is like a box: you go into the box ( Mother laughs ). Of course, if there were some people who had the courage to be in the government without a party “We represent no party ! We represent India” that would be magnificent.

Pull the consciousness up, up, above party.

And then, naturally, certain people who couldn’t come into political parties − that ! that is truly working for tomorrow. Tomorrow it will be like that. *All this turmoil is because the country must take the lead, must go above all these old political habits. Government without party. Oh, it would be magnificent !*


Page - 428, Words of The Mother, vol -15

Home

I told him Tibet would become independent again. He asked me when. I said, "I don't know." [[Mother replied, "All depends on the world's receptivity to the supramental consciousness." We publish in the Addendum an account of the Dalai Lama's questions and Mother's answers. ]]

Page 351,

L'Agenda de Mère - vol 13 – 1972-73

Home

All wealth belongs to the Divine and those who hold it are trustees, not possessors.
It is with them today, tomorrow it may be elsewhere.
All depends on the way they discharge their trust while it is with them, in what spirit,
with what consciousness in their use of it, to what purpose.*

The Mother - page 12, volume - SABCL

Guru

The attitude you have taken is the right one. It is this feeling and attitude which help you to overcome so rapidly the attacks that sometimes fall upon you and throw you out of the right consciousness. As you say, difficulties so taken become opportunities; the difficulty faced in the right spirit and conquered, one finds that an obstacle has disappeared, a first step forward has been taken. *To question, to resist in some part of the being increases trouble and difficulties − that is why an unquestioning acceptance, an unfailing obedience to the directions of the Guru was laid down as indispensable in the old Indian yogas − it was demanded not for the sake of the Guru, but for the sake of the Shishya.

It is really for the vital part of the being that and rites are done – to help the being to get rid of the vital vibrations which still attach it to the earth or to the vital worlds, so that it may pass quickly to its rest in the psychic peace.

I only said what was originally meant by the ceremonies – the rites. I was not referring to the feeding of the caste or the Brahmins which is not a rite or ceremony. Whether /śrāddha/ as performed is actually effective is another matter – for those who perform it have not either the knowledge or the occult power.


page 433 , Letters on Yoga , volume - 22 , SABCL

Prakriti is only the executive or working force – the Power behind the Prakriti is Shakti. It is the Chit-Shakti in manifestation: that is the spiritual consciousness.


page 1080, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

The Self or Atman is inactive; Nature (Prakriti) or Shakti acts. When the Self is felt it is first an infinite existence, silence, freedom, peace that is felt – that is called Atman or Self. What action takes place in it is according to the realisation either felt as forces of Nature working in that wideness, as the Divine Shakti working or as the cosmic Divine or various powers of them working. It is not felt that the Self is acting.


page 1078, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

A lotus flower indicates the open consciousness.



The red lotus is the presence of the Divine on earth; the sun is the Divine Truth. It indicates the Divine manifestation on earth raising earth consciousness towards the Truth.



The white lotus is the symbol of the Mother's consciousness, – it does not indicate any part of the individual consciousness.



The opening of the lotuses in your experience means, I suppose, the opening of the true vital and physical consciousness in which the spiritual being (the Swan) can manifest with all the consequences of that opening.


page 978, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

The Self is being, not a being. By Self is meant the conscious essential existence, one in all.


The Self is essentially universal; the individualised self is only the universal experienced from or in an individual centre. If what you have realised is not felt to be one in all, then it is not the Atman; it is the central being not yet revealing its universal aspect as Atman.



The self is felt either as universal, one in all, or as universalised individual the same in essence as others, extended everywhere from each being but centred here. Of course centre is a way of speaking, because no physical centre is usually felt – only all the actions take place around the individual.



page 1071-1072, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

The world is the form, the reality is the Divine. One must see the presence in the form.


page 1081, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

The Divine is the Supreme Truth because it is the Supreme Being from whom all have come and in whom all are.


The Divine is that from which all comes, in which all lives, and to return to the truth of the Divine now clouded over by Ignorance is the soul's aim in life. In its supreme Truth, the Divine is absolute and infinite peace, consciousness, existence, power and Ananda.


page 1081, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

I knew very well Sister Nivedita (she was for many years a friend and a comrade in the political field) and met Sister Christine,—the two closest European disciples of Vivekananda. Both were Westerners to the core and had nothing at all of the Hindu outlook; although Sister Nivedita, an Irish woman, had the power of penetrating by an intense sympathy into the ways of life of the people around her, her own nature remained non-oriental to the end. Yet she found no difficulty in arriving at realisation on the lines of Vedanta.


page 557, Letters on Yoga , volume - 22 , SABCL

The earth is the place of evolution in which all these forces meet and try to manifest and out of their working something has to develop. On the other planes (the mental, vital etc.) there is not the evolution – there each acts separately according to its own law.


page 1086, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

Nirvana is the goal of the soul's progress. Nirvana is the cessation of all phenomenal activity. Saints and sages are agreed in all religions on this one common truth, that so long as the phenomenal world is present to the soul, there can be no communion with God. Whoever imagines that by communion with the phenomenal world he can reach God is committing error, for the two are incompatible. The West is full of interest in phenomena, and it is for this reason that no great religion has ever come out of the West. Asia on the other hand is full of interest in Brahman and she is therefore the cradle of every great religion. Christianity, Mahomedanism, Buddhism and the creeds of China and Japan are all offshoots of one great and eternal religion of which India has the keeping.


Page 712, Bande Mataram , volume 1, SABCL

*A National University



THE idea of a National University is one of the ideas which have formulated themselves in the national consciousness and become part of the immediate destiny of a people. It is a seed which is sown and must come to its fruition, because the future demands it and the heart of the nation is in accord with the demand. The process of its increase may be rapid or it may be slow, and when the first beginnings are made, there may be many errors and false starts, but like a stream gathering volume as it flows, the movement will grow in force and certainty, the vision of those responsible for its execution will grow clearer, and their hands will be helped in unexpected ways until the purpose of God is worked out and the idea shapes itself into an accomplished reality. But it is necessary that those who are the custodians of the precious trust, should guard it with a jealous care and protect its purity and first high aim from being sullied or lowered.

There have been many attempts before the present movement to rescue education in India from subservience to foreign and petty ends, and, to establish Colleges and Schools maintained and controlled by Indians which would give an education superior to the Government-controlled education. The City College, the Ferguson College and others started with this aim but they are now monuments of a frustrated idea. In every case they have fallen to the state of ordinary institutions, replicas of the Government model, without a separate mission or nobler reason for existence. And they have so fallen because their promoters could not understand or forgot that the first condition of success was independence — an independence jealously preserved and absolute. In other words there can be no national education without national control.


Page 717-19, Bande Mataram , volume 1, SABCL

The Tuticorin Victory*



*THE* success of passive resistance at Tuticorin ought to be an encouragement to those who have begun to distrust the power of the new weapon which is so eminently suited to the Asiatic temperament. When the Boycott was declared in Bengal, the whole of the energy of the people was thrown into the attempt to get the Partition repealed and if that concentration of effort had been continued, the Partition would by this time have become an unsettled fact; but for two different reasons the attempt to unsettle the Partition was unstrung and the energy diverted to a different goal. In the first place, a great thought entered into the heart of the people and displaced the petty indignation against an administrative measure which was the immediate cause of the Boycott. Swaraj displaced the idea of a mere administrative unity and Swaraj is too mighty an object to be effected by a single and limited means. Secondly, the first magnificent unity of the movement was lost. The Mahomedans, lured by specious promises, broke away from the ranks and within the circle of the leaders themselves a division arose between those who believed in Swaraj pure and unadulterated and those whom policy or caution dissuaded from so mighty an aspiration. For passive resistance to succeed unity, perseverance and thoroughness are the first requisites. Because this unity, perseverance and thoroughness existed in Tuticorin, the great battle fought over the Coral Mill has ended in a great and indeed absolutely sweeping victory for the people. Every claim made by the strikers has been conceded and British capital has had to submit to the humiliation of an unconditional surrender. Nationalism may well take pride in the gallant leaders who have by their cool and unflinching courage brought about this splendid vindication of Nationalist teaching. When men like Chidambaram, Padmanabha and Shiva are ready to undergo exile or imprisonment so that a handful of mill coolies may get justice and easier conditions of livelihood, a bond has been created between the educated class and the masses, which is the first great step towards Swaraj.

There has been only one other instance of a victory as complete for passive resistance against the might of a great Government. We refer to the struggle in the Transvaal which was carried on with equal unity, perseverance and thoroughness to a success less absolutely unconditional but even more striking from the strength and stubbornness of the enemy it had to overcome. We publish in another column a letter from a brother in the Transvaal on the subject. The conditions of political struggle in the Transvaal are different, the objects less vast than those of the movement in India. The Transvaal Indians demand only the ordinary rights of human beings in modern civilised society, the right to live, the right to trade, to be treated like human beings and not like cattle. In India which is our own country, our aspirations have a larger sweep and our methods must be more varied and strenuous. Moreover, in the Transvaal the Asiatics form a small and distinct community in a foreign and hostile environment and can more easily rise above petty differences of creed and caste, opinion and interest; but in this vast continent with its huge population of thirty crores and its complex tangle of diversities the task is more difficult, even as the prize of success is more splendid. The unity will be longer in coming, the perseverance more difficult to maintain, the thoroughness less perfect; but the might of three hundred millions welded into a single force will be a potency so gigantic that the imagination fails to put a limit to the final results of the movement now in its infancy.

Meanwhile, the lesson of Tuticorin, the lesson of the Transvaal is one which needs to be learnt and put frequently into practice. We should lose no opportunity of letting our strength grow by practice. There have been many labour struggles in Bengal, but with the exception pf the Printers' strike none has ended in a victory for Indian labour against British capital. Either the unity among the operatives was defective or the support of the public was absent or the perseverance and thoroughness of the strike was marred by hesitations, individual submissions, partial concessions. The Tuticorin strike is a perfect example of what an isolated labour revolt should be. The operatives must act with one will and speak with one voice, never letting the temptation of individual interest or individual relief get the better of the corporate aim in which lies the whole strength of a labour combination, and the educated community must give both moral and financial support with an ungrudging and untiring enthusiasm till the victory is won, realising that every victory for Indian labour is a victory for the nation and every defeat a defeat to the movement. The Tuticorin leaders must be given the whole credit for the unequalled skill and courage with which the fight was conducted and sill more for the complete realisation of the true inwardness of the Nationalist gospel which made them identify the interests of the whole Indian nation with the wrongs and grievances of the labourers in the Coral Mill.


Page 752-54, Bande Mataram , volume 1, SABCL

Dreams or visions on the vital plane are usually either:

(1) symbolic vital visions;

(2) actual occurrences on the vital plane;

(3) formations of the vital mind, either of the dreamer or of someone else with whom he contacts in sleep or of powers or beings of that plane. No great reliance can be put on this kind of experience, even the first having only a relative or suggestive value, while the second and third are often quite misleading.


page 946, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

Home

Suicide is an absurd solution; he is quite mistaken in thinking that it will give him peace. He will only carry his difficulties with him into a more miserable condition of existence beyond and bring them back to another life on earth. The only remedy is to shake off these morbid ideas and face life with a clear will for some definite work to be done as the life's aim and with a quiet and active c...ourage.

Sadhana has to be done in the body, it cannot be done by the soul without the body. When the body drops, the soul goes wandering in other worlds − and finally it comes back to another life and another body. Then all the difficulties it had not solved meet it again in the new life. So what is the use of leaving the body?

Moreover, if one throws away the body willfully, one suffers much in the other worlds and when one is born again, it is in worse, not in better conditions.
The only sensible thing is to face the difficulties in this life and this body and conquer them.

Letters On Yoga , Volume-24 , SABCL

I dreamed a dream, 0 friend.

The wedding was fixed for the morrow. And He, the Lion, Madhava, the young Bull whom they call the master of radiances, He came into the hall of wedding decorated with luxuriant palms.

I dreamed a dream, 0 friend.

And the throng of the Gods was there with Indra, the Mind Divine, at their head. And in the shrine they declared me bride and clad me in a new robe of affirmation. And Inner Force is the name of the goddess who adorned me with the garland of the wedding.

/ dreamed a dream, 0 friend.

There were beatings of the drum and blowings of the conch; and under the canopy hung heavily with strings of pearls He came, my lover and my lord, the vanquisher of the demon Madhu_and grasped me by the hand.

I dreamed a dream, 0 friend.

Those whose voices are blest, they sang the Vedic songs. The holy grass was laid. The sun was established. And He who was puissant like a war-elephant in its rage. He seized my hand and we paced round the Flame.

* Andal

All the difficulties are bound to vanish in time under the action of the Force. They rise, because if they did not rise the action would not be complete, for all has to be faced and worked out, in order that nothing may be left to rise up hereafter. The psychic being itself can throw the light by which the full consciousness will come and nothing remain in the darkness.

Letters On Yoga , Volume-24, SABCL

The Kural*

1. Alpha of all letters the first,

Of the worlds the original Godhead the beginning.

2. What fruit is by learning, if thou adore not

The beautiful feet of the Master of luminous wisdom?

3. When man has reached the majestic feet of him whose walk is on flowers,

Long upon earth is his living.

4. Not to the feet arriving of the one with whom none can compare,

Hard from the heart to dislodge is its sorrow.

5. Not to the feet of the Seer, to the sea of righteousness coming,

Hard to swim is this different ocean.

6. When man has come to the feet of him who has neither want nor

unwanting, Nowhere for him is affliction.

7. Night of our stumbling twixt virtue and sin not for him, is

The soul in the glorious day of God's reality singing.

8. In the truth of his acts who has cast out the objects five from the gates

of the senses Straight if thou stand, long shall be thy fullness of living.

9. Some are who cross the giant ocean of birth; but he shall, not cross it

Who has touched not the feet of the Godhead.

10. Lo, in a sense unillumined no virtue is, vainly is lifted

The head that fell not at the feet of the eightfold in Power, the Godhead.

* A celebrated work in Tamil by Poet Tiruvalluvar.

Spontaneously, I'd say it's the fire or the breath that carries the whole world. It's the fire that makes everything live - that makes the chest breathe, that makes the sea heave ...

What would YOU say?

It's the substance of the world, what constitutes the world.

It's the breath or the force that carries the world - that makes it be.

Oh no! You are the one who must find it.

Because otherwise, we are lost in abstractions.

But how do YOU perceive consciousness?

(Mother looks at the child's letter and hands it to Satprem)

It's not true, the Rishis always spoke of Fire, "Agni," which is the primordial substance.

Yes, it becomes consciousness - it is consciousness. It's consciousness-force. The Rishis said, "Even in the stone he is there, even in the waters he is there."

In the Upanishads, they say "tapas"[[Tapas: energy or heat, or also the concentration of the power of consciousness. ]] created the world.

It's fire, too.

Chit-Tapas is heat.

But Sri Aurobindo always said "Consciousness-Force," indissolubly. We can't separate one from the other. There is no consciousness without force and no force without consciousness - it's Consciousness-Force. That's what the world is!

No, your definition first, that's the first stage! Then the second stage, the human.

(Mother laughs and writes:)

It's for you to say.

I don't know.... Consciousness is the breath or the fire that carries everything.

The breath that carries everything, that makes everything breathe?

(Mother writes:)

The Mother

The psychic is the being organised by the divine Presence and it belongs to the earth − I am not speaking of the universe, only of the earth; it is only upon earth that you will find the psychic being. The rest of the universe is formed in quite a different way.

vol -4 , 1st March , page 165

The psychic is the support of the individual evolution; it is connected with the universal both by direct contact and through the mind, vital and body.


page 1078, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

Pondicherry

Aug. 30,1920

Dear Dr. Munje,

As I have already wired to you, I find myself unable to accept your offer of the Presidentship of the Nagpur Congress. There are reasons even within the political field itself which in any case would have stood in my way. In the first place I have never signed and would never care to sign as a personal declaration of faith the Congress creed, as my own is of a different character. In the next place since my retirement from British India I have developed an outlook and views which have diverged a great deal from those I held at the time and, as they are remote from present actualities and do not follow the present stream of political action, I should find myself very much embarrassed what to say to the Congress. I am entirely in sympathy with all that is being done so far as its object is to secure liberty for India, but I should be unable to identify myself with the programme of any of the parties. The President of the Congress is really a mouth­piece of the Congress and to make from the presidential chair a purely personal pronouncement miles away from what the Congress is thinking and doing would be grotesquely out of place. Not only so, but nowadays the President has a responsibility in connection with the All India Congress Committee and the policy of the Congress during the year and other emergencies that may arise which, apart from my constitutional objection and, probably, incapacity to discharge official duties of any kind or to put on any kind of harness, I should be unable to fulfil, since it is impossible for me to throw over suddenly my fixed programme and settle at once in British India. These reasons would in any case have come in the way of my accepting your offer.

The central reason however is this that I am no longer first and foremost a politician, but have definitely commenced another kind of work with a spiritual basis, a work of spiritual, social, cultural and economic reconstruction of an almost revolutionary kind, and am even making or at least supervising a sort of practical or laboratory experiment in that sense which needs all the attention and energy that I can have to spare. It is impossible for me to combine political work of the current kind and this at the beginning. I should practically have to leave it aside, and this I cannot do, as I have taken it up as my mission for the rest of my life. This is the true reason of my inability to respond to your call.

that, holding these ideas, it is not possible for me to intervene and least of all on the chair of the President.

Might I suggest that the success of the Congress can hardly depend on the presence of a single person and one who has long been in obscurity? The friends who call on me are surely wrong in thinking that the Nagpur Congress will be uninspiring without me. The national movement is surely strong enough now to be inspired with its own idea especially at a time of stress like the present. I am sorry to disappoint, but I have given the reasons that compel me and I cannot see how it is avoidable

, Yours sincerely,

Aurobindo Ghose

Sri Aurobindo's symbol

The descending triangle represents Sat-Chit-Ananda.

The ascending triangle represents the aspiring answer from matter under the form of life, light and love.

The junction of both – the central square – is the perfect manifestation having at its centre the Avatar of the Supreme – the lotus.

The water – inside the square – represents the multiplicity, the creation.

4 April 1958

page 29, vol -13, Words of The Mother

Dear Chitta,

It is a long time, almost two years I think, since I have written a letter to anyone. I have been so much retired and ab­sorbed in my Sadhana that contact with the outside world has till lately been reduced to minimum. Now that I am looking outward again, I find that circumstances lead me to write first to you — I say, circumstances because it is a need that makes me take up the pen after so long a disuse.

The need is in connection with the first outward work that I am undertaking after this long inner retirement. Barin has gone to Bengal and will see you in connection with it, but a word from me is perhaps necessary and therefore I send you through Barin this letter. I am giving also a letter of authority from which you will understand the immediate nature of the need for which I have sent him to raise funds. But I may add something to make it more definite.

I think you know my present idea and the attitude towards life and work to which it has brought me. I have become confirmed in a perception which I had always, less clearly and dynamically then, but which has now become more and more evident to me, that the true basis of work and life is the spiritual, — that is to say, a new consciousness to be developed only by Yoga. I see more and more manifestly that man can never get out of the futile circle the race is always treading until he has raised himself on to the new foundation. I believe also that it is the mission of India to make this great victory for the world. But what precisely was the nature of the dynamic power of this greater consciousness? What was the condition of its effective truth? How could it be brought down, mobilised, organised, turned upon life ? How could our present instruments, intellect, mind, life, body be made true and perfect channels for this great transformation ? This was the problem I have been trying to work out in my own experience and I have now a sure basis, a wide knowledge and some mastery of the secret. Not yet its fullness and complete imperative presence — therefore I have still to remain in retirement. For I am determined not to work in the external field till I have the sure and complete possession of this new power of action, — not to build except on a perfect foundation.

But still I have gone far enough to be able to undertake one work on a larger scale than before — the training of others to receive this Sadhana and prepare themselves as I have done, for without that my future work cannot even be begun. There are many who desire to come here and whom I can admit for the purpose, there are a greater number who can be trained at a distance; but I am unable to carry on unless I have sufficient funds to be able to maintain a centre here and one or two at least outside. I need therefore much larger resources than I at present command. I have thought that by your recommendation and influence you may help Barin to gather them for me. May I hope that you will do this for me ?

One word to avoid a possible misunderstanding. Long ago I gave to Motilal Roy of Chandarnagar the ideas and some

principles and lines of a new social and economical organisation and education and this with my spiritual force behind him he has been trying to work out in his own way in his Sangha. This is quite a separate thing from what I am now writing about, — my own work which I must do myself and no one can do for me.

I have been following with interest your political activities, specially your present attempt to give a more flexible and practically effective turn to the non-cooperation movement. I doubt whether you will succeed against such contrary forces, but I wish you success in your endeavour. I am most interested however in your indications about Swaraj; for I have been developing my own ideas about the organisation of a true Indian Swaraj and I shall look forward to see how far yours will fall in with mine.

Yours,

Aurobindo

Pondicherry

1st December 1922

A MESSAGE ON C. R. DAS

Chittaranjan's death is a supreme loss. Consummately endowed with political intelligence, constructive imagination, magnetism, a driving force combining a strong will and an uncommon plasticity of mind for vision and tact of the hour, he was the one man after Tilak who could have led India to Swaraj.

To A Biographer

I see that you have persisted in giving a biography — is it really necessary or useful? The attempt is bound to be a failure, because neither you nor anyone else knows anything at all of my life; it has not been on the surface for men to see.

MESSAGE TO THE ANDHRA UNIVERSITY¹

Bengal, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Sind, Assam, Orissa, Nepal, the Hindi-speaking peoples of the North, Rajputana and Bihar. British rule with its provincial administration did not unite these peoples but it did impose upon them the habit of a common type of administration, a closer intercommunication through the English language and by the education it gave there was created a more diffused and more militant form of patriot­ism, the desire for liberation and the need of unity in the struggle to achieve that liberation. A sufficient fighting unity was brought about to win freedom, but freedom obtained did not carry with it a complete union of the country. On the contrary, India was deliberately split on the basis of the two-nation theory into Paki­stan and Hindustan with the deadly consequences which we know.

In taking over the administration from Britain we had inevi­tably to follow the line of least resistance and proceed on the basis of the artificial British-made provinces, at least for the time; this provisional arrangement now threatens to become permanent, at least in the main and some see an advantage in this permanence. For they think it will help the unification of the country and save us from the necessity of preserving regional sub-nations which in the past kept a country from an entire and thorough-going uni­fication and uniformity. In a rigorous unification they see the only true union, a single nation with a standardised and uniform administration, language, literature, culture, art, education, — all carried on through the agency of one national tongue. How far such a conception can be carried out in the future one can­not forecast, but at present it is obviously impracticable, and it is doubtful if it is for India truly desirable. The ancient diver­sities of the country carried in them great advantages as well as drawbacks. By these differences the country was made the home of many living and pulsating centres of life, art, culture, a richly and brilliantly coloured diversity in unity; all was not drawn up into a few provincial capitals or an imperial metropolis, other towns and regions remaining subordinated and indistinc­tive or even culturally asleep; the whole nation lived with a full life in its many parts and this increased enormously the creative energy of the whole. There is no possibility any longer that this diversity will endanger or diminish the unity of India. Those vast spaces which kept her people from closeness and a full interplay have been abolished in their separating effect by the march of Science and the swiftness of the means of communica­tion. The idea of federation and a complete machinery for its perfect working have been discovered and will be at full work. Above all, the spirit of patriotic unity has been too firmly estab­lished in the people to be easily effaced or diminished, and it would be more endangered by refusing to allow the natural play of life of the sub-nations than by satisfying their legitimate aspi­rations. The Congress itself in the days before liberation came had pledged itself to the formation of linguistic provinces, and to follow it out, if not immediately, yet as early as may conveniently be, might well be considered the wisest course. India's national life will then be founded on her natural strengths and the prin­ciple of unity in diversity which has always been normal to her and its fulfilment the fundamental course of her being and its very nature, the Many in the One, would place her on the sure foundation of her "Swabhava and Swadharma.

This development might well be regarded as the inevitable trend of her future. For the Dravidian regional peoples are demanding their separate right to a self-governing existence;

Maharashtra expects a similar concession and this would mean a similar development in Gujarat and then the British-made Presidencies of Madras and Bombay would have disappeared. The old Bengal Presidency had already been split up and Orissa, Bihar and Assam are now self-governing regional peoples. A merger of the Hindi-speaking part of the Central Provinces and the U.P. would complete the process. An annulment of the parti­tion of India might modify but would not materially alter this result of the general tendency. A union of States and regional peoples would again be the form of a united India.

aims: Benares and Aligarh had a different origin but were all-India institutions serving the two chief religious communities of the country. Andhra University has been created by a patriotic Andhra initiative, situated not in a Presidency capital but in an Andhra town and serving consciously the life of a regional people. The home of a robust and virile and energetic race, great by the part it had played in the past in the political life of India, great by its achievements in art, architecture, sculpture, music, Andhra looks back upon imperial memories, a place in the suc­cession of empires and imperial dynasties which reigned over a large part of the country; it looks back on the more recent me­mory of the glories of the last Hindu Empire of Vijayanagar, — a magnificent record for any people. Your University can take its high position as a centre of light and learning, knowledge and culture which can train the youth of Andhra to be worthy of their forefathers: the great past should lead to a future as great or even greater. Not only Science but Art, not only book-knowledge and information but growth in culture and character are parts of a true education; to help the individual to develop his capacities, to help in the forming of thinkers and creators and men of vision and action of the future, this is a part of its work. Moreover, the life of the regional people must not be shut up in itself; its youths have also to contact the life of the other similar peoples of India interacting with them in industry and commerce and the other practical fields of life but also in the things of the mind and spirit. Also, they have to learn not only to be citizens of Andhra but to be citizens of India; the life of the nation is their life. An elite has to be formed which has an adequate understanding of all great national affairs or problems and be able to represent Andhra in the councils of the nation and in every activity and undertaking of national interest calling for the support and participation of her peoples. There is still a wider field in which India will need the services of men of abi­lity and character from all parts of the country, the international field. For she stands already as a considerable international figure and this will grow as time goes on into vast proportions; she is likely in time to take her place as one of the preponderant States whose voices will be strongest and their lead and their action determinative of the world's future. For all this she needs men whose training as well as their talent, genius and force of character is of the first order. In all these fields your University can be of supreme service and do a work of immeasurable importance.

In this hour, in the second year of its liberation the nation has to awaken to many more very considerable problems, to vast possibilities opening before her but also to dangers and difficul­ties that may, if not wisely dealt with, become formidable. There is a disordered world-situation left by the war, full of risks and sufferings and shortages and threatening another catastrophe which can only be solved by the united effort of the peoples and can only be truly met by an effort at world-union such as was conceived at San Francisco but has not till now been very successful in the practice; still the effort has to be continued and new devices found which will make easier the difficult transition from the perilous divisions of the past and present to a harmo­nious world-order; for otherwise there can be no escape from continuous calamity and collapse. There are deeper issues for India herself, since by following certain tempting directions she may conceivably become a nation like many others evolving an opulent industry and commerce, a powerful organisation of social and political life, an immense military strength, practising power-politics with a high degree of success, guarding and ex­tending zealously her gains and her interests, dominating even a large part of the world, but in this apparently magnificent pro­gression forfeiting its Swadharma, losing its soul. Then ancient India and her spirit might disappear altogether and we would have only one more nation like the others and that would be a real gain neither to the world nor to us. There is a question whe­ther she may prosper more harmlessly in the outward life yet lose altogether her richly massed and firmly held spiritual experience and knowledge. It would be a tragic irony of fate if India were to throw away her spiritual heritage at the very moment when in the rest of the world there is more and more a turning towards her for spiritual help and a saving Light. This must not and will surely not happen; but it cannot be said that the danger is not there. There are indeed other numerous and difficult problems that face this country or will very soon face it. No doubt we will win through, but we must not disguise from ourselves the fact that after these long years of subjection and its cramping and impairing effects a great inner as well as outer liberation and change, a vast inner and outer progress is needed if we are to fulfil India's true destiny.

The rules are very few so that each one can enjoy the freedom needed for his development but a few things are strictly forbidden: they are ― (1) politics, (2) smoking, (3) alcoholic drink and (4) sex enjoyment.

Great care is taken for the maintenance of good health and the welfare and normal growth of the body of all, small and big, young and old.

24 September 1953

page 112, vol -13, Words of The Mother

ON KOREA¹

I do not know why you want a line of thought to be indicated to you for your guidance in the affair of Korea. There is nothing to hesitate about there, the whole affair is as plain as a pike-staff. It is the first move in the Communist plan of campaign to dominate and take possession first of these northern parts and then of South East Asia as a preliminary to their manoeuvres with regard to the rest of the continent — in passing, Tibet as a gate opening to India. If they succeed, there is no reason why domination of the whole world should not follow by steps until they are ready to deal with America. That is, provided the war can be staved off with America until Stalin can choose his time. Truman seems

to have understood the situation if we can judge from his moves in Korea, but it is to be seen whether he is strong enough and determined enough to carry the matter through. The measures he has taken are likely to be incomplete and unsuccessful, since they do not include any actual military intervention except on sea and in the air. That seems to be the situation; we have to see how it develops. One thing is certain that if there is too much shilly-shallying and if America gives up now her defence of Korea, she may be driven to yield position after position until it is too late: at one point or another she will have to stand and face the necessity of drastic action even if it leads to war. Stalin also seems not to be ready to face at once the risk of a world war and, if so, Truman can turn the tables on him by constantly facing him with the onus of either taking that risk or yielding position after position to America. I think that is all that I can see at present; for the moment the situation is as grave as it can be.

Evolution

In my explanation of the universe I have put forward this cardinal fact of a spiritual evolution as the meaning of our existence here. It is a series of ascents from the physical being and consciousness to the vital, the being dominated by the life-self, thence to the mental being realised in the fully developed man and thence into the perfect consciousness which is beyond the mental, into the supramental Consciousness and the supramental being, the Truth-Consciousness which is the integral consciousness of the spiritual being. Mind cannot be our last conscious expression because mind is fundamentally an ignorance seeking for knowledge; it is only the supramental Truth-Consciousness that can bring us the true and whole Self-Knowledge and world-Knowledge; it is through that only that we can get to our true being and the fulfilment of our spiritual evolution.

Rebirth

If evolution is a truth and is not only a physical evolution of species, but an evolution of consciousness, it must be a spiritual and not only a physical fact. In that case, it is the individual who evolves and grows into a more and more developed and perfect consciousness and obviously that cannot be done in the course of a brief single human life. If there is the evolution of a conscious individual, then there must be rebirth. Rebirth is a logical necessity and a spiritual fact of which we can have the experience. Proofs of rebirth, sometimes of an overwhelmingly convincing nature, are not lacking, but as yet they have not been carefully registered and brought together.

To H.H the Maharani of Baroda

It is true that I have by the practice of Yoga attained to the higher spiritual consciousness which comes by Yoga, and this carries with it a certain power. Especially there is the power to communicate to those who are ready or to help them towards that spiritual state which, in its perfection is a condition of unalterable inner calm, strength and felicity. But this spiritual peace and joy is something quite different from mental peace and happiness. And it cannot be reached without a spiritual discipline.

I do not know whether this has been rightly explained to Your Highness. I may say briefly that there are two states of consciousness in either of which one can live. One is a higher consciousness which stands above the play of life and governs it; this is variously called the Self, the Spirit or the Divine. The other is the normal consciousness in which men live; it is something quite superficial, an instrument of the Spirit for the play of life. Those who live and act in the normal consciousness are governed entirely by the common movements of the mind and are naturally subject to grief and joy and anxiety and desire or to everything else that makes up the ordinary stuff of life. Mental quiet and happiness they can get, but it can never be permanent or secure. But the spiritual consciousness is all light, peace, power and bliss. If one can live entirely in it, there is no question; these things become naturally and securely his. But even if he can live partly in it or keep himself constantly open to it, he receives enough of this spiritual light and peace and strength and happiness to carry him securely through all the shocks of life. What one gains by opening to this spiritual consciousness, depends on what one seeks from it; if it is peace, one gets peace; if it is light or knowledge, one lives in a great light and receives a knowledge deeper and truer than any the normal mind of man can acquire; if it [is] strength or power, one gets a spiritual strength for the inner life or Yogic power to govern the outer work and action; if it is happiness, one enters into a beatitude far greater than any joy or happiness that the ordinary human life can give.

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.

I have written so much in order to explain my position and the nature of my Yogic power. I do not usually ask anyone to practise this Yoga, because it is possible only for those who have from the beginning or who develop a strong call to it; others cannot go through it {{0}}[ ][[MS with]] to the end. Nor {{0}}[do I][[MS I do]] often go out of my way to help those who are merely in need of some kind of quietude of [the] external nature as many Yogins do – though I do not refuse to do it in certain cases. My aim is to create a centre of spiritual life which shall serve as a means of bringing down the higher consciousness and making it a power not merely for “salvation” but for a divine life upon earth. It is with this object that I have withdrawn from public life and founded this Asram in Pondicherry (so-called for want of a better word, for it is not an Asram of Sannyasins, but of those who want to leave all else and prepare for this work). But at the same time I have a small number of disciples all over India who live in their families and receive spiritual help from me even at a distance.

This is all I can answer to Your Highness at present. It is for Your Highness to {{0}}decide[[Alternative: see for yourself]] whether what you seek has anything to do with what I have explained in this letter.

The cosmic Force is under the control of the overmind. The supermind does not act on it directly – whatever comes down from there is modified so as to pass through the overmind and take a lesser form suitable to the plane on which it acts, mental, vital or physical. But this intervention is exceptional in the ordinary play of the cosmic forces.


The cosmic spirit contains the supermind, but it keeps it above and works for the present between the overmind and the physical. It is only when the Ignorance is removed that the supramental becomes directly a dynamic part of the workings of cosmic Nature here. Till then there are only reflections of it.


page 1082, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

The overmind is a sort of delegation from the supermind (this is a metaphor only) which supports the present evolutionary universe in which we live here in Matter.


page 243 , Letters on Yoga , volume - 22 , SABCL

THE ONLY MANTRA USED IN THIS YOGA

As a rule the only mantra used in this Sadhana is that of the Mother or of my name and the Mother's. The concentration in the heart and the concentration in the head can both be used — each has its own result. The first opens up the psychic being and brings Bhakti, love and union with the Mother, her presence within the heart and the action of her Force in the nature. The other opens the mind to self-realisation, to the consciousness of what is above mind, to the ascent of the consciousness out of the body and the descent of the higher consciousness into the body.

13-10-1934

Adwaita

People are apt to speak of the Adwaita as if it were identical with Mayavada monism, just as they speak of Vedanta as if it were identical with Adwaita only; that is not the case. There are several forms of Indian philosophy which base themselves upon the One Reality, but they admit also the reality of the world, the reality of the Many, the reality of the differences of the Many as well as the sameness of the One (bhedābheda). But the Many exist in the One and by the One, the differences are variations in manifestation of that which is fundamentally ever the same. This we actually see as the universal law of existence where oneness is always the basis with an endless multiplicity and difference in the oneness; as, for instance, there is one mankind but many kinds of man, one thing called leaf or flower but many forms, patterns, colours of leaf and flower. Through this we can look back into one of the fundamental secrets of existence, the secret which is contained in the one Reality itself. The oneness of the Infinite is not something limited, fettered to its unity; it is capable of an infinite multiplicity. The Supreme Reality is an Absolute not limited by either oneness or multiplicity but simultaneously capable of both; for both are its aspects, although the oneness is fundamental and the multiplicity depends upon the oneness.

the centres and of the planes (mental, vital, physical) which these centres command; there is also the descent which is the main key of the spiritual transformation. Therefore, there is, I have said, a Tantric knowledge behind the process of transformation in this yoga.

⁂

In our yoga there is no willed opening of the chakras, they open of themselves by the descent of the Force. In the Tantric discipline they open from down upwards, the Muladhar first; in our yoga, they open from up downward. But the ascent of the force from the Muladhar does take place.

⁂

In the Tantra the centres are opened and Kundalini is awakened by a special process, its action of ascent is felt through the spine. Here it is a pressure of the Force from above that awakens it and opens the centres. There is an ascension of the consciousness going up till it joins the higher consciousness above. This repeats itself (sometimes a descent also is felt) until all the centres are open and the consciousness rises above the body. At a later stage it remains above and widens out into the cosmic consciousness and the universal self. This is a usual course, but sometimes the process is more rapid and there is a sudden and definite opening above.

What was Ramakrishna? God manifest in a human being; but behind there is God in His infinite impersonality and His universal Personality.

page 98 −Thoughts and Aphorisms ,

The Hour Of God Volume-17 , SABCL

Of all these souls Sri Ramakrishna was the last and greatest, for while others felt God in a single or limited aspect, he felt Him in His illimitable unity as the sum of an illimitable variety. In him the spiritual experiences of the millions of saints who had gone before were renewed and united. Sri Ramakrishna gave to India the final message of Hinduism to the world. A new era dates from his birth, an era in which the peoples of the earth will be lifted for a while into communion with God and spirituality become the dominant note of human life. What Christianity failed to do, what Mahomedanism strove to accomplish in times as yet unripe, what Buddhism half-accomplished for a brief period and among a limited number of men, Hinduism as summed up in the life of Sri Ramakrishna has to attempt for all the world. This is the reason of India's resurgence, this is why God has breathed life into her once more, why great souls are at work to bring about her salvation, why a sudden change is coming over the hearts of her sons. The movement of which the first outbreak was political, will end in a spiritual consummation.


Page 801, Bande Mataram , volume 1, SABCL

And what was Vivekananda? A radiant glance from the eye of Shiva; but behind him is the divine gaze from which he came and Shiva himself and Brahma and Vishnu and OM all-exceeding.


page 98 −Thoughts and Aphorisms , The Hour Of God Volume-17 , SABCL

SYMBOLISM OF THE TALE OF SATYAVAN AND SAVITR

The tale of Satyavan and Savitri is recited in the Mahabharata as a story of conjugal love conquering death. But this legend is, as shown by many features of the human tale, one of the many symbolic myths of the Vedic cycle. Satyavan is the soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance; Savitri is the Divine Word, daughter of the Sun, goddess of the supreme Truth who comes down and is born to save; Aswapati, the Lord of the Horse, her human father, is the Lord of Tapasya, the concentrated energy of spiritual endeavour that helps us to rise from the mortal to the immortal planes; Dyumatsena, Lord of the Shining Hosts, father of Satyavan, is the Divine Mind here fallen blind, losing its celestial kingdom of vision, and through that loss its kingdom of glory. Still this is not a mere allegory, the characters are not personified qualities, but incarnations or emanations of living and conscious Forces with whom we can enter into concrete touch and they take human bodies in order to help men and show him the way from his mortal state to a divine consciousness and immortal life.


Page – 265 - Sri Aurobindo On Himself , volume 26-- SABCL

Narada stands for the expression of the Divine Love and Knowledge.


page 392 , Letters on Yoga , volume - 22 , SABCL

Ganesha is the Power that removes obstacles by the force of Knowledge; Kartikeya represents victory over the hostile Powers. Of course, the names given are human, but the gods exist.


page 392 , Letters on Yoga , volume - 22 , SABCL

Sciatica is something more than nervous − it affects the movement of the muscles through the nerves. It can be got rid of at once, however, if you can manage to direct the Force on it.

There is no outer means. Sciatica is a thing which yields only to inner concentrated force or else it goes away of itself and comes of itself. Outer means at best can only be palliatives.

page 1584, Letters on Yoga , volume 24, SABCL

The plants are very psychic, but they can express it only by silence and beauty.


page 499 , Letters on Yoga , volume - 22 , SABCL

The rose is not the only beautiful flower, there are hundreds of others; most flowers are beautiful.
There are degrees and kinds of beauty, that is all.
The rose is among the first of flowers because of the richness of its colour, the intensity of sweetness of its scent and the grace and magnificence of its form.

page 499 , Letters on Yoga , volume - 22 , SABCL

THE object of the 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. Its object is not to be a great yogi or a Superman (although that may come) or to grab at the Divine for the sake of the ego's power, pride or pleasure. It is not for Moksha though liberation comes by it and all else may come, but these must not be our objects. The Divine alone is our object.


page 503, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

Patriots do not love their country only when she is rich, powerful, great and has much to give them; love for country has been most ardent, passionate, absolute when the country was poor, degraded, miserable, having nothing to give but loss, wounds, torture, imprisonment, death as the wages of her service; yet even knowing that they would never see her free, men have lived, served and died for her – for her own sake, not for what she could give.


page 512, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

The words “peace, calm, quiet, silence” have each their own shade of meaning, but it is not easy to define them.

Peace – śānti

Calm – sthiratā

Quiet – acañcalatā.

Silence – niścala-nīravatā.

Quiet is a condition in which there is no restlessness or disturbance.

Calm is a still unmoved condition which no disturbance can affect – it is a less negative condition than quiet.

Peace is a still more positive condition; it carries with it a sense of settled and harmonious rest and deliverance.

Silence is a state in which either there is no movement of the mind or vital or else a great stillness which no surface movement can pierce or alter.



Quiet is rather negative – it is the absence of disturbance.

Calm is a positive tranquillity which can exist in spite of superficial disturbances.

Peace is a calm deepened into something that is very positive amounting almost to a tranquil waveless Ananda.

Silence is the absence of all motion of thought or other vibration of activity.



Calm is a strong and positive quietude, firm and solid – ordinary quietude is mere negation, simply the absence of disturbance.

Peace is a deep quietude where no disturbance can come – a quietude with a sense of established security and release.

In complete silence there are either no thoughts or thoughts come, but they are felt as something coming from outside and not disturbing the silence.

Silence of the mind, peace or calm in the mind are three things that are very close together and bring each other.



page 642, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

The power of Gayatri is the Light of the divine Truth. It is a mantra of Knowledge.

The Gayatri mantra is the mantra for bringing the light of Truth into all the planes of the being.


page 747, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

The moon indicates spirituality, sometimes also spiritual Ananda.

The moon as a symbol in vision signifies usually spirituality in the mind or, simply, the spiritual consciousness. It can also indicate the flow of spiritual Ananda (nectar is in the moon according to the old tradition).

It [the spiritual Mind symbolised by the moon] is Mind in contact with truths of the spirit and reflecting them. The Sun is the light of the Truth, the Moon only reflects the light of the Truth – that is the difference.


The star signifies a creation or formation or the promise or power of a creation or formation.

The star is always a promise of the Light to come; the star changes into a sun when there is the descent of the Light.
Stars indicate points of light in the ignorant mental consciousness.

Moon = spiritual light.

Sun = The higher Truth Light.


page 957-958, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

The sun rising on the horizon is the direct light of the Divine Truth rising in the being – the ray upwards opens the being to the Truth as it is above mind, the ray in front opens it to what we call the cosmic consciousness, it becomes released from the personal limitation and opens and becomes aware of the universal mind, universal physical, universal vital. The action on the heart was the pressure of this Sun on it to have this direct opening, so that the consciousness may become free, wide and wholly at peace.


page 1077, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

The flute is the symbol of a call – usually the spiritual call.

The flute is the call of the Divine.

The conch is the symbol of the spiritual call.


The conch is the call to realisation.

The conch is perhaps the proclamation of victory.

page 977, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

The Swan is a symbol of the soul on the higher plane.

The swan is the liberated soul, the lotus is either the consciousness reddening to the colour of Divine Love or else the symbol of the Divine Presence on earth.

page 978, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

The Hansa is the symbol of the being – it regains its original purity as it rises until it becomes luminous in the Highest Truth.

page 979, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

The Aswattha usually symbolises the cosmic manifestation.

page 970, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

There are different Krishna lights – pale diamond blue, lavender blue, deep blue etc. It depends on the plane in which it manifests....

There is one blue that is the higher mind, a deeper blue belongs to the mind – Krishna's light in the mind....

All blue is not Krishna's light....

Diamond blue, Krishna's light in the Overmind – lavender blue in intuitive mind.

Blue is also the Radha's colour.


page 961, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

The meaning of blue light depends on the exact character of colour, its shade and nature. A whitish blue like moonlight is known as Krishna's light or Sri Aurobindo's light – light blue is often that of Illumined Mind – there is another deeper blue that is of the Higher Mind; another, near to purple, which is the light of a power in the vital.


The pale whitish blue light is “Sri Aurobindo's Light” – it is the blue light modified by the white light of the Mother.


The pale blue light is mine, the white light is the Mother's. The world you saw above the head was the plane of the Illumined Mind which is a level of consciousness much higher than the human intelligence. It is there that the Divine Light and Power come down to be transmitted to the human consciousness and from there they work and prepare the transformation of the human consciousness and even the physical nature.


If the blue lights were of different shades it might mean the overhead planes, overmind, Intuition, Illumined Mind, Higher Mind.


page 961, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

The golden light is that of the modified (overmentalised) supramental, i.e., the supramental Light passing through the overmind, Intuition, etc., and becoming the Light of Truth in each of these things. When it is golden red it means the same modified supramental-physical Light, – the Light of Divine Truth in the physical.

Golden Light always means the light of Truth – but the nature of the Truth varies according to the plane to which it belongs. Light is the light of Consciousness, Truth, Knowledge – the Sun is the concentration or source of the Light.

It is again the ascent into one of the higher planes of mind illumined with the light of the Divine Truth. Yellow is the light of mind growing brighter as one goes higher till it meets the golden light of the Divine Truth.

The spiritual Power is naturally more free on its own level than in the body. The golden colour indicates here Mahakali force which is the strongest for the working in the body.

It is not clear yet. Golden red is the colour of the supramental physical light – so this yellow red may indicate some plane of the overmind in which there is a nearer special connection with that. The golden red light has a strong transforming power.

Orange or red gold is supposed, by the way, to be the light of the supramental in the physical.


page 963, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

Orange is the true light manifested in the physical consciousness and being.

The deep red light is a light that comes down into the physical for its change. It is associated with the sunlight and the golden light.

The deep red is the light of the Power that descended before the 24th [November, 1933] for the transformation of the physical.

Deep red is the Divine Love – rosy is the psychic love.

It seems to be an opening of various powers and the peace, light and wideness of the spiritual consciousness. The red Purusha may be the Power of the true physical – red being the colour of the physical.

Orange is the colour of occult knowledge or occult experience.

Yellow is the thinking mind. The shades indicate different intensities of mental light.

The colour of the psychic light is according to what it manifests – e.g., psychic love is pink or rose, the psychic purity is white, etc.


page 964, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

Reddish pink rose = psychic love or surrender.

White rose = pure spiritual surrender.

The rosy light is that of love – so probably you entered the psychic worlds – or at least one of them.

As for the experiences described in the other letter, it seems to have been a passage through worlds of neutral peace which to the mind are a darkness and stand in the way to the full light.

The violet is the light of Divine Grace and Compassion.

“Violet” is the colour of benevolence or compassion, but also more vividly of the Divine Grace – represented in the vision as flowing from the heights of the spiritual consciousness down on the earth. The golden cup is I suppose the Truth Consciousness.

Violet is the colour of the light of Divine Compassion, as also of Krishna's Grace. It is also the radiance of Krishna's protection. Blue is his special and significant colour, the colour of his aura when he manifests – that is why he is called /Nīla// Krishna/. The adjective does not mean that he was blue or dark in his physical body.

Purple is the colour of the vital force – crimson is usually physical.


page 965, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

The crimson colour is the light of Love in the vital and physical.

Both [purple and crimson] are vital lights, but when seen above they represent the original forces of which the vital are the derivations.

Green light can signify various things according to the context – in the emotional vital it is the colour of a certain form of emotional generosity, in the vital proper an activity with vital abundance or vital generosity behind it – in the vital physical it signifies a force of health.

Yes. The green light is a vital force, a dynamic force of the emotional vital which has the power to purify, harmonise or cure.

Green is a vital energy of work and action.


page 966, Letters on Yoga , volume - 23 , SABCL

IT is not possible to make a foundation in yoga if the mind is restless. The first thing needed is quiet in the mind. Also to merge the personal consciousness is not the first aim of the yoga: the first aim is to open it to a higher spiritual consciousness and for this also a quiet mind is the first need.

⁂

The first thing to do in the sadhana is to get a settled peace and silence in the mind. Otherwise you may have experiences, but nothing will be permanent. It is in the silent mind that the true consciousness can be built.

Purity is to accept no other influence but only the influence of the Divine.

⁂

Purity means freedom from soil or mixture. The divine Purity is that in which there is no mixture of the turbid ignorant movements of the lower nature. Ordinarily, purity is used to mean (in the common language) freedom from sexual passion and impulse.

⁂

The Divine Purity is a more wide and all-embracing experience than the psychic.

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Purity or impurity depends upon the consciousness; in the divine consciousness everything is pure, in the ignorance everything is subject to impurity, not the body only or part of the body, but mind and vital and all. Only the self and the psychic being remain always pure.

It is on the Silence behind the cosmos that all the movement of the universe is supported.

It is from the Silence that the peace comes; when the peace deepens and deepens, it becomes more and more the Silence.

In a more outward sense the word Silence is applied to the condition in which there is no movement of thought or feeling etc., only a great stillness of the mind.

But there can be an action in the Silence, undisturbed even as the universal action goes on in the cosmic Silence.

All love, indeed, that is adoration has a spiritual force behind

it, and even when it is offered ignorantly and to a limited object,

something of that splendour appears through the poverty of the

rite and the smallness of its issues. For love that is worship is at

once an aspiration and a preparation: it can bring even within

its small limits in the Ignorance a glimpse of a still more or

less blind and partial but surprising realisation; for there are

moments when it is not we but the One who loves and is loved

in us, and even a human passion can be uplifted and glorified

by a slight glimpse of this infinite Love and Lover. It is for this

reason that the worship of the god, the worship of the idol,

the human magnet or ideal are not to be despised; for these are

steps through which the human race moves towards that blissful

passion and ecstasy of the Infinite which, even in limiting it,

they yet represent for our imperfect vision when we have still to

use the inferior steps Nature has hewn for our feet and admit

the stages of our progress. Certain idolatries are indispensable

for the development of our emotional being, nor will the man

who knows be hasty at any time to shatter the image unless he

can replace it in the heart of the worshipper by the Reality it

figures. Moreover, they have this power because there is always

something in them that is greater than their forms and, even

when we reach the supreme worship, that abides and becomes

a prolongation of it or a part of its catholic wholeness. Our

knowledge is still imperfect in us, love incomplete if even when

we know That which surpasses all forms and manifestations, we

cannot still accept the Divine in creature and object, in man, in

the kind, in the animal, in the tree, in the flower, in the work

of our hands, in the Nature-Force which is then no longer to us

the blind action of a material machinery but a face and power

of the universal Shakti: for in these things too is the presence of

the Eternal.

Sri Aurobindo , The Synthesis of Yoga , page 149 , vol - 20 ,SABCL

Psychology is the science of consciousness and its states and operations in Nature and, if that can be glimpsed or experienced, its states and operations beyond what we know as Nature.

It is not enough to observe and know the movements of our surface nature and the superficial nature of other living creatures, just as it is not enough for Science to observe and know as electricity only the movements of lightning in the clouds or for the astronomer to observe and know only those movements and properties of the stars that are visible to the unaided eye. Here as there a whole world of occult phenomena have to be laid bare and brought under control before the psychologist can hope to be master of his province.

Our observable consciousness, that which we call ourselves, is only the little visible part of our being. It is a small field below which are depths and farther depths and widths and ever wider widths which support and supply it but to which it has no visible access. All that is our self, our being; what we see at the top is only our ego and its visible nature.

Even the movements of this little surface nature cannot be understood nor its true law discovered until we know all that is below or behind and supplies it — and know too all that is around it and above.

For below this conscient nature is the vast Inconscient out of which we come. The Inconscient is greater, deeper, more original, more potent to shape and govern what we are and do than our little derivative conscient nature. Inconscient to us, to our surface view, but not inconscient in itself or to itself, it is a sovereign guide, worker, determinant, creator. Not to know it is not to know our nether origins and the origin of the most part of what we are and do. And the Inconscient is not all.

For behind our little frontal ego and nature is a whole subliminal kingdom of inner consciousness with many planes and provinces. There are in that kingdom many powers, movements, personalities which are part of ourselves and help to form our little surface personality and its powers and movements. This inner self, these inner persons we do not know, but they know us and observe and dictate our speech, our thoughts, feelings, doings even more directly than the Inconscient below us.

Around us too is a circumconscient Universal of which we are a portion. This circumconscience is pouring its forces, suggestions, stimuli, compulsions into us at every moment of our existence.

Around us is a universal Mind of which our mind is a formation and our thoughts, feelings, will, impulses are continually little more than a personally modified reception and transcription of its thought-waves, its force-currents, its foam of emotion and sensation, its billows of impulse.

Around us is a permanent universal Life of which our petty flow of life-formation that begins and ceases is only a small dynamic wave.