... the merely human formula and establish something that could be called a divine life upon earth, a first sketch of supermanhood, of a supramental living in the circumstances of the earth-nature. But this could not be the complete and radical change needed, it would not be the total transformation, the fullness of a divine life in a divine body. There would be a body still human and indeed animal in... is insufficient for a sadhana which conceives of a divine life upon earth and liberation of earth-nature itself as part of a total purpose of the embodiment of the spirit here. If a Page 149 a total transformation of the being is our aim, a transformation of the body must be an indispensable part of it, without that no full divine life on earth is possible. It is the past evolution... spiritual must follow the way of ascent till it reaches the divine Reality. The body and its activities must be accepted as part of the divine life and pass under this law, but, as in the other evolutionary transitions, what cannot accept the law of the divine life cannot be accepted and must fall away from the ascending nature. Another difficulty that the transformation of the body has to face ...
... the merely human formula and establish something that could be called a divine life upon earth, a first sketch of supermanhood, of a supramental living in the circumstances of the earth-nature. But this could not be the complete and radical change needed; it would not be the total transformation, the fullness of a divine life in a divine body. There would be a body still human and indeed animal in... liberation, it is insufficient for a sadhana which conceives of a divine life upon earth and liberation of earth-nature itself as part of a total purpose of the embodiment of the spirit here. If a total transformation of the being is our aim, a transformation of the body must be an indispensable part of it; without that no full divine life on earth is possible. It is the past evolution of the body and... spiritual must follow the way of ascent till it reaches the divine Reality. The body and its activities must be accepted as part of the divine life and pass under this law; but, as in the other evolutionary transitions, what cannot accept the law of the divine life cannot be accepted and must fall away from the ascending nature. Another difficulty that the transformation of the body has to face is ...
... ent destiny in the being itself, a necessity of the thing in itself and therefore inevitable. Its manifestation of the divine life will also be inevitable; its own life on its own plane is divine and, if Supermind descends upon the earth, it will bring necessarily the divine life with it and establish it here. Supermind is the grade of existence beyond mind, life and Matter and, as mind, life and... will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life. It is indeed so that life and mind involved in Matter have realised themselves here; for only what is involved can evolve, otherwise there could be no emergence. The manifestation of a supramental truth-consciousness is therefore the capital reality that will make the divine life possible. It is when all the movements of thought, impulse... existence. The divine life cannot Page 562 be a contradiction of the Divine or of the supreme reality; it is part of that reality, an aspect or expression of it and it can be nothing else. In life on the supramental plane all the Divine is possessed, and when the Supermind descends on earth, it must bring the Divine with it and make that full possession possible here. The divine life will give ...
... destiny in the being itself, a necessity of the thing in itself and therefore inevitable. Its manifestation of the divine life will also be inevitable; its own life on its own plane is divine and, if Supermind descends upon the earth, it will bring necessarily the divine. life with it and establish it here. Supermind is the grade of existence beyond mind, life and Matter and, as mind, life... a completely realised divinity or the divine life. It is indeed so that life and mind involved in Matter have Page 173 realised themselves here, for only what is involved can evolve, otherwise there could be no emergence. The manifestation of a supramental truth-consciousness is therefore the capital reality that will make the divine life possible. It is when all the movements... existence. The divine life cannot be a contradiction of the Divine or of the supreme reality; it is part of that reality, an aspect or expression of it and it can be nothing else. In life on the supramental plane all the Divine is possessed, and when the Supermind descends on earth, it must bring the Divine with it and make that full possession possible here. The divine life will give to those ...
... THE DIVINE MANIFESTATION AND THE DIVINE LIFE BEFORE we proceed to note the identity existing between Sri Aurobindo's views on the Divine Manifestation and the Divine Life and those of the Mother before her meeting with Sri Aurobindo, we had better be clear about what Sri Aurobindo understands by Manifestation and the Divine Life. There are two important elements which give... will reveal nothing but Him in Page 371 thought and feeling and action, and fulfil Him and His Will in the world. This is what Sri Aurobindo calls the Divine Life. Defining the process and the condition of the Divine Life Sri Aurobindo says, "The Divine descends from pure existence through the play of consciousness-Force and Bliss and the creative medium of Supermind into cosmic... Divine in life, which is the ultimate end of evolution. This evolutionary aspect of Manifestation has to be taken fully into account in any correct appreciation of Sri Aurobindo's gospel of the Divine Life, for it argues the inevitability of such a consummation. The second element is, that Manifestation, according to Sri Aurobindo, will not be a spiritual victory of an individual or a few exceptional ...
... manifestation of a spiritual being in us and the divine life of a perfected consciousness in a supramental or gnostic power of spiritual being that must be the secret burden and intention of evolutionary Nature. All spiritual life is in its principle a growth into divine living. It is difficult to fix the frontier where the mental ceases and the divine life begins, for the two project into each other... The Knowledge and the Spiritual Evolution The Life Divine Chapter XXVIII The Divine Life O seeing Flame, thou carriest man of the crooked ways into the abiding truth and the knowledge. Rig Veda. (I. 31. 6.) I purify earth and heaven by the Truth. Rig Veda. (I. 133. 1.) His ecstasy, in one who holds it, sets into... Divine, he has realised the spiritual existence. The spiritual man living in the sense of the spiritual self, in the realisation of the Divine within him and everywhere, would be living inwardly a divine life and its reflection would fall on his outer acts of existence, even if they did not pass—or did not seem to pass—beyond the ordinary instrumentation of human thought and action in this world of e ...
... CHAPTER V THE DIVINE MANIFESTATION AND THE DIVINE LIFE Before we proceed to note the identity existing between Sri Aurobindo's views on the Divine Manifestation and the Divine Life and those of the Mother before her meeting with Sri Aurobindo, we had better be clear about what Sri Aurobindo understands by Manifestation and the Divine Life. There are two important elements which... by Him, will reveal nothing but Him in thought and feeling and action, and fulfil Him and His Will in the world. This is what Sri Aurobindo calls the Divine Life. Defining Page 51 the process and the condition of the Divine Life Sri Aurobindo says, "The Divine descends from pure existence through the play of consciousness-Force and Bliss and the creative medium of Supermind into... Divine in life, which is the ultimate end of evolution. This evolutionary aspect of Manifestation has to be taken fully into account in any correct appreciation of Sri Aurobindo's gospel of the Divine Life, for it argues the inevitability of such a consummation. The second element is, that Manifestation, according to Sri Aurobindo, will not be a spiritual victory of an individual or a few ...
... and dharma means every ideal which we can propose to ourselves and the law of its working out and its action. A total perfection is the ultimate aim which we set before us, for our ideal is the Divine Life which we wish to create here, the life of the Spirit fulfilled on earth, life accomplishing its own spiritual transformation even here on earth in the conditions of the material universe. That cannot... our aim, but for that the right development of the body itself is an essential element; health, strength, fitness are the first needs, but the physical frame itself must be the best possible. A divine life in a material world implies necessarily a union of the two ends of existence, the spiritual summit and the material base. The soul with the basis of its life established in Matter ascends to the... revealing instrument, it does not cast away the energies of Matter, its capacities, its methods; it brings out their hidden possibilities, uplifts, sublimates, discloses their innate divinity. The divine life will reject nothing that is capable of divinisation; all is to be seized, exalted, made utterly perfect. The mind now still ignorant, though struggling towards knowledge, has to rise towards and ...
... and dharma means every ideal which we can propose to ourselves and the law of its working out .and its action. A total perfection is the ultimate aim which we set before us, for our ideal is the Divine Life which we wish to create here,, the life of the Spirit fulfilled on earth, life accomplishing its own spiritual transformation even here on earth in the conditions of the material universe. That cannot... our aim, but for that the right development of the body itself is an essential element; health, strength, fitness are the first needs, but the physical frame itself must be the best possible. A divine life in a material world implies necessarily a union of the two ends of existence, the spiritual summit and the material base. The soul. with the basis of its life established in Matter ascends to the... revealing instrument, it does not cast .away the energies of Matter, its capacities, its methods; it brings out their hidden possibilities, uplifts, sublimates, discloses their innate divinity. The divine life will reject nothing that is capable of divinisation; all is to be seized, exalted, made utterly perfect. The mind now still ignorant, though struggling towards knowledge, has to rise towards and ...
... and dharma means every ideal which we can propose to ourselves and the law of its working out and its action. A total perfection is the ultimate aim which we set before us, for our ideal is the Divine Life which we wish to create here, the life of the Spirit fulfilled on earth, life accomplishing its own spiritual transformation even here on earth in the conditions of the material universe. That cannot... right Page 68 development of the body itself is an essential element; health, strength, fitness are the first needs, but the physical frame itself must be the best possible. A divine life in a material world implies necessarily a union of the two ends of existence, the spiritual summit and the material base. The soul with the basis of its life established in Matter ascends to the... revealing instrument, it does not cast away the energies of Matter, its capacities, its methods; it brings out their hidden possibilities, uplifts, sublimates, discloses their innate divinity. The divine life will reject nothing that is capable of divinisation; all is to be seized, exalted, made utterly perfect. The mind now still ignorant, though struggling towards knowledge, has to rise towards and ...
... formula and establish something that could be called a divine life upon earth, a first sketch of supermanhood, of a supramental living in the circumstances of the earth-nature.” This is not what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother until then had consistently called “superman”: “… It would not be the total transformation, the fullness of a divine life in a divine body. There would be a body still human and... spontaneous and recalled in vivid detail!” 9 The second article is entitled Perfection of the Body. “A total perfection is the ultimate aim which we set before us, for our ideal is the Divine Life which we wish to create here, the life of the Spirit fulfilled on earth, life accomplishing its own spiritual transformation even here on earth in the conditions of the material universe. That cannot... revealing instrument, it does not cast away the energies of Matter, its capacities, its methods; it brings out their hidden possibilities, uplifts, sublimates, discloses their intimate divinity. The divine life will reject nothing that is capable of divinisation; all is to be seized, exalted, made utterly perfect.” 10 In this second article, Sri Aurobindo again writes about the physical perfection ...
... and dharma means every ideal which we can propose to ourselves and the law of its working out and its action. A total perfection is the ultimate aim which we set before us, for our ideal is the Divine Life which we wish to create here, the life of the Spirit fulfilled on earth, life accomplishing its own spiritual transformation even here on earth in the conditions of the material universe. That cannot... our aim, but for that the right development of the body itself is an essential element; health, strength, fitness are the first needs, but the physical frame itself must be the best possible. A divine life in a material world implies necessarily a union of the two ends Page 521 of existence, the spiritual summit and the material base. The soul with the basis of its life established inMatter... revealing instrument, it does not cast away the energies of Matter, its capacities, its methods; it brings out their hidden possibilities, uplifts, sublimates, discloses their innate divinity. The divine life will reject nothing that is capable of divinisation; all is to be seized, exalted, made utterly perfect. The mind now still ignorant, though struggling towards knowledge, has to rise towards and ...
... withdrawal... it is insufficient for a sadhana which conceives of a divine life upon earth and liberation of earth-nature itself as a part of a total purpose of the embodiment of the spirit here. If a total transformation of the being is our aim, a transformation of the body must be an indispensable part of it; without that no full divine life on earth is possible. 337 According to Sri Aurobindo, the... Chapter 8 Independence from the Physical After the mind and vital, the physical – the third instrument of the spirit in us – plays a special role in Sri Aurobindo's yoga, since without it no divine life is possible on this earth. We will only discuss now some points of preliminary experience, the very ones Sri Aurobindo discovered at the beginning of his yoga; indeed, the yoga of the body necessitates... and soar straight into the Absolute, but we are unable to bring the intensity and plenitude of the Spirit down to our "lower" kingdom – the mental, vital, and material realm – in order to create a divine life there. Independence from the Body Thus, consciousness can be independent of the sense organs, independent of illnesses, and, to a large extent, independent of food and sleep, once it has ...
... for – a "divine" life. Well, I didn't know what "divine" meant, but let's say a... "breathable" life, a REAL life. Not a three-piece suit who is a philosopher, a mathematician or a breadwinner.... Not just a suit of clothes in which you go round and round, until you're put into a coffin; and then your son takes over. Page 47 I just couldn't live like that. The "divine" life, for me... the cries of sea gulls.... That was FULL, as it were. For me, that was already a sort of divine life. Page 81 But, of course, that kind of life is only possible for a few rare minutes at a time in an existence that... was not in the least divine. So how to find, to "incarnate" that divine life? And that was after trying or SEEING what the famous realization of yogis is – because... world were throbbing in you; those moments were... utterly "full" and simple. And that's what I had felt in flashes, here and there, throughout my life. That's what I was looking for, that "divine" life. Towarnicki: The disappearance of the ego? You can say that, but I wasn't looking for a philosophical concept. I was looking for a particular way of breathing. And in spite of everything ...
... gained by telling lies. Nothing is gained by lying, of course; on the contrary, one darkens one's consciousness. 12 May 1935 I cannot see the superhuman, spiritual, divine life anywhere, and without the divine life everything is meaningless for me. If your consciousness were superhuman, divine, or even spiritual, you would see that same consciousness everywhere. 13 May 1935 ... parts of your being that refuse to participate in the divine life; previously you were not aware of them, but now, on the contrary, you are becoming more and more conscious of them, and consciousness is a real progress—it is the way towards mastery. 15 July 1935 So what must I do to make these lower parts participate in the divine life? You must educate them as one educates a child. ... ess higher than the vital. 18 May 1934 I have decided to smile only at a few people and never at a woman. Is this all right? Always to maintain an attitude of concentration on the Divine Life is more important than making rules that are too rigid. It would be better to resolve not to smile in expectation of a vital interchange. 21 May 1934 Isn't it true that one should know ...
... of her suffering to the presiding Deity, surrendered herself completely to the Will of the Supreme. Indeed in it she attempted all and achieved all. In it she received the most wondrous boon of divine life on earth. The Divine Savitri had assured Aswapati that she shall take birth as his daughter and accept the burden of the world: She shall bear Wisdom in her voiceless bosom, Strength... growing in time to take time along with him. The birth of Savitri means the birth of a new world. This she brings about by meeting the luminous Presence behind Death and obtaining the boon of a divine life upon earth. She always works in us towards that change, awaking us to the sense of our true innate spiritual entitlement. Sometimes it is feared that by laying too exclusive a stress on the aspect... the removal of this double veil, this double transformation which was accomplished by Savitri. Thus behind the darkness of this creation she meets her bright father to receive authentic boons of divine life upon earth. The Yoga-tapasya of Aswapati has thus borne the fruits of godly felicity. Some Imponderables There is no doubt that the ancient tale of Savitri is charged with the contents ...
... can take hold of all living relations without hesitation or danger and turn them Godwards delivered from their crude, mixed and petty human settings and sublimated into the happy material of a divine life. For it is the very nature of the supramental experience that it can perpetuate the play of difference without forfeiting or in the least diminishing either the divine union or the infinite oneness... in Love, these cannot be effective here unless they secure the consent of Life and can use the instrumentation of some delivered energy at its centre for a sublimation of the erring human into a divine Life-Force. It is not possible to cut the difficulty by a splitting up of the works of sacrifice; we cannot escape it by deciding that we shall Page 172 do only the works of Love and Knowledge... us is the condition for the divine fulfilment of the objects of the Life-Force. Those objects will even remain the same in essence, but transformed in their inner motive and outer character. The Divine Life-Power too will be a will for growth, a force of self-affirmation, but affirmation of the Divine within us, not of the little temporary personality on the surface,—growth into the true divine Individual ...
... treated, with completeness, with precision, with the inspiration of a poet possessed by divine truth & the skill of a consummate architect of thought & language. The Isha Upanishad is the gospel of a divine life in the world and a statement of the conditions under which it is possible and the spirit of its living. It is this harmonious totality of meaning which it is the sole object of my commentary to... & the ever-present Master. Similarly, the Isha has for its subject the nature of human life & action lived & done in the light of Vedantic knowledge & supreme realisation. It is the gospel of a divine life on earth, a consecration of works, the seed & foundation of Karmayoga. The Upanishads are works of inspiration, not of reasoning; therefore we shall not find in them the development of thought... pre-Buddhistic Hindus answered the question, if I am not mistaken, in a different sense & attained to a deeper consummation. They answered it in the sense of the Isha Upanishad & the Gita; they held divine life in the Brahman here to be a possibility. The supreme importance of the question is apparent. If the theory of the Illusionist is true, life is an inexplicable breach of Truth, an unjustifiable ...
... spiritual realization dwells in the divine and lives and acts and behaves, in all ways of his being and acting, in Page 128 the Divine. And when one lives inwardly a divine life, the reflection of that divine life would fall on his outer acts or existence, even if they did not pass beyond the ordinary instrumentation of human thought and action in this world of earth-nature. According to... vision. In the same way, none of the earlier yogic systems had envisaged the aim of the complete manifestation of Spirit in Matter or that of the total transformation of the life in Matter into the divine life on the earth. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were led to the new and integral aim by their intense labour of research on the basis of which the life on the earth be led eventually to achieve total... corresponding aims of life. The question is as to whether the Upanishads put forward the possibility and realization of the transformation of the inconscient and transformation of material life into divine life. For, the full integration would imply the conquest of the Inconscience by the superconscience, so that the superconscience, if it is concealed in the inconscience, can also manifest in its fullness ...
... But there is a second condition, which also needs to be fulfilled. The pure vital being provides us the instrumentation of a divine life, but the vital being always needs a power that can govern and that can provide divine initiative. The progression of divine life demands that the mind and the life impulse must cease to be anything but instruments and the inmost psychic being must take their... and indispensable but which was not found in any earlier systems of the synthesis of yoga, and it is to that aspect of the work that we may turn. Evolution of the Next Species The divine life in the divine body, the eventual advent of Page 7 the supramental supermanhood, and the evolution of the next species, is the goal that has been envisaged for the integral yoga, and... by Sri Aurobindo in the following words: "It is, then, this spiritual fulfilment of the urge to individual perfection and an inner completeness of being that we mean first when we speak of a divine life. It is the first essential condition of a perfected life on earth, and we are therefore right in making the utmost possible individual perfection our first supreme business. The perfection of the ...
... states that the man of spiritual realization dwells in the divine and lives and acts and behaves, in all ways of his being and acting, in the Divine. And when one lives inwardly a divine life, the reflection of that divine life would fall on his outer acts or existence, even if they did not pass beyond the ordinary instrumentation of human thought and action in this world of earth-nature. According to... life. The question is as to whether the Upanishads put forward the possibility and page - 104 realization of the transformation of the inconscient and transformation of material life into divine life. For, the full integration would imply the conquest of the Inconscience by the superconscience, so that the super-conscience, if it is concealed in the inconscience, can also manifest in its fullness... manifestation of this kind can only have for its soul of significance the revelation of Being in a perfect Becoming." 58 Full Manifestation of Spirit in Matter The manifestation of divine life on earth is the distinctive and unprecedented aim that has been explicitly stated by Sri Aurobindo as the aim of his integral yoga. Full manifestation of Spirit in Matter as the culmination of i ...
... assumed into the divine life. This had an effect on the whole cosmos. Through this event a power was released in the world by which matter and life and human consciousness are destined to be transformed, so as to participate in the divine life and consciousness. In that final state, time and space are transcended and the whole universe and mankind is assumed into the divine life, so as to share... transformation of the human body. This was what took place in the Resurrection of Jesus. The human body and soul of Jesus were transformed by the divine Spirit and he was finally taken up into the divine life beyond space and time. This in turn reveals the destiny of all men, that we shall all be transformed, body and soul, and experience the bliss of Sachchidananda. In this perspective it seems... creative consciousness-force but also the ultimately transformative dynamism of the Spirit. It holds in itself the supernal archetype, the perfect model, of all that evolves here: a divine mind, a divine life-energy, a divine matter await in it for manifestation in our world. What it seeks to manifest is a state of integral divinisation in evolutionary terrestrial terms, a realisation of the Eternal ...
... ignorance. Fifth, "I am here to establish the divine life and the divine consciousness in those who of themselves feel the call to come to me and cleave to it and in no others. " 21 Page 247 VI Writing to another sadhak, Sri Aurobindo observed that the central aim of the Yoga, the Sadhana, should be to grow "into a divine life in the Mother's consciousness". On the contrary... Baroda in 1930, "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 Ashram .... " 5 The founding of the Ashram was also a fulfilling moment in Mirra's life of high... and lodging and clothing and the impetrative necessities of life, so as to see whether all the energies freed by this certainty of a secure material living would turn spontaneously towards the divine life and the inner realisation. Well, towards the middle of my life ... the means was given to me and I could realise this, that is, create such conditions of life. 6 Page 240 If ...
... have taken of our existence; but at the same time we speak of a divine life as the culmination of the evolutionary process, and the use of the phrase implies that our present life is undivine and all the life too that is below us. At the first glance this looks like a self-contradiction; instead of making a distinction between the divine life we aspire for and a present undivine existence, it would be... its limits if it were based on a restricted but harmonious self-power and self-knowledge. It is this bondage to a perpetual stamp of imperfection and disharmony that is the mark of the undivine; a divine life, on the contrary, even if progressing from the little to the more, would be at each stage harmonious in its principle and detail: it would be a secure ground upon which freedom and perfection could... the paucity of Good and Delight in our world-experience, there is also the deficiency of other divine degrees: for Knowledge, Truth, Beauty, Power, Unity are, they too, the stuff and elements of a divine life, and these are given to us in a scanty and grudging measure; yet all are, in their absolute, powers of the Divine Nature. It is not possible then to limit the description of our and the world's ...
... no question of a Divine Life here, though that is hinted at as the unexpressed possible result of the ascent—because the Earth is not put aside ("Earth's heart was felt beating below me still"); nevertheless the poem expresses only the ascent towards the Highest, far beyond the Life Heavens, and the Earth-Spirit claims that power and does not speak of any descent of a Divine Life. I say so much in... different conditions of the physical plane. The Life Heavens Where do you find in "The Life Heavens" 2 that I say or anybody says the conditions on the earth are glorious and suited to the Divine Life? There is not a word to that effect there! The Life Heavens are the heavens of the vital gods and there is there a perfect harmony but a harmony of the sublimated satisfied senses and vital desires... can influence earth, so can the hostile Powers, but it does not follow that hostile Powers can penetrate the Overmind—they can't: they can only spoil what it sends to the earth. Each power of the Divine (life like mind and matter are powers of the Divine) has its own harmony inherent in the purity of its own principle—it is only if it is disturbed or perverted that it produces disorder. That is another ...
... we come to consider the psychological conditions of the divine Life; at present we are only considering its metaphysical foundations, its essential nature and principles. Suffice it at present to observe that the absence or abolition of separatist egoism and of effective division in consciousness is the one essential condition of the divine Life, and therefore their presence in us is that which constitutes... conception we have formed of the Supermind, by its opposition to the mentality on which our human existence is based, we are able not only to form a precise instead of a vague idea of divinity and the divine life,—expressions which we are otherwise condemned to use with looseness and as the vague wording of a large but almost impalpable aspiration,—but also to give these ideas a firm basis of philosophical... can be no difference of essential characteristics, but only of mould and colouring. We can already ascertain on the basis of the conclusions at which we have arrived the essential nature of the divine life towards which we aspire. What then would be the existence of a divine soul, not descended into the ignorance by the fall of Spirit into Matter and the eclipse of soul by material Nature? What ...
... making this offering in a general way, as though once for all; you say, "I am the servant of the Divine; my life is given absolutely to the Divine; all my efforts are for the realisation of the Divine Life". But that is only the first step; for this is not sufficient. When the resolution has been taken, when you have decided that the whole of your life shall be given to the Divine, you have still at... Divine to reign here we must give all we have and are and do here to the Divine. It will not do to think that anything is unimportant or that the external life and its necessities are no part of the Divine Life. If we do, we shall remain where wc have always been and there will be no conquest of the external world; nothing abiding there will have been done. Page 4 Do people who have advanced... or lose touch with the Divine? Page 5 You lose it because your consciousness is still divided. The Divine has not settled into your mind; you arc not wholly consecrated to the Divine Life. Otherwise you could concentrate to any extent upon such things and still you would have the sense of being helped and supported by the Divine. In all pursuits, intellectual or active, your ...
... us and in all things. Only one thing is important, it is to find the Divine. For each one and for the whole world anything becomes useful if it helps to find the Divine. Life is meant for seeking the Divine. Life is realised when finding the Divine. Let this be our one need in life, to realise the Divine. Yes, to live in the consciousness of the Divine Presence is the only... from the heart. 11 June 1971 To be and to become more and more what the Divine wants us to be should be our greatest preoccupation. 25 July 1971 Page 6 Consider the Divine Life as the most important thing to obtain. Happiness is not the aim of life. The aim of ordinary life is to carry out one's duty, the aim of spiritual life is to realise the Divine. ... the only thing valid. 6 January 1973 What is lasting, eternal, immortal and infinite, that indeed is worth having, worth conquering, worth possessing. It is divine Light, divine Love, divine Life―it is also Supreme Peace, Perfect Joy and All-Mastery upon earth with the Complete Manifestation as the crowning. Page 8 ...
... in man are seen to be evolving towards the divine life and the divine consciousness, in which they are not annihilated but fulfilled." (p. 137) The Supramental Physical and the Body of the Resurrection Just after these words Griffiths writes: "This is the goal of a Christian Yoga. Body and soul are to be transfigured by the divine life and to participate in the divine consciousness... continues: "For a Christian this had already taken place in the resurrection of Christ. In his body matter has already been transformed, so as to become a spiritual body, which is the medium of the divine life..." {Ibid.) In the address delivered at the International Transper-sonal Conference held in Bombay from the 14th till the 20th February this year, Griffiths touches on the theme again and,... about Ramalingam, what do we reach? He 19 writes: "Ramalingam's mysticism does not involve the loss of the body in the final state of liberation but its transfiguration... It is filled with the divine life and becomes a spiritual body no longer conditioned by the present laws of matter, but transfigured in the divine light. The story of his own passing that he simply disappeared, whether it is literally ...
... in man are seen to be evolving towards the divine life and the divine consciousness, in which they are not annihilated but fulfilled." (p. 137) The Supramental Physical and the Body of the Resurrection Just after these words Griffiths writes: "This is the goal of a Christian Yoga. Body and soul are to be transfigured by the divine life and to participate in the divine consciousness... "For a Christian this has already taken place in the resurrection of Christ. In his body matter has already been transformed, so as to become a spiritual body, which is the medium of the divine life..." {Ibid.) In the address delivered at the International Transpersonal Conference held in Bombay from the 14th till the 20th February this year, Griffiths touches on the theme again and... about Ramalingam, what do we reach? He 19 writes: "Ramalingam's mysticism does not involve the loss of the body in the final state of liberation but its transfiguration.... It is filled with the divine life and becomes a spiritual body no longer conditioned by the present laws of matter, but transfigured in the divine Page 9 light. The story of his own passing that he simply disappeared ...
... mind, illumined mind, intuition, over mind—and supermind as the last term of its self-expression. In divine life, this supermind has to be reached through a complete annulment of the separative and limited ego-consciousness and its powers brought down to mind, life and body to create a divine life in Matter through a total and radical transformation of their nature and substance. In Yoga also... arrive at a compromise between the two. Sri Aurobindo has come to give us a complete synthesis between the two by his own highest and deepest experience in the realms of both. "The affirmation of a divine life upon earth and an immortal sense in mortal existence can have no-base unless we recognise not only eternal Spirit as the inhabitant of this bodily mansion, the wearer of this mutable robe, but accept... as life, mind, super-mind and the grades that link mind to supermind ; then only the identification and identity between the two become complete and we can, according to Sri Aurobindo, envisage a divine life upon the earth with Matter as the pedestal and Spirit as the summit of that life. Spirit is the soul and reality of what we call Matter and Matter is the body and form of the Spirit. There is ...
... XV, No. 4, p. 51.) Our sadhana has for its goal not merely the spiritual liberation of some isolated individuals from the shackles of phenomenal Ignorance but the establishment of a divine life upon earth, ihaiva. But since Matter is the foundation of all evolutionary efflorescence of Life here upon the terrestrial plane, our body assumes a * This chapter acts as a bridge linking... For "the body is not only the necessary outer instrument of the physical part of action, but for the purposes of this life a base or pedestal also for all inner action." 2 So a full play of divine life demands as its essential prerequisite a totally transformed physical body which will as a supple and flawless and transparent instrument respond fully to each and every call of the self-manifesting... of death, division and mutual devouring, the material substance itself will be transfigured and spiritualised and our body will become the body divine that will "reflect or reproduce here in a divine life on the earth something of this highest greatness and glory of the self-manifesting Spirit." 13 At this point the sceptic may raise his eyebrows and exclaim: "Impossible! This is too fantastic ...
... from the falsehoods and uncertainties that are our lot; it moves in safety towards its perfection. Once the truth-consciousness was established here on its own sure foundation, the evolution of divine life would be a progress in felicity, a march through light to Ananda.'¹ Supermind is, according to Sri Aurobindo, a grade of existence beyond, mind, life and Matter. And, between Mind and Supermind... Supermind already and always exists and possesses its own essential law of being. Its own life on its own plane is divine and, if Supermind descends upon the earth, it will bring necessarily the divine life with it and establish it here. The descent of the Supermind and its manifestation on the earth is, according to Sri Aurobindo, an inevitability of the 'evolutionary' process. Evolution is, according... mental parts so that these lower powers can become portions of a total divinised activity Page 24 of our whole being: it is that will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life. It is indeed so that life and mind involved in Matter have realised themselves here; for only what is involved can evolve, otherwise there could be no emergence.'4 IlI It is significant ...
... be no divine life upon earth. And yet, Sri Aurobindo affirms, the establishment of the divine life is inevitable, as it is the logical culmination of the process of evolution which brings out from the indeterminate inconscience the fundamental principles of existence involved there. As Matter has evolved, and life and mind, so the other principles must also evolve. Therefore the divine life on earth... The Synthesis of Yoga, Book I., Part I, Ch. 3 Page 355 can be nothing else than the physical transformation of man, individual and collective, leading to the establishment of the divine life on earth. On more or less the same subject, the Mother says in The Supreme Discovery: "Let us allow ourselves to be penetrated and transformed by this Divine Love and give up to Him, without reservation ...
... Supermind towards the divine being. The knot of the two, the higher and the lower hemisphere, is where mind and Supermind meet with a veil between them. The rending of the veil is the condition of the divine life in humanity; for by that rending, by the illumining descent of the higher into the nature of the lower being and the forceful ascent of the lower being into the nature of the higher, mind can recover... on. The next preordained evolutionary change, the Supramental, may very well prove to be the climactic upsurge that will end the "original sin" of impotent separatist egoism and make manifest a Divine Life on the earth. III The hope of such a divinised life on the earth, although it may seem revolutionary or merely fanciful in the present context, has nevertheless been often seriously... first volume of The Life Divine begins, as we saw, with a reference to man's primeval and persistent longings for "God, Light, Freedom, Immortality", and concludes with the announcement that a divine life here "is the inevitable outcome and consummation of Nature's evolutionary endeavour". 33 The large aim of the formidable second volume is to set forth in almost overwhelming detail how exactly this ...
... intervention of the Divine Grace in the person of Savitri. As the cosmos came into being by the sacrifice by the Divine's perfection and His descent into the Nescience so the creation of divine life on earth would be possible by the descent of the Divine Power in man helping him to conquer the obstacles and transform his ignorant nature. So, when the Divine Power withdrew to some far off... is the subject of this Canto. Here for the first time it becomes clear that this great epic deals with the spiritual odyssey of the soul. The poet here openly discloses himself as the poet of divine life by beginning in this Canto the song of the soul's liberation. The whole poem becomes the song par excellence of man's growth on earth from the inconscient through the vital and the mental stages... rising from world to world, from peaks of mind to the peaks of the spirit till he reaches the supreme Divine and by his unfailing aspiration invokes the Divine to descend into himself so as to create divine life on earth. But this cannot be so long as human soul is tied like an animal with the triple cord of mental, vital and physical ignorance to the sacrificial post in the vast cosmic sacrifice to be offered ...
... be no divine life upon earth. And yet, Sri Aurobindo affirms, the establishment of the divine life is inevitable, as it is the logical culmination of the process of evolution which brings out from the indeterminate inconscience the fundamental principles of existence involved there. As Matter has evolved, and life and mind, so the other principles must also evolve. Therefore the divine life on earth... " This terrestrial transformation of which the Mother speaks, can be nothing else than the physical transformation of man, individual and collective, leading to the establishment of the divine life on earth. On more or less the same subject, the Mother says in "The Supreme Discovery": "Let us allow ourselves to be penetrated and transformed by this Divine Love and give up to Him, without ...
... making this offering in a general way, as though once for all; you say, "I am the servant of the Divine; my life is given absolutely to the Divine; all my efforts are for the realisation of the Divine Life." But that is only the first step; for this is not sufficient. When the resolution has been taken, when you have decided that the whole of your life shall be given to the Divine, you have still at... Divine to reign here we must give all we have and are and do here to the Divine. It will not do to think that anything is unimportant or that the external life and its necessities are no part of the Divine Life. If we do, we shall remain where we have always been and there will be no conquest of the external world; nothing abiding there will have been done. Do people who have advanced very far come... do we sometimes forget or lose touch with the Divine? You lose it because your consciousness is still divided. The Divine has not settled into your mind; you are not wholly consecrated to the Divine Life. Otherwise you could concentrate to any extent upon such things and still you would have the sense of being helped and supported by the Divine. In all pursuits, intellectual or active, your one ...
... fruition. “This Thing of Capital Importance …” “If Supermind descends upon the earth, it will bring necessarily the divine life with it and establish it here … The manifestation of a supramental truth-consciousness is therefore the capital reality that will make the divine life possible,” 69 wrote Sri Aurobindo. “If Supermind descends …”, “if the supramental comes down …” It was the condition... Yoga”, as Sri Aurobindo named it – in the beginning he also sometimes called it Purna Yoga (complete yoga) or “Synthetic Yoga” – would allow others to follow in their footsteps; for creating a divine life necessitated collaboration from the flower of humanity. Sri Aurobindo would call the Integral Yoga “the path I had opened, as Christ, Krishna, Buddha, Chaitanya, etc. opened theirs.” 55 A ... from embodied life as well. But for Sri Aurobindo individual liberation is not an end in itself, but only a means to emancipate the divine consciousness in the collective existence and establish a divine life upon earth.” N. Jayashanmugam: Veda and Vedanta: New Interpretations, p. 40. × Ibid., p. 464 ...
... shall do. You write about the deva sangha : “I am not a God, I am only some much hammered and refined iron”. No one is a God but in each man there is a God and to make Him manifest is the aim of divine life. That we can all do. I recognise that there are great and small Adhars (vessels). I do not accept as accurate your description of yourself. Still whatever the nature of a vessel be, once the touch... of God. I have no faith in the customary trade of the Guru. I do not wish to be a Guru. That at my touch or at another's some wake and manifest from within their slumbering Godhead and get the divine life—this is what I want. It is such men that will raise the country. You must not think from all this lecture that I despair of the future of Bengal. You say that what is needed is the Bhava intoxication... sattvikbudhi , follow the Dharma, fulfilling of one's own Swadharma and doing the work proper to one's capacities; and satisfy Kama and Artha under the control of the Buddhi and Dharma. The object of divine life, on the other hand, is to realise one's highest self or to realise God and to put the whole being into harmony with the truth of the highest self or the law of the divine nature, to find one's own ...
... sensitive reactions of Life in the metal and the plant up to its full organization in man, so in man himself there is the same ascending series, the preparation, if nothing more, of a higher and divine life. It is, therefore, contended that it is a supramentalised, perfected and divinized life for which the earth-nature is secretly seeking, and that a progressive manifestation of this kind can only... progress impels the race to be carried beyond itself, into a self-exceeding, a transformation of the mental being and even mutation of the human species so as to establish on the earth the rule of the divine life in the divine body. But before the appearance of the divine body, there will have to come about a radical change of consciousness that can be effected by the ascent to the supermind and the descent... Significance of the Evolution of the Supermind for Humanity and Its Problems Sri Aurobindo contends that the evolution of the Supramental being would imply that the influence of the divine life on earth would fall upon the life of the Ignorance and impose harmony on it within its limits, and much that is disharmonious in human life would disappear. What is true in the mental ideals and ...
... nature, necessity and utility of meditation and concentration in the Integral Yoga. In the fulfilment of our sadhana we aspire to lead a divine life here upon earth itself in an embodied physical existence. But is it possible to lead a divine life without first achieving the divine consciousness? For, it is consciousness that determines the nature and quality of the life lived. Therefore... look into ourselves and see and enter into ourselves and live within is the first necessity for transformation of nature and for the divine life." (The Life Divine, Cent. Ed., p. 1027) So we see that if we would like to lead a truly spiritual-divine life with our nature divinely transformed, what becomes essential for us is not to remain floating on the surface level of our consciousness ...
... science, and then messages of thanksgiving for relief and remedy by spiritual means. No, Sri Aurobindo, the Yogi of the Supermind descending into the outer as well as the inner being and bringing a divine life on earth in addition to the infinite immortality of the Beyond, cannot be looked upon as passing away on account of old age and physical causes. Whatever the purely clinical picture, it must have... Nothing except a colossal strategic sacrifice of this kind in order that the physical transformation of the Mother may be immeasurably hastened and rendered absolutely secure and, through it, a divine life on earth for humanity may get rooted and be set aflower - nothing less can explain the passing of Sri Aurobindo. There would also be implied in the holocaust a world-saving action by the sweet power... occult force and process whether with or even without the assistance or intervention of some gross material procedure. A soul wishing to enter into a body or form for itself a body and take part in a divine life upon earth might be assisted to do so or even provided with such a form by this method of direct transmutation without passing through birth by the sex process or undergoing any degradation or any ...
... awaken them to the divine life. For this He has invoked the Supreme, the Grace, to descend here below on this earth to help in His work. That is why, having heard His call, I have come down here into matter in a physical body, into this world of pain, suffering and death. And it is in the union of both of us that the world will witness gradually this miracle of a divine life. It is because of Him... House of the Spirit, the Supramental-Consciousness, but to aspire and to bring down that Truth-Consciousness to earth, so that there is a new creation and the earthly life gets transformed into a divine life. He is a protagonist of not only the Ascent but also of the Descent: he achieves not only "an individual victory" over the "structured visions of the cosmic Self' 6 but also an universal realisation ...
... something the greatest mystics in all climes have proclaimed with one voice: that one must utilise whatever one is given to serve others. Or, to put it in the mantric words of the great Messiah of divine life, the mystic wins God not to rocket up to him leaving the earth to her fate, but to invoke His light here below for all. But this does not mean that the lure is an imaginary one: the lure... shadows and limitations. But the Daughter is also the Mother of Mothers who comes to us, weaklings, to show that "Immortality" is not "a plaything to be given lightly to a child," nor "the divine life a prize without effort or the crown for a weakling." 7 The legend is an old one, even older in age than the Ramayana since in this first epic of India Sita makes mention of Savitri and... is ever rising towards the heights. 52 It is true, as he admitted in the same letter, that at present, so long as the earth remains as supine as she is, there can be "no question of a divine life". Nevertheless, as he indicates in his poem A God's Labour, Heaven's fire is lit in the breast of the earth And the undying suns here bum; Through a wonder cleft in the bounds ...
... affirmation”, 4 an affirmation to “square with all the facts of existence”. 5 They wanted an integral knowledge to be the basis of an integral method (yoga) to transform human life into a divine life on earth. “As in Science, so in metaphysical thought, that general and ultimate solution is likely to be the best which includes and accounts for all so that each truth of experience takes its place... projected into a hereafter or into an indefinite earthly future. Now, Sri Aurobindo and Mirra had acquired the conviction, based on their spiritual experience, that the time had come to realise the divine life here and now, and that it was they themselves who had to initiate the required transformation in matter, in the body, on earth. If this conception – fantastic, grandiose, utopian! – was true, then... starting-point and has only a constructed understanding of unity; even when it experiences oneness, it has to act from the oneness on a basis of limitation and difference. But the supramental, the divine life is a life of essential, spontaneous and inherent unity.” 36 As all is in all, Supermind was present in the manifestation since its inception. It caused the manifestation – the typal worlds ...
... no question of a divine life here, though that is hinted at as the unexpressed possible result of the ascent—because the Earth is not put aside ("Earth's heart was felt beating below me still"); nevertheless the poem expresses only the ascent towards the Highest, far beyond the Life Heavens, and the Earth-Spirit claims that power and does not speak of any descent of a Divine Life. I say so much... Perhaps I shall have to copy it out. As for the other question—where do you find in "The Life Heavens" that I say or anybody says the conditions on the earth are glorious and suited to the Divine Life? There is not a word to that effect there! The Life Heavens are the heavens of the vital gods and there is there a perfect harmony but a harmony of the sublimated satisfied senses and vital desires ...
... must carefully distinguish them. They are: first, the establishment of a divine life on earth and, second, personal divinisation. Evidently, if one individual got divinised, it would not mean 1 Mother India, December 5,1953, "A 'Call' from Pondicherry", p. 187. 2 Ibid. Page 54 that a divine life had been terrestrially established. Unless a certain group undergoes the... not indispensable for it and an individual's change into a new being is suggested also when the Mother speaks of "a group in time arranged in a file in time" as one of the possibilities by which a divine life on earth may be established. Does not this imply one individual realising that life before others who repeat his realisation in the succeeding years? Here, too, however, we must note that an ...
... Reality, into his own universal and transcendent Self and source of existence. It is on this foundation that we have to base our conception of a truth in our terrestrial being and the possibility of a divine Life in material Nature. There our chief need is to discover the origin and nature of the Ignorance Page 380 which we see emerging out of the inconscience of matter or disclosing itself within... Page 387 unity. This mutuality founded in unity is the whole secret of the divine existence in its perfect manifestation; it must be the basis of anything to which we can give the name of a divine life. But, secondly, we see that the whole difficulty and confusion into which the normal reason falls is that we are speaking of a higher and illimitable self-experience founded on divine infinities... life by it, is that which makes the working out of the divine self-manifestation through the individual possible; and the arrival of the individual—not Page 401 in one but in all—at the divine life is the sole conceivable object of the movement. The existence of the individual is not an error in some self of the Absolute which that self afterwards discovers; for it is impossible that the absolute ...
... sacrifice Immortality made possible and attained. All the powers and potentialities of the human life are offered up, in the symbol of a sacrifice, to the divine Life in the Cosmos. Knowledge, Force and Delight are the three powers of the divine Life; thought and its formations, will and its works, love and its harmonisings are the corresponding human activities which have to be exalted to the divine... virtue, action and inaction are the confusions of will, dissipators of the divine Force. And all these confusions arise and even become necessary modes of our action because the triune powers of the divine Life are divorced from each other, Knowledge from Strength, Love from both, by the Ignorance which divides. It is the Ignorance, the dominant cosmic Falsehood that has to be removed. Through the Truth ...
... The Path and the Goal Letters on Yoga - II Chapter II The Aim of the Integral Yoga A Yoga of Divine Life You have apparently a call and may be fit for Yoga; but there are different paths and each has a different aim and end before it. It is common to all the paths to conquer the desires, to put aside the ordinary relations of life, and to try to pass... object of this Yoga to transform life by bringing down into it the Light, Power and Bliss of the divine Truth and its dynamic certitudes. This Yoga is not a Yoga of world-shunning asceticism, but of divine Life. Your object, on the other hand, can only be gained by entering into Samadhi and ceasing in it from all connection with world-existence. The way of Yoga followed here has a different purpose... divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter. This is an exceedingly difficult aim and difficult Yoga; to many or most it will seem impossible. All the established forces of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness are opposed to ...
... nothing to do with materialism. I would like to know if in the higher spiritual or Divine Life the sexual or vital play is to be altogether banned. If you expect to indulge it in the Divine Life, you will never get rid of it—it will remain clinging under that excuse. If there is to be no sex in the Divine Life, how is the human race to continue? Why concern yourself with the continuity of ...
... , change totally the minute one decides to do yoga and enter the divine life. Then, all values change completely; what is honest in ordinary life, is no longer at all honest for you. Besides, there is such a reversal of values that one can no longer use the same ordinary language. If one wants to consecrate oneself to the divine life, one must do it truly, that is, give oneself entirely, no longer... life as the only spiritual condition. But this is an error; it leaves the power in the hands of the hostile forces. To reconquer it for the Divine to whom it belongs and use it divinely for the divine life is the supramental way for the sadhaka." Sri Aurobindo, The Mother , pp. 11-12 How can one know if one's way of using money is in accordance with the divine Will? One must first ...
... April Questions and Answers (1957-1958) 24 April 1957 " A divine life in a material world implies necessarily a union of the two ends of existence, the spiritual summit and the material base. The soul with the basis of its life established in Matter ascends to the heights of the Spirit but does not cast away its... revealing instrument, it does not cast away the energies of Matter, its capacities, its methods; it brings out their hidden possibilities, uplifts, sublimates, discloses their innate divinity. The divine life will reject nothing that is capable of divinisation; all is to be seized, exalted, made utterly perfect. " In the pursuit of perfection we can start at either end of our range of being and we... lower perfection; but this can usually be done only by a transition from the lower to a higher outlook, aspiration and motive: this we shall have to do if our aim is to transform the human into the divine life. But here there comes in the necessity of taking up the activities of human life and sublimating them by the power of the spirit. Here the lower perfection will not disappear; it will remain but ...
... way of surmounting the ordinary mental activity? 1 My answer: Keep silent. Second Seminar: 22 November 1964 How to be steady and sincere in our aspiration for the Divine Life. 2 Consider the Divine Life as the most important thing to obtain. Page 301 Third Seminar: 14 February 1965 How to discriminate between Truth and falsehood in the impulses of action. 3 ... speak of—inertia, shyness, laziness, etc., etc. And it is just for that I asked you to do it four times a year. The students are not here to have an easy life but to prepare themselves for the Divine Life. How can they expect to get ready if they shun an effort, remain lazy and "tamasic"? 30 October 1967 Page 316 × ...
... I have in view is a Samgha [community] founded in the spirit and in the image of its oneness. It is with this idea that the name Deva Samgha has been given—the commune of those who want the divine life is the Deva Samgha. Such a Samgha will have to be established in one place at first and then spread all over the country. But if any shadow of egoism falls over this endeavor, then the Samgha will... write about the Deva Samgha and say, "I am not a god, I am only a piece of much hammered and tempered iron." No one is a God but in each man there is a God and to make Him manifest is the aim of divine life. That we can all do. I recognize that there are great and small adharas [vessels]. I do not accept, however, your description of yourself as accurate. Still whatever the nature of the vessel, once... who will be the instruments of God. I have no faith in the customary trade of the guru. I do not wish to be a guru. If anybody wakes and manifests from within his slumbering godhead and gets the divine life—be it at my touch or at another's—this is what I want. It is such men that will raise the country. You must not think from all this lecture that I despair of the future of Bengal. I too hope, ...
... childish. My physical mind is not yet convinced that human life is capable of overcoming all suffering and even death. It may be that human life is indeed incapable of it; but for the divine life nothing is impossible. Is it strange that one should become disgusted with this world? The repetition of the same round—that is death itself. This is one way of seeing things; but there... in you; for you will soon discover that in the depths of this emptiness is the Divine. If I find some solace in books, how can I say that nothing sustains me and that I am plunged in the divine life through an absolute emptiness? "The absolute emptiness" is more of an image than a reality. It is better to keep in one's heart a high aspiration rather than an obscure somnolence. Page 170... than all alone, without anyone to shed light on the path and guide the uncertain footsteps? My darling Mamma, I want to lead a pure life and I shall do all I can to progress towards the divine life. This does not depend so much on outer conditions, but above all on the inner state. A pure being is always pure, in all circumstances. You will admit that one can't live with others ...
... science, and then messages of thanksgiving for relief and remedy by spiritual means. No, Sri Aurobindo. the Yogi of the Supermind descending into the outer as well as the inner being and bringing a divine life on earth in addition to the infinite immortality of the Beyond, cannot be looked upon as passing away on account of old age and physical causes. Whatever the purely clinical picture, it must have... Nothing except a colossal strategic sacrifice of this kind in order that the physical transformation of the Mother may be immeasurably hastened and rendered absolutely secure and, through it, a divine life on earth for humanity may soon get rooted and be set aflower - nothing less can explain the passing of Sri Aurobindo. There would also be implied in the holocaust a world-saving action by the sweet... occult force and process whether with or even without the assistance or intervention of some gross material procedure. A soul wishing to enter into a body or form for itself a body and take part in a divine life upon earth might be assisted to do so or even provided with such a form by this method of direct transmutation without passing through birth by the sex process or undergoing any degradation or any ...
... forth the Divinity which is involved in material existence and which serves, by its covert presence there, to give that existence ultimately a permanent Divine Life as an intrinsic luminous right, a dharma or self-law, rather than as a mere super-imposition, however brilliant, a siddhi or infused and hence insecure... law of entropy and not realising that it is a brake to his ideal of human beings evolved beyond themselves and transformed into supramental ones leading a collective divine life on earth of unity-in-diversity and illumined dynamism. How it could be a brake is not quite clear. Is it because such a life would mark a supreme height... emergence and increasing organization of what we must call 'mental properties' ". 47 Here we have an index to the possibility — nay, the certainty — of a triumphant divine life on earth with new organs and faculties supremely supra-phy-sical in power and therefore likely to be capable of changing the inexorable-looking second law ...
... Bulletin, Vol. XV, No. 4, p. 51) The goal of our Sadhana is not merely the liberation of some isolated individuals from the shackles of phenomenal Ignorance but the establishment of a divine life upon earth, ihaiva. But since Matter is the foundation of all evolutionary efflorescence of Life here on the terrestrial plane, our body assumes a supreme importance in the total scheme of our... body is not only the necessary outer instrument of the physical part of the action, but for the purposes of this life a base or pedestal also for all inner action." 1 So a full play of divine life demands as its essential prerequisite a fully transformed material body which as a supple and flawless and potent instrument will respond fully to every call of the self-manifesting Spirit. "At... present law of death, division and mutual devouring, the material substance will be transfigured and spiritualised and our body will become the body divine that will "reflect or reproduce here in divine life on the earth something of [the] highest greatness and glory of the self-manifesting spirit." 2 We have been so far speaking in the future tense, but that should not carry the impression ...
... parā prakrti, of which the lower Nature is only a darkened derivative. The Gita stops short only at a sparkling hint of the Divine Life and the transcendence of the gunas, but Sri Aurobindo takes up this hint and elaborates it into a glowing evangel of the Divine Life created by the transfiguring and revealing dynamism of the parā prakrti, the supreme Divine Nature, the Mother. The soul of... higher and lower, parā and aparā. An accomplished Karmayogi lives, not the normal human life of desire and attachment, ¹ dharmakshetre kwukshetre Page 291 but the divine life of unity and creative harmony in the immortal consciousness of the Infinite, though he apparently moves and works like others in the world; and he does not live in the lower nature of the fettering ...
... There were vases, and roses too. On 15 September 1939, the Mother offered to Sri Aurobindo the flower "Gratitude". It was a simple self-sufficing gesture. Of the kind of constant human-divine life Sri Aurobindo lived in those days, who can bear witness except the Mother - or such reverent observant beloved attendants like Champaklal and Nirod? For example, the Mother has recalled a singular... and perhaps a hint of imminent happenings - perhaps all three in unison. The ideal should be, not simply a healthy or beautiful mind in a healthy and beautiful body, but rather a perfect and divine life in a perfect and divine body. But, then, what are the badges of the current imperfection of the body and the divorce of the Divine from human life? Life in the ignorance, life yoked to the density... what may be called a gnostic mentality, in a transformation of the human being, even before the supermind is reached, even in the earth-consciousness and in a humanity transformed, an illumined divine life. It would be an intermediate or forerunner race between our mentalised humanity and the ultimate supramentalised Gnostic beings.* Along with Sri Aurobindo's articles, the ...
... would best serve the economy of cosmic Nature. A materialistic philosophy would admit of no possibility of a divine life in Matter; but even a philosophy admitting a soul or spirit or a spiritual terminus of the evolutionary movement here could very well deny the capacity of earth for a divine life: a divine existence could only be achieved by a departure from earth and the body. Even if cosmic existence... case capable of the full possibilities of mind acting as a recipient of that truth and at least a secondary action of it in thought and life. It could even be a part of what could be described as a divine life upon earth and at least the beginnings of an evolution in the Knowledge and no longer entirely or predominantly in the Ignorance. How far this would go, whether it would eventually embrace the whole ...
... consciously in eternity and not in the bondage of the hour and the succession of the moments is the substance of the change: so to exist is a first condition of the divine consciousness and the divine life. To possess and govern from that inner eternity of being the course and process of the becoming is the second, the dynamic condition with, as its practical outcome, a spiritual self-possession and... impulsion, but as masters—subject only to the Divine within us—of our being and nature. At the same time we get rid of the egoistic ignorance; for so long as we are at any point bound by that, the divine life must either be unattainable or imperfect in its self-expression. For the ego is a falsification of our true individuality by a limiting self-identification of it with this life, this mind, this body:... luminous plastic automatic process of its knowledge. This would seem to be the method and the result of the conscious spiritual evolution; a transformation of the life of the Ignorance into the divine life of the truth-conscious spirit, a change from the mental into a spiritual and supramental way of being, a self-expansion out of the sevenfold ignorance into the sevenfold knowledge. This transformation ...
... master of himself and by increasing union with the Infinite possessor of his universe. Desire is the lever by which the divine Life-principle effects its end of self-affirmation in the universe and the attempt to extinguish it in the interests of inertia is a denial of the divine Life-principle, a Will-not-to-be which is necessarily ignorance; for one cannot cease to be individually except by being infinitely... clasp of Love replacing the convulsive clasp of strife. Still, strife is the necessary and salutary beginning. Death, Desire and Strife are the trinity of divided living, the triple mask of the divine Life-principle in its first essay of cosmic self-affirmation. Page 209 ...
... of its own Force. Between these two poles there is the possibility of an infinite gradation. These considerations become of great importance when we consider the possible relation between the divine life and the divine mind of the perfected human soul and the very gross and seemingly undivine body or formula of physical being in which we actually dwell. That formula is the result of a certain fixed... substance from its present imperfections be imposed on this sensible form and instrument of our being, then there may be even here a physical working of divine mind and sense, a physical working of divine life in the human frame and even the evolution upon earth of something that we may call a divinely human body. The Page 268 body of man also may some day come by its transfiguration; the ... ascent in the grades of substance to that ideal or causal body which is proper to our supramental being, and the conquest of the lower principles by supermind and its liberation of them into a divine life and a divine mentality must also render possible a conquest of our physical limitations by the power and principle of supramental substance. And this means the evolution not only of an untrammelled ...
... 47 the knowledge of his conscious mind, by the general march of Nature, but at last consciously by a progressive awakening and self-enlargement, to his divine ascension. The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man's real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect... man searches after so that having found he may affirm it in his mental and bodily existence. This practical affirmation of something essentially superior to his present self is the basis of the divine life in the human being. Awakened to a profounder self-knowledge than his first mental idea of himself, Man begins to conceive some formula and to perceive some appearance of the thing that he has... solution for the logical mind,—for we are standing on the border-line of the unknowable, the ineffable and straining our eyes beyond,—but a sufficient basis in experience for the practice of the divine life. To do this we must dare to go below the clear surfaces of things on which the mind loves to dwell, to tempt the vast and obscure, to penetrate the unfathomable depths of consciousness and identify ...
... starting-point and has only a constructed understanding of unity; even when it experiences oneness, it has to act from the oneness on a basis of limitation and difference. But the supramental, the divine life is a life of essential, spontaneous and inherent unity. It is impossible for the mind to forecast in detail what the supramental change must be in its parts of life action and outward behaviour or... into a wide or deep or passionate delight of universal union and love and sympathy and the joy of beings and the joy of things. In the will and vital parts it is felt as the energy of delight of a divine life-power in action or a beatitude of the senses perceiving and meeting the One everywhere, perceiving as their normal aesthesis of things a universal beauty and a secret harmony of creation of which... divine Being and Nature, a soul and life of love, a soul and life of divine light and knowledge, a soul and life of divine power and sovereign action and creation, and innumerable other forms of divine life; on the supramental height all would be taken up into a manifold unity, a supreme integration of being and life. A fulfilment of the being in a luminous and blissful integration of its states and ...
... from the falsehoods and uncer tainties that are our lot; it moves in safety towards its per fection. Once the truth-consciousness was established hen on its own sure foundation, the evolution of divine life would be a progress in felicity, a march through light to Ananda." 1 Man is a transitional being, and the spiritual man is the sign of the new evolution. The intention of Nature in the... still needed in the totality has to be preserved, but all has to be perfected. "The human body has", says Sri Aurobindo, "in it parts and instruments that have been sufficiently evolved to serve the divine life; these have to survive in their form, though they must be still farther perfected, their limitations of range and use removed, their liability to defect and malady and impairment eliminated, their... absolute essence and pitch of the all-creating Ananda. The transformation of the physical being might follow this incessant line of progression and the divine body reflect or reproduce here in a divine life on the earth something of this highest greatness and glory of the self-manifesting Spirit." 4 4. Ibid ., p. 40. Page 286 ...
... themselves to receive the supramental Force, to assimilate it and to obey it. “Of course, there is a higher state than this, namely the state Sri Aurobindo speaks of as the ideal to be fulfilled: the divine life in a divine body. But he himself tells us that this will take time, it is an integral transformation that cannot be achieved in a moment. It will even take quite a long time … However, it is no longer... the dissolution of its individual beings in the Supreme … If a total transformation of the being is our aim, a transformation of the body must be an indispensable part of it; without that no full divine life on earth is possible.” 36 But there remains that huge gap to be bridged between the human and the supramental physicality. As long as bodies are formed by the method of procreation which is... this subtle physical substance and precipitate the forms thus made into our grosser materiality is feasible … “A soul wishing to enter into a body or form for itself a body and take part in a divine life upon earth might be assisted to do so or even provided with such a form by this method of direct transmutation, without passing through birth by the sex process or undergoing any degradation or any ...
... Mother 11 December 1956 To paint was all right with me, but I did really want to live the Divine Life. I wondered how to make my whole being come round to join the ardent aspiration of my soul to lead the Divine Life in completeness. Once again I implored the Mother to accomplish my longing, because now my patience was wearing thin. She replied on a pretty... pretty card: 11.12.56 Bonjour To My dear little child To my sweet Huta I have read your nice letter—yes, my dear child, I will explain to you all that is needed to live the Divine Life, the true life, and I will show you the way step by step. My love and blessings and the Divine Grace are always present with you, night and day and for ever ...
... there is nothing in it worth getting upset about. What is lasting, eternal, immortal and infinite — that indeed is worth having, worth conquering, worth possessing. It is Divine Light, Divine Love, Divine Life — it is also Supreme Peace, Perfect Joy and All-Mastery upon earth with the Complete Manifestation as the Crowning. When you get the sense of relativity of things, then whatever happens, you can... with every passing breeze. His heart and mind and will should not have separate contrary fascinations: 'All his members should worship the same Sun'. The 'Sun' here is of course the Divine and the divine life. This should be the sadhaka 's constant and conscious effort in course of his conduct of daily life. 6. "To Observe, to Watch Over, to Control, to Master" As a part of his regular... pointed out, "to pretend that you want to live the spiritual life and not to do it, to pretend that you want to seek the truth and not to do it, to display the external signs of consecration to the divine life... but within to be concerned only with oneself, one's selfishness and one's own needs." {Questions and Answers, M C W Vol. 3, p. 190) 7. "To Take Life Seriously" Wishing to wake ...
... shackles of phenomenal Ignorance but the establishment of a truly divine life upon earth itself, ihaiva. But since Matter is the foundation of all evolutionary efflorescence of life here upon the terrestrial plane, our physical body assumes a supreme importance in the total scheme of our spiritual achievement. A full play of divine life demands as its essential prerequisite a totally transformed physical... law of death, division and mutual devouring, the material substance itself will be transfigured and spiritualised and our body will become the body divine that will "reflect or reproduce here in a divine life on the earth something of [the] highest greatness and glory of the self-manifesting Spirit." (Sri Aurobindo, The Supra-mental Manifestaion upon Earth, 1952 edition, p. 74) Indeed, no limit ...
... all things are. (Savitri, Book II, Canto V, p. 167) The Philosophy of Integralism arising out of Sri Aurobindo's Integral Vision of the Reality and world-process envisages "a divine life upon earth and liberation of earth-nature itself as part of a total purpose of the embodiment of the spirit here", 1 and the Yoga of supramental Transformation as brought into action by the Mother... perfect Becoming." 1 Attitude towards body and bodily life: It is quite obvious that in this Vision of the integral fulfilment of terrestrial life, in this idea of the establishment of a divine life upon earth in an earthly body, our body is bound to assume a place of capital importance. For, is it not too patent a fact that man as a species has become man, as distinct from and superior... evolution, this Gnostic Knowledge-Will is bound to emerge and be overtly operative in the field of earthly manifestation; and this supramental manifestation in its turn is sure to usher in its wake a divine life in a divine body in a material world, for which Nature, the Great Mother, has been in travail since ages past. This divine transfiguration of life in the field of matter will necessarily signify ...
... object of my Yoga to transform life by bringing down into it the Light, Power and Bliss of the Divine Truth ana its dynamic certitudes. This Yoga is not a Yoga of world-shunning asceticism, but of divine life.... It aims at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object." 1 Elsewhere Sri Aurobindo asserts emphatically: "I am... a 'pure and spiritualised physical existence'. "The transformation of the physical being might follow [an] incessant line of progression and the divine body reflect or reproduce here in a divine life on the earth something of [the] highest greatness and glory of the self-manifesting Spirit." 1 At this point the critic may interject: Is it 'practical politics' after all ? As an ideal... being. "The conquest of the lower principles by Supermind and its liberation 1 A line from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri. 2 The Life Divine, p. 932 of them into a divine life and divine mentality must also render possible a conquest of our physical limitations by the power and principle of supramental substance." 1 Sri Aurobindo assures us that there will ...
... appointed means for that progressive manifestation of the immortal divine life in the field of matter-bound mortality. And man the mental being has appeared at a crucial turning-point of that evolutionary ascension. For, this man, the transitional being, is destined to become the vehicle of the establishment and manifestation of divine life upon earth. And for that, the Transcendent-Universal Lord of existence... and the ultimate consummation of the movement of evolution. Renunciation in the Integral Yoga: Now, to collaborate actively with the ascending evolutionary movement and prepare for the divine life upon earth is the life-goal set before the sadhakas of the Integral Yoga. So we are not entitled to follow the escapist tendency and step back from the world-process by declaring with the traditional ...
... Questions and Answers, 8.3-51, 25.11.53. Page 94 If a total transformation of the being is our aim, a transformation of the body must be an indispensable part of it; without that no full divine life on earth is possible....¹ In fact, Sri Aurobindo gives us in this chapter some very valuable indications of the psychological and physical characteristics of the new species of superhumanity... something unrecognisable but a high sequel to what has already been achieved and in part perfected. The human body has in it parts and instruments that have been sufficiently evolved to serve the divine life; these have to survive in their form, though they must be still further perfected, their limitations of range and use removed, their liability to defect and malady and impairment eliminated, their... absolute essence and pitch of the all-creating Ananda. The transformation of the physical being might follow this incessant line of progression and the divine body reflect or reproduce here in a divine life on the earth something of this highest greatness and glory of the self-manifesting Spirit.¹ *** In 1949, things began to become very serious. In early 1950, Sri Aurobindo told the Mother: ...
... got from me is the first foundation, the base of my yoga — surrender, equality etc. He has been working on these things; the work is not complete.... I have spoken in my English writings of the "divine life". Nolini has translated this as devajivana. The community of those who want the deva-jivana is the deva-sangha. Motilal has begun an attempt to establish this kind of community in seed-form... yoga and his comment that he was 'not a god, only some much-hammered and tempered steel', Sri Aurobindo wrote: 'No one is a god, but each man has a god within him. To manifest him is the aim of the divine life. That everyone can do. I admit that certain individuals have greater or lesser capacities. I do not, however, accept as accurate your description of yourself but whatever the capacity, if once God... in guruhood of the usual type. I do not want to be a guru. What I want is for someone, awakened by my touch or by that of another, to manifest from within his sleeping divinity and to realise the divine life. Such men will uplift this country.' A few words about Motilal Roy and the Prahartak Sangha may not be out of place here. From the time Motilal gave shelter to Sri Aurobindo at Chandernagore, ...
... would best serve the economy of cosmic Nature. A materialistic philosophy would admit of no possibility of a divine life in Matter; but even a philosophy admitting a soul or spirit or a spiritual terminus of the evolutionary movement here could very well deny the capacity of earth for a divine life: a divine existence could only be achieved by a departure from earth and the body. Even if cosmic existence... capable of the full possibilities of mind acting as a recipient of that truth. and at least a secondary action of it in thought and life. It could even be a part of v/hat could be described as a divine life upon earth and at least the beginnings of an evolution in the Knowledge and no longer entirely or predominantly in the Ignorance. How far this would go, whether it would eventually embrace the whole ...
... wide and so radical that one is required to readjust, sometimes, one's mind in order to catch fully all that The Life Divine The first thing that strikes you is that it does not speak of divine life but of "Life Divine". So the insistence at the dawn of that new age is on "Life",—and the possibility of its transformation. Life human is there, the book establishes the possibility of the tran... expression of the Divine. That is how we look at this great book. It wants to take hold of life, consider life as the main element to deal with. And it tries to show how life can be turned into divine life. Now the fact that he points out is that this life as manifested in man has an aspiration. Life as manifested on earth and in the human being, in humanity—as a group and individuals-has an aspiration... what is proper and what is improper. The divine manifestation is a harmony, not a dazzling and inexplicable miracle. It is not something extraordinary and queer. It is an ordered rhythm of divine life that has to be brought into life. An ordered rhythm which is irresistible; you can create that only by living that life inside and by disciplining the whole instrumentation to manifest the Divine ...
... and feel Her Presence even for a day, I shall cease to exist. The psychic love, the psychic attitude, the psychic self-giving, the psychic faithfulness and obedience—this is the only path to the Divine Life on earth. This is what Sri Aurobindo calls the sun-lit path. And it is the Mother's Grace alone that can lead us through this path to our Divine fulfilment. The Mother is Sri Aurobindo, and Sri Aurobindo... to hew his path through a virgin forest. He had to pass through all spiritual experiences in order to realise the ultimate synthesis of them all in an integral Divine fulfilment of man on earth—a Divine Life in a divine body. 5.02.67 * * * Regarding Vivekananda, I have read almost all his writings, speeches and talks. What a great man, what a harmonious life, and how irresistibly... nobody before him ever conceived of. As the Mother says, "Sri Aurobindo does not belong to History ; he is outside and beyond History." He is the creator of the future, the glorious future of the Divine Life on earth. We take our hats off to all great leaders and prophets and Avataras, but we follow none but Sri Aurobindo! He is our Guru, our guide and our goal. 11.04.67 * * * Regarding ...
... It becomes for us the universe. Divine consciousness possesses that delight eternally. For that, the problem does not exist. But if man is to attain divine life then that veiled Divine Self must be unveiled to man. Otherwise he cannot live the divine life here. In actuality we feel two things : one is the unity of Satchidananda, and the other is the divided mentality; that is to say, the mental consciousness... consciousness ? In order to have the real change man will have to undertake a serious inner effort and become so changed in his nature in life and his relation to others as to be able to embody the divine life. How must we changed in order to do that ? He is presenting that problem; and in Chapter 17 he says we have seen the descent of the Divine, the descent from the Truth-Consciousness to the ego formation ...
... towards the realisation of the divine life in the light of Sri Page-180 Aurobindo and the Mother's teaching, to walk on the path of Truth and to establish that Truth in our life; on the other, the tremendously hostile forces that constantly try to attack and block this upward movement towards the divine life. These asuric forces do not... not want the divine life to be established upon the earth, they do not want the transformation of man's nature. That is why, each time we decide to work upon an advice of the Mother, or set out to practise Sri Aurobindo's clear guidance, these asuric forces mount a ferocious attack on us, try to demolish our endeavour and our aspiration. We are forced to start anew with an equal mind. I am sure many ...
... and less purely intuitive symmetries and groupings of the European styles. But these bodies are not, when we look close at them, bronze representations of human flesh and human life, but forms of divine life, embodiments of the gods. The human type is exceeded, and if sometimes one more subtly and psychically beautiful replaces it, at other times all mere physical beauty is contemptuously disregarded... whole ocean of being expresses itself. The significance varies; sometimes it is unfathomable thought, sometimes the self-restraint of infinite power, sometimes the self-contained oceanic surge of divine life and energy, sometimes the absolute immortal ecstasy. But always one has to look not at the form, but through and into it to see that which has seized and informed it. The appeal of this art is in ...
... substance: it has all the universal conscious-force of existence behind it and is not a separate entity or movement. Life in us must become conscious of this divine Force behind it in order to become divine.—Life, at first darkened, ignorant, divided and helplessly subject, seeks as it develops to become master and enjoyer, to grow in Power; but until it escapes from the bonds of individuality it must be... Therefore growth by struggle is the third Law of Life. This strife again has to divinise itself and become the clasp of Love. Until then Death, Desire and Strife are and must be the triple mask of the divine Life-principle in its cosmic self-affirmation. Page 473 ...
... ascending gradation of its own powers and types of an ascending humanity which will embody more and more the turn towards spirituality, capacity for Light, a climb towards a divinised manhood and the divine life. In the birth of the mind of Light and its ascension into its own recognisable self and its true status and right province there must be, in the very nature of things as they are and very nature... what may be called a gnostic mentality, in a transformation of the human being, even before the supermind is reached, even in the earth-consciousness and in a humanity transformed, an illumined divine life. Page 587 ...
... in its search seven in the place of three prime elements of conscious being. Sat, Chit, Ananda, Vijnana are four divine unmodifiable principles; they constitute the divine being, divine nature & divine life, and are called in their sum Amritam, Immortality; Manas, Prana, Annam, Mind, Life & Matter, are inferior & modifying principles constituting in their sum in this material world mortal being, mortal... mortal life and are called Mrityu or Martya, mortality. The doctrine and instruction of the possibility, the means and the necessity for man of climbing from Mrityu to Amritam, out of Death into divine Life,—mrityum tírtwámritam asnute, is Veda & Vedanta. The world in which we live seems to our normal experience of it to be a material world; matter is its first term, matter is its last. Life-energy ...
... practise is not for ourselves alone, but for the Divine; its aim is to work out the will of the Divine in the world, to effect a spiritual transformation and to bring down a divine nature and a divine life into the mental, vital and physical nature and life of humanity. Its object is not personal Mukti, although Mukti is a necessary condition of the yoga, but the liberation and transformation of the... Thus, in Sri Aurobindo's view, too, the object of yoga is not merely to attain individual liberation but to become an instrument for bringing down the Divine's kingdom on earth and establishing a divine life in the world by a transformation of mind, life, and body. Sri Aurobindo therefore makes a distinction between liberation and transformation. As he explains in a letter to a disciple: What ...
... shall do. You write about the deva sangha: "I am not a God, I am only some much hammered and refined iron". No one is a God but in each man there is a God and to make Him manifest is the aim of divine life. That we can all do. I recognise that there are great and small Adharas (vessels). I do not accept as accurate your description of yourself. Still whatever the nature of a vessel be, once the touch... of God. I have no faith in the customary trade of the Guru. I do not wish to be a Guru. That at my touch or at another's some wake and manifest from within their slumbering Godhead and get the divine life this is what I want. It is such men that will raise the country. You must not think from all this lecture that I despair of the future of Bengal. You say that what is needed is the Bhava intoxication ...
... course necessary to constitute a supramental, divine being. “If a total transformation of the being is our aim, a transformation of the body must be an indispensable part of it; without that no full divine life on earth is possible.” 8 Otherwise how would one be able “to be here and there at the same time”? How would one be able “to communicate with many people at the same time”? In other words, how... × “The necessary forms and instrumentations of Matter must remain since it is in a world of Matter that the divine life has to manifest, but their materiality must be refined, uplifted, ennobled, illumined, since Matter and the world of Matter have increasingly to manifest the indwelling spirit.” Sri Aurobindo: Essays ...
... in life for her,—any more than Poetry or Literature are with me,— the Divine, the divine consciousness, the discovery of the conditions for a divine life are and must be our one concern, with Art, Poetry or Music as parts or means only of the divine life or expression of the Divine Truth and the Divine Beauty. That does not mean that they are only "tolerated", but that they are put in their right ...
... n is realized,’ the Mother said the day after her epoch-making experience. ‘It is the denial of all the spiritual assurances of the past [which say]: “If you want to live fully conscious of the divine life, give up your body, for the body cannot follow [the spiritual aspiration].” But you see, Sri Aurobindo has come and he has said: “Not only can the body follow, it can even be the base which manifests... be called ‘the Utopia of all Utopias,’ its aim being the concrete realization of the Divine on Earth, in a human body, and the great change of ‘the vale of tears and darkness’ into a materialized Divine Life. The Mother seemed to be quite sure of the success of the fantastic enterprise she was launching: ‘The city will be built by what is invisible to you. The men who have to act as instruments will ...
... a school here, it is in order that it be different from the millions of schools in the world,’ the Mother said. ‘It is to give the children a chance to distinguish between ordinary life and the divine life, the life of truth – to see things in a different way. It is useless to want to repeat here the ordinary life. The teacher’s mission is to open the eyes of the children to something which they will... part of it cannot be left aside; for the body is the material basis, the body is the instrument we have to use … A total perfection is the ultimate aim which we set before us, for our ideal is the Divine Life which we wish to create here, the life of the Spirit fulfilled on earth, life accomplishing its own spiritual transformation even here on earth in the conditions of the material universe. That cannot ...
... Supramental Manifestation, Sri Aurobindo had written about the evolutionary continuity: ‘The necessary forms and instrumentations of Matter must remain since it is in a world of Matter that the divine life has to manifest, but their materiality must be refined, uplifted, ennobled, illumined, since Matter and the world of Matter have increasingly to manifest the indwelling Spirit.’ 6 This important... woken up to a new receptivity and they have opened to the divine Influence, directly … ‘This is the denial of all spiritual confirmations of the past: “If you want to live fully conscious of the divine life, leave your body, for the body cannot follow.” But Sri Aurobindo has come and he has said that the body can not only follow: it can be the base manifesting the Divine. The work still has to be done ...
... Peter Heehs therefore writes: ‘[Sri Aurobindo] did not look forward to full success in his lifetime. But he believed that whatever he accomplished would help in the eventual establishment of a divine life on earth, in a body, and not only in an insubstantial heaven or nirvana.’ 17 We must conclude that Sri Aurobindo cannot have been the source of the belief or conviction that he and the Mother... was happening to the Mother was exactly what should happen, deterioration and death being the laws of Nature. Nobody can be prevented from imagining great things like the cancellation of death, a divine life upon Earth, an end to suffering, and what not — but, you see, Sri Aurobindo too had succumbed, even Sri Aurobindo. Therefore one could be reasonably certain that this lady, called the Mother, would ...
... || When I joined the Ashram in 1927 I had the good fortune to accept two reformists—Sri Aurobindo and the Mother—as my Gurus. Both of them have revolutionized and reformed human life into Divine life and transformed the old face and outlook of Indian spirituality. They are the pioneers of a new ideal, namely that of transformation of human nature and divinization of human life. This was the... that had spontaneously led and transmuted my life into an everflowing river that absorbs all ills wherever it flows, and sanctifies and suggests by its own movements that it is moving towards the Divine. Life is a voyage towards the Divine and I was trying to prove it through my dedication pilgrimage. I did not attribute these successes to my individual capacity. All positive, inspiring and miraculous ...
... coming Victory—it is the most powerful arms to chase it for ever. Keep courage and faith—I am with you. To lead the Divine Life does not depend on any exterior activity of circumstances whatever you do from the highest work to the most ordinary; you can lead the Divine Life if you are in the true consciousness and the right attitude. ...
... The perfecting of the normal mind, heart, prana and body gives us only the perfection of the psycho-physical machine we have to use and creates certain right instrumental conditions for a divine life and works lived and done with a purer, greater, clearer power and knowledge. The next question is that of the Force which is poured into the instruments, karaṇa , and the One who works it for his... the manifest divine Shakti, the supreme or the universal Force unveiled in the liberated individual being, parā prakṛtir jīvabhūtā , who will be the doer of all the action and the power of this divine life, kartā . The One behind this force will be the Ishwara, the Master of all being, with whom all our existence will be in our perfection a Yoga at once of oneness in being and of union in various ...
... d to us as life, knowledge, force and power, emotion, sensation and desire. The object of Yoga is to turn all these things towards God. Therefore to become one with God, to be Divine and live a Divine Life is the first object of Yoga. The second is to know God in Himself and in ourselves and in everything. The third is to make ourselves one with the Divine Will and to do in our life a Divine Work by... enjoy God in all beings, in all things and in all that happens. Since the Life is to be Divine there must be siddhi or Perfection of the Being. The difference between the Divine Being and Divine Life and ours is that we are in the limited ego, confined to our own physical and mental experiences while that is beyond ego infinite eternal and all-embracing. Page 1463 Therefore we have ...
... earthly manifestation, to a profound and powerful change not only in the ethical, but in the social and outward life and ideals of the race. He may, on the other hand, descend as an incarnation of the divine life, the divine personality and power in its characteristic action, for a mission ostensibly social, ethical and political, as is represented in the story of Rama or Krishna; but always then this descent... because their permanent truth and value lie in their persistence as a spiritual form, presence, influence in the inner consciousness of the race and the life of the human soul. Avatarhood is a fact of divine life and consciousness which may realise itself in an outward action, but must persist, when that action is over and has done its work, in a spiritual influence; or may realise itself in a spiritual influence ...
... there as the Mother. It is a Vedic epithet of the God Vayu, who, representing the divine principle in the Life-energy, Prana, extends himself in Matter and vivifies its forms. Here, it signifies the divine Life-power that presides in all forms of cosmic activity. × Apas , as it is accentuated in the version... state of beatitude is intended, self-content in the principle of pure Love and Joy, which the Vedic initiates regarded as the source of the divine existence in the universe and the foundation of the divine life in the human being. It is the deformation of this principle by egoism which appears as desire and the lust of possession in the lower worlds. ...
... the infallible promise that I will lead thee to myself through and beyond all sorrow and evil. Whatever difficulties and perplexities arise, be sure of this that I am leading thee to a complete divine life in the universal and an immortal existence in the transcendent Spirit." The secret thing, guhyam , that all deep spiritual knowledge reveals to us, mirrored in various teachings and justified... the teaching is given, and Arjuna the chosen human soul is once more turned, no longer in his egoistic mind but in this greatest self-knowledge, to the divine action. The Vibhuti is ready for the divine life in the human, his conscious spirit for the works of the liberated soul, muktasya karma . Destroyed is the illusion of the mind; the soul's memory of its self and its truth concealed so long by ...
... the true or spiritual person which is an eternal portion of the Divine. II. "The contemplation of the Christian ... is inseparable Page 508 from the state of Grace 3 and the divine life. Even when he annuls himself, his personality still triumphs by allowing itself to be torn away from all that is not itself, by breaking all the bonds that tie it to the flesh so that the living... the mental individuality and vital individuality also. All these ties have to be broken, the imperfect forms of mind and life transcended, mind transformed into something beyond mind, life into divine life, if the transformation is to be real and not merely a new shaping or heightening of the lights of the Ignorance. IV. "This solitude of the soul [of the Asiatic ascetic] is not the true spiritual ...
... The teaching here is more developed because it includes the Supramental means of creating a divine life. Also the getting of the truth is different, since here it is put in such a way as to initiate men of all castes, races, creeds and cultures without distinction to share in the Truth and the Divine Life. But it is no use trying to draw those who received the earlier teaching, for their sight is ...
... occult force and process whether with or even without the assistance or intervention of some gross material procedure. A soul wishing to enter into a body or form for itself a body and take part in a divine life upon earth might be assisted to do so or even provided with such a form by this method of direct transmutation without passing through birth by the sex process or undergoing any degradation or any... experiences. All these ideas of good and evil, good and bad, higher, lower, all these notions belong to the ignorance of the human mind, and if one really wants to come into contact with the divine life, one must liberate oneself totally from this ignorance, one must rise to a region of consciousness where these things have no reality. The feeling of superiority and inferiority completely disappears ...
... Sri Aurobindo has written: "The descent of the Supermind will bring to one who receives it and is fulfilled in the truth-consciousness all the possibilities of the divine life. It will take up not only the whole characteristic experience which we recognise already as constituting the spiritual life but also all which we now exclude from that category...." The Supramental... one must want it and each one must do his own work as sincerely and completely as he can. Page 171 × "A divine life on earth need not be a thing apart and exclusive having nothing to do with the common earthly existence: it will take up human being and human life, transform what can be transformed, spiritualise ...
... self-aware existence. It would be at least some initiation of this Truth-consciousness, some first figure and action of it that must be reached and enter into a first operation if there is to be a divine life or any full manifestation of a spiritualised consciousness in the world of Matter. Or, at the very least, such a Truth-consciousness must be in communication with our own mind and life and body... of the forces of Nature could see at long last a prospect of total achievement. This complete human self-fulfilment might well pass beyond limitations and be transformed into the character of a divine life. Matter after taking into itself and manifesting the power Page 34 of life and the light of mind would draw down into it the superior or supreme power and light of the spirit and ...
... find me there. 11 February 1938 All souls who aspire are always under my direct care. 27 December 1957 Mother is with all those who are sincere in their aspiration towards a divine life. 26 March 1971 Page 66 Mother, I offer myself to You unceasingly. Here I am, Mother. I hold you to my heart and keep you there. Blessings. 5 June 1971 Mother... individually, and the answer given for the best of each one from the spiritual point of view. Go to your parents and at the same time you will be able to see and decide if sincerely you want the Divine Life more than anything else. 8 October 1966 I am not in the habit of imposing my will on others. If they, themselves, ask for help, the help will be given. 24 October 1967 "I ...
... would be to project your own way of being onto the Supreme.' But this is an Himalayan imbecility! It is a stupidity, the mind's pretentious stupidity projecting itself onto the divine life and imagining that the divine life conforms to its own projection. The Supreme does not decide: He knows. The Supreme does not want: He sees. And it is so for each thousandth of a second, eternally. That's all ...
... inexprimable joie que les mots pauvres ne peuvent pas exprimer. (Presque Pour la derniere moitie, j'ai consulte «Prieres et Meditations ».) 17/20 bien * Without the Divine life is a painful illusion, with Him all is bliss. Explain. Men in Europe have reached the highest summit of intelligence thanks to the development of science. With the help of science they have... knowledge comes by the Divine Grace. He is our life, our courage, our knowledge and our peace —how is it possible for us to live in this world without Him! That is why we say: "Without the Divine, life is a painful illusion. With Him all is bliss." 17/20 good Page 51 Collectivement, fonder la societe ideale dans le lieu propice a I'eclosion de ...
... it's somewhat better). But then, in all things Falsehood and Truth are there, mixed, everywhere; in the so-called "spiritual life," in the sannyasins, the swamis, those who think they represent divine life on earth, all that, there is also that mixture of Falsehood and Truth. It would be better not to make a split. ( silence ) For the children, precisely because they are children, the best... at a glance, when you have a very general vision, it's interesting to know that what will be realized ahead was already announced before; just Page 96 as Sri Aurobindo said that "the divine life will manifest on earth because it is ALREADY buried in the depths of Matter." From this point of view it's interesting to look back or look at the very bottom (not in order to know what happened ...
... On Yoga, p. 1231) To live in the Divine and have the divine Consciousness is itself immortality and to be able to divinise the body and make it a fit instrument for divine works and divine life would be its material expression only. (Ibid., p. 1232) We have ventured to state that the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother has for its ultimate goal the realisation ... consciously in eternity and not in the bondage of the hour and the succession of the moments is the substance of the change: so to exist is a first condition of the divine consciousness and the divine life. To possess and govern from that inner eternity of being the course and process of the becoming is the second, the dynamic condition with, as its practical outcome, a spiritual self-possession ...
... The Destiny of the Body Chapter XII The Mystery of Matter "...The question may be raised whether, not only at first but always, the divine life must submit to this necessity [of material alimentation]. But it could only deliver itself from it altogether if it could find out the way so to draw upon the universal energy that the energy would sustain... ascent in the grades of substance to that ideal or causal body which is proper to our supramental being, and the conquest of the lower principles by supermind and its liberation of them into a divine life and divine mentality must also render possible a conquest of our physical limitations by the power and principle of supramental substance." 3 There would no doubt remain a material base ...
... consciousness. What is proposed, therefore, is that the bodily life should undergo a great perfection and even an evolutionary mutation so that the material life of the body becomes fully transformed. Divine life in a divine body is thus proposed as the aim of the highest integral view of life. In the light of this aim and realisation, Socratesʼ views on the body, life and soul may seem to be constricted... revolutionary, a philosopher, a poet and a visionary of evolution. He was an explorer of consciousness and the architect of a new world. "Man is a transitional being" and therefore a possibility of a Divine life on earth, not only in mind and life force but also in the physical body, was a discovery he made through his intensive exploration of consciousness, a search to which he devoted his entire life. ...
... "All activities of knowledge that seek after or express Truth are in themselves rightful material for a complete offering; none ought necessarily to be excluded from the wide framework of divine life. The mental and physical sciences which examine into the laws and forms and processes of things, those which concern the life of men and animals, the social, political, linguistic and historical... Nature, in his own consciousness is the sure foundation of his perfection and his realisation of all harmonies: this will be his highest and widest state, his status of a divine consciousness and a divine life and its initiation the starting-point for his entire evolution of his self-knowledge, world-knowledge, God-knowledge". 43 It is not expected that everybody will be a yogi or everybody a ...
... completely different from the one elaborated above. According to our integral theory of world-manifestation, the perfect and final goal set before the terrestrial being called "man" is to establish a divine life in a human body on the terrestrial plane itself. And that surely necessitates the perfect manifestation of divine knowledge-power-bliss here upon earth itself and not elsewhere in some supraphysical... realms, and, then, comes back into an almost unending series of successive rebirths upon earth. And all this with only one single aim in view, to ultimately bring about the full manifestation of a divine life upon earth itself and in a material-physical human or superhuman body. But what is the role and function of the mind, the vital and the physical in this affair? - They are the channels of ...
... spiritual unity, a dynamisation of the intimate consciousness of one-being, of one self in all beings, can alone found and govern by its truth the action of the divine life." (The Life Divine, p. 1030) And it is such a divine life that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother want to establish upon earth, and the Sri Aurobindo Ashram should consciously and deliberately aspire to be the nucleus of such ...
... XI SADHANA THROUGH WORK (Karma-sādhanā) Karma-sadhana is a very essential part of the Integral Yoga. Our ultimate goal being the establishment of divine life upon earth and our intermediate goal being the achievement of victory of the Di-vine in the totality of our embodied human existence, a consecration of the thinking mind and its knowledge alone... the conquest of all its movements and the realisation of the Divine here. It will not do to think that anything is unimportant or that the external life and its activities are no part of the Divine Life. If we do, I we shall remain where we have always been and there will be no conquest of the external world; nothing abiding there will have been done.' Now the central question is: How ...
... but also of the descent, and it aims at the manifestation of the supramental light and power right into matter and even in the inconscient so as to transform them for purposes of the creation of divine life on the earth. Page 21 This Yoga has rightly been called the supramental Yoga; it rests on the discovery of the supermind and of special methods by which the supermind can be made to... expect to be delivered except through radical means which can transmute the Mind, which is today the leader of human evolution, into the supermind which can thenceforth lead the future and develop divine life on the earth and can also solve the problems that humanity is struggling to solve but which it is incapable to do. The supramental Yoga has, therefore, been presented by Sri Aurobindo as a practical ...
... mumuksu , that is to say, have an ardent yearning for liberation. Still it is doubtful if that alone can give him liberation into the divine life. What then is the indispensable and unfailing requisite? What is it that gives you the right of entrance into the divine life? What is the element, the factor in you that acts as the "open sesame", as a magic solvent? Only one thing, represented by one ...
... body, — for the body-consciousness also must become sufficiently awake to be a fit instrument of the workings of the new supramental Force and its new order. ...On this basis the principle of a divine life in terrestrial Nature would be manifested; even the world of ignorance and inconscience might discover its own submerged secret and begin to realize in each lower degree its divine significance."... the body. The body will be turned by the power of the spiritual consciousness into a true and fit and perfectly responsive instrument of the Spirit." 58 But apart from the emergence of the divine life in the divine body and apart from the integral yoga being a method Page 74 of future evolution and of the emergence of the next supramental species, this yoga will increasingly become ...
... divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter. This is an exceedingly difficult aim and difficult yoga; to many or most it will seem impossible. All the established forces of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness are opposed... with divine knowledge, divine works and an enriched devotion of divine Love, the secrets also of the Hatha and Raja Yogas, the use of the body and of mental askesis for the opening up of the divine life on all its planes, to which the Gita gives only a passing and perfunctory attention. Moreover it grasps at that idea of the divine perfectibility of man, possessed by the Vedic Rishis but thrown ...
... teach he said: “Repeat exactly whatever I say, even if you don’t understand.” He started with: “ Sans le Divin, la vie est une illusion douloureuse. Avec lui tout est félicité .” (Without the Divine life is a painful illusion, with the Divine, all is bliss.) I kept pronouncing the words exactly as he did and kept telling myself: “How will I remember anything without understanding?” Mr. Benjamin... understand later,” he continued, “what an invaluable thought I have given you in our first French lesson.” For many years now these words have come to my mind again and again: Without the Divine, life is a painful illusion, with the Divine, all is bliss. After remembering the words of the Mother that Benjamin had taught me, I suddenly recollect a great change that took place in my life. I ...
... has written: What food had the Mother prepared that man refused to accept? It was nothing other than a divine life here on the bosom of the earth prepared with supreme love and divine ananda by this Light and this Power beyond, something that only gods can enjoy. To attain this divine life in our present state is still a distant reality for us. To convert this goal into a realisation is still ...
... conscious Yoga in man becomes, like the subconscious Yoga in Nature, outwardly conterminous with life itself..." 5 There are three rungs in the ladder of life - bodily life, mental life, divine life - which God and Nature have provided for man's ascent towards self-perfection culminating in a "trinity of transcendent existence, self-awareness and self-delight (Sachchidananda). To find this... supermind as the infinite self of knowledge and power of knowledge and Ananda of knowledge of the spirit. 45 The dream or the ideal is not simply "a healthy mind in a healthy body"; it is a divine life in a divine body. 46 The spiritual summit and the material base are to come together. This man-changing, world-changing, Nature-changing Yoga aims thus at establishing nothing less than an Earthly ...
... how? A divine life means, firstly, the fulfilment of man's urge to individual perfection; and secondly, the harmonisation of perfected individuals with one another, and the evolution of a perfect collective life. "Perfect the individual, perfect the race"! Page 611 Between the twin poles of individual perfection and hierarchic perfection will revolve the many-splendoured Divine Life. ...
... housing, clothes and all the other imperative necessities of life—in order to see if all the energies thus liberated by the certainty of a secure material existence would spontaneously turn toward the divine life and inner realization. Well, toward the middle of my existence—or what is usually considered the middle of a human existence—the means were given to me and I was able to realize it, to create those... But suppose we were done with gospels once and for all, whether those of death or of eternal paradise? Suppose we start believing in Matter's truth, in the divine possibility of Matter, in the divine life in a true body? Well, then we must go and seek true Matter, that is all, without any prejudice of death or of life, without any of the prejudices of improved apes, whether scientific, materialistic ...
... highest being in creation?" "It is the egoistic ignorance of man that makes him think so." Sri Aurobindo replied patiently. "He is high because there is in him the possibility of evolving a divine life. You can say also, that he is high because he has developed a mind and the mind gives him a chance of conscious evolution. But it does not necessarily follow that because man is a mental being he... create a gulf between animal and man! No, all that is human nonsense!" Then more seriously, "Man is great because he can open to something higher and can consciously go beyond the mind and live a divine life upon earth." Page 291 ...
... relations between itself and the ego which figures it first formed, then led to their consummation? For on those relations and on the process they follow depend the whole philosophy and practice of a divine life for man. We arrive at the conception and at the knowledge of a divine existence by exceeding the evidence of the senses and piercing beyond the walls of the physical mind. So long as we confine... results arrived at on this foundation by the ancient sages is not my object, but it is necessary to pass briefly in review some of their principal conclusions so far as they affect the problem of the divine Life with which alone we are at present concerned. For it is in those ideas that we shall find the best previous foundation of that which we seek now to rebuild and although, as with all knowledge, old ...
... thing in life for her,—any more than Poetry or Literature are with me,—the Divine, the divine consciousness, the discovery of the conditions for a divine life are and must be our one concern, with Art, Poetry or Music as parts or means only of the divine life or expression of the Divine Truth and the Divine Beauty. That does not mean that they are only "tolerated", but that they are put in their right ...
... little flame, there—that flame never goes out and you become conscious of it when you have managed this relaxation. And all of a sudden this little flame rises slowly into an aspiration for the divine life, Page 351 the truth, the consciousness of the Divine, the union with the inner being, it goes higher and higher, it rises, rises, like that, very gently. Then everything gathers there... One must go and ask them! But there is a conclusion, the last sentences give a very clear explanation. It is said: "Nay, then, is immortality a plaything to be given lightly to a child, or the divine life a prize without effort or the crown for a weakling?" 2 This comes back to the question why the adverse forces have the right to interfere, to harass you. But this is precisely the test necessary ...
... letters is exactly what we wanted you to think and feel. You have only to keep this state of mind permanently; for this is the true foundation for the careful and patient building of the real Divine Life in you. If you feel any kind of excitement or demand for immediate divinisation, or any idea of fasting, or impatience of staying there, then read again my letter of March 22 and it will help... itself has to be mastered and transformed. It is often strongest in people with a strong vital nature and this strong vital nature can be made a great instrument for the physical realisation of the Divine Life. If the sexual impulse comes, do not be sorry or troubled, but look at it calmly, quiet it down, reject all wrong suggestions connected with it, and wait for the Higher Consciousness to transform ...
... psychic needs. In the end, yes; but here too people expect Him to supply them instantly, which does not always happen. 30 January 1936 It is true that the sadhaks have turned the idea of a divine life into an excuse for an unbridled spirit of demand and desire and this is increasing to a perilous extent. The whole world is in a financial and economic crisis; money difficult to get, prices rising... the body. I indicated clearly that only by Yoga could there come a supreme and total perfection of all the instruments of the Spirit and the ascent of the whole being to the highest level and a divine life on earth and the assumption of a divine body. I made it clear that by human and physical means such as sports only a limited and precarious human perfection could come. In all this there is nothing ...
... of Yoga in the Ashram (1926-1950) Letters on Himself and the Ashram Miscellaneous Matters Household Questions What is the "divine life" and what are "petty things"? The divine life is not something lived on romantic heights with no reference to earth and its movements. The Yogic or spiritual attitude has to be applied to the small outward details of life ...
... letter]. Permit me to ask as to the qualifications of persons who can be accepted and admitted into the holy ashram as sadhaks. There are no specific qualifications except the call to lead a divine life embodying a higher spiritual and supramental Truth (not Sannyasa), the spirit which is prepared to sacrifice all for that one end accepting even the hardest conditions, ordeals and tests, and the... Sri Aurobindo's past political activities of 20 years ago. 1 December 1929 The Asram here is not precisely a place for "spiritual training" but for growing into a divine consciousness and divine life. Those who come here must have grown already so far that they are ready to give up all past mental ideas, fixed life-habits or life-tendencies and even the very mould of their physical consciousness ...
... necessity for the future of the human race. For I believe firmly that the secret concealed in the Veda, when entirely discovered, will be found to formulate perfectly that knowledge and practice of a divine life to which the march of humanity, after long wanderings in the satisfaction of the intellect and senses, must inevitably return. 28 * It is a superstition of modern thought that the march... the customary trade of guru. I do not want to be a guru. What I want is that a few, awakened at my touch or at that of another, will manifest from within their sleeping divinity and realise the divine life. It is such men who will raise this country. 80 May, 1920 (From a letter to Motilal Roy.) The old politics in India persist in a chaos of parties and programmers ... and in Bengal ...
... them, this creates for them antecedents for future lives. But it is only from the moment you say, "There, now I know that there is but one thing which counts for me, it is the divine life, and I want to live the divine life"—from that moment one asks you, not before. Mother, there are people who come here, who have money and are very devoted, who show their devotion, Page 16 but when ...
... adverse forces at work in the world. The world as it is today is in its greater part under the influence of the adverse forces. We call them adverse because they do not want the divine life; they oppose the divine life. They want things to remain as they are, because it is their field and their power in the world. They know very well that they will lose all power and all influence the moment the ...
... May Questions and Answers (1957-1958) 29 May 1957 " A divine life in a divine body is the formula of the ideal that we envisage.... The process of the evolution upon earth has been slow and tardy—what principle must intervene if there is to be a transformation, a progressive or sudden change? " It is indeed... preparing themselves to receive the supramental force, to assimilate it and obey it. Of course, there is a higher state than this, the state Sri Aurobindo speaks of as the ideal to be fulfilled: the divine life in a divine body. But he himself tells us that this will take time; it is an integral transformation which cannot be achieved in a moment. It will even take quite a long time. But when it is accomplished ...
... can help it to realise itself. The Mother Preparing for a Divine life People who feel miserable here and find that they have not the comfort they require ought not to stay. We are not in a position to do more than we do, and after all our aim is not to give to people a comfortable life, but to prepare them for a Divine Life which is quite a different affair. The Mother A true child ...
... the Divine Power on the material world and the physical nature. It is therefore only when this vital is transformed and made a pure and strong instrument of the Divine Shakti, that there can be a divine life. Then only can there be-a successful transformation of the physical nature or a free perfected divine action on the external world; for with our present means any such action is impossible. That... obedience of the vital to the. psychic and the higher mind is the beginning of the outgoing of the Yogic consciousness in its dynamic action upon life. But this too is not Sufficient for the divine life. To come into contact With the higher mind consciousness is not enough, it is only an indispensable stage. There must be a descent of the Divine Force from yet loftier and more powerful reaches. ...
... sincere, you will grow into the divine life. To be entirely sincere means to desire the divine Truth only, to surrender yourself more and more to the Divine Mother, to reject all personal demand and desire other than this one aspiration, to offer every action in life to the Divine and do it as the work given without bringing in the ego. This is the basis of the divine life. One cannot become altogether ...
... two notebooks that he had used a number of years earlier to make fair copies of literary works. He originally headed the piece "The Isha Upanishad". Later he changed the heading to "The Secret of Divine Life /A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad", and still later to "The Life Divine /A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad". "Introduction", written below the heading, was at one point changed to "Foreword".... Second Movement—Brahman Self Blissful and All-Blissful Part [IV] The Third Movement—God in World—Vidya & Avidya Part [V] The Fourth Movement—Surya & Agni Part [VI] The Divine Life Of these six parts, only "Part II The First Movement" was worked on. The Life Divine [Draft C] . 1914. This draft consists of two chapters, numbered II and III by the author. Although ...
... the Divine Power on the material world and the physical nature. It is therefore only when this vital is transformed and made a pure and strong instrument of the Divine Shakti, that there can be a divine life. Then only can there be a successful transformation of the physical nature or a free perfected divine action on the external world; for with our present means any such action is impossible. That... obedience of the vital to the psychic and the higher mind is the beginning of the outgoing of the Yogic consciousness in its dynamic action upon life. But this, too, is not sufficient for the divine life. To come into contact with the higher mind consciousness is not enough, it is only an indispensable stage. There must be a descent of the Divine Force from yet loftier and more powerful reaches. ...
... him from within, when he has the true consciousness and lives in the Light. They will be determined within him by the power and will of the Divine Mother according to the supramental Truth for the divine life and the divine work; they must not be determined by his mind and his vital desires. This is the thing you have to remember. Your psychic being is capable of giving itself to the Mother and living... reason why you were unable to progress, because you were keeping up an element and movements which could not be allowed to remain; for they were the exact opposite of what has to be established in a divine life. The Mother can only free you from these things, if you really want it, not only in your psychic being, but in your physical mind and all your vital nature. The sign will be that you no longer cherish ...
... ego their entire sense and ultimate purpose. There must be effected a complete transformation of our limited and distorted egoistic life and works into the large and direct outpouring of a greater divine Life, Will and Energy that now secretly supports us. This greater Will and Energy must be made conscious in us and master; no longer must it remain, as now, only a superconscious, upholding and permitting... must be the spring of our action, it would seem as if all incentive or motive power had been removed and action itself must necessarily cease. The Gita replies with its third great secret of the divine life. All action must be done in a more and more Godward and finally a God-possessed consciousness; our works must be a sacrifice to the Divine and in the end a surrender of all our being, mind, will ...
... Rebirth and Other Worlds XXI,XXII Revised form of a chapter originally published in the Arya . XLVIII The Crown of Rebirth -- XLIX The Metaphysical Basis of the Divine Life -- L The Four Theories of Existence XVI Chapter comprising revised Arya material as well as new material. LI The Necessity of the Gnostic Being -- LII The... tion -- XXVI Entirely new chapter. The Ascent towards Supermind -- XXVII Entirely new chapter. The Gnostic Being -- XXVIII Entirely new chapter. The Divine Life -- Page 1117 × It is interesting to note that this revision work was less extensive than the unused ...
... self or mental ego, also enjoys that play and delight eternally and inalienably and cannot indeed do otherwise since it is one in being with the Divine Consciousness. If we aspire therefore to a divine life, we cannot attain to it by any other way than by unveiling this veiled self in us, by mounting from our present status in the false self or mental ego to a higher status in the true self, the Atman... the mind and its form of life and body that we exist on earth and, if we must abolish the consciousness of mind, life and body in order to reach the one Existence, Consciousness and Bliss, then a divine life here is impossible. We must abandon cosmic existence utterly as an illusion in order to enjoy or re-become the Transcendent. From this solution there is no escape unless there be an intermediate ...
... sensitive reactions of Life in the metal and the plant up to its full organisation in man, so in man himself there is the same ascending series, the preparation, if nothing more, of a higher and divine life. The animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out man. Man himself may well be a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation she wills... ion of the divine in himself and the realisation of God within and without are the highest and most legitimate aim possible to man upon earth. Thus the eternal paradox and eternal truth of a divine life in an animal body, an immortal aspiration or reality inhabiting a mortal tenement, a single and universal consciousness representing itself in limited minds and divided egos, a transcendent, indefinable ...
... solve the problem, to escape beyond the merely human formula and establish something that could be called a divine life upon earth, a first sketch of supermanhood, of a supramental living in the circumstances of the earth-nature … It would not be the total transformation, the fullness of a divine life in a divine body. There would be a body still human and indeed animal in its origin and fundamental character ...
... the body. I indicated clearly that only by Yoga could there come a supreme and total perfection of all the instruments of the Spirit and the ascent of the whole being to the highest level and a divine life on earth and the assumption of a divine body. I made it clear that by human and physical means such as sports only a limited and precarious human perfection could come. In all this there is nothing... and our works or else the Universal Sachchidananda, and attain to the essential results of this Yoga and afterwards to proceed from them to the integral results if one accepted the ideal of the divine life and this material world conquered by the Spirit. It is this view and experience of things and of the truth of existence that enabled me to write the Life Divine and Savitri. The realisation ...
... Mother on October 5, 1972 by her son Monsieur Andre, she wrote and sent to me through him a message which conveys everything. This is the interesting story of how a being discovers the Divine Life. Nolini Kanta Gupta, the Mother's personal secretary went through the script and spontaneously wrote of it: It is a beautiful book well-written, elevating, illuminating, inspring. To... note received from Nolini-da and gave permission for it to be included in this book. From the way one soul has been guided, all can learn and be benefitted on the long universal road towards the Divine Life, Light, Love and Truth. I am profoundly grateful to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Huta नैनं छिन्दन्ति शस्त्राणि नैनं दहति पावकः । न चैने क्लेदयन्त्यापो न शोषयति मारुतः ।। अच्छ ...
... quite apt: To look into ourselves and see and enter into ourselves and live within us is the first necessary step for the transformation of our nature and for the divine life . Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - II: The Divine Life ...
... It implies the transformation of human stuff into divine substance - the counterpart to the ascent to the Supermind: the Supermind's descent and the permanent change of earthly existence into a divine life. This counterpart holds the true significance of the epithet "evolutionary". A new species evolving from the human just as the human has evolved from the animal: such is the ultimate sense of the... so-called "accomplished avatar" would be an anachronism. And though it may surprise you, the "evolutionary avatar" is missioned to do much more than simply bring down superhuman powers to establish a divine life by altering the human state, not only in consciousness but also in material terms. For, this alteration may be possible by imposing on embodied existence an all-pervading godlike state: what in ...
... Victory Day". Surely for Sri Aurobindo, the Victory, the Perfection and Fulfilment can only be related to his goal which is nothing else than the descent of the Supermind into the body promising a Divine Life upon earth. Referring to his own Sadhana for the Supermind's descent, Sri Aurobindo says on 15 August 1925, his forty-third birthday: "I am not doing an isolated Yoga.... It is true that my Yoga... essays, Sri Aurobindo discussed the possibility of a materialisation of this sort in a time yet to come. He wrote: "A soul wishing to enter into a body or form for itself a body and take part in a divine life upon earth might be assisted to do so or even provided with such a form by this method of direct transmutation without passing through birth by the sex process or undergoing any degradation or any ...
... the infallible promise that I will lead thee to Myself through and beyond all sorrow and evil. Whatever difficulties and perplexities arise, be sure of this that I am leading thee to a complete divine life in the universal and an immortal existence in the transcendent Spirit." 99 Eckhart conveys this supreme secret of the Gita in a form more accessible to the modern mind. How to transform... qualities is therefore indispensable if the natural self is to be transformed and made an instrument of the spiritual consciousness. "Tamas unenlightened and rajas unconverted, no divine change or divine life is possible." 133 It may seem that the solution lies in cultivating exclusively the quality of Sattwa. But no single quality can by itself prevail against the other two. If Rajas, the ...
... her suffering to the presiding Deity, surrendered herself completely to the Will of the Supreme. Indeed in it she attempted all and achieved all. In it she received the most wondrous boon of divine life on earth. The Divine Savitri had assured Aswapati that she shall take birth as his daughter and accept the burden of the world: She shall bear Wisdom in her voiceless bosom, Strength shall... established the supreme Truth on earth. The birth of Savitri means the birth of a new world. This she brings about by meeting the luminous Presence behind Death and obtaining the boon of a divine life upon earth. Page 85 There is no doubt that the ancient tale of Savitri is charged with the contents of physical transformation; but then we also see that many details it has given ...
... differentiate, to make the most of the individual form and it is there because it is indispensable to the evolution of the lower life. But when Page 127 we would rise above to a higher divine life we must loosen the force of the ego and eventually get rid of it — as for the lower life the development of ego, so for the higher life this reverse movement of elimination of the ego is indispensable... when we get rid of the ego and our false separative sense of individuality, realise our oneness with the transcendent and cosmic Divine and with all beings. It is this which makes possible the Divine Life. Nirvana is a step towards it; the disappearance of the false separative individuality is a necessary condition for our realising and living in our true eternal being, living divinely in the Divine ...
... life and body, then the imperfections of these Page 172 instruments have to be faced and mended — they can only be mended by transformation. Letters on Yoga, p. 1143 A divine life in a material world implies necessarily a union of the two ends of existence, the spiritual summit and the material base. The soul with the basis of its life established in Matter ascends to the... revealing instrument, it does not cast away the energies of Matter, its capacities, its methods; it brings out their hidden possibilities, uplifts, sublimates, discloses their innate divinity. The divine life will reject nothing that is capable of divinisation; all is to be seized, exalted, made utterly perfect. The mind now still ignorant, though struggling towards knowledge, has to rise towards and ...
... still needed in the totality has to be preserved, but all has to be perfected. 'The human body has', says Sri Aurobindo, 'in it parts and instruments that have been sufficiently evolved to serve the divine life; these have to survive in their form, though they must be still farther perfected, their limitation of range and use removed, their liability to defect and malady and impairment eliminated, their... absolute essence and pitch of the all-creating Ananda. The transformation of the physical being might follow this incessant line of progression and the divine body reflect or reproduce here in a divine life on the earth something of this highest greatness and glory of the self-manifesting Spirit.' Page 59 ...
... that during our first meeting I had declared myself to be an atheist; it is only when I understood the distinction between religion and spirituality that I could enter into the portal of divine life. But divine life is something quite Page 63 different from what is being dreamt by exclusive religions. "Through your help I came to read the Gita and thereafter I have read a lot. I have ...
... along with divine knowledge, divine works and an enriched devotion of divine Love, the secrets also of the Hatha and Raja Yogas, the use of the body and of mental askesis for the opening up of the divine life on all its planes, to which the Gita gives only a passing and perfunctory attention. Moreover it grasps at that idea of the divine perfectibility of man, possessed by the Vedic Rishis but thrown... Vivekananda to support his family and for that to follow dispassionately the law or medicine or journalism. The Gita does not teach the disinterested performance of duties but the following of the divine life, the abandonment of all dharmas, sarvadharman, to take refuge in the Supreme alone, and the divine activity of a Buddha, a Ramakrishna, a Vivekananda is perfectly in consonance with this teaching ...
... complex, and Page 36 in the integral yoga, the ascent to the supermind has the eventual aim that implies transformation of material life into divine life, carrying with it eventually the appearance of a new physical vehicle of divine life by means of the descent of the supermind on all planes of consciousness right up to the physical, subconscient and the inconscient. Hence, even when ascent ...
... towards what can be called the higher, supramental and divine life. As Sri Aurobindo states: "As the impulse towards Mind ranges from the more sensitive reactions of Life in the metal and the plant up to its full organization in man, so in man himself there is the same ascending series, the preparation, if nothing more, of a higher and divine life. The animal is a living laboratory in which Nature ...
... other one being the progressive eradication of the ego-centric attitude. He has also affirmed that the difficult task the Integral Yoga has taken in hand, that is to say, the establishment of a divine life upon earth itself, can only be achieved with the conjunction of two forces: (I) a steadily mounting ardent aspiration from the side of the sadhaka, and (ii) from the Divine's side an answering Grace... aspiration is an upward elan of our consciousness towards all that is essentially good and pure and beautiful; it is a thirst for spiritual knowledge; it is a quiet and steady seeking for the Divine and divine life; it embodies an indomitable courage to fight against all that tries to prevent the sadhaka' s progress by exercising upon him a gravitational pull downward and backward. Here are some char ...
... Arindam Basu’s inquiry, apropos of this observation of Sri Aurobindo’s, as to what was the other great step, Sri Aurobindo said, "Aspiration of the sadhak for the divine life." Sri Aurobindo’s voice appeared to stress the phrase "divine life". The work goes on, whether we allow her or not. The Mother said in one context, "... I may be there or not, but these children of mine will be there to carry ...
... to awaken them to the divine life. For this He has invoked the Supreme, the Grace, to descend here below on this earth to help in His work. That is why, having heard His call, I have come down here into matter in a physical body, into this world of pain, suffering and death. And it is in the union of both of us that the world will witness gradually this miracle of a divine life. It is because of Him ...
... is regarded as the highest being in creation ? Sri Aurobindo : It is the egoistic ignorance of man that makes him think so. He is high because there is in him the possibility of evolving a divine life. You can say also that he is high because he has developed a mind and the mind gives him a chance of conscious evolution. But it does not necessarily follow that because man is a mental being he... physical as would create a gulf between animal and man! No. All that is human nonsense ! Man is great because he can open to something higher and can consciously go beyond the mind and live a divine life upon earth. Disciple : You said just now that jasmine in a psychic flower – is it so in the shape and colour or in the fragrance or in what? Sri Aurobindo : No. I do not at all mean ...
... silent!" Another seminar was held on 22 November, and the subject given by the Mother was How to be steady and sincere in our aspiration for the Divine Life? 39 Again, the Mother cut the Gordian knot with her exhortation: "Consider the Divine Life as the most important thing to obtain." Or, as she had written to Huta in answer to a similar question: To want it and to want only that ...
... ascending gradation of its own powers and types of an ascending humanity which will embody more and more 'the turn towards spirituality, capacity for Light, a climb towards a divinised manhood and the divine life. In the birth of the mind of Light and its ascension into its own recognisable self and its true status and right province there must be, in the very nature of things as they Page 206 ... what may be called a gnostic mentality, in a transformation of the human being, even before the supermind is reached, even in the earth-consciousness and in a humanity transformed, an illumined divine life. Page 207 ...
... reflected flashes from within. This erratic and self-defeating ordinary life should first be exceeded by the discovery of the psychic or the true soul within: that will be the beginning of one's divine life on the earth. To seek and find one's true self and to offer it wholeheartedly to the Divine is the whole secret of the sadhana. "Surrender," says the Mother, "is the decision taken to hand over... the entrenched layers of Darkness and the invading rays of Light, between the unyielding Asura and the uncompromising Divine. As the Mother said in her talk on "Knowledge by Unity with the Divine": Life is a battlefield in which the Divine succeeds in detail only when the lower nature is receptive to its impulsions instead of siding with the hostile forces .... What you have to do is to give ...
... have stated above, how can we, then, affirm the possibility of divine life on earth ? That can only be if man can accept that there is something within him which is essentially superior to his present egoistic self, and that it is possible to attain it. In that acceptance of the higher possibility of man lies the basis of divine life. The difficulty is that man accepts his present life with all ...
... taken, and a definite direction and lead given to the Godward Odyssey of mankind. Her individual noise in the material world is an imperative demand of the logic of physical transformation and divine life. Besides, the aim of the Integral Yoga being the supra- mental fulfilment of the Divine in man, the infusion of the supramental principle into Matter and the eventual conversion of the material life... the integral perfection, and is an 1 The Mother by Sri Aurobindo. 2 For further details refer to The Mother by Sri Aurobindo. Page 92 essential condition of the divine life in the material world. Maheshwari with her all-illumining and all-commanding splendour of knowledge, Mahâkâli with her thunders and lightnings of force, Mahâlakshmi with her enthralling and exalting ...
... life as the only spiritual condition. "But this is an error; it leaves the power in the hands of the hostile forces. To reconquer it for the Divine to whom it belongs and use it divinely for the divine life is the supramental way for the Sadhaka. "All wealth belongs to the Divine and those who hold it are trustees, not possessors. It is with them to-day, tomorrow it Page 200 may... influence refines mind and life and body and where she presses her feet course miraculous streams of an entrancing Ananda.... For it is through love and beauty that she lays on men the yoke of the Divine. Life is turned in Page 201 her supreme creations into a rich work of celestial art and all existence into a poem of sacred delight; the world's riches are brought together ...
... abandon the earth and find fulfilment only in heavens where the Many enjoy the presence of the One,—perceiving, as we do, that there is a higher knowledge which leads to complete identity and that divine life based upon it need not be confined to heavens beyond, but may embrace the earth also.—Ignorance is an initial state of knowledge, the essence of which is to create a sense of limitation and division; ...
... , he who is raw and his body not heated does not taste or enjoy that; śṛtāsa id vahantas tat samāśata , only those who have been baked in the fire bear and entirely enjoy that. The wine of the divine Life poured into the system is a strong, overflooding and violent ecstasy; it cannot be held in the system unprepared for it by strong endurance of the utmost fires of life and suffering and experience ...
... rhythm of periods of a sublime and golden illumination and other periods of obscuration or relapse into normal unillumined consciousness and he confesses the growth of the infant strength of the divine life within him through all these alternations and even by the very force of their regular vicissitude. For in both states there Page 365 works, hidden or manifest, the same divine intention ...
... Ribhus were born. It is made by the breath of the mouth, the life-power in the world. Its object is to confirm in the human soul the entire delight of the Beatitude, the thrice seven ecstasies of the divine Life. 2 This divine Birth is represented by the Ribhus who, once human, have become immortal. By their accomplishings of the work,—the great work of upward human evolution which is the summit of ...
... upward to its own supreme Self who is beyond all this movement and master of it all. Therefore the mind must indeed become passive to the divine Mind, the sense to the divine Sense, the life to the divine Life and by receptivity to constant touches and visitings of the highest be transfigured into a reflection of these transcendences; but also the individual self must through the mind's aspiration upwards ...
... all-inhabiting Lord, proceeds to the all-becoming Self and returns to the Lord as the Self of the cosmic movement, because it has to justify works to the seeker of the Uncreated and to institute a divine life founded on the joy of immortality and on the unified consciousness of the individual made one with the universal. The Kena addresses itself to the soul still attracted by the external life, not yet ...
... along with divine knowledge, divine works and an enriched devotion of divine Love, the secrets also of the Hatha and Raja Yogas, the use of the body and of mental askesis for the opening up of the divine life on all its planes, to which the Gita gives only a passing and perfunctory attention. Moreover it grasps at that idea of the divine perfectibility of man, possessed by the Vedic Rishis but thrown ...
... oneness with God to the plural asman when he turns to pray for the equal purification and felicity of his fellows. Our ideal, therefore, is fixed,—to become one with God and lead individually the divine life, but also to help others to the divine realisation and prepare, by any means, humanity for the kingdom of God on earth,—satyadharma, satyayuga. Our means is Yoga. Yoga is not, as the popular mind ...
... remnants of the old knowledge &intellectual knowledge in that language discipline & we have firm hold in our schools of Yoga on the supreme means by which its lost parts can be recovered. The key of a divine life upon earth lies, rusted indeed in an obscure corner of our mansion, used only by a few, but still it lies there & is still used. It has to be singled out from amid much waste matter, made Page ...
... & not the denial of the dividing ego-sense. The ethical rule against covetousness is an ordinary human rule and stands on a strong affirmation of the ego-sense & it has no meaning in a gospel of divine life & universal consciousness. The phrase can only stand here, not as an ethical rule, but a rule of the inner life, tending not to the confirmation but to the annulment of the ego. The Mosaic commandment ...
... fruits of Paradise; the law of divisibility and opposition ceases when we have shaken from our necks His leaden yoke of Avidya. But in these initial couplets the Seer is insisting especially on a divine life in this world, iha, as the necessary basis of the fulfilment which is held in store for us at the end of the utter & perfect sacrifice. All that we have renounced to Him, action and struggle, thought ...
... not merely the occult omnipresence of the Divine: it is also meant to be His manifestation. The immense unity and the immense multiplicity are pressing forward to express in the cosmic formula a divine life taking its start in the individual soul-spark which is enshrined in creatures and which one of the Upanishads englished by Sri Aurobindo sums up with intuitive intensity: "The Purusha that is within ...
... Yoga are essentially the same; what he called ‘chittasuddhi’ is what we mean by the psychic change. The teaching here is more developed because it includes the Supramental means of creating the divine life…. 19.6.35 ...As to the details he gave from time to time, in all these prophecies of what is to come the main fact can be accepted but this or that detail may point to something that is ...
... one's power by the influence of the Divine Force, to be self-realised and perfect by attaining the Divine Nature, this is the goal of the integral yoga. In one word, to accomplish birth of god, divine life. Not featureless, ineffable dissolution, that kind of liberation is not intended by me. Brahman is eternal and ancient, the expression of Brahman as the world is also eternal and perpetual ...
... consciousness bliss... The transformation of the physical being might follow this incessant line of progression Page 177 and the divine body reflect or reproduce here in a divine life on the earth something of this highest greatness and glory of the self-manifesting Spirit. 140 Of course, it is the consciousness within that has first to change; for, our means and ways ...
... concealed in God's Beyond. Now mind appears to be the leader of the human race. There are greater destinies and mind is not the last summit of human destiny. A day will come when man will realise divine life. All earth shall be the Spirit's manifest home. The hour must come of the Transceadant's will. The end of Death, the death of Ignorance will also come. For that Truth must descend on earth and man ...
... extended beyond wall or canvas to the lived everyday reality of the artist—the Gods must be shaped within to live in us and an inspired dynamic union with the Transcendent's sphere lead us into a Divine Life on earth: Only when we have climbed above ourselves, A line of the Transcendent meets our road And joins us to the timeless and the true; It brings to us the inevitable word ...
... worth giving to others but I do not wish to attempt this until the process is completed. Still I must have some men on whom I can make experiments and they will get according to their capacity. The Divine Life lives in unity but sees the difference also and the reasons of differences. There will be no action where there is knowledge of only unity. True action is possible by reading the truth of all activities ...
... sattvikbuddhi, follow the Dharma, fulfilling of one's own Swadharma and doing the work proper to one's capacities; and satisfy Kama and Artha under the control of the Buddhi and Dharma. The object of divine life, on the other hand, is to realise one's highest self or to realise God and to put the whole being into harmony with the truth of the highest self or the law of the divine nature, to find one's own ...
... about 500 verses in all is available in English translation, may look surprising; but its striking thematic similarity with Savitri is the only justification. The argument of the poem is: "How a Divine Life (a Daemon) descended into human life, suffered the agony of incarnation here, but redeemed himself by purifying the world wherein he was incarnate, and then reascended." 2 Why at all did the ...
... is a path of action and will. In the individual as in the world, the divine work is done behind a veil. The story of Savitri's Yoga and her ultimate conquest of death, fulfilling the promise of a divine life on earth, is told in the form of a legend, but its essential meaning is to be found by opening ourselves to the consciousness that transformed the legend into a symbol: This Light comes not ...
... greatness of country does not depend on the victory of a party but on union of all the parties. 6 October 1969 The Mother Mother is which all those who are sincere in their aspiration towards a divine life. 26 March 1971 For each problem there is a solution that can give satisfaction to everybody, but for finding this ideal solution each one must want it instead of meeting the others with the ...
... ourselves and our works or else the Universal Sachchidananda and attain to the essential results of this Yoga and afterwards to proceed from them to the integral results if one accepted the ideal of the divine life and this material world conquered by the Spirit. It is this view and experience of things and of the truth of existence that enabled me to write The Life Divine and Savitri. The realisation of the ...
... when we get rid of the ego and our false separative sense of individuality, realise our oneness with the transcendent and cosmic Divine and with all beings. It is this which makes possible the Divine Life. Nirvana is a step towards it; the disappearance of the false separative individuality is a necessary condition for our realising and living in our true eternal being, living divinely in the Divine ...
... starting-point and has only a constructed understanding of unity; even when it experiences oneness, it has to act from the oneness on a basis of limitation and difference. But the supramental, the divine life is a life of essential, spontaneous and inherent unity.” 944 According to Sri Aurobindo evolution cannot stop or be stopped in its tracks, and the appearance of the supramental being, the Aur ...
... being could be harmonised with the life of the Supermind which will then be the highest order above it, and become even an extension and annexe of the Truth-consciousness, a part and province of the divine life … An immense change of human life, even if it did not extend to transformation, would be inevitable.” 11 “In the untransformed part of humanity itself there might well arise a new and greater ...
... as one keeps all the ties which bind one to life, which make you a slave to ordinary life, how can one belong to the Divine? … We tried to create an atmosphere where only one thing counted: the divine life.’ Now things changed, and not for the better according to many sadhaks and sadhikas encrusted in the habits of their frugal Ashram life. Children mean life, movement, noise, immediacy of needs, longings ...
... the life-force into power and purity would be the first approach, the first attempt to solve the problem, to escape beyond the merely human formula and establish something that could be called a divine life upon earth, a first sketch of supermanhood, of a supramental being in the circumstances of the earth-nature.’ 5 The Mother said in 1959, looking back on her sadhana since 1950: ‘I have told ...
... ‘Nothing except a colossal strategic sacrifice of this kind in order that the physical transformation of the Mother may be immeasurably hastened and rendered absolutely secure and, through it, a divine life on earth for humanity may get rooted and be set aflower — nothing less can explain the passing of Sri Aurobindo.’ 26 Let us examine certain facts. The Mother had said several times that Sri ...
... heightening of its consciousness and its eventual divinization, were held by one and all to be unachievable. For to transform and immortalize the material body — an indispensable condition for a truly divine life on Earth — its material substance and hence the basis of that substance has to be transformed too. This is to say that the Subconscient and ultimately the universal Inconscient had to be transformed ...
... changes have to take place, many progressive changes, and these are the ones I am talking about. Life is in perpetual transformation so that it may achieve the integral transformation in the Divine Life. 28 September 1966 ...
... material body played a very important role. The goal of this path was not the quickest possible escape from our material incarnation into some heaven, liberation or nirvana, but a realization of a divine life, of the corps glorieux upon Earth. Mirra’s body had become extremely refined and sensitive because, on the one hand, she was living in her soul and every yogic siddhi (permanent realization) ...
... Thou who hast appeared to me in all Thy divine splendour – this individual being in all its complexity offers itself to Thee in an act of supreme adoration … Will the great miracle of the integral Divine Life in the individual at last be accomplished?’ 5 All the main themes of the endeavour of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, all the main items on the agenda of their spiritual labour for humanity ...
... of him and his letter shows that even mentally he cannot rise to the height—how can this Yoga be given to one Page 69 who understands only the ethical life and not at all what the divine life can be? Temperamentally he is too weak and depressed to put the burden of Yoga on him—it might result in a breakage. But I don't want to depress and discourage him still farther—so please do not ...
... aimed at because that is necessary for the complete union and the complete liberation not only of the soul and the spirit but of the nature itself. It is also a Yoga of works and of the integral divine life; for that the integral transformation of nature is evidently necessary; the union with the Divine has to carry with it a full entrance into the divine consciousness and the divine nature; there ...
... lodging, clothing and the other imperative necessities of life, so as to see whether all the energies freed by this certainty of a secure material existence would turn spontaneously towards the divine life and the inner realization. Well, towards the middle of my life – I mean what is generally speaking the middle of a human life – the means were given to me and I could realize this, in other words ...
... (Chaitanya) intensely establishing in the human emotional-vital the possibility of an absolute love and surrender which might be the basis for calling down and receiving the power from above of a divine life. That Truth-Consciousness above the Overmind would be what the next Avatar would exemplify. And when he exemplifies it he would take into himself the whole human being and nature, represent all the ...
... creative of its own forms. It is indeed this Existence after which we Aurobindonians Page 34 strive and by which we hope to change matter no less than mind to a perfect instrument of a Divine Life on earth. I think your final impression of me from this letter will be that I am not quite unlike the first American woman to come to the Ashram, one Mrs. Macpheeters whom an Ashramite correctly ...
... challenge: "Nothing except a colossal strategic sacrifice... in order that the physical transformation of the Mother may be immeasurably hastened and rendered absolutely secure and, through it, a divine life on earth for humanity may get rooted and be set a flower—nothing less can explain the passing of Sri Aurobindo." Words could not be more explicit and emphatic in asserting that the Mother would ...
... of God. I have no faith in the customary trade of the Guru. I do not wish to be a Guru. That at my touch or at another’s some awake and manifest from within their slumbering Godhead and get the divine life – this is what I want. It is such men that will raise the country … Neither am I going back to Bengal now. Not because Bengal is not ready but because I am not ready. If the unripe goes among the ...
... think that the maternity clinic is established for all children born in an illegal way. Voilà. I don't care for legality. I don't care for law, I don't care for convention, but what I want is a divine life and not an animal life. And they use the liberty for licence, for the satisfaction of desires, and all these things that we truly have worked all our life to master, they indulge in dissipation ...
... process of sadhana was a journey to be performed with a return-ticket, in a most natural and normal way. This sadhana was not for personal gain, not for personal moksha , but for establishing the Divine life upon earth, by transforming the triple human nature of mind, life and body. In short it is a sadhana of self-perfection, which is to be practised in the conditions laid down by the Divine Grace: ...
... her love and blessings. It ran in Sri Aurobindo's words: The divine perfection is always above us; but, for man to become divine in consciousness and act and to live inwardly and outwardly the divine life is what is meant by spirituality; all lesser meanings given to the word are inadequate, fumbling or impostures. I pondered over the message. My soul must have understood but my mental being groped ...
... a larger and more divine being, a larger and more divine force and consciousness, knowledge and will, sense of existence and delight in existence; there could be an initial unfolding towards the divine life. All religion, all occult knowledge, all supernormal (as opposed to abnormal) psychological experience, all Yoga, all psychic experience and discipline are sign-posts and directions pointing us upon ...
... write finis on the recurrence of the human birth for the individual. Man is there to move from the ignorance and from the little life which he is in his mind and body to the knowledge and the large divine life which he can compass by the unfolding of the spirit. At least the opening out of the spirit in him, the knowledge of his real self and the leading of the spiritual life must be attained before he ...
... Nature, in his own consciousness is the sure foundation of his perfection and his realisation of all harmonies: this will be his highest and widest state, his status of a divine consciousness and a divine life and its initiation the starting-point for his entire evolution of his self-knowledge, world-knowledge, God-knowledge. Page 729 × ...
... before people are tired of it. To live in the Divine and have the divine consciousness is itself immortality and to be able to divinise the body also and make it a fit instrument for divine works and divine life would be its material expression only. It depends on the consciousness [ whether one wants to live a long life ]. As it is, at present, most people do not get tired of life; they die because ...
... vehicle of a superior power helps to open the consciousness. The harmonising rests on that principle. 19 September 1936 Literature like everything else can be made an instrumentation for the Divine Life. It can be made of some spiritual importance if it is taken up with that aim and, even so, it cannot have that importance for everybody. In ordinary life no particular pursuit or study can be imposed ...
... merely a negative Nirvana or a static and featureless Absolute, but dynamic, the perception that this Divine Consciousness can be realised not only beyond but here, and the consequent acceptance of a divine life as the aim of Yoga, do not belong to the mind. It is not a question of mental theory—even though mentally this outlook can be as well supported as any other, if not better,—but of experience and ...
... formed and accessible by which the embodied mental being, as it became ready, could climb into the gnosis and change into an embodied supramental and spiritual being. On this basis the principle of a divine life in terrestrial Nature would be manifested; even the world of ignorance and inconscience might discover its own submerged secret and begin to realise in each lower degree its divine significance. ...
... t and immutable Absolute. If this is the one Truth, then all ground is cut away from under our feet; the divine Manifestation, the victory of the soul in Matter, its mastery over existence, the divine life in Nature would itself be a falsehood or at least something not altogether real imposed for a time on the sole true Reality. But here all turns on the mind's conception or the mental being's experience ...
... egoistic use; even divine Truth and divine influences, when they descend into the earthly plane, cannot escape this misuse and seizure. Tamas unenlightened and rajas unconverted, no divine change or divine life is possible. An exclusive resort to sattwa would seem to be the way of escape: but there is this difficulty that no one of the qualities can prevail by itself against its two companions and rivals ...
... separate and sharply differentiate, to make the most of the individual form and it is there because it is indispensable to the evolution of the lower life. But when we would rise above to a higher divine life we must loosen the force of the ego and eventually get rid of it—as for the lower life the development of ego, so for the higher life this reverse movement of elimination of the ego is indispensable ...
... being. The knot of the two, the Page 278 higher and the lower hemisphere, 2 is where mind and supermind meet with a veil between them. The rending of the veil is the condition of the divine life in humanity; for by that rending, by the illumining descent of the higher into the nature of the lower being and the forceful ascent of the lower being into the nature of the higher, mind can recover ...
... of the great wheel bring to him no sense of terror or giddiness; he rises above it in his soul and knows from above their divine law and their divine purpose. The difficulty of harmonising the divine life with human living, of being in God and yet living in man is the very difficulty that he is set here to solve and not to shun. He has learned that the joy, the peace and the deliverance are an imperfect ...
... embrace us in all our becoming. This not only as a means of approach and passage to His supreme transcendence, but as the condition, even when we possess and are possessed by the Transcendent, of a divine life in the manifestation of the cosmos. In order that we may do this, the terms concentration and Samadhi must assume for us a richer and profound meaning. All our concentration is merely an image ...
... become full of the divine nature. Our intelligent mentality is to become a play of the divine knowledge-will, our mental soul-life a play of the divine love and delight, our vitality a play of the divine life, our physical being a mould of the divine substance. This God-action in us is to be realised by an opening of ourselves to the divine gnosis and divine Ananda and, in its fullness, by an ascent into ...
... thought, singers of the hymn to Indra, the God-Mind. × That is, let all in us that we offer to the divine Life be turned into the self-light and self-force of the divine Nature. ...
... Desire is the badge of subjection with its attendant discord and suffering. That which is free, one and lord, does not desire, but inalienably contains, possesses and enjoys. THE RULE OF THE DIVINE LIFE Enjoyment of the universe and all it contains is the object of world-existence, but renunciation of all in desire is the condition of the free enjoyment of all. The renunciation demanded is ...
... basis is laid down by the idea of the one and stable Spirit inhabiting and governing a universe of movement and of the forms of movement. ( Verse 1, line 1 ) On this conception the rule of a divine life for man is founded,—enjoyment of all by renunciation of all through the exclusion of desire. ( Verse 1, line 2 ) Page 13 There is then declared the justification of works and of the ...
... star of hope to pierce the blackness. Beautiful is the face of the Divine Mother, but she too can be hard and terrible. Nay, then, is immortality a plaything to be given lightly to a child or the divine life a prize without effort or the crown for a weakling? Strive rightly and thou shalt have; trust and thy trust shall in the end be justified; but the dread Law of the Way is there and none can abrogate ...
... necessity for the future of the human race. For I believe firmly that the secret concealed in the Veda, when entirely discovered, will be found to formulate perfectly that knowledge and practice of a divine life to which the march of humanity, after long wanderings in the satisfaction of the intellect and senses, must inevitably return and is actually at the present dawn, in the impulses of its vanguard ...
... become truth of earth, truth of life until it is lived. The divine perfection is always there above us; but for man to become divine in consciousness and act and to live inwardly and outwardly the divine life is what is meant by spirituality; all Page 262 lesser meanings given to the word are inadequate fumblings or impostures. This, as the subjective religions recognise, can only be brought ...
... is necessary for the complete union and the complete liberation not only of the soul and the spirit but of the Page 686 nature itself. It is also a Yoga of works and of the integral divine life; for that the integral transformation of nature is evidently necessary; the union with the Divine has to carry with it a full entrance into the divine consciousness and the divine nature; there must ...
... central sincerity and a fidelity to the Divine. These are the two necessary conditions. The first conditions of this Yoga are: (1) A complete sincerity and surrender in the being. The divine life and the transformation of the lower human into the higher divine nature must be made the sole aim of all the life. Page 43 No attachments, desires or habits of the mind, heart, vital ...
... change. It refuses to give up ego and desire and claim and demand or to accept a true self-giving and surrender, while yet it feels the pressure on it to transform itself into an instrument of the divine life. It is this pressure that it calls suffocation. The refusal to let it expand its desires and make a big place for itself it calls limitation of the being. The calm, purity, collected silence which ...
... things can be given a prominent place—and then too it will not be the satisfaction of desire, but the fulfilment of the Divine Truth in each and all and in the new life that is to express it. In the divine life all is for the sake of the Divine and not for the sake of the ego. I should perhaps add one or two things to avoid misapprehensions. First, the love for the Divine of which I speak is not a psychic ...
... the dharma , fulfilling one's own svadharma and doing the work proper to one's capacities, and satisfy kāma and artha under the control of the buddhi and the dharma . The object of the divine life, on the other hand, is to realise one's highest self or to realise God and to put the whole being into harmony with the truth of the highest self or the law of the divine nature, to find one's own ...
... 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 Page 441 an Asram of ...
... patient will to arrive ... in spite of all obstacles, then the opening in one form or another is sure to come." 30 "All sincere aspiration has its effect; if you are sincere you will grow into the divine life" [ p. 26 ]. Again "One cannot become altogether this at once, but if one aspires at all times and calls in the aid of the Divine Shakti with a true heart and a straightforward will, one grows more ...
... and our works or else the universal Sachchidananda, and attain to the essential results of this Yoga and afterwards to proceed from them to the integral results if one accepted the ideal of the divine life and this material world conquered by the Spirit. It is this view and experience of things and of the truth of existence that enabled me to write The Life Divine and Savitri . The realisation of ...
... × When Sri Aurobindo was asked, on a later occasion, what the second great step is, he replied, "Aspiration of the sadhak for the divine life."—Ed. ...
... catch the contagion from him.... So long as you belong to humanity and so long as you lead the ordinary life, it does not matter much if you mix with the people of the world; but if you want the divine life, you will have to be exceedingly careful about your company and your environment." Questions and Answers 1929 ( 14 April ) To try to solve this problem ascetics used to go away into forests ...
... hypocrisy: to pretend that you want to live the spiritual life and not to do it, to pretend that you want to seek the truth and not to do it, to display the external signs of consecration to the divine life—here symbolised by the yellow robe—but within to be concerned only with oneself, one's selfishness and one's own needs. It is interesting to note the insistence of the Dhammapada on self-control ...
... months to gain. So long as you belong to humanity and so long as you lead the ordinary life, it Page 6 does not matter much if you mix with the people of the world; but if you want the divine life, you will have to be exceedingly careful about your company and your environment. What is the way to establish unity and homogeneity in our being? Keep the will firm. Treat the recalcitrant ...
... because they will not understand you. And I repeat, it has absolutely no importance. True sincerity consists in advancing on the way because you cannot do otherwise, to consecrate yourself to the divine life Page 282 because you cannot do otherwise, to seek to transform your being and come out into the light because you cannot do otherwise, because it is the purpose of your life. When ...
... others we should become always more and more a divine example of integral activity both intellectual and spiritual, an opportunity which is offered to them to understand and enter upon the path of divine life. Page 73 ...
... divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter. This is an exceedingly difficult aim and difficult Yoga; to many or most it will seem impossible. All the established forces of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness are opposed to ...
... them and governs them. By that he is Swarat Samrat, self-ruler and all-ruler. Supermind is superman; therefore to rise beyond mind is the condition. To be the superman is to live the divine life, to be a god; for the gods are the powers of God. Be a power of God in humanity. To live in the divine Being and let the consciousness and bliss, the will and knowledge of the Spirit possess ...
... within you and can taste of an eternal life that the outer life seems unreal to you; and therefore, because of this opposition, you begin to do what is necessary to pass from the outer life to the divine life. If there were no opposition in the being, if you were a middle term between the two, like that, this could last indefinitely; you would not objectify your difficulty and your need, you would continue ...
... not only different but often quite contradictory, these pieces necessarily create a division in your being. For example, you have one part in yourself which Page 283 aspires for the divine life, to know the Divine, to unite with Him, to live Him integrally, and then you have another part which has attachments, desires—which it calls "needs"—and which not only seeks these things but is quite ...
... was a symbol which certainly applies to what Sri Aurobindo writes here 1 on the necessity of the transformation of the body, what kind of transformation should take place for life to become a divine life. It was somewhat like this: somewhere in the centre of this huge building, a room was reserved—in the story, as it seemed, it was reserved for a mother and her daughter. The mother was a very ...
... and dharma means every ideal which we can propose to ourselves and the law of its working out and its action. A total perfection is the ultimate aim which we set before us, for our ideal is the Divine Life which we wish to create here, the life of the Spirit fulfilled on earth, life accomplishing its own spiritual transformation even here on earth in the conditions of the material universe. That cannot ...
... veritable transformation and a transformation of the mind and life and very body is indeed the change to which our evolution is secretly moving and without this transformation the entire fullness of a divine life on earth cannot emerge. In this transformation the body itself can become an agent and a partner. It might indeed be possible for the spirit to achieve a considerable manifestation with only a passive ...
... possibility given to you to find the purpose of life, to make you advance one step towards this deeper truth, to make you discover this secret which puts you into contact with the eternal rapture of the divine life. ( Silence ) I have already told you many a time that to seek suffering and pain is a morbid attitude which must be avoided, but to run away from them through forgetfulness, through a superficial ...
... case capable of the full possibilities of mind acting as a recipient of that truth and at least a secondary action of it in thought and life. It could even be a part of what could be described as a divine life upon earth and at least the beginnings of an evolution in the Knowledge and no longer entirely or predominantly in the Ignorance. How far this would go, whether it would eventually embrace the whole ...
... by one's own choice. And one bears it very well because it is imposed on one's own self and one feels a kind of glory in having done something very "remarkable", through one's aspiration for the divine life! No other questions? Page 170 Well, now, I told you the other day that I would speak to you of illness; I thought of it today and have made notes For you may tell me there are microbes ...
... trouble to read the first rules of the Ashram, even friendship among people was considered dangerous and not very desirable. We had tried to create an atmosphere where only one thing counted, the divine life. But as I said, you know, little by little... it has changed. This has one advantage. We were too much outside life. Many problems did not occur which, when the full manifestation is wanted, would ...
... past, all those who wanted to do Yoga or follow a discipline, used to say that one should not touch money, for it was something—they said—diabolic or Asuric or at least altogether opposed to the divine life. But the whole universe, in all its manifestation, is the Divine Himself, and so belongs entirely to Him; and it is on this ground that he says that the money-forces belong to the Divine. One must ...
... new life, when one is another being, does not see anything in the same way any longer, does not feel anything in the same way any more—then one knows intimately, profoundly, completely what the divine life is. And even afterwards, if the door closes again, one can keep a precise memory. And it is in this way that it is seen. It is impossible to make a mistake. It is something quite different, there ...
... these small unnoticed things overcome in oneself gain an infinitely greater victory, though the effects are hidden. Every movement in you which is false and opposed to the truth is a negation of the divine life. Your small efforts have considerable results which you don't even have the satisfaction of knowing, but which are true and have precisely an impersonal and general effect. If you really want ...
... made of pieces which are not only different but often quite contradictory, these pieces necessarily create a division in your being. For example, you have one part in yourself which aspires for the divine life, to know the Divine, to unite with Him, to live Him integrally, and then you have another part which has attachments, desires—which it calls “needs”—and which not only seeks these things but is quite ...
... would be, fulfilled and we could conceive of the perfection of life even here, its attainment of a full spiritual living even in this body or it may be in a perfected body. We could even speak of a divine life on earth; our human dream of perfectibility would be accomplished and at the same time the aspiration to a heaven on earth common to several religions and spiritual seers and thinkers. ...
... governs them. By that he is Swarat Samrat, self-ruler and all-ruler. Supermind is superman; therefore to rise beyond mind is the condition. To be the superman is to live the divine life, to be a god; for the gods are the powers of God. Be a power of God in humanity. To live in the divine Being and let the consciousness and bliss, the Will and knowledge of the Spirit ...
... would be fulfilled and we could conceive of the perfection of life even here, its attainment of a full spiritual living even in this body or it may be in a perfected body. We could even speak of a divine life on earth; our human dream of perfectibility would be accomplished and at the same time the aspiration to a heaven on earth common to several religions and spiritual seers and thinkers. The ascent ...
... Is it to satisfy little personal needs that you have come to Auroville? That was really not necessary. The ordinary world is there for that. One comes to Auroville to realise a divine life which wants to manifest on earth. Each one should make an effort in this direction and not remain hypnotised by the so-called "needs" which are nothing but personal fancies. Look upward ...
... Naturally, if one lets himself be invaded by the Western atmos-rhere, farewell to the sadhana. But even in the most materialistic milieu, if one retains one's aspiration and one's faith in the Divine Life, the sadhana can and should continue. (To B returning to the West) * If the need is a true one the means to do it will come spontaneously. 31.3.1970* * What exactly ...
... beauty. And the Divine Help shall always be with you. Supreme art expresses the Beauty which puts you in contact with the Divine Harmony. If art is to manifest something in the divine Life, there also a vast and luminous peace must express itself. Page 232 Spiritual beauty has a contagious power. Beauty is the joyous offering of Nature. True art means ...
... become a good athlete; this is the first step on the way to be a true man. Blessings. 15 July 1962 Athletics Competition 1963 To all those who want to make their body fit for a Divine Life, I say, do not miss this excellent opportunity of the athletic competition and never forget that whatever we do we must aspire for perfection. For it is this yearning for perfection which will, in ...
... further reason to exist, so that they might no longer be there to point out everything that has to be changed. Their presence was made unavoidable by all these things that were negations of the divine life. And this movement of offering of the earth consciousness to the Supreme, in an extraordinary intensity, was like a redemption so that the adverse forces might disappear. It was a very intense ...
... from the falsehoods and uncertainties that are our lot; it moves in safety towards its perfection. Once the truth-consciousness was established here on its own sure foundation, the evolution of divine life would be a progress in felicity, a march through light to Ananda." 1 It is very, very, very important. Very important. All the people who pretend to manifest the Supramental will be ...
... had been shared by all, nothing could have happened, all the most violent attacks would have been in vain. 1965 Mother is with all those who are sincere in their aspiration towards a divine life above party and politics. 26 March 1971 Page 125 ...
... determination to stand on the Truth. This is the only way. 6 July 1971 India shall take her true place in the world only when she will become integrally the messenger of the Divine Life. 24 April 1972 What is India? India is not the earth, rivers and mountains of this land, neither is it a collective name for the inhabitants of this country. India is a living being ...
... people think that the maternity clinic is intended for all illegitimate children. I am not concerned about legality, I am not concerned about laws or conventions. But what I do want is a more divine life and not an animal life. And they turn freedom into license, they use it to satisfy their desires. And all the things that we have truly worked all our lives to master, they indulge in―a dissipation ...
... 1971 Is it to satisfy little personal needs that you have come to Auroville? That was really not necessary. The ordinary world is there for that. One comes to Auroville to realise a divine life which wants to manifest on earth. Each one should make an effort in this direction and not remain hypnotised by the so-called "needs" which are nothing but personal fancies. Look upward and ...
... the door open for you and as soon as you become strong enough, you will come back. My blessings are and will always be with you. And if next time you can come for the yoga and to lead the divine life, then everything will become easy. I am happy if your stay here has widened your vision and understanding and deepened your consciousness. Page 143 ...
... They call you "refugees" but it is indeed a glorious thing to be God's refugees and to enjoy his shelter and His love... Let them write if it pleases them to display their lack of faith in the Divine Life, we cannot be affected by that. Sri Aurobindo says: Better to put behind you your past altogether and not re-establish broken ties. It would be better not to write nor to send a wire ...
... search for the Divine." There aren't any words in French, and it's not "spiritual". Divine? We have to find a word - we can put this: "Auroville is for those who want to live a divine life..." Yes, "a life essentially divine," yes. "Divine" is wide, Sweet Mother. (silence) Is it finished?... There was so much, I didn't jot everything down.... It was the ...
... be the use of man if he were not created to throw a bridge between That which is eternally but is unmanifested and that which is manifested, between all the transcendences and splendours of the divine life and all the dark and sorrowful ignorance of the material world? Man is the link between What must be and what is; he is the footbridge thrown across the abyss, he is the great cross-shaped X, the ...
... think that the maternity clinic is established for all children born in an illegal way! I don't care for legality, I don't care for law, I don't care for convention. But what I want is a more divine life, not an animal life. And they use the liberty for license, for the satisfaction of desires, and all these things that we truly have worked all our life to master, they indulge in - dissipation ...
... do not say that this is good and that is bad or try to impose your outlook on others; for, what you term bad may be the very thing that is good for your neighbour who is not trying to realise the Divine Life. Source Hasn't Morality Helped? Sweet Mother, hasn't morality helped us to increase our consciousness? That depends on people. There are people who are helped by it, there are ...
... making this offering in a general way, as though once for all; you say, "I am the servant of the Divine; my life is given absolutely to the Divine; all my efforts are for the realisation of the Divine Life." But that is only the first step; for this is not sufficient. When the resolution has been taken, when you have decided that the whole of your life shall be given to the Divine, you have still at ...
... live in a half- Page 190 truth or in your own ignorance. I am not here to convert anyone; I do not preach to the world to come to me and I call no one. I am here to establish the divine life and the divine consciousness in those who of themselves feel the call to come to me and cleave to it and in no others. 91 * * * January 14, 1932 The traditions of the past ...
... then in the silence the aspiration expressed itself in prayers. ( Silence ) It is the contradiction of all the spiritual assertions of the past: "If you want to live fully conscious of the divine life, give up your body—the body cannot follow"; well, Sri Aurobindo came and said: the body, not only can it follow, it can even be the base for manifesting the Divine. The work remains to be done ...
... them to yield and obey and I found them quite receptive. To use a quiet, steady, unwavering conscious will , that is the way, the only true way really effective and worthy of an aspirant for Divine Life. I hope that this time I have made myself clear. 14 September 1932 It seems to me that, at least for a time, it would be better not to try to turn out much work every day, as Ojas may ...
... forces might disappear, might no longer have any reason to exist, no longer need to be there to point out all that has to change. The adverse forces were necessitated by all these negations of the divine life. And this movement of earth consciousness towards the Supreme, the offering of all these things with such extraordinary intensity, was a kind of reparation so that those adverse forces might disappear ...
... evocation. With the second sound, the body's cells make their' surrender,' they give themselves. And with the third sound comes the identification of this [the body] with That, which produces the divine life. These are my three sounds. And in the beginning, during the first months that I was doing the japa, I felt them ... I had an almost detailed awareness of Page 433 these myriads of ...
... have not the comfort they require ought not to stay. We are not in a position to do more than we do, and, after all, our aim is not to give to people a comfortable life but to prepare them for a Divine Life which is quite a different affair. 1964 Page 247 Page 248 Mother, In October or November I used to get my supply of dry fruits and persimmons. Please see ...
... they will not understand you. And I repeat that this has no importance whatever. True sincerity consists in following the way because you cannot do otherwise, in consecrating yourself to the divine life because you cannot do otherwise, in endeavouring to transform your being and emerge into the Light because you cannot do otherwise, because it is the very reason for which you live. When it is ...
... "widening the consciousness"? Widening the consciousness is necessary for all who want to live a free and intelligent life, even without there being any question of Yoga or aspiration for the Divine Life. 7 December 1966 Page 344 Sweet Mother, When I heard that X was drowned in a lake at Gingee during the outing, I was unable to believe it or to be shocked by this news ...
... Note sent by Mother to Satprem ) 24 April 1959 The divine perfection is always there above us; but for man to become divine in consciousness and act and to live inwardly and outwardly the divine life is what is meant by spirituality; all lesser meanings given to the word are inadequate fumblings or impostures. 1 × ...
... themselves. This is a very complex problem. They might have been sincere in relation to their own ideal. You do not know. I have known beings who were the most active instruments against the divine life, against the divine realisation. Well, to some extent, they were loyal to their own ideal and very sincere in their... 1 These beings are called Asuras, but as I have just said, they were sincere ...
... be told about it to... "Ah, but I do as I like." All right. (Mother starts reading) To those ... I am making a distinction: there are people who come here and want to dedicate themselves to divine life, but they come to do work and they will work (they won't do an intensive yoga because not one in fifty is capable of doing it, but they are capable of dedicating their life and of working and doing ...
... myself that now I didn't care a bit about that, because to me it's nothing! All the rest... rail the rest is equally inadequate, incomplete and miserable, you know—miserable. If you think about a divine life, it's miserable. And curiously, everything comes and presents itself as images and possibilities; so I say to myself, "But if after a time all this Page 287 suddenly stops functioning ...
... he who is raw and his body not heated does not taste or enjoy that; srtasa id vahantas tat samasata, only those who have been baked in the fire bear and entirely enjoy that. The wine of the divine Life...cannot be held in the system unprepared for it by strong endurance of the utmost fires of life and suffering and experience. The raw earthen vessel not baked to consistency in the fire of the kiln ...
... Sri Aurobindo came and said... ( Mother tries in vain to remember ). I don't remember the words. It's strange, I can't remember. ( here is the text, found later: ) Page 125 "Divine life in the process of evolution, the divine Consciousness at work in Matter—here is, so to speak, what this existence represents." And at the same time, there was the clear vision, the very clear ...
... itself so important and indispensable, and then a child sitting on its head and playing! It's so funny. Ah, mon petit, we don't have faith! The moment one has faith.... We say, "We want a divine life"—but we're afraid of it! The second the fear disappears and we are sincere... really, everything changes. We say, "We want nothing more of this life," but... ( laughing ) something in us clings ...
... spite of his latter-day preoccupation not with the "Empyrean" but what he called the "Abyss", the common world-stuff which had to Page 280 be illumined, he held out the promise of a divine life, a full descent of the 'Empyrean", I cannot help having faith in what he foresaw as coming to pass no matter what difficulties and even disasters might be met with on the way. Now for my Sha ...
... int of a difficult evolution which is yet meant to express the supreme plenitude in earthly terms in what has been till now the Gita's "transient and unhappy world". What has the Aurobindonian "divine life" in common ultimately with the philosophy of one who, according to his biographer Porphyry, was such an intransigent mystic that "he seemed ashamed to be in a body"? Indeed a world away is Sri Aurobindo ...
... supreme Transcendence. Its madness is a wise madness of Ananda, the incalculable ecstasy of a supreme consciousness and power vibrating with an infinite sense of freedom and intensity in its divine life-movements... —a dance this also, a whirl of mighty energies, but the Master of the dance holds the hands of His energies and keeps them to the rhythmic order, the self-traced harmonic circles of ...
... p. 77). Page 98 supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter." 1 It is thus almost an axiomatic truth that Yoga by works should form an indispensable part of our sadhana and an essential element of our realisation if we would seek to transplant ...
... Soul 08 November 1955 I was still striking the wrong note. My mind was full of rubbish that gave me a throbbing headache. My knowledge about the Divine Life was nil. I could not even follow what the Mother said in her French classes, whereas others talked and debated about spirituality with ease. I heard one of the Mother's talks being discussed by ...
... civilisation is destined to be a spiritual civilisation which will bring to humanity all that it lacks at present, rlamely, Consciousness, Power, Peace, Bliss, Harmony and Love, in other words, a Divine Life on earth. Page 46 ...
... itself on the animal body in Matter. He is conscious Name or Numen accepting and utilising form as a medium through which Person can deal with substance." 1 Also, "the ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man's real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect ...
... out. As a result, in the course of history, India tended to neglect bodily life. The time has come now when the right balance of the body and the spirit should be achieved under a new ideal of divine life in a divine body. ___________________________ This essay is based on the material contained in Physical Education in Ancient India, by S.H. Deshpande ...
... provide a judicious combination of various systems of Yoga, leading upto a comprehensive combination of consequences for the perfection of the spiritual, mental, vital and physical perfection. A divine life in a divine body would be the ideal of the integral Yoga. In the integral Yoga, perfections of the physical body would be a part of the totality of attainments, although the methods of Hatha Yoga ...
... Life Divine ?" Amiya replied, "No." So Sisir said, "Then it is new for you." ( Laughter ) SATYENDRA: Has he got it? NIRODBARAN: He has bought a copy. SATYENDRA: No, I mean: has he got the divine life? SRI AUROBINDO: Oh, you mean that? SATYENDRA: Do you have to change much in the Psychology ? SRI AUROBINDO: No—only adding a passage here and there, and one or two new chapters at the end ...
... Besides, we are speaking from different viewpoints. SRI AUROBINDO: He is speaking from the viewpoint of fear! NIRODBARAN: A last question: When people are united by love and come to lead a divine life but then their relation breaks off and each goes his or her own way, is it because the purpose of love has been served that the separation occurs? SRI AUROBINDO: Not necessarily. There are cases ...
... being, my whole life be a conscious collaboration With my soul, where resides forever the Mother Divine,. May I become a simple surrendered happy instrument, For Her play in the drama of divine life on earth. 36 - 37 Migration An invisible great migration has already begun in earnest. Drawn by a Majestic Golden Swan flying in a pale moonlight ...
... The Carriers of Honey The Heaven has sent us to distribute this invaluable Nectar to the souls Who are thirsty for the love of God and for the new divine life on earth. We come from a very distant, very ancient country. We bring a very special honey, Which cannot be found somewhere else. Honeys, which can cure all the wounds, Relieve all ...
... conscious of what he is aiming at. So the former has less power to harm. NIRODBARAN: Perhaps one of them may change for the better. THE MOTHER: In what sense? NIRODBARAN: He may turn to the divine life again. THE MOTHER: That is romance! NIRODBARAN: But Satyendra may come to the Ashram once more—since he was here a good number of years. THE MOTHER (amused) : Do you think so? When a man ...
... another. The first to see the light of day was the first volume of his magnum opus , The Life Divine . It was the end of 1939, the year of World War II. The publication of the Arya of which the Divine Life was the basic theme, started in 1914, the year of World War I. Can we call these mere coincidences? The two other volumes came out on the heels of the first one and were extensively rewritten. He ...
... Mother wrote to Laljibhai: Laljibhai, Where is your faith in the Divine? Having faith in the Divine you ought to rejoice that Savita has received the inner call and decided to lead the divine life; you ought to be made happy by this sign of the Divine's Grace and feel grateful for it. The offering that Savita has made of herself has been accepted and from now she is no more Savita but ...
... mounted separately in frames embroidered with gold thread. And ... I took the plunge into the ocean of spirituality. I thought that now the Divine was within my reach and that I was leading the Divine Life. How mistaken I was! In fact I understood nothing. I felt as if I had been pushed into a black, turbulent and threatening sea. Hostile forces came rushing into my consciousness like gigantic waves ...
... object of my yoga to transform life by bringing down into it the Light, Power and Bliss of the Divine Truth and its dynamic certitudes. This Yoga is not a yoga of world-shunning asceticism, but of divine life ....It aims at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object." 1 Elsewhere Sri Aurobindo points out that "not only must ...
... dub as a chimera all hope of transforming this earth-life. But, after all, what is a law if not "the habits of the world"? 26 And, while considering "the possible relation between the divine life and the divine mind of the perfected human soul and the very gross and seemingly undivine body or formula of physical being in which we actually dwell," 27 we should never forget that "that formula ...
... progressive growth of their consciousness, also to radically change all their instruments of manifestation such as the mind, the heart and the body and finally to divinely transform them so that a divine life can be established upon earth itself and a bridge be built between the heaven and the terrestrial existence. And the Divine will do all that is necessary for this sole purpose. Page ...
... lust and desire, (b) anger and irritation, (c) greed and voracity, (d) delusion and deception, (e) pride and vanity, and , last , (f) envy and jealous y. Do I not profess that I aspire after a divine life? - How can I then act and behave as if I am a worm wriggling in the gutter?" Such a spirit of inner dignity, if always active in the sadhaka' s consciousness, will immensely fortify his ...
... by a supreme pure Existence, consciousness and bliss... The transformation of the physical being might follow this incessant line of progression and the divine body reflect or reproduce here in a divine life on the earth something of this higher greatness and glory of the self-manifesting Spirit." (The Supramental Manifestation and Other Writings, 1989, p. 40) Of course, it is the consciousness ...
... just the centre and guide of a world which is not ultimately a contradiction of its divine spark but a veiled perfection which it has to clear of encumbrances and help to unveil. A divine Mind, a divine Life-Force, even a divine Matter have to be realised and established. Then alone the aim of evolution will be fulfilled. The complete and integral divinsation of our whole being is the ‘why’ of our coming ...
... behind it. But what is this purpose? That purpose is for each soul: (i)to reach the perfection of Sachchidananda through the progressive development of his consciousness; (ii)to establish divine life upon earth itself in a human body if possible, through the integral transformation of the triple instruments of mind and life and body; (iii)to be a willing and effective participant in the ...
... the Body" in which Sri Aurobindo perceives in the body the power to become an agent and a partner in the task of a total transformation of the mind, life and body so as to evolve the fullness of a divine life on earth. He envisages that a stage can be reached where a secure completeness and stability of the health and strength of the physical body could be maintained by the indwelling Spirit and that ...
... little flame there — that flame never goes out and you become conscious of it when you have managed this relaxation. And all of a sudden this little flame rises slowly into an aspiration for the divine life, the truth, the consciousness of the Divine, the union with the inner being, it goes higher and higher, it rises, rises, like that, very gently. Then everything gathers there, and if at that moment ...
... The latest trend takes up the burden and treasure of the gains of the past and looks towards the future with some kind of basis of effective realisation where tasks of the establishment of the divine life on the earth for full participation by the entire human race could be under-taken. Tasks of Renascent India: While outlining these tasks, particularly, of the renascent India, Sri Aurobindo ...
... Instruments of the Spirit and their purification, Psychology of Self-Perfection, Perfection of Personality by Yoga, Supermind, its descent and its action upon the earth, Supermind and Collective life, Divine life on the earth Yoga and Health: Psychology, Yoga and Health Esoteric Causes of Illness and Yogic Remedies Page 369 Role of Hypnotism and allied Processes of Cure: Uses ...
... integral realization of the Infinite but also at the full manifestation of the supramental consciousness in Matter and at the total transformation of matter and material life to which the name of the divine life is given, Page 102 is to be found in the persistence of the individual even after liberation is attained by unity and self-knowledge. For the normal Reason, difficulties arise ...
... manifest the consequences of this union for arriving at ever increasing perfection of the individual and collective life in the physical world and even to transform earthly life into what can be called divine life. The distinctive methods of Yoga relate to the meticulous handling of customary psychological workings based upon a knowledge developed and confirmed by regular experiments, practical analysis ...
... be the highest reach of self-perfection." 70 The integrality of perfection cannot remain confined to the individual, but it would extend progressively to the development of the collective divine life on the earth. In the words of Sri Aurobindo: "The divinising of the normal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race ...
... ego-sense 42, 43 eightfold path 43 energy-substance, grades of 66 Essays on the Git ā 3, 92 evolution 24, 26, 48, 50, 59, 60, 64, 65, 71, 76, 77, 85, 88, 89, 100; lower 28; of divine life 23; supramental 98; the cycles of 92-93; theories of 25; upward 27 evolutionary, consciousness 35; process 24, 25, 36,59, 65 (The) Foundations of Indian Culture 3 (The) Future ...
... Preface The most distinctive thesis of the Integral Yoga is that supramental consciousness can, by its descent in Matter transform earthly life into divine life. In other words, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have discovered the method by which supramental descent on the earth can be brought about and even Matter can manifest supramental consciousness. ...
... has its own distinctive aim and distinctive method. Spirit and Matter are synthesized in the new synthesis for purposes of the fullest manifestation of spirit in Matter and of establishing divine life on the earth. This yoga, therefore, does not reject life but transforms life so as to bring out fully the hidden Spirit behind all manifestations of material life. This yoga rejects exclusiveness ...
... and wrests from the jealous guardians of Felicity, the wine of Soma. And, as in Ribhus, there is confirmation in the Soul of the entire delight of the Beatitude, the thrice seven ecstasies of the divine Life (RV, 1.20). And one invites Ribhus to the human sacrifice to fashion for man the things of immortality even as they fashioned them for themselves (RV, IV.36.6-9). The Vedic Yoga aims at immortality ...
... soul, jiva, in its inalienable union with the Supreme — then the human problem can be solved, our human life be delivered out of its confusions and crookedness into the clarity and freedom of divine life. (C) The idea, on which this possibility is founded, is the conception of the individual soul in man as in its eternal essence and its original power a ray of the supreme soul and Page ...
... sensitive reactions of Life in the metal and the plant up to its full organisation in man, so in man himself there is the same ascending series, the preparation, if nothing more, of a higher and divine life. The animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out man. Man himself may well be a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation she wills ...
... tried in the "Synthesis of Yoga" to arrive at a synthetical view of the principles and methods of the various lines of spiritual self-discipline and the way in which they can lead to an integral divine life in the human existence. But this is an individual self-development, and therefore it was necessary to show too how our ideal can work out in the social life of mankind. In the "Psychology of Social ...
... You write about the Deva-Sangha: I am not a God, I am only some much-hammered and refined iron. No one is God, but in each man there is a God and to make him manifest is the aim of divine life. That we can all do. I do not want hundreds of thousands of disciples. It will be enough if I can get a hundred complete men, empty of petty egoism, who will be instruments of God. ...
... constantly I'm thinking of what I should write etc. Evidently such an upsetting is not good for our sadhana, is it? But perhaps one can indulge in a little exuberance when friends seem to aspire for a divine life. It is not likely to be much of an obstacle. But there should be no attachment or depression if it does not happen as you would like. April 13, 1933 When I get up in the morning ...
... would be man if he was not made to throw a bridge between That which eternally is, but is not manifested, and that which is manifested; between all the transcendences, all the splendours of the divine life and all the obscure and sorrowful ignorance of the material world? Man is the intermediary between that which has to be and that which is; he is a bridge thrown over the abyss, he is the great ...
... being into the divine being; the second is the rending of the lower veil and the descent of the divine consciousness into the most material, the subconscient and the inconscient, realising the divine life on earth. Page 133 ...
... environment. It was Danton who said, one carries not his country with him at the sole of his shoe. Even so you cannot hope to shift bodily your present social ensemble, place it wholesale in the divine life on the plea that it will be purified and transformed in the process. Purification is there indeed, but one must remember purification literally means burning and not a little of the past and present ...
... attain to the status of a god, to evolve oneself, to attune oneself so as to call by this affinity a divine being, a god, and to become a Page 12 god. Sri Aurobindo speaks of the divine life, the Life Divine, the life of a god, it means that you become a god, not only realise the utmost human perfection possible as man but surpass man's humanity and call in and embody divinity. You may ...
... on (which includes, of course, vitalisation and mentalisation) of the Spirit and the spiritual values. It means the establishment of divine names and forms in terrestrial individuals leading a divine life, individually and collectively here below. We have so far spoken of two lines of descent. But in either case the descent was of a general and impersonal character. Consciousness was considered ...
... divine Nature. Here we come perhaps to the very heart of the mystery. For till now, till Page 78 almost yesterday, we may say in a general way, the spiritual life, any kind of divine life was considered possible only through battling with Nature, through a struggle upstream against the current of Nature. Indeed Nature was despised, feared, rejected as an enemy of the Spirit. But today ...
... to a godly or divine nature from a human nature. God reveals this sadhana through his human life. Man knows himself as sinful, afflicted, weak and helpless. To him the spiritual realisation, the divine Life, the divine Consciousness may seem to be futile and hollow dreams, like the castle in the air. These are only luxurious idealisms which are not for all, at least for many. Only a few that are heroic ...
... on (which includes, of course, vitalisation and mentalisa-tion) of the Spirit and the spiritual values. It means the establishment of divine names and forms in terrestrial individuals leading a divine life, individually and collectively here below. II We have so far spoken of two lines of descent. But in either case the descent was of a general and impersonal character. Consciousness ...
... cannot let it go waste, throw it to the winds. So I offered it to my Lord and laid it at his feet. He accepted it. He alone can enjoy it and honour it. The Feast is that of Transformation, the Divine Life on earth. Man is not capable of it naturally, cannot attain it by his own effort or personal worth. It is the Divine who is to bring it down Himself. He is to manifest Himself and thus establish ...
... would be man if he was not made to throw a bridge between That which eternally is, but is not manifested, and that which is manifested; between all the transcendences, all the splendours of the divine life and all the obscure and sorrowful ignorance of the material world? Man is the intermediary between that which has to be and that which is; he is a bridge thrown over the abyss, he is the great X ...
... Not necessarily. For one may empty the cells of their obscure contents but replenish them with something of a purer order. This is a possibility we envisage and which we are working for. The Divine life empties the cells of desire but fills it with the energy of solar Light. (4) EGO To renounce is a greater delight than to enjoy. To give is a greater joy than to take. To love ...
... in and through the higher divine Nature. Here we come perhaps to the very heart of the mystery. For till now, till almost yesterday, we may say in a general way, the spiritual life, any kind of divine life was considered possible only through battling with Nature, through a struggle upstream against the current of Nature. Indeed Nature was despised, feared, rejected as an enemy of the Spirit. But today ...
... POETS AND MYSTICS Sri Aurobindo : The Age of Sri Aurobindo SOMEONE has written to this effect: "This is not the age of Sri Aurobindo. His ideal of a divine life upon earth mayor may not be true; at any rate it is not of today or even of tomorrow. Humanity will take some time before it reaches that stage or its possibility. What we are concerned with here ...
... an expression and embodiment of the Spirit. In this view the approaches to the Divine are not mere interim truths but facets of one organic total reality incarnating the divine consciousness in a divine life. In other ways that lead to an escape, you reach a state where you are happy and satisfied, you feel you have attained the highest, the utmost worth attaining and you need not move further or ...
... along with divine knowledge, divine works and an enriched devotion of divine Love, the secrets also of the Hatha and Raja Yogas, the use of the body and of mental askesis for the opening up of the divine life on all its planes, to which the Gita gives only a passing and perfunctory attention." 65 Divinization of Life on the Earth According to Sri Aurobindo, the Tantra grasps at the idea ...
... vision. In the same way, none of the earlier yogic systems had envisaged the aim of the complete manifestation of Spirit in Matter or that of the total transformation of the life in Matter into the divine life on the earth. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were led to the new and integral aim by their intense labour of research on the basis of which the life on the earth can be led eventually to achieve total ...
... of or search for the Divine." There aren't any words in French, and it's not "spiritual". Divine? We have to find a word—we can put this: "Auroville is for those who want to live a divine life..." Yes, "a life essentially divine,” yes. "Divine” is wide, Sweet Mother. (silence) Is it finished?... There was so much, I didn't jot everything down.... It was the day before ...
... synthesis. The latest trend takes up the burden and treasure of the gains of the past and looks towards the future with some kind of basis of effective realisation where tasks of establishment of the divine life on the earth for full participation by the entire human race could be undertaken. Page 105 While outlining these tasks, particularly, of the renascent India, Sri Aurobindo states: ...
... and weakness; but under other circumstances it could be a social virtue which takes delight in communion with others within the boundary of life and social gatherings. The aspiration to found the divine Life among men, in society and in the world, that is coming to the fore almost everywhere, will stir the Bengali heart to an extent which will never be excelled by others, we think. An ideal of the wholeness ...
... collaborate to make you live in Light, Force and Joy. With love.) Page 170 (Bonne Fête! To Pranab. Love manifested in Truth, is the Supreme Victor and will conquer earth for the Divine Life. With love.) Page 171 (My loved one. The Divine's love is with you always and for ever.) Page 172 (Bonne Fête To Pranab with everlasting love.) ...
... prophecy of the colossal work that was to rear its edifice on the secure foundation of political freedom 35. The integral Yoga was to transform human nature into Divine Nature and human life into Divine Life 36. 34. From the Bande Mataram, 23.2.1908. 35. "The true aim of the nationalist movement is to restore the spiritual greatness of the nation by the essential preliminary of its ...
... of his realisations through his monthly review Arya. In five major sequences published month after month through several years, he envisaged, in the main, the progressive march of man towards a divine life on earth, towards the unity of mankind and a perfect social order. One of these serials was called The Future Poetry in which he traced the growth and development that world poetry is undergoing ...
... in the embrace of the Divine. * Close not your senses-however earthly they may be. Fling them all wide open-open always and everywhere, but to the Divine. * Life itself becomes Art-the very highest form of Art-when it is moulded in the rhythm of the Supreme Beauty, when its steps follow the cadences of the Divine. * ...
... far ahead as to be inconceivable for us. Indeed we may take it as the ideal which Sri Aurobindo places before us, the next step we have to take in the long ascending series of steps leading to a Divine Life upon earth. It may inspire us in our endeavour to find an issue to the present crisis and give us the strength so that we may not falter.4 Analyzing the growth and decay of societies, Sri ...
... the main stages of the complete supramental transformation of the individual man. This transformation, once generalised, will establish upon earth what ... might fitly be characterised as a divine life; for it would be a life in the Divine, a life of the beginnings of a spiritual divine light and power and joy manifested in material Nature.20 This at least is the highest hope, the possible ...
... personalities speak in almost identical terms and with a singular ring and consensus of certitude, and whether they can be brought down to transfigure our mortal life and nature on earth into divine life and divine nature. These are some of the vital questions we have to attack and attempt to resolve, as we proceed with our study of Sri Aurobindo's many- faceted life and work. For, even his politics ...
... the many are essentially one, and that their oneness can be dynamically expressed in every movement of human life. It was for the complete transformation of homo sapiens and his ascent into the Divine Life that they have laboured for long years of unrelaxed collaboration. But the transformation is impossible without a radical dealing with the very base of human life and nature. This base, as both of ...
... strivings of his Page 232 passion—all human effort in fact,—are directed towards this divine Power. It is through her that man will realise his unity with all beings and the fulfilment of divine life on earth. Aswapathy knew this "in a thunder-flash of God" and all his limbs were filled with joy of eternity. For "once seen, his heart acknowledged only her." Now, "Only a hunger of infinite bliss ...
... forerunners, the heads of Time "The first-born of a new supernal race. The incarnate dual Power shall open God's door, Eternal supermind touch earthly Time". Then man will realise divine life: "The Eternal's truth shall mould his thoughts and acts. "All then shall change" —and "Light shall invade darkness of its base. "All earth shall be the Spirit's manifest home ...
... pools. Earth was in love with Heaven there was music, blooms, riot of scents and hues. In that wonderful place "Magician of her rapt felicities, Blithe, sensuous-hearted careless and divine, Life ran or hid in her delightful rooms"; All over Nature there was calm and peace. "Life had not learned its discord with its aim" at that place. It was at such a place that ...
... not made to throw a bridge between that which eternally is, but is not manifested, and that which is manifested, between all the transcendences, all the splendors Page 65 of the divine life and all the obscure and sorrowful ignorance of the material world? Man is the intermediary between That which has to be and that which is; he is a bridge thrown over the abyss, he is the great X ...
... with certain characters in history or legend. Savitri is presented as the Goddess herself come down to effect the evolutionary change from Man to Superman, from terrestrial to the divine life. Coercing her godhead she has become a woman, and she is willing that the Master of Evolution should deal with her as is fit. 75 Although Sri Aurobindo's mystic muse in Savitri ...
... of human possibility, a sign that points to the goal of evolution. In his Essays on the Gita, Sri Aurobindo says about the Avatar : "He may on the other hand descend as an incarnation of divine life, the divine personality and power in its characteristic action, for a mission ostensibly social, ethical and political, as is represented in the story of Rama and Krishna; but always then his descent ...
... also a depth which is a negative movement; there is a hell, so to say, in the # lower movement of life. Life can be anti-divine, not merely ignorant. Make a distinction between ignorant and anti-divine. Life when it is ignorant, well, it is simply ignorant, but when it is anti-divine it opposes any higher movement. When you go to these levels of life you find not only ignorance but anti-divinity, opposition ...
... everlasting day, they look upon Page 17 mankind and try to bring down the ray of the eternal sun, the knowledge of truth into the world and try to change the world into a divine life. That is roughly the story of the epic. Now the poem begins with the dawn, but this dawn is not the ordinary morning rise of the sun. It is a symbol dawn. This dawn that is spoken of as a ...
... freedom of Mother India. But over and above his solid contribution to literature and the struggle for freedom, he has given a loftier vision to the modem world — the vision of man's destiny of divine life on earth. This vision, accompanied by an active effort in collaboration with the Mother, has created, out of almost nothing, two institutions of international importance — the Ashram and the Sri ...
... poor mediums are subjecting themselves! Europe is meddling in these things without knowing what they are. That is the result of a sceptical denial of any higher possibility of spiritual and divine life on the one hand, and a spirit of mere curiosity on the other. If Europe wants something genuine in the spiritual life, it is absolutely necessary for it to throw away all this rubbish. Disciple ...
... about the Deva Sangha and say, "I am not a God, am only a piece of much hammered and tempered iron ." . . . No one is a God but in each man there is a God and to make Him manifest is the aim of divine life. That we can all do . ... I do not want hundreds of thousands of disciples. It will be enough if I can get a hundred complete men, purified of petty egoism, who will be the instruments of God ...
... humbug as contended by many dogmatic scientists . ... "But you needn't be alarmed," he put in placidly. "For Yoga has for its ultimate object the realisation of the Divine and achieving the Divine life. These are side-issues and as such need not be looked upon as germane to spiritual experience. So belief in them is not necessary, far less indispensable for realisation. You have the right of ...
... before people are tired of it. To live in the Divine and have the divine Consciousness is itself immortality and to be able to divinise the body also and make it a fit instrument for divine works and divine life would be its material expression only. " ( On Yoga II, Tome 2, P. 337 ) ( 6) " The scientists now hold that it is (theoretically at least; 'possible to discover physical means by which ...
... learn and assimilate in them. I want to put before them some ideas of Sri Aurobindo on arts,-ideas which he gave to mankind in order that man may be able to fulfil his destiny, and live a divine life on earth. I want to tell you, students, that most of you lack mastery over technique-any technique-which gives discipline to the artist. The mastery which the Chinese and the Japanese ...
... mount of Kalki, the last “avatar” (for us, Sri Aurobindo) the one who comes at the end of the human cycle to “change the Law” of reigning Death and Falsehood, in order to establish the reign of Divine Life and of True Man. 1956 Mother’s Island or The Three Boatmen of My Life A Vision of Sujata’s Page 24 (This vision prefigured the whole journey of Sujata ...
... practise is not for ourselves alone, but for the Divine; its aim is to work out the will of the Divine in the world, to effect a spiritual transformation and to bring down a divine nature and a divine life into the mental, vital and physical nature and life of humanity. Its object is not personal Mukti... but the liberation and transformation of the human being." (SABCL, Vol. 16, p. 411. See also ...
... believes in the ghosts, then it is killed by the ghosts; if it believes only in the Divine, then there is nothing whatsoever, except an experience to teach to the body the real attitude and the real divine life. So it is a thin thread and one can be thrown to one side or to another — real life or death — depending on this physical consciousness. I don't know whether all these experiences are willed by ...
... nature, the expression of this new way of being in our day-to-day activities at every moment, this new way of looking at things, this new creativity, all channelized towards the realisation of the divine life. Towards this realisation all our efforts are directed in the Ashram, in our daily lives, While studying, while playing, while working in the different departments, while singing, dancing, drawing ...
... fall and in this wonderful atmosphere it was as if my soul had come out of its body and begun floating. ... [On that very night] I determined to relinquish the ordinary life and embrace the Divine Life. 2 "You have given me life;" she wrote again on 19 August 1954: Now I have understood what value life has.... You alone have given me the inspiration that in the remaining years of my ...
... d'être of the universe 689 cure for petty frustrations 690 levels of perfection 696-7 Fear: the worst thing 713 descent of a Truth-power and the Hippie revolution 715, 720 aspiration for the divine life 717 basic requirements of the Path 719, 725 true aim of life 721, 824 people's demand for miracles 736 how to serve the Truth 739, 795, 807 use of LSD 742 lila and maya 743 gifted children ...
... Page 787 Is it to satisfy personal needs that you have come to Auroville? That was really not necessary. The ordinary world is there for that. One comes to Auroville to realise a divine life which wants to manifest on earth. 18 Goodness, sincerity and discipline are indispensable qualities for those who want to be Aurovilians. 19 She felt that there should be no compromise ...
... universal force which, although it was being exploited and put to evil uses by the Asuric forces, must be reconquered for the Divine to whom alone it belonged and should be used "divinely for the divine life". Should there be a single victory for Page 683 the Divine somewhere, it would have its reverberations elsewhere, and ultimately everywhere. The problem was to make a decisive start ...
... prehistoric humanity." 1 Mother continued. "The other tradition, which Theon said was the origin of Cabala — he said both the Cabala and the Vedas originated from it —also held the same concept of divine life and a divine world as Sri Aurobindo: that the summit of evolution would be the divinization of everything objectified, along with an unbroken progression from that moment on. As things are now, we ...
... we should become always and more and more a divine example of integral activity both intellectual and spiritual, an opportunity which is offered to them to understand and enter upon the path of divine life. 33 This, then, is the conclusion of the matter: there shall be no running away from - no betrayal of - earth-life, even with all its present limitations. Karma is not to be avoided, either ...
... repeat their invocation again and again until the earth awakens from its unreal falsehood. Until it awakens from its false materialism as from its false spiritualism to enter into true matter and divine life on earth. But perhaps there are still some surprises in store for us. As early as 1958, she had said: “Wait for the last act.” 12 Apocalypse or Fairy Tale? What is going ...
... which was there, deep down, in the very depths. The central light of the cell. And Mother said, It's a denial of all the spiritual assertions of the past: "If you want to live fully conscious of the divine life, leave your body—the body cannot follow." Well, Sri Aurobindo came and said, "Not only can the body follow, but it can be the base that will manifest the Divine...." The work remains to be done.'s ...
... meditate for millennia, invent democratic and electronic paradises and go round in circles ad nauseam .. . until She shatters our paradises and virtues and littleness, compelling us to fashion the Divine Life on earth and the Divine Man in a body. There is in her overwhelming intensity, a mighty passion of force to achieve, a divine violence rushing to shatter every limit and obstacle. All her divinity ...
... who will be the instruments of God. I have no faith in the customary trade of the Guru. I do not wish to be a guru. If anybody wakes and manifests from within his slumbering godhead and gets the divine life - be it at my touch or at another's - this is what I want. It is such men that will raise the country. Yours Sejda 36 Barin came to Pondicherry. Ullaskar Datta, one of the r ...
... absorbed concentration. It is only the seekers of the integral union, those who are resolved to turn their whole human consciousness into the divine consciousness, and their whole human life into the divine life, that aspire for transformation. The second condition is an integral surrender to the Divine śakti, the Mother. I have dwelt at length on this subject in some of the previous chapters, pa ...
... human race," asserted Sri Aurobindo. "For I firmly believe that the secret concealed in the Veda, when entirely discovered, will be found to formulate perfectly that knowledge and practice of a divine life to which the march of humanity, after long wanderings in the satisfaction of the intellect and senses, must inevitably return." M. D. Page 248 ...
... should man learn to overcome or destroy? They are those that threaten his life and hinder his progress. All that weakens, degrades or makes him unhappy. 08.04.1951 *** Without the Divine, life is a painful illusion, with Him all is bliss. 29.04.1951 The Mother giving dictations to the Green Group children There is a great beauty in simplicity. Persevere and all obstacles ...
... a God existent, not in being, but in becoming. There is an element of truth and value in this belief, but it brings disabling limitations into our inner realisation of God and the practice of a divine life to which it gives a foundation. Page 589 ...
... the divine Force he represents, which bear the Hero, the battling power within us that performs the journey. And the births divine are at once the gods themselves and those manifestations of the divine life in man which are the Vedic meaning of the godheads. That this is the sense becomes clear from the fourth Rik. "When the Page 188 Guest that lodges in the bliss has become conscious in ...
... piteously importuning the Sun-God to turn to softness and charity. The Vedic idea was that the subconscient darkness and the ordinary life of ignorance held concealed in it all that belongs to the divine life and that these secret riches must be recovered first by destroying the impenitent powers of ignorance and then by possessing the lower life subjected to the higher. Of Indra it has been said, as ...
... greatest self and it is according to the real idea, the truth of ourselves, that which is growing in us and finding always new and more adequate forms in birth after birth, in our animal and human and divine life, in that which we were, that which we are, that which we shall be,—it is in accordance with this inner soul-truth that, as our opened eyes Page 518 will discover, we are progressively ...
... things, moved only by them to help and heal, to occupy himself with the good of all beings, to lead men to the spiritual bliss, to work for the progress of the world Godwards, he shall live the divine life, so long as days upon earth are his portion. The God-lover who can do this, can thus embrace all things in God, can look calmly on the lower nature and the works of the Maya of the three gunas and ...
... Vivekananda to support his family and for that to follow dispassionately the law or medicine or journalism. The Gita does not teach the disinterested performance of duties but the following of the divine life, the abandonment of all dharmas, sarvadharmān , to take refuge in the Supreme alone, and the divine activity of a Buddha, a Ramakrishna, a Vivekananda is perfectly in consonance with this teaching ...
... he said to him: "Energise (again) the conscious-energy in thee; for the Energy is Brahman." Taittiriya Upanishad. (III. 1) Taittiriya Upanishad. (III. 2) The affirmation of a divine life upon earth and an immortal sense in mortal existence can have no base unless we recognise not only eternal Spirit as the inhabitant of this bodily mansion, the wearer of this mutable robe, but accept ...
... object of his Yoga to transform life by bringing down into it the Light, Power and Bliss of the divine Truth and its dynamic certitudes. This Yoga is not a Yoga of world-shunning asceticism, but of divine Life. Page 541 Your object on the other hand can only be gained by entering into Samadhi and ceasing in it from all connection with world existence. You cannot get help in this path from Sri ...
... is needed for progress in the sadhana. 10 July 1937 There is one thing everybody should remember that everything should be done from the point of view of Yoga, of sadhana, of growing into a divine life in the Mother's consciousness. To insist upon one's own mind and its ideas, to allow oneself to be governed by one's own vital feelings and reactions should not be the rule of life here. One has ...
... as it seems Page 114 indispensable to us, this shows that we are still little conscious of the inner life, the true life. Even if we do not attain to the marvellous depths of the divine life, of which only very rare individuals are constantly conscious, already in the domain of thought we escape the laws of time and space. To think of someone is to be near him, and wherever two beings ...
... there is nothing in it worth getting upset about. What is lasting, eternal, immortal and infinite—that indeed is worth having, worth conquering, worth possessing. It is Divine Light, Divine Love, Divine Life—it is also Supreme Peace, Perfect Joy and All-Mastery upon earth with the Complete Manifestation as the crowning. When you get the sense of the relativity of things, then whatever happens you can ...
... mean from what point of view? All human will which is against the divine Will is an anti-divine will. That's all. No matter where it manifests, even in you! There are no party politics in the divine life, you know. ( Laughter ) There are only states of consciousness. ( To a child ) You have a question to ask, you? No, Mother, will you explain the two poems? Explain? There is no explanation ...
... It seems to me that the purpose of the supramental yoga is to dissipate ignorance from the entire cosmos and remove the Page 279 darkness of earthly nature, in order to make the divine life possible. Not from the entire cosmos—from the earth consciousness,—because the earth is the place of evolution. Through the descent and manifestation of the supermind, a new race will be born—a ...
... picture, when we have a very global vision, it becomes interesting to know that what will be realised later on has already been announced beforehand, in the same way that Sri Aurobindo said that the divine life will manifest on earth, because it is already involved in the depths of Matter; from this stand- point it is interesting to look back or to look down below - not to know what happened, or to know ...
... material, vital and mental parts so that these lower powers can become portions of a total divinised activity of our whole being: it is that that will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life. It is indeed so that life and mind involved in Matter have realised themselves here; for only what is involved can evolve, otherwise there could be no emergence. Sri Aurobindo Essays in Philosophy ...
... do not say that this is good and that is bad or try to impose your outlook on others; for, what you term bad may be the very thing that is good for your neighbour who is not trying to realise the Divine Life. Let us take an illustration of the difference between the moral and the spiritual view of things. The ordinary social notions distinguish between two classes of men,—the generous, the avaricious ...
... Truth; for if we have a school here, it is in order that it be different from the millions of schools in the world; it is to give the children a chance to distinguish between ordinary life and the divine life, the life of truth—to see things in a different way. It is useless to want to repeat here the ordinary life. The teacher's mission is to open the eyes of the children to something which they will ...
... preparation and the work, the work and the preparation alternate and interpenetrate to such an extent that sometimes it becomes difficult to distinguish them; and their combination constitutes Thy divine life upon earth. What one must be, what one must do: the perfecting of Thy instrument and its utilisation go together; sometimes Thou wantest it to enrich itself and grow, to open all its doors on infinite ...
... take possession of Thy kingdom; dost Thou not find Thy kingdom yet ready enough for Thee to link it definitively to Thyself and become integrated with it? Will the great miracle of the integral Divine Life in the individual at last be accomplished? Page 314 ...
... peace in which, along with the cessation of all tension, struggle, effort, there ceased also suffering in all its forms, and this was considered to be the true and only expression of a spiritual and divine life. It was considered to be the divine grace, the divine help, the divine intervention. And even now, in this age of anguish, tension, hypertension, this sovereign peace is the best received aid of ...
... impulse of the life-force, partly by a mind which is mostly a servant and abettor of the ignorant life-impulse, but in part also its uneasy and not too luminous or competent guide and mentor; for a divine life the mind and the life-impulse must cease to be anything but instruments and the inmost psychic being must take their place as the leader on the path and the indicator of a divine guidance. Last, ...
... food and lodging and clothing and the imperative necessities of life, so as to see whether all the energies freed by this certainty of a secure material living would turn spontaneously towards the divine life and the inner realisation. Well, towards the middle of my life―at least, what is usually the middle of a human life―the means were given to me and I could realise this, that is, create such conditions ...
... and does not expect any collaboration from it in the transformation. This is obviously the easiest method. But it is also obvious that if one wants this material existence to participate in the divine life, to be the field of action and realisation, it is preferable not to wait until with wear and tear the body becomes sufficiently... quiet so as not to obstruct the yoga. It is much better, on the ...
... material, vital and mental parts so that these lower powers can become portions of a total divinised activity of our whole being: it is that that will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life. It is indeed so that life and mind involved in Matter have realised themselves here; for only what is involved can evolve, otherwise there could be no emergence. " The Supramental Manifestation ...
... picture, when we have a very global vision, it becomes interesting to know that what will be realised later on has already been announced beforehand, in the same way that Sri Aurobindo said that the divine life will manifest on earth, because it is already involved in the depths of Matter; from this standpoint it is interesting to look back or to look down below-- not to know what happened, or to know what ...
... total harmony with all the rest. And then all these things that seem so "bad", so "reprehensible", so "unacceptable" to the puritan mind, would become movements of delight and freedom in a totally divine life. And then nothing would prevent us from knowing, understanding, feeling and living this wonderful laughter of the Supreme who takes infinite delight in watching Himself live infinitely. This ...
... do we sometimes forget or lose touch with the Divine? You lose it because your consciousness is still divided. The Divine has not settled into your mind; you are not wholly consecrated to the Divine Life. Otherwise you could concentrate to any extent upon such things and still you would have the sense of being helped and supported by the Divine. In all pursuits, intellectual or active, your one ...
... total harmony with all the rest. And then all these things that seem so "bad", so "reprehensible", so "unacceptable" to the puritan mind, would become movements of delight and freedom in a totally divine life. And then nothing Page 155 would prevent us from knowing, understanding, feeling and living this wonderful laughter of the Supreme who takes infinite delight in watching Himself live ...
... important and indispensable, and then the child sitting on its head and playing! It is very amusing. Page 311 Ah, my child, we have no faith. As soon as one has faith... We say, "We want the divine life"—yet we are afraid of it! But as soon as fear goes away and we are sincere... everything changes truly. We say, "We do not want any more this life", and ( Mother laughs ) something is there that ...
... very global vision, it becomes interesting to know that what will be realised later on has already been announced beforehand, in the same way that Page 402 Sri Aurobindo said that the divine life will manifest on earth, because it is already involved in the depths of Matter; from this standpoint it is interesting to look back or to look down below—not to know what happened, or to know what ...
... Page 119 In putting the cycle, you should first observe and be sure that it will stand steady before you withdraw your hand from it or loosen too much your hold. If you want the divine life, you must remain absolutely unexcited and quiet . Not careless, but always on your guard, sober, vigilant. "Madcaps" cannot contain the Power of the Mother, only those who are calm, poised, balanced ...
... interests rather than pursuits useful for keeping up a general culture. All depends on the aim of the life. To one whose aim is to discover and possess the highest spiritual truth and the divine life, I do not think a University post can count for much, nor do I see that there can be any practical connection between them. It might be different if the aim were the life of a writer and thinker ...
... truth when we get rid of the ego and our false separative sense of individuality, realise our oneness with the transcendent and cosmic Divine and with all beings. It is this which makes possible the Divine Life. Nirvana is a step towards it; the disappearance of the false separative individuality is a necessary condition for our realising and living in our true eternal being, living divinely in the Divine ...
... spirit, here concealed behind the coatings of our lower nature, is the secret seed of the divinity and will be, when discovered and delivered, luminous above the mind, the wide ground upon which a divine life of the human being can be with security founded. When we speak of the superman, we speak evidently of something abnormal or supernormal to our present nature, so much so that the very idea of ...
... in all its senses अन्य another अनस् 1. birth 2. living being 3. parent अनुः 1. a man 2. a proper name अनल 1. soul 2. the supreme spirit 3. a Vasu अनिल Vishnu (cf Isha Up. अनिलममृतं divine Life) आनूकं in abundance (Vedic) (2) with idea of substance, mass or extension अन्नं food or matter .. rice, corn .. earth .. (water) अनस् rice, boiled food अनीक 1. group, mass 2. form 3. front ...
... . Sy. चक्षुः. Sy. तेजः. This is just possible; but चक्षुः also & more commonly means sight or eye; it Page 652 may also mean that which is seen. Agni is the sight or the eye of the divine life & existence, through him it sees the births or worlds hidden from the mortal vision. 20) Etá te agna uchatháni vedho, avocháma kavaye tá jushasva; Uchchhochasva kṛiṇuhi vasyaso no, maho ráyah ...
... Brahman, transcendental and universal even in the individual, One in the Many, Many in the One, Stable and Motional, exceeding and reconciling all opposites. The second line, fixing as the rule of divine life universal renunciation of desire as the condition of universal enjoyment in the spirit, has been explained by the state of self-realisation, the realisation of the free and transcendent Self as one's ...
... NonBirth. The realisation of the Self as the unborn and the poise of the soul beyond the dualities of birth and death in the infinite and transcendent existence are the conditions of a free and divine life in the Becoming. The one is necessary to the other. It is by participation in the pure unity of the Immobile (Akshara) Brahman that the soul is released from its absorption in the stream of the movement ...
... complete solution. The accordance of a mortal mind, life and body with a secretly indwelling immortal spirit is the final problem; the spiritualisation or divinisation of mind, life and body, a divine life, would be the perfect solution. The search after these solutions by the human being is not irrational; it is rather the very effort and striving of Nature within him. Life appears in Matter, Mind ...
... the Veda, to express the particular actions of the law of truth, the singular its general action. It is the ideal law that supports Page 64 the human offering of our activities to the divine life above us, rituná yajnaváhasá; by the force of the law of Truth Agni leads the sacrifice to its goal. In this suggestive & significant hymn packed full of the details of the Vedic sacrificial symbolism ...
... the transcendent Soul of things within, but by identifying the Spirit in the universe with the Spirit in all bodies, it asserts what is of equal importance to Page 430 its gospel of a divine life for humanity, that the soul in man also is master, not really a slave, not bound, not a prisoner, but free—not bound to grief and death and limitation, but the master, the user of grief and death ...
... her nor the suppression of the heart's deeper emotions and the rigid repression of the soul's and the life's parts of beauty. For it is through love and beauty that she lays on men the yoke of the Divine. Life is turned in her supreme creations into a rich work of celestial art and all existence into a poem of sacred delight; the world's riches are brought together and concerted for a supreme order and ...
... life as the only spiritual condition. But this is an error; it leaves the power in the hands of the hostile forces. To reconquer it for the Divine to whom it belongs and use it divinely for the divine life is the supramental way for the Sadhaka. You must neither turn with an ascetic shrinking from the money power, the means it gives and the objects it brings, nor cherish a rajasic attachment to ...
... bear, you are free to go and live in a half-truth or in your own ignorance. I am not here to convert anyone; I do not preach to the world to come to me and I call no one. I am here to establish the divine life and the divine Consciousness in Page 109 those who of themselves feel the call to come to me and cleave to it and in no others. I am not asking you and the Mother is not asking you to ...
... object of our existence which is to manifest in itself whether on earth in a terrestrial body and against the resistance of Matter or in the worlds beyond or enter beyond all world the glory of the divine Life and the divine Being. Page 91 × This is also the view of the Gita and generally accepted. ...
... self-fulfilment and self-poise, aspiring towards the ascension to the divine consciousness, able to receive and bear the descent of the divine light and power, fitting itself to be a vessel of the divine Life. Page 577 ...
... division, all activities of knowledge that seek after or express Truth are in themselves rightful materials for a complete offering; none ought necessarily to be excluded from the wide framework of the divine life. The mental and physical sciences which examine into the laws and Page 141 forms and processes of things, those which concern the life of men and animals, the social, political, linguistic ...
... lacked a basis of assured knowledge and the mind of man has remained swinging between a bright future hope and a grey present certitude. But the grey certitude is not so certain as it looks and a divine life evolving or preparing in earth Nature need not be a chimera. All acceptations of our defeat or our limitation start from the implied or explicit recognition, first, of an essential dualism and, then ...
... and Mind have been released in Matter, so too must in their time these greater powers of the concealed Godhead emerge from the involution and their supreme Light descend into us from above. A divine Life in the manifestation is then not only possible Page 303 as the high result and ransom of our present life in the Ignorance but, if these things are as we have seen them, it is the inevitable ...
... inhabitant of terrestrial existence through whom that transformation of the mental into the supramental can at last be operated, is it not possible that he may develop, as well as a divine mind and a divine life, also a divine body? or, if the phrase seem to be too startling to our present limited conceptions of human potentiality, may he not in his development of his true being and its light and joy and ...
... knowledge in which the egoistic life shall rediscover all its values transformed and corrected. Then we shall possess that new order of truths which will make it possible for us to substitute a more divine life for the existence which we now lead and to effectualise a more divine and puissant use of our faculties on the life-material of the universe. That new life and power of the human integer must ...
... lends its energies to the perfect self-figuration of the Divine in ever-new forms and activities of the universal existence. In the light of this conception we can perceive the possibility of a divine life for man in the world which will at once justify Science by disclosing a living sense and intelligible aim for the cosmic and the terrestrial evolution and realise by the transfiguration of the human ...
... sense of inability is for the seeker of the integral Yoga a non-sense, for his object is a development of a perfection that is there already, latent in the being, because man carries the seed of the divine life in himself, in his own spirit, the possibility of success is involved and implied in the effort and victory is assured because behind is the call and guidance of an omnipotent power. At the same ...
... with a supreme Transcendence. Its madness is a wise madness of Ananda, the incalculable ecstasy of a supreme consciousness and power vibrating with an infinite sense of freedom and intensity in its divine life-movements. Its action is supra-rational and therefore to the rational mind which has not the key it seems a colossal madness. And yet this that seems madness is a wisdom in action that only baffles ...
... bear, you are free to go and live in a half-truth or in your own ignorance. I am not here to convert anyone; I do not preach to the world to come to me and I call no one. I am here to establish the divine life and the divine consciousness in those who of themselves feel the call to come to me and cleave to it and in no others. I am not asking you and the Mother is not asking you to accept us. You can go ...
... generate the vision of an ultra-violet reaching out to the all-transformative "Supermind" and of an infra-red plunging down to the same archetypal Power waiting secret in Matter to break forth a divine life on earth. Sri Aurobindo's birth on August 15 in 1872 is celebrated today on its 116th anniversary. This is the prime significance of the date in view of India's basic genius of many-lustred spirituality ...
... Sri Aurobindo and the Mother do. The constant day-to-day living in the light of the Supermind and the supramental descent into our whole constitution in order to shape a divine mind, a divine life-force, a divine body: this is the aim and the decisive condition of Sri Aurobindo's yoga. But there is a long and difficult way to go, a hard task of self-consecration, self-purification, se ...
... attained in five years, Ramakrishna in almost as few and Raman Maharshi in about the same or even less? Sri Aurobindo would then be not the greatest Yogi of our day but the greatest dunce of the divine life! Surely it is clear that he is at a mighty unparalleled job and is trying to compass and establish on earth a truth which has not been known so far. If, as Krishna Prem declares, the final unmistakable ...
... the ascension to the divine consciousness, able to receive and bear the descent of the divine light and power, Page 123 fitting itself to be a vessel of the divine Life." It is the descent with which we are concerned in this essay and the further forms of the Mind of Light resulting from the descent have to be envisaged. Its initial form which seems a ...
... just the centre and guide of a world which is not ultimately a contradiction of its divine spark but a veiled perfection which it has to clear of encumbrances and help to unveil. A divine Mind, a divine Life Force, even a divine Matter have to be realised and established. Then alone the aim of evolution will be fulfilled. The complete and integral divinisation of our whole being is the "why" of our coming ...
... lives in them and governs them. By that he is Swarat Samrat, self-ruler and all-ruler. Supermind is superman; therefore to rise beyond mind is the condition. To be the superman is to live the divine life, to be a god; for the gods are the powers of God. Be a power of God in humanity. To live in the divine Being and let the consciousness and bliss, the will and knowledge of the Spirit possess thee ...
... practise is not for ourselves alone, but for the Divine; its aim is to work out the will of the Divine in the world, to effect a spiritual transformation and to bring down a divine nature and a divine life into the mental, vital and physical nature and life of humanity. Its object is not personal Mukti, although Mukti is a necessary condition of the yoga, but the liberation and transformation of the ...
... government of India, I felt it wasn't the Truth speaking (that's in fact why I started feeling angry), and I suddenly perceived it wasn't he who spoke, it was probably the mental formation of those "Divine Life Society" people who sent you a letter of recommendation for him. I feel it's their mental formation. That's right. Page 370 There's nothing to be done with those government people ...
... maternity clinic is established for all children born in an illegal way! Page 117 I don't care for legality, I don't care for law, I don't care for convention. But what I want is a more divine life, not an animal life. And they use the liberty for license, for the satisfaction of desires, and all these things that we truly have worked all our life to master, they indulge in—dissipation. ...
... n: the power to change form at will, for example, or to be in many places at the same time—all sorts of things that poor human beings can only dream of having. The gods have it all. They live a divine life! But it's not supramental. The Supermind is knowledge—Pure Knowledge. Yes, it is knowing—knowing what is to be known. Page 354 There is no longer a play BETWEEN oneself and things ...
... that certainly applies to what Sri Aurobindo has written here 1 regarding the necessity for the transformation of the body, the type of transformation that has to take place for life to become a divine life. It went something like this: somewhere, in the center of this enormous edifice, there was a room reserved—as it seemed in the story—for a mother and her daughter. The mother was a lady, an elderly ...
... seen it so splendid. And now it has become constant; each time I hear or see something ugly or horrible, or each time something ugly or horrible happens, something which is a negation of the divine life ... just behind is this flame—so wonderful. And then the effect is annulled. There is a magnificence of realization which could not have been had this evil, this horror and this negation not been ...
... may still be alive!) Their conception of things was similar to Sri Aurobindo's. The other tradition—Theon said it was the origin of both the Kabbala and the Vedas—also held the same concept of divine life and a divine world as Sri Aurobindo: that the summit of evolution would be the divinization of everything objectified, along with an unbroken progression from that moment on. (As things are now, ...
... This is what I sent to Indira. You can read it to me, I don't even remember what I put. "India shall take her true place in the world only when she will become integrally the messenger of the Divine Life." 1 On what occasion was it sent? She wrote me a very nice letter to express her gratitude, and she asked if I had something to tell her, so that's what I replied. It seems she ...
... hush. (The Fall) This blossoming is not a thing that is to take place in some “heaven of quiet” or fade away in the earth-negating Void. Following Sri Aurobindo's vision of the divine life Sethna says: ...Omnipotence Would shine through and the finishing touch be given To make, of earth's light, harmonies of heaven. (The Missing Touch) Such ...
... waking in you all eternity! 5 Amal Kiran is nothing if not a sadhak, - a sadhak with a most intense and ardent aspiration for self-realisation and God-union and eventually, the divine life. This does not mean that he is at the first stage of practice of the integral yoga. For though aspiration is admittedly the first thing, it is also a continuous process. It is my firm conviction ...
... urn there was an interpreter reading the charter in the language of that particular nation. It all went so beautifully and was never rehearsed. The Mother said Auroville did not need to follow the divine life of the Ashram. She said they were to concentrate on building a new city for the Divine in their own way. So, the ways of Auroville are different from those of the Ashram and Aurovilians are not expected ...
... Balcony Darshan makes me emotional and the voice gets strained, choked as I just found the other day reciting these tines to someone. * Refuge in the Mother and aspiration for the Divine life are the two essentials in this Yoga. * Once I asked Amal, referring to a talk of the Mother at the end of which she says: "Let us meditate, I will give you what has descended ...
... Aurobindo's passing. His inner interpretation runs as in the following passage: "Sri Aurobindo, the Yogi of the Supermind descending into the outer as well as the inner being and bringing a divine life on earth in addition to the infinite immortality of the Beyond, cannot be looked upon as passing away on account of old age and physical causes. Whatever the purely clinical picture, it must ...
... sapiens and the coming species of supermen, Homo supramentalis . This transitional being he gave no name, but called it “a new humanity.” “It would not be the total transformation, the fullness of a divine life in a divine body. There would be a body still human and indeed animal in its origin and fundamental character, and this would impose its own inevitable limitations on the higher parts of the embodied ...
... without a change of human nature is an irrational and unspiritual proposition; it is to ask for something unnatural and unreal, an impossible miracle. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - II: The Divine Life Mankind has a habit of surviving the worst catastrophes created by its own errors or by the violent turns of Nature and it must be so if there is any meaning in its existence, if its long history ...
... diseased body, lustreless myopic eyes guarded by eye-glasses. To utilize the golden opportunity of living for the sake of God and attaining union with Him and transforming one's existence into divine life, the body is the only instrument. Let us fulfil our duty of maintaining this instrument as fit as a fiddle and the eyes as fine 'as divine sparkle. To achieve this let us learn the art of preserving ...
... make Ashram life so hard to bear is that it first invites one to change, then exhorts, then coaxes and lastly presses one to realise that unless and until one agrees to change progressively, the divine life must remain a Utopian dream. Somebody said that human folly makes even angels weep because human idiocy is the only malady for which even the gods can find no medicine. Sri Aurobindo, however, was ...
... come out of his seclusion to resume his political leadership. He had to, as a man must die to his old self of personal ambition and desires before he can be reborn to the creative freedom of the divine life: "All that denies must be torn out and slain And crushed the many longings for whose sake We lose the One for whom our lives were made." (ibid 3.2) Is this not a noble commentary ...
... Great (pp.331-342) I will quote here only a few lines: "But you need not be alarmed," he put in placidly. "For Yoga has for its ultimate object the realisation of the Divine and achieving the divine life. These are side-issues and as such need not be looked upon as germane to spiritual experience. So belief in them is not necessary, far less indispensable for realisation. You have the right of private ...
... of creation given, of involution and evolution of the -divine consciousness, it will not Page 460 be difficult to follow the evolutionary process which is the sole theme of the Divine Life. Sat or existence becomes Matter, Chit or Consciousness hides itself in conscience and Ananda into its opposite insensibility. 'The first to emerge from this swoon of inconscience is matter, dull ...
... be simplified, simplified, simplified." 1 Sri Aurobindo too envisages a radical change in the structure and functioning of the body before it can serve as the vehicle of a supramental divine life. For, the human body's present "minutely constructed and elaborated system of organs and a precarious order of their functioning which can easily become a disorder, open to a general or local ...
... life, the importance of the body is indeed obvious. For, as Sri Aurobindo himself has declared: "A total perfection is the ultimate aim which we set before us, for our ideal is the Divine Life which we wish to create here, the life of the Spirit fulfilled on earth, life accomplishing its own spiritual transformation even here on earth in the conditions of the material universe. That ...
... transitory and inconstant phenomenal existence full of hazards of life and its uncertainties and difficulties, it was necessary to dissolve the ego-complex and then only we could enter into the Divine Life and enjoy the bliss of life while it lasted. This spiritual ideal became so wide-spread and deep-rooted in the mind of Indian people that life and matter were neglected in an exclusive Page ...
... struggles and strifes of the present life of the world with its ignorance, darkness and falsehood which are bound to be replaced by their divine opposites and earth-life will be transformed into divine life even assuring physical immortality to the body. He has himself offered his body for the hastening of this process of the descent of the immortal Supermind on earth and the Mother of the Ashram ...
... Brahman is the food-offering, by Brahman it is offered into the Brahman-fire". (Gita, 4,24) 3 Words of the Mother, p. 238. Page 228 not only at first but always, the divine life also must submit to this necessity." 1 For as yet there has been no instance of any organism whatsoever which can live indefinitely without the help of any material sustenance gathered ...
... supramental instrumentation of the Spirit in the life and the body...." 1 It is in this way that the spiritual penury of our waking existence can be radically remedied and one can enjoy a divine life here upon earth itself, even in the physical embodied existence, without any "need to shun existence or plunge into the annihilation of the spiritual Person in some self-extinguishing Nirvana ...
... integral spiritual sadhana should have for its goal not merely the spiritual liberation of some isolated individuals from the shackles of phenomenal Ignorance, avidy ā , but the establishment of a divine life upon earth, ihaiva. But since Matter is the foundation of all evolutionary efflorescence of life here upon the terrestrial plane, our physical body assumes a supreme importance in the total scheme ...
... Mother, There are plenty of moods and fancies among the inmates, many unnecessary harassings. I undergo all possible pinchings, tortures and troubles, but our goal is something else—it is the Divine Life. You are quite right in not allowing the moods and fancies of the people to affect you. You must soar above all that in the constant feeling of the Divine's Presence, Love and Protection. ...
... There is chaos everywhere. People are concerned only about their personal affairs, and each one exploits You. Why??? Probably their ego interests them more than the Divine or even more than the divine life. Or rather their ego is master of the house — it runs the house! 6 October 1966 ...
... ‘Nothing except a colossal strategic sacrifice of this kind in order that the physical transformation of the Mother may be immeasurably hastened and rendered absolutely secure and, through it, a divine life on Earth for humanity may get rooted and be set aflower – nothing less can explain the passing of Sri Aurobindo.’ 58 At that point in time K.D. Sethna could not know about the imminent manifestation ...
... manifests rarely . The Mother, Words of the Mother - II: The Body (the Physical) Light: Light of Purified Power; Of irresistible simplicity in its power, solely consecrated to the Divine . Life: Conversion of the Aim of Life from the Ego to the Divine: Instead of seeking one's own satisfaction, to have the service of the Divine as the aim of life . The Mother, Words of the ...
... portion is a part of The Story of a Soul which I have been writing. The Mother encouraged me to do so. She has given this message for it: This is the interesting story of how a being discovers the Divine Life . I am giving only outlines in Mother India . But I have to write fourteen volumes—each will be almost hundreds of pages! Please pray for me. I have so much to tell you—all in tune with the ...
... peace seemed to be falling all around me. It was as if my soul surged out of its body and floated in this magnificent atmosphere. That night I determined to relinquish ordinary life and embrace the Divine Life. Ever since my childhood I had been aspiring to realise and live the Supreme Truth and Love. In the past no one had understood this feeling of mine, and now nobody knew of my final decision. ...
... Aurobindo's poems Words of Sri Aurobindo Supermind is superman; therefore to rise beyond mind is the condition. To be the superman is to live the divine life, to be a god; for the gods are the powers of God. Be a power of God in humanity. To live in the divine Being and let the consciousness and bliss, the will and knowledge of the Spirit possess thee ...
... members: 20.2.55 Laljibhai, Where is your faith in the Divine? Having faith in the Divine you ought to rejoice that Savita has received the inner call and decided to lead the divine life; you ought to be made happy by this sign of the Divine's Grace and feel grateful for it. The offering that Savita has made of herself has been accepted and from now she is no more Savita but ...
... very much and fully approved of it to be used as an accompaniment throughout the slide shows. The Mother had given these names to her music: Mystic Solitude, Quiet Power, Joy, Compassion of the Divine, Life in Eternity, Construction of the Future. As for Sunil's Savitri music, the Mother arranged for it to be played in the Playground during the meditations on Thursdays and Sundays. In this connection ...
... forth the call and the leading to the highest destinies of the race. I am not here to convert anyone; I do not preach to the world to come to me and I call no one. I am here to establish the divine life and the divine consciousness in those who of themselves feel the call to come to me and cleave to it and in no others. ...
... nobody in front of "intelligent" and "wise" people. I was hypersensitive and ultra-emotional. I thought that it was too late for me to do anything worthwhile. It would take an eternity to find the Divine Life. Time and age could not wait. They slipped by too rapidly. ...
... well. It is very common and can only be solved with much endurance in the will and much patience. For on the one hand you want to consecrate yourself to the Divine and take your place in the divine life in the making. On the other hand you want the satisfactions of ordinary life and the pleasures of the vital—without considering, however, that these pleasures can only be obtained through much ...
... and able for this Transformation. ( silence ) Page 28 And nothing, nothing imaginable in the eternal history of the universe can be compared to that shock: to have lived a perfect divine life as something completely natural and everyday, something OBVIOUS (it was never even in question), and then... all of a sudden, physically—your base is snatched away. Well, to stay on after that!. ...
... way of facing difficulties. 5 February 1955 Where is your faith in the Divine? Having faith in the Divine you ought to rejoice that X has received the inner call and decided to lead the divine life; you ought to be made happy by this sign of the Divine's Grace and feel grateful for it. Quietly face the social difficulties with equality and cheerfulness; then you will know that my love and ...
... its instrument. And the choice has to be made at every moment of your life. Page 30 It is the conflict in you between what is attached to ordinary life and what aspires for the divine life. It is up to you to choose which is the strongest in you and to act accordingly. 19 September 1967 You can follow the meanderings of innumerable reincarnations or choose the steep and ...
... very bad way of wasting one's time and lowering one's consciousness. Page 207 Unless this very nasty habit is eradicated from the atmosphere, never will the Ashram reach its goal of Divine Life. I wish all would repent like you and take the resolution of stopping this unhealthy activity. 12 October 1967 ...
... aim, a single joy―the Divine. Page 14 Concentration upon oneself means decay and death. Concentration on the Divine alone brings life and growth and realisation. Without the Divine life is a painful illusion, with the Divine all is bliss. The ideal attitude is to belong only to the Divine, to work only for the Divine and above all to expect only from the Divine strength, ...
... Naturally, if one lets himself be invaded by the Western atmosphere, farewell to the sadhana. But even in the most materialistic milieu, if one retains one's aspiration and one's faith in the Divine Life, the sadhana can and should continue. 1970 Page 44 × Mother probably dictated the answers to these ...
... that happens, happens in order to give us precisely the lesson we needed, and if we are sincere in the "sadhana", the lesson should be accepted with joy and gratitude. For one who aspires to the divine life, what can the actions of a blind and ignorant humanity matter to him? 18 January 1967 If truly you love the Divine, prove it by remaining quiet and peaceful. All that comes to each one ...
... spiritual peace where, along with the cessation of tension, struggle and effort, suffering in all its forms also ceased, and this was considered the true and unique expression of the spiritual and divine life. This is what was considered divine grace, divine succor, divine intervention. And even now, in this age of anguish, tension and hypertension, this sovereign peace is of all help the best received ...
... have not the comfort they require ought not to stay. We are not in a position to do more than we do, and after all our aim is not to give to people a comfortable life, but to prepare them for a Divine Life which is quite a different affair. The reason for people to come and settle here is surely not to find comfort and luxury—this can be found anywhere if one is lucky enough. But what one can get ...
... pardon me and give me Thy protection and blessings. If you are sincere in your aspiration to see me, you must throw far away from you these morbid ideas of suicide which are quite contrary to any divine life. Be patient, firm and steady, face quietly the difficulties of life and still more quietly the difficulties of "sadhana"—then you will be sure of the final success. With blessings. 21 August ...
... trying to be completely 'pure' according to the spiritual concept—it doesn't sense its separate personality. More and more, year after year, it has been striving to feel only the divine Presence, the divine Life, the divine Force and the divine Will, all within itself; and to feel that without them it is nothing, it doesn't exist. This is fully realized in its consciousness (the conscious part). In the ...
... silent. And then in that silence, the aspiration expressed itself in prayers. ( silence ) It's a denial of all the spiritual assertions of the past: "If you want to live fully conscious of the divine life, leave your body—the body cannot follow." Well, Sri Aurobindo came and said, "Not only can the body follow, but it can be the base that will manifest the Divine." The work remains to be done. ...
... public use: a life in the presence of the Divine, exclusively taken up with the Divine, and so one sang and ... Touchingly simple. Anyway, they conceived of a world (not a material one) in which a divine life had been realized. In the ancient Indian traditions, there had also been a first hint of already divine worlds, as a sort of reaction to that Nirvanism—if we want to be divine, we must stop being ...
... Especially fitting is it for Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to be here because their Integral Yoga is meant not for a glorious flight to a perfect Beyond but for a splendid all-round manifestation of a Divine Life on earth. That manifestation has to be through a power of the Spirit mostly unexplored hitherto and never really mobilised for terrestrial use, a power of the supreme Personal Godhead which Sri Aurobindo ...
... place in total harmony with the rest. Then all those things that appear so "evil," so "reprehensible" and "unacceptable" to the puritan mind would become movements of joy and freedom in a totally divine life. And then nothing would stop us from knowing, understanding, feeling and living this wonderful Laughter of the Supreme who takes infinite delight in watching Himself live infinitely. This delight ...
... "One of the two great steps in this yoga is to take refuge in the Mother" — the other great step being, as Sri Aurobindo afterwards clarified to Nirodbaran: "Aspiration of the sadhak for the divine life."³ But perhaps the most sweeping as well as startling compliment to the Mother — a compliment charged with a humility possible only to a supreme instrument of the Divine such as Sri Aurobindo ...
... which is both creative and transformative and which Sri Aurobindo designated "Truth-Consciousness", the prophecy about Truth prevailing has essentially proved right, and the seed has been sown for a Divine Life to emerge for man in the future. Indeed there has been the realisation of what had looked "impossible" in the midst of modern materialism and its rat-race and, on a backward gaze, the burden ...
... Vyasa in mind when he wrote the above lines, but the influence is clear. However, Sri Aurobindo gives a new turn to the idea of time in the last two lines in accordance with his philosophy of the divine life. Whereas in Vyasa time is ultimately Death the Ender, in Sri Aurobindo even in Time there shall come the end of Death. There is also an evident link between the two poets through the common ...
... hermitage and the dwellers gathering at the moment of concern and at the moment of jubilation? Possibly the sages and the Rishis would have told us about the nature of the new creation and about the divine life received as a boon by Savitri from the Supreme, the "life that has opened with divinity." Similarly, the Book of Death, which presently has only Canto Three, entitled Death in the Forest, might ...
... the ego which is a finite movement of the Infinite, an instrument personality. Aswapati could however see the potentiality in man appearing with the prospect of our life being transformed into divine life. This he could find as if in the glimmerings of a dying torch in the darkness — in the Kingdom of the Little Life working in the grey anarchy. The Traveller, challenging the darkness with ...
... into the Real, and Death into Immortality. The famous Mahabharata legend of Savitri and Satyavan, the story of Love Conquers Death is made the basic symbol of this mystic scripture of Divine Life on Earth. The legend tells of the noble and virtuous king Aswapati performing all kinds of austerities in order that God might be pleased and grant him a child to uphold his kingdom. After eighteen ...
... is a vision of the world in terms of current laws of human evolution as seen by the ideal mind. It opens up a new world of consciousness for mankind. It is concerned with the revelation of the divine life. In it the relation of man with God is direct. Throughout Savitri one finds the question of Eternity and Time and their interdependence. It is Timeless-Eternity of Absolute that wells out ...
... wings and move about freely in earthly or heavenly Paradises. Here is a doctrine, however crude, of physical transformation, by which the human form can be completely spiritualized and live a divine life, the life of "Gods". Of course, to Milton, such a life was possible to unfallen Man and cannot be lived now by any means: it can come about only at the Resurrection for those who have passed their ...
... were not created to throw a bridge between That which is eternally but is unmanifested and that which is manifested, between Page 49 all the transcendences and splendours of the divine life and all the dark and sorrowful ignorance of the material world? Man is the link between What must be and what is; he is the footbridge thrown across the abyss, he is the great cross-shaped X, the ...
... much and fully approved of it to be used as an accompaniment throughout the slide shows. The Mother had given these names to her music: Mystic Solitude, Quiet Power, Joy, Compassion of the Divine, Life in Eternity, Construction of the Future. As for Sunil-da's Savitri music, the Mother arranged for it to be played in the Playground during the meditations on Thursdays and Sundays. In this ...
... our Earth and the work he performed in them; his quest for the supreme goal: the presence of the Divine Mother and her promise to incarnate among mankind in order to assure the foundation of the divine life upon earth. "The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds was just a small passage," writes Nirodbaran. "Here now we find the fully lengthened and developed Book running into 15 cantos. The third Book ...
... leave the door open for you and as soon as you become strong enough, you will come back. My blessings are and will always be with you. And if next time you can come for the yoga and to lead the Divine life, then everything will become easy. The Mother ...
... Treasures - Edition-II Chandulal Chandulal, The first conditions of this Yoga are: (1) A complete sincerity and surrender in the being. The divine life and the transformation of the lower human into the higher divine nature must be made the sole aim of all the life. No attachments, desires or habits of the mind, heart, vital being or body should ...
... sacred moments I have shared with him. Those were beautiful days when I worked under his presence and guidance. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have given to the modern world the sublime vision of a divine life on earth. Our minds are uplifted by the light emanating from their vast and fathomless knowledge. To study their works is to enlarge the boundaries of our knowledge. The writings and talks collected ...
... Whatever is your personal value or even your individual realisation, the first quality required in yoga is humility . Mother is with all those who arc sincere in their aspiration towards a divine life. 26.3.71 1971-11-12 For each problem there is a solution that can give satisfaction to everybody, but for finding this ideal solution each one must want it instead of meeting the others ...
... patient will to arrive in spite of all obstacles, then the opening in one form or another is sure to come." "All sincere aspiration has its effect, if you are sincere you will grow into the divine life." Again, "One cannot become altogether this at once, but if one aspires at all times and calls in the aid of the Divine Shakti with a true heart and a straight- forward will, one grows more and ...
... the infallible promise that I will lead thee to Myself through and beyond all sorrow and evil. Whatever difficulties and perplexities arise, be sure of this that I am leading thee to a complete divine life in the universal and an immortal existence in the transcendent Spirit. ( Essays on the Gita , SABCL, Vol. 13, pp. 537-38) The supreme Mantra is given to the seeker soul: An omniscient ...
... knowledge, divine works an enriched devotion of divine Love, the secrets also of the Hatha Yoga and the Raja Yoga. Thus the Tantra seeks to use the body and mental askesis for the opening up of the divine life on all its planes. Moreover, the Tantra grasps at that idea of divine perfectibility of man, which was possessed by the Vedic Rishis but thrown into the background by the intermediate ages. In the ...
... transform his life by it, is that which makes the working out of the divine self-manifestation through the individual possible; and the arrival of the individual, — not in one but in all, — at the divine life is the sole conceivable object of the movement. The existence of the individual is not an error in some self of the Absolute which that self afterwards discovers; for it is impossible that the absolute ...
... enjoyment of being on the supramental gnostic basis. And this integrality of perfection cannot remain confined to the individual, but would extend progressively to the development of the collective divine life on the earth. In the words of Sri Aurobindo: 'The divinising of the normal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race ...
... Sircar, K., The Mimdmsa: Rules of Interpretation, Thaker, Spink & Co., 1909. Sister Nivedita, The Master as 1 Saw Him, Udbodhan, Calcutta, 1991. Sivananda, Swami, Kundalini Yoga, The Divine Life Society, Sivanand Nagar, 1994. Sukhlal jee. Pandit, Bhdrtiya Tattva Vidya, Maharaja Sayaji Rao Vishva Vidyalaya. Vadodara, 1958. Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, Sri Aurobindo ...
... necessity for the future of the human race. For I believe firmly that the secret concealed in the Veda, when entirely discovered, will be found to formulate perfectly that knowledge and practice of a divine life to which the march of humanity, after long wanderings in the satisfaction of the intellect and senses, must inevitably return." 7 _________________________________ 7 Sri! Aurobindo: ...
... enjoyment of being on the supramental gnostic basis. And this Page 298 integrality of perfection cannot remain confined to the individual, but would extend progressively to the collective divine life on the earth. In the words of Sri Aurobindo: The divinising of the normal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race ...
... sensitive reactions of Life in the metal and the plant up to its full organization in man, so in man himself there is the same ascending series, the preparation, if nothing more, of a higher and divine life. The animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out man. Man himself may well be a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation she wills ...
... the more powerful their 'activity.' "Here we have a veritable theory of the transmutation of simple bodies, but not as the alchemists understood it 1 The Life Divine, Chapter 28, The Divine Life, p. 1052, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Trust, 1970. Page 49 (Pierre Curie was to write). Inorganic matter must have evolved, necessarily, through the ages, and followed immutable ...
... The answer must lie in what we, as people, would like to give to our children for their highest welfare. If we take a voluntary decision to generate a will to change, to turn human life into the divine life, then we can visualise in the coming years, a period of fruitful and successful implementation of the needed ideas and programmes. Page 71 ...
... Ignorance is, there suffering too must come'? Of course, the ultimate victory will be the divine Will's, and in spite of all the vicissitudes of his existence man will surely be privileged to have a divine life here in the earthly field in a physical embodiment. But that is a far way off at the end of a long arduous journey Page 117 covering many lives. And these lives, including ...
... that knows all things and combines all its movements in view of a perfect eventual result.... Whatever difficulties and perplexities arise, be sure of this that I am leading you to a complete divine life in the universal and an immortal existence in the transcendent Spirit." (Essays on the Gita, Cent. Ed., pp. 537-38) At this point an intriguing question may haunt the sadhaka's mind: ...
... But we have already affirmed many a time in course of this book that this sort of escapist spirituality is not the character of the Integral Yoga. We aim at the founding and manifestation of divine life here upon earth itself in the embodied existence of man; and in this task the happy and unquestioning collaboration of the vital is altogether essential. For, no siddhi worth the name is possible ...
... at all.... I indicated clearly that only by Yoga could there come a supreme and total perfection of all the instruments of the spirit and the ascent of the whole being to the highest level and a divine life on earth and the assumption of a divine body. I made it clear that by human and physical means such as sports only a limited and precarious human perfection could come. "In all this there is ...
... fulfilment as an individual and as a race. N ā nyo panth ā vidyate ayan ā ya. But a nagging question may haunt us at this point: Will man's physical existence too share in the glory of the divine life upon earth? Will the body of man be ever able to liberate itself from all the present frailties and limitations? In which way will the New Man's body, in its form and functioning, be different ...
... Aurobindo has indicated in the following passage: "There is one thing everybody should remember that everything should be done from the point of view of Yoga, of Sadhana, of growing into a divine life in the Mother's consciousness. To insist upon one's own mind and its ideas, to allow oneself to be governed by one's own vital feelings and reactions should not be the rule of life here. One has ...
... from the falsehoods and uncertainties that are our lot; it moves in safety towards its perfection. Once the truth-consciousness was established here on its own sure foundation, the evolution of divine life would be a progress in felicity, a march through light to Ananda.¹ Soon after his arrival in Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo 'received' a programme of his own yoga in the form of Sanskrit mantras ...
... ego the world cannot become divine." 3 Similarly, desire in all its guises gross and subtle must be altogether extirpated from our waking consciousness, if we would like to acquire a divine life of action and creation firmly established in the consummated transcendence of the universal Ignorance; for, contrary to what is generally assumed, it is not desire that is the true creative principle ...
... consciousness not liable to be easily disturbed; (3) widening of the consciousness; (4) an uncompromising rejection of all that is in Page 81 oneself opposed to the Divine and divine life; (5) an unshakable faith and trust in the Power and Love of the Divine Mother; (6) to keep the Divine always in one's thought under all situations of life; (7) an attitude of glad enthusiasm free ...
... sadhaka should seek to keep alive at all moments in the background of his consciousness a profound conviction and a sure and unwavering feeling that except for the Divine, the Divine Truth and the Divine Life, there is nothing whatsoever in the world that is really worth cherishing or striving after. He should seek to remain firm in his awareness that the only object set before him is the complete abolition ...
... and the present towards a still more golden future. More than any other person, he is the torch-bearer of our age, the opener of doors to unknown far-flung splendours, the bringer of the dawn of Divine Life. In the eld of poetry too Sri Aurobindo is the Master, but his work is not conned only to his own great poetic achievement; he has also created poetry of singular beauty and excellence through ...
... the English language. That is not easy, for it has many outer and inner elements. September 8, 1938 "Mortality fades away with dim footfalls From the measureless beauty of my life divine." "Life" is not the right word; but if you get upon the mysterious silence of your height divine, all comes in pat enough. Obviously mortality has to walk off when you become so uppish as that. September ...
... said we are children of an intellectual age. Should we not follow in the footsteps of the Master? Essentially Ramakrishna was right. The literature etc. belongs to the instrumentation of the Divine Life—It is of importance only if one accepts that aim and even so, not of importance to everybody. It is not necessary for instance for everybody to have a mastery of English literature or to be a poet ...
... Yoga is an attempt at discovering a new 'Law of Life', and after that discovery one has to mould and regulate one's life in accordance with it. This Law of Life is nothing other than the Law of Divine Life. What does it mean? It means that in a human being there are two planes, two kinds of nature and two laws of life – one belongs to the lower region, the other to the higher, one belongs to the t ...
... divinity Than the staple or dry straw or Reason's tilth, Its heaped fodder of innumerable facts, Plebian fare on which today we thrive. 31 Knowledge of the divine life, spiritual knowledge, is best insinuated through myths and the key symbols that constitute them rather than through logic or philosophy. "Only a mythology", says Berdyaev, "which conceives of the ...
... only way of securing a harmonious and perfected humanity: "Manifest the divinity within you, and everything will be harmoniously arranged around it." The path to this higher harmonious divine life is that of hard labour, of scrupulously untiring, conscientious work: "It is struggle against nature and not conformity to nature that makes man what he is." Work and not abstention from ...
... great dilemma, eternal life or eternal death." 110 The point may likewise be made that what Sri Aurobindo achieved and sought to dramatise in Savitri is an actual insight into the great dilemma: divine life on earth or death in the ignorance. Page 416 ...
... would be man if he was not made to throw a bridge between That which eternally is, but is not manifested, and that which is manifested; between all the transcendences, all the splendours of the divine life and all the obscure and sorrowful ignorance of the material world ? Man is the intermediary between that which has to be and that which is; he is a bridge thrown over the abyss, he is the great X ...
... realisations through his monthly review Arya. In five major sequences published month after month through several years, he envisaged, in the main, the progressive march of man towards a divine life on earth, towards the unity of mankind and a perfect social order. One of these serials was called the Future Poetry in which he traced the growth and development that world poetry is undergoing ...
... expression and embodiment of the Spirit. In this view the approaches to the Divine are not mere interim truths but facets of one organic total reality incarnating the divine consciousness in a divine life. Page 50 In other ways that lead to an escape, you reach a state where you are happy and satisfied, you feel you have attained the highest, the utmost worth attaining and you ...
... Not necessarily. For one may empty the cells of their obscure contents but replenish them with something of a purer order. This is a possibility we envisage and which we are working for. The Divine life empties the cells of desire hut fills it with the energy of solar Light. (4) Ego To renounce is a greater delight than to enjoy. To give is a greater joy than to take ...
... them, one Page 266 has to go to the laboratory and follow a special procedure. The process that brings the direct vision of God, the Self, Immortality and the touch of the Divine Life is called the practice of Yoga. Page 267 ...
... He accepted it. He alone can enjoy it and honour it. 1 Prayers and Meditations of the Mother —September 3, 1919 Page 100 The Feast is that of Transformation, the Divine Life on earth. Man is not capable of it naturally, cannot attain it by his own effort or personal worth. It is the Divine who is to bring it down Himself. He is to manifest Himself and thus establish ...
... success in spiritual sadhana. Even one may be, after Shankara, a mumukshu, What then is the indispensable and unfailing requisite? What is it that gives you the right of entrance into the divine life? What is the element, the factor in you that acts as the open sesame, as a magic solvent? Only one thing, represented by one small homely word—"Call". Whatever may be the case with other ...
... possible in this domain also, and such an exceeding is part of Sri Aurobindo's vision of the future: A total perfection is the ultimate aim which we set before us for our ideal is the Divine Life which we wish to create here, the life of the Spirit fulfilled on earth, life accomplishing its own spiritual transformation even here on earth in the conditions of the material universe. That ...
... on Education. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, 1990. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on Love. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, 1988. The Future Evolution of Man: The Divine Life upon Earth. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, 1990. (The Future Evolution of Man contains extracts from the works of Sri Aurobindo, with a summary and notes by the compiler. ...
... in 1945-46, Mother had told me that she wanted a beautiful place with the sea, hills and rivers. There men would live without egoism, aspiring for the Divine in order to fulfil the dream of "divine life". She had not yet called it Auroville. This was a dream of Mother's. There is also a writing of hers titled A dream. Mother had many similar beautiful ideas. Mother would often speak of a ...
... is the resistance of the material world. Disciple : What do you mean by- "unrepentant" ? Sri Aurobindo : 1 mean, that the material world does not care a jot for the Divine or the Divine Life. Disciple : What do you mean by the resistance of the material world ? Sri Aurobindo : Its impossibility of opening to something high, of conceiving something different from what ...
... of human possibility, a sign that points to the goal of evolution. In his Essays on the Gita, Sri Aurobindo says about the Avatar: "He may on the other hand descend as an incarnation of divine life, the divine personality and power in its characteristic action, for a mission ostensibly social, ethical and political, as is represented in the story of Rama and Krishna; but always then his descent ...
... will find yourself in the embrace of the Divine. *** Close not your senses -however earthly they may be. Fling them all wide open -open always and everywhere, but to the Divine. *** Life itself becomes Art - the very highest form of Art - when it is moulded in the rhythm of the Supreme Beauty, when its steps follow the cadences of the Divine. *** Every ...
... ion (which includes, of course, vitalisation and mentalisation) of the Spirit and the spiritual values. It means the establishment of divine names and forms in terrestrial individuals leading a divine life, individually and collectively here below. 2 We have so far spoken of two lines of descent. But in either case the descent was of a general and impersonal character. Consciousness was ...
... the only way of securing a harmonious and perfected humanity: "Manifest the divinity within you, and everything will be harmoniously arranged around it." The path to this higher harmonious divine life is that of hard labour, of scrupulously untiring, conscientious work: "It is struggle against nature and not conformity to nature that makes man what he is." Work and not abstention from ...
... revealed to me, and what I have been able to bring down here — the total realisation of the Supramental and consequently the Supramental manifestation upon earth, and with that the promise of a divine life upon earth. It is this that I dreamt of in my childhood, it is this that I have expressed through all that I have undertaken in the course of my terrestrial existence or else of my entire life. ...
... for you. But it is more ardent, more true than a conviction, it is an absolute trust, a faith in the Divine. And, little by little, one sees whether one can really launch oneself into a divine life, call Him, so that He may help us and guide us in so many ways from behind a veil. So much Grace bathes us in our hours of difficulty, in our moments of despair. In our hopelessness, he stretches ...
... 386 the divine being; the second is the rending of the lower veil and the descent of the divine consciousness into the most material, the subconscient and the inconscient, realising the divine life on earth. Page 387 ...
... Yunshan of Cheena-Bhavana, Visvabharati, recorded: The Ashram has now grown up.... It is a growing, not of the nature of an ordinary society or organisation. It is a growing towards a divine life.... It is indeed a divine home for all.... I would say: "If there is a divine home in the world, it is this, it is this... ." 7 In March 1952, K.M. Munshi - then Governor of Uttar Pradesh ...
... Śarīram khalu dharmasādhanam, says the old Sanskrit adage, the body is the means of fulfilment of dharma.... A total perfection is the ultimate aim which we set before us, for our ideal is the Divine Life which we wish to create here, the life of the Spirit fulfilled on earth.... That cannot be unless the body too undergoes a transformation, un- less its action and functioning attain to a supreme ...
... llion, 638H; sonnets, 647ff; 'Inconscient', 647-8; 'Evolution', 648; 'Surreal Science', 650-1; 'Electron', 651; 'The Infinite Adventure', 652; Savitri, 653-92; accident to leg, 655ff; human-divine life, 693ff; at the time of cyclone, 693; resumed talks, 694; on Spengler, 694; on modem art and poetry, 695; on his biographers, 696; deep interest in the war, 696ff; Hitler & Napoleon, 696-7; spiritual ...
... Sri Krishna, the Overmind Godhead, into Sri Aurobindo's physical being. The 'birth' of the Ashram with about twenty-four sadhaks. The sadhana here, declared Sri Aurobindo, is to grow 'into a divine life in the Mother's consciousness'. Sri Aurobindo 'soon retired into seclusion and the whole material and spiritual charge of the Ashram devolved on her'. Later he explains: 'I am seeking to bring ...
... earlier pralayas, almost hoped that the present manifestation too would merely dissolve, but not undergo a transformation. The Mind too, for all its conceit, was ignorant: even when it asked for the divine life it had no faith, in fact it was afraid of it and clung to the old life. The Mother pictured the transforming Force as a child sitting on the head of this Mind to silence it. Nevertheless as the Mother ...
... without emotion. Is there a significance? (Mother underlined the word "Something" and answered:) It is your psychic being, the individualisation of your soul that wants to realise the divine life during its human life. 28.1.1967 In the human being, is the psychic being the entire soul or do both the psychic being and the soul {in its essence, as a divine spark in all creatures) ...
... The Mother and Sri Aurobindo want us to transform all the impurities of our lower nature and raise them to conscious Truth. To transform human life into God-life, into divine life. We cannot give it up and become indifferent. We have to get down into this life and purify it. Like descending into hell and converting it into heaven. The Mother said that Sri Aurobindo was of ...
... self-fulfilment and self-poise, aspiring towards the ascension to the divine consciousness, able to receive and bear the descent of the divine light and power, fitting itself to be a vessel of the divine Life. Page 195 ...
... turn to the Divine, to achieve a progressive divinisation of his nature. As he once wrote to his brother Barin: "No one is God but in each man there is a God and to make him manifest is the aim of divine life. That we can all do." 81 When man so manifests the divine, then his philosophy, art, science, ethics, social existence, and vital pursuits will be, "no longer an exercise of mind ...
... its true action it belongs to the Divine. But it has been usurped and is being misused by the Asuric forces: To reconquer it for the Divine to whom it belongs and use it divinely for the divine life is the supramental way for the Sadhaka. You must neither turn with an ascetic shrinking from the money power, the means it gives and the objects it brings, nor cherish a rajasic attachment to ...
... has to open to this inner light, and one should be anchored in utter sincerity: True sincerity consists in advancing on the way because you cannot do otherwise, to consecrate yourself to the divine life because you cannot do otherwise, to seek to transform your being and come out into the light because you cannot do otherwise, because it is the purpose of your life. After the meditation on ...
... At the root of it all would be a feeling of delight in everything, in the body as much as in the spirit .... No one is a god, but each man has a god within him. To manifest him is the aim of divine life." Sri Aurobindo concluded by saying that "I too am tying up my bundle. But I believe this bundle is like the net of St.Peter, teeming with the catch of the Infinite." 21 But he wouldn't be coaxed ...
... Ashram has now grown up into a big organisation than which I cannot think of a more perfect one.... It is a growing, not of the nature of an ordinary society or association. It is a growing towards a divine life.... It is indeed a divine home for all.... Of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram I would say: "If there is a divine home in the world, it is this, it is this." 30 Page 532 ...
... On The Mother CHAPTER 39 International Centre I In the Ashram's collective adventure of moving towards a New Life, a divine life, the Mother assigned (as we have seen) a central role almost to education. A school had been founded for children on 2 December 1943, but in the course of the seven years they had grown up in age and abilities and spread ...
... on the world of phenomena. This divergence should be healed, and both the East and the West march together towards the new horizons of a spiritual evolution of human and earth nature so that a "divine life" on the earth may emerge ultimately out of the present. The Mother, in a succinct message, exhorted men and women all over the world to stop thinking that some were of the West and some of the East; ...
... Truth; for if we have a school here, it is in order that it be different from the millions of schools in the world; it is to give the children a chance to distinguish between ordinary life and the divine life, the life of truth to see things in a different way. It is useless to want to repeat here the ordinary Life. The teacher's mission is to open the eyes of the children to something which they will ...
... posits a spiritual principle, the collective soul in place of destiny and sees history moving towards the fulfilment of the collective spirit of man. Man's destiny, according to him, is to attain divine life on earth i. e. to attain and manifest the Truth- Consciousness which would take the place of his mental consciousness and recreate life, individual and collective, in the mould of that higher reality ...
... deepest self. There is a long passage in which Savitri affirms the coming down of the supreme Light into her and Satyavan. They are working for the perfection of mankind and creating for humanity the divine life on earth. There you get some concept of Savitri. It is an outline, because in two or three days you can't get the whole of Savitri. But you can get something about what it deals with, you can ...
... and, second, whether a desireless, impersonal action is all that a perfect Yogic action means. The spiritual discipline of the Gita is, indeed, a very powerfully synthetic discipline for a divine life-effectuation and life- fulfilment, but the most radically effective steps of it, the steps of the crucial transition from the human to the Divine, have been left in obscurity, as a mystery to ...
... a supreme manifestation of the Divine Power which makes possible the double victory of man and the Divine by conquering all the forces of darkness and Ignorance here and at last establishes the divine life on earth. It is this "Divine event" to which the whole creation of Sāvitrī tends. About the subject-matter of Sāvitrī, Sri Aurobindo himself wrote:— "Sāvitrī is the record of a ...
... secret of the conquest and transformation of life and the evolution of the divine unity and harmony in the midst of multitudinous diversity. The Liberating Knowledge "Without the Divine, life is a painful illusion, with the Divine, all is bliss.”² Because modern humanity, in its pride of intellectual advancement, has exiled the Divine from its life, it is labouring under a painful ...
... of the Supermind and its establishment in the earth-consciousness as a principle and power of the infinite Knowledge-Will, superseding and completing the mind of man, was inevitable, and that a divine life on earth was the crowning glory of human destiny. How was that great work going to be accomplished ? Who would now be the leader of the supramental evolution ? Was it not merely a lofty dream of ...
... four heads: (I) The Divine Union, (2) Physical transformation through service in an integral surrender, (3) conquest of the Subconscient and the Inconscient, (4) The Divine Manifestation and the Divine Life. It will be our humble endeavour in this study to follow the developing contours of the Mother's ideal and mission and relate them to those of Sri Aurobindo in order to substantiate our thesis ...
... four heads : (1) The Divine Union, (2) Physical transformation through service in an integral surrender, (3) Conquest of the Subconscient and the Inconscient, (4) The Divine Manifestation and the Divine Life. It ill be our humble endeavour in this study to follow the developing contours of the Mother's ideal and mission and relate them to those of Sri Aurobindo in order to substantiate our thesis that ...
... * For through the shocks of difficulty and death Man shall attain his godhead. ** * All sincere aspirations has its effect; if you are sincere you will grow into the divine life. Page 10 ...
... sattwic or rajasic, the ego is the ego, as a chain is a chain, Page 134 whether it is of iron or gold; and so long as the ego persists, spiritual liberation is a far cry, let alone the Divine Life, which is the aim of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. THE TENTACLES OF THE EGO The tentacles of the ego are spread out in every part of human nature. They pervade our body, our life parts, our ...
... of the Supermind and its establishment in the earth-consciousness as a principle and power of the infinite Knowledge-Will, superseding and completing the mind of man, was inevitable, and that a divine life on earth was the crowning glory of human destiny. How was that great work going to be accomplished? Who would now be the leader of the supramental evolution? Was it not merely a lofty dream of ...
... the many are essentially one, and that their oneness can be dynamically expressed in every movement of human life. It was for the complete transformation of homo sapiens and his ascent into the Divine Life that they have laboured for long years of unrelaxed collaboration. But the transformation is impossible without a radical dealing with the very base of human life and nature. This base, as both ...
... departures from the traditional paths of Yoga and the original contribution of Sri Aurobindo to the spiritual achievements of humanity. They are meant to bring into focus the essential elements of the Divine Life which, according to Sri Aurobindo, is the ultimate destiny of the evolving being of man. All these essays appeared serially in the Mother India) to the editor of which I am much indebted. ...
... s of human possibility, a sign that points to the goal of evolution. In his Essays on the Gita, Sri Aurobindo says about the Avatar: "He may on the other hand descend as an incarnation of divine life, the divine personality and power in its characteristic action, for a mission ostensibly social, ethical and political, as is represented in the story of Rama and Krishna; but always then his descent ...
... observe, and to look within! She gave me the force to know myself, to choose the right thing from among a confused heap of falsehoods. Our whole life she cast into a new mould to prepare it for a divine life, a new birth of consciousness, an inner life. Nolini had written to me before I came to the Ashram, “Here the resources of ordinary life will be of no use at all.” Its meaning became gradually clear ...
... it, but he put it to the test throughout his tour from Bombay to Calcutta. As already mentioned above, all activities initiated afterwards were taken up in the same way. The basis of his ideal of divine life as a result of complete transformation of human nature was derived from solid experience gained in the midst of a stormy political activity. Thus, Sri Aurobindo's yoga does not rest upon the basis ...
... of our earthly race" and "This region borders on our mortal state". The beings of this higher vital world are cast in "the hero's mould". Even though this is not a region of true and highest divine life, still, there is here a movement towards the light, for Page 190 the first time "An ideal is their leader and their king". These beings aspire to establish a government of some high ...
... follow the movement of progress; transformation is the natural, inevitable result of that new breathing. It is no longer life, it is no longer death, it is something else… a divine something else. Divine life on earth. An immortal consciousness in the body that remoulds the body in its immortal image. What was up above or at the very bottom of Matter under the carbon crust has come HERE. All the ...
... worlds. 27 Man must accomplish his mission of purifying matter 28 transforming matter, 29 She said as early as 1912, even before meeting Sri Aurobindo. Man must enter the path of the divine life, 30 create a new race. 31 And with a prophetic vision of all that Sri Aurobindo's yoga would be, as well as her own up to the age of ninety-five, She wrote, The obstacle merges with the very ...
... help and guide us to become whatever it is we must become... " The answer Mother gave was one of her messages, "Mother is with all those who are sincere in their aspiration towards a divine life." Laura gets a final chance to stay in Auroville. Santosh Chakrabarty, retired Judge of Calcutta High Court, wants Auroville work. Law matters and important correspondence approved ...
... the dungeon. The slow invasion of the new Life. And, at the other end, a new species that will change the face of the earth. The twilight of man is the beginning of the free Man and the divine life on earth. “May Earth and Heaven be equal and one,” said the Veda. “A new Heaven and a new Earth,” said Saint John of the Apocalypse. The resurrection from the dead is our resurrection. ...
... can lead a married life, a life in the world. In all your works you find the expression of God's delight.... No one is a god but in each man there is a god and to make Him manifest is the aim of divine life. 6 The goal wasn't of course to be reached in a sudden or single leap; Sri Aurobindo had himself faced the perils and difficulties and uncertainties of the journey and the struggle: ...
... Srinivasachari: "On another occasion he was telling us that the coming Yuga will be a glorious one, for man will be able to live a far higher life, almost divine, in this world Then Bharati said that if divine life is lived on earth, then we must be immortal also. Yes, he said, we are bound to be so when we work for it." How hard Sri Aurobindo worked—for decades—to usher in the New Yuga. Page 44 ...
... the understanding of the dynamic divine Truth between the old Yogas and our Yoga? A. The fundamental difference is in the teaching that there is a dynamic divine Truth (the Supermind) and that into the present world of Ignorance that Truth can descend, create a new Truth-consciousness and divinize Life. The old Yogas go straight from mind to the absolute Divine, regard all dynamic existence as... as Ignorance, Illusion or Lila; when you enter the static and immutable Divine Truth, they say, you pass out of cosmic existence. ...
... loveliness Unstained by time The soul must press. Within the body Of God's sheer light Is the soul of God's Creative might. There burns the Beauty To make divine Even life's luring Outward shine. Short of that inmost Fire of the world Eternity itself Is half unfurled. 1.10.51 Page 560 ...
... Habit or 'groove' to use Sri Aurobindo's expression, what we call the 'law of life,' in other words, birth-growth-decay-death, is but a groove created by Nature. And just as breaking a habit does not destroy but improves us, so too this groove of Nature can be changed without destroying the universe, bringing a divinized Life here in this physical world. In fact plenty of people in the Ashram got... eternal." It was intolerable to Mother to see physical suffering. "Physical suffering is to me like a child being beaten.... But then," Mother told Satprem one day, "when that true Compassion of Divine Love comes and you see all those things that look so horrible, so abnormal, so absurd, that great pain over all beings and even over things.... Then there was born in this physical being the aspiration... night Sri Aurobindo could cure a person of a fever and send him fresh and full of strength to his work. A cure without medicines. And Mother. She healed. She healed all wounds —inner or outer —that life is wont to inflict on us. She had such a tender way of doing it too! Oh, how many times did I see her with children who had fallen sick, removing their pain, curing them of fever by passing her ...
... describe that utter relief, that delightful lightness which comes when one is free from all anxiety for oneself, for one's life and health and satisfaction, and even one's progress? This relief, this deliverance Thou hast granted to me, O Thou, Divine Master, Life of my life and Light of my light, O Thou who unceasingly teachest me love and makest me know the purpose of my existence. It is Thou... enough to cure us of every personal thought, to make us spread our wings and soar above the contingencies of material life, so as to fly away into Thy divine atmosphere and be able to return as Thy messengers to the earth to announce the glorious tidings of Thy approaching Advent? O Divine Master, sublime Friend, marvellous Teacher, in a fecund silence I bow to Thee. Page 31 ... August 17, 1913 O Lord, Master of our life, let us soar very high above all care for our material preservation. Nothing is more humiliating and depressing than these thoughts so constantly turned towards the preservation of the body, these preoccupations with health, the means of subsistence, the framework of life.... How very insignificant is all this, a thin smoke that a simple ...
... they go out of existence to find the Divine, to find God, a God who is outside life; they themselves go outside life to find Him. While in the integral yoga it is in life that the Divine must be found, not outside life. There are those, for instance, who consider life and the world an illusion, and think it necessary to leave them behind in order to find the Divine, whose nature, they say, is the opposite... says that perhaps they will find God outside life but will not find the Divine in life. He contrasts the two things. In one case it is an extra-terrestrial and unmanifested Divine, and in the other it is the Divine who is manifested in life and whom one can find again through life. Do you catch the point? Mother, when one is identified with the Divine in the higher part of the being while neglecting... of union with the Divine in action and work, and in the consecration of one's work to the Divine. That's all. Sweet Mother, "the consecration of works is a needed element in that change. Otherwise, although they may find God in other-life, they will not be able to fulfil the Divine in life." The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 85 Why these two words: "God" and "the Divine"? I don't think ...
... surroundings. The following message from the Mother is indeed admirable: Matrimandir is here to teach people that it is not by escaping from the world or ignoring it that they will realise the Divine in life. Matrimandir must be the symbol of this Truth . The Matrimandir is certainly not a place where people can indulge in their vital enjoyments and their egos. It is not a tourist spot, either.... Indeed, we can only repay Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, for all that they have done and are still doing for us, by fulfilling faithfully and sincerely their "Dream" upon earth. Then and then alone is life worth living. And to fulfil that "Dream" we must weave into our lives the Message which the Mother gave me on my spiritual birthday in 1961: Truth is supreme harmony and supreme delight ...
... does our true spiritual life begin? The true spiritual life begins when one is in communion with the Divine in the psychic, when one is conscious of the divine Presence in the psychic and in constant communion with the psychic. Then the spiritual life begins, not before. The true spiritual life. When one is united with one's psychic being and conscious of the divine Presence, and receives the... that it is the Spirit, the spiritual consciousness and the divine Presence which give to life all its value, that without this spiritual consciousness and divine Presence life has no value. The same holds true for the individual, whatever his material capacities and the material conditions in which he lives, his only worth is that of the divine Presence and the spiritual consciousness in him. And... the impulses for one's action from this divine Presence, and when the will has become a conscious collaborator with the divine Will―that is the starting-point. Before that, one may be an aspirant to the spiritual life, but one doesn't have a spiritual life. Sweet Mother, I would like to have the explanation of a sentence. Sri Aurobindo has said somewhere, "Materially you are nothing, spiritually ...
... learn that it was only in November 392 that the Roman Emperor Theodosius had banned all forms of public worship other than the Christian. Madame de Staēl said succinctly, "Pagans divinize life, Christians divinize death." And what death! During the Spanish Inquisition, in a span of fifteen years, between 1483 and 1498, a single Dominican priest who was the Inquisitor-General, sentenced over 114... Jefferson (1743-1826). Voltaire, who dominated the intellectual world of the eighteenth century, was also endowed with a lion's heart. He took on the might of the Roman Catholic Church. Throughout his life he waged a war to cut Christianity to size. His discerning intellect saw through the deliberate falsehoods spread by the missionaries, not to mention the cupidity of the Europeans sustained by Christian... Hugging the coast they sailed down south 1 As quoted by Sita Ram Goel in History of Hindu-Christian Encounters. Page 141 and found their new home in South Kanara "where life and religion were quite secure under the Nayaka rulers of Keladi." They had managed to save their family Goddess, Mahālasā. Those who were unable to escape, and who would not embrace Christianity ...
... has them. The life that is dedicated to the Divine, the life that is in some way connected with the higher consciousness, through which something of the world of light and delight comes down into our mortality acquires a special worth and naturally calls for divine protection. Likewise the property placed at the service of the Divine, which is used as an instrument for the Divine's own work upon... and deprivation of life's possession – are necessary sometime or other for that growth and well-being – the contingency is not ruled out – well, that destiny too has to be accepted as part of the divine purpose, as protection itself. For after all life and life's powers have no intrinsic' or absolute value of their own, their value depends upon the soul's need of them for its divine well-being. ... upon earth, the Divine will surely protect, for it is then part of his grandeur and glory, ai ś warya. Life and property become indeed sacred and inviolable when they are put at the disposal of the Divine for his use in the fulfilment of the cosmic design. As we know, life and property under present conditions upon earth are possessions of the undivine forces, they are weapons through which God's ...
... sorrow and trouble and accuses the Divine and life and everybody else of torturing it, but for the most part the sorrow and the trouble come and remain because the perverse something in the vital wants them! That element in the vital has to be got rid of altogether. Yes, it is so [ that people themselves indirectly choose pain and misery by not turning to the Divine ]. Even there is something in... in the vital consciousness that would not feel at home if there were no suffering in life. It is the physical that fears and abhors suffering, but the vital takes it as part of the play of life. It is the vital that enjoys the drama of life and takes a pleasure even in sorrow and suffering—it [ a movement of depression ] is not a revolt but an acceptance. Of course there are moods of revolt also... , you need change nothing in the inward aim and concentration of your will and endeavour on the one thing to be done—the entire self-giving and self-dedication of your inner and outer being to the Divine Page 179 alone. If you can adopt firmly the right inward attitude, it may even be easier than by an outward rule for your main guidance. I hope you will be able to reject this duḥkha ...
... ours; We are sons of God and must be even as he: His human portion, we must grow divine. Our life is a paradox with God for key. But none learns whither through the unknown he sails Or what secret mission the great Mother gave. In the hidden strength of her omnipotent Will, Driven by her breath across life's tossing deep, Through the thunder's roar and through the windless hush, Through... roots of trance, Wake a dumb self in the inconscient depths And raise a lost power from its python sleep That the eyes of the Timeless might look out from Time And the world manifest the unveiled Divine. For this he left his white infinity And laid on the Spirit the burden of the flesh, That Godhead's seed might flower in mindless Space. Savitri , I.IV.55-73 Soon afterwards ... all activities. As soon as you try to formulate it, there comes in that mental element. It's no longer that. Very, very active. A constant activity of demonstration, of teaching—in action, in life (not mental, not in thought). And as soon as speech, for instance, comes, it takes away the truth of the thing, I don't know... It turns it into literature, as it were. One can't say anything. ...
... physical life-evolution. According to the theory of spiritual evolution, there are three stages in the process of becoming. An involution of the spirit in the inconscience is the beginning. An evolution in the ignorance with its play of possibilities of a partial developing knowledge is the middle. A consummation in a deployment of the spirit's self-knowledge and the self-power of its divine being and... evolved Page 45 consciousness, the partial consciousness already reached must surely evolve into complete consciousness. It is contended that it is a supramentalized, perfected and divinized life for which the earth-nature is secretly seeking, and that a progressive manifestation of this kind can only have for its secret of significance the revelation of Being in a perfect Becoming. ... entitled 'Record of Yoga’ and thirteen volumes of the Mother's own account of development reaching up to its climactic point. A study of these volumes and other volumes such as Sri Aurobindo's 'The Life Divine’, 'The Synthesis of Yoga’, 'Letters on Yoga’, "The Supramental Manifestation Upon Earth’, 'Savitri’ — an epic written in the English language, as also 'The Mother's Conversations’, 'Questions and ...
... p. 624 of The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo (American Edition, 1949). This sentence is the second in the paragraph which starts speaking of "a unity behind diversity and discord" as "the secret of the variety of human religions and philosophies". It runs: "Whether they see dimly the material world as the body of the Divine, or life as a great pulsation of the breath of Divine Existence, or all... manifold Deity, the one divine Man or the one Divine in all men or, more largely, discover the One whose presence enables us to become unified in consciousness or in works or in life with all beings, unified with all things in Time and Space, unified with Nature and her influences and even her inanimate forces,—the truth behind must ever be the same because all is the one Divine Infinite whom all are... character: only a fixed number of them are relevant, exhausting the real possibilities of the variety into which human religions and philosophies can meaningfully proliferate in relation to the secret divine unity. Page 394 ...
... physical life-evolution. According to the theory of spiritual evolution, there are three stages in the process of becoming. An involution of the spirit in the inconscience is the beginning. An evolution in the ignorance with its play of possibilities of a partial developing knowledge is the middle. A consummation in a deployment of the spirit's self-knowledge and the self-power of its divine being and... inconscience has evolved consciousness, the partial consciousness already reached must surely evolve into complete consciousness. It is contended that it is a supramentalized, perfected and divinized life for which the earth-nature is secretly seeking, and that a progressive manifestation of this kind can only have for its secret of significance the revelation of Being in a perfect Becoming. ... emerges in the disguise of vital vibrations, animate but subconscient; then in imperfect formulations of a conscient life, it strives towards self- finding through successive forms of that material Substance, forms more and more adapted to its own complete expression. Consciousness in life, throwing off the primal insensibility of a material inanimation and nescience, labours to find itself more and more ...
... ( Concerning a few words of Mother's noted from memory by a disciple. ) "The harmonious moments in life are not a reward granted by the Divine. If life were normally what it should be, everything would always be harmonious...." Yes, when it's harmonious we think, "The Divine is happy with me"! That's what people think, but it's not true: it is the NORMAL state. "...It is because... probably a necessary experience, a necessary phase. You know, I always felt, always: if something isn't right, it means that this something isn't really turned to the Divine. And if everything is turned to the Divine, and obeys only the Divine, things will inevitably be harmonious. That was my conviction. But yesterday the experience came differently. Probably it's a necessary experience. Yes, probably... there, it's concrete and it hurts, but there is a consciousness in which it no longer exists—physically. If you know (what shall I say?)... to put it simply: to approach the Divine in the right way, to enter into contact with the Divine in the right way, in the right manner—it starts up again afterwards as before. ( Mother turns around ) Is he here? Pranab is here. Ah! Au revoir!... ...
... sattwic vairagya which has learned what life is and turns to what is above and behind life. By the ascetic vairagya I mean that which denies life and world altogether and wants to disappear into the Indefinite—and I object to it for those who come to this Yoga because it is incompatible with my aim which is to bring the Divine into life. But if one is satisfied with life as it is, then there is no reason... a grave mistake. This Yoga is not a rejection of life or of closeness and intimacy between the Divine and the sadhaks. Its ideal aims at the greatest closeness and unity on the physical as well as the other planes, at the most divine largeness and fullness and joy of life. Vairagya Vairagya means a positive detachment from things of this life—but it does not immediately carry with it a luminous... and the divine work, such as art, music, poetry etc.—Yoga can be done without the rejection of life, without killing or impairing the life-joy and the vital force. I have objected in the past to vairagya of the ascetic kind and the Page 388 tamasic kind—and by the tamasic kind I mean that spirit which comes defeated from life, not because it is really disgusted with life but because ...
... need to cut all family ties; on the contrary, this is an indispensable condition because as long as you hang on to all these cords which bind you to ordinary life, which make you a slave to the ordinary life, how can you possibly belong to the Divine alone? What childishness! It is simply not possible. If you have ever taken the trouble to read over the early ashram rules, Page 41 you would... friendships were considered dangerous and undesirable ... We made every effort to create an atmosphere in which only ONE thing counted: the Life Divine . But as I said, bit by bit ... things changed. However, this had one advantage: we were too much outside of life. So there were a number of problems which had never arisen but which would have suddenly surged up the moment we wanted a complete manifestation... that alone can heal the gulf between the highest heights of the supramental spirit and the lowest abysses of Matter, the Ananda that holds the key of a wonderful divines Life and even now supports from its secrecies the work of all the other Powers of the universe.' Sri Aurobindo, The Mother (A disciple:) Sweet Mother, what is this Personality and when will It manifest? My answer is ...
... hint of Savitri's life and trial has been given. After all, we know the story of Savitri's struggle and victory. It is this Savitri of popular legend that is seen to forge the link between the inconscient matter and the Superconscient Life Divine. The life-giving rays of the Sun turn the tiny seed buried in the pond into a bright pearly lotus. Savitri begins her life as an artless innocent... princess born amidst wealth and comfort. Then she assumes the role of the Redeemer whose mission is to transform this meaningless mortal life into the purposeful Life Divine. "Savitri is represented in the poem", says Sri Aurobindo, "as an incarnation of the Divine Mother. This incarnation is supposed to have taken place in far past times when the whole thing had to be opened, so as to 'hew the ways... G. K. Chesterton I 'The Symbol Dawn' Sri Aurobindo's chosen aim in life was to show earth-bound : mortals the path that leads to the Life Divine. It was to illustrate this passage to the earthly paradise that he wrote his epic Savitri, a masterpiece of sustained philosophical motivation and steeped in mysticism ...
... blossoming of a flower because the Divine is in him and the joy of the Divine, and as that joy expands in him, soul and mind and life too expand naturally into their godhead. At the same time, because he feels the Divine in all, perfect within every limiting appearance, he will not have the sorrow of his imperfection. Nor will the seeking of the Divine through life and the meeting of him in all the... worship. All Nature and all life will be to him at once a revelation and a fine trysting-place. Intellectual and aesthetic and dynamic activities, science and philosophy and life, thought and art and action will assume for him a diviner sanction and a greater meaning. He will seek them because of his clear sight of the Divine through them and because of the delight of the Divine in them. He will not be... personal relations of the Divine with the human, that too we shall not deny ourselves; we shall admit both the play of the love and the delight and its ineffable union. By knowledge we seek unity with the Divine in his conscious being: by works we seek also unity with the Divine in his conscious being, not statically, but dynamically, through conscious union with the divine Will; but by love we seek ...
... shall hardly be Aurobindonians. Vaishnava bhakti has brought the sweetness and intensity and concreteness of the personal Divine into life and, as such, it is indispensable for us, human persons who have been doing the Integral Yoga under gurus whom we have believed to be the Divine embodied. But there has been a lot of emotional and sensational excitement associated with this bhakti, and that certainly... a Yoga with which they themselves were never associated." Actually, Sri Aurobindo's central stress is on a new life, a transcendence of the spiritual past as well of the past in any other form, though in that spiritual past there are naturally some helpful hints for the new life. Sri Aurobindo appreciates all true seeking and permits the prolongation of the past when sincere people are somehow... my Prophet, my Guru," and opposes it to all other realisation in a sectarian or a fanatical spirit. All sectarianism, all fanaticism must be shunned; for it is inconsistent with the integrity of the divine realisation.' "Then again in Letters on Yoga we read these lines: I have Page 71 no objection at all to the worship of Krishna or the Vaishnava form of devotion, nor is there ...
... You must understand what is meant when you say you no longer want it. It is not so easy. For while in your brain you turn and turn the idea 'I do not want ego, I do not want to separate from the Divine', in life it has no effect; when actually you do a selfish or egoistic act, you find it quite natural; it does not even give a shock to you. We must begin by understanding what the thing really means... your true self, the divine being in you, so that the whole may be a cohesive organised entity. When thus wholly conscious, harmoniously organised around the divine centre, then it can be wholly consecrated, united to the Divine: then the time comes, the Divine permits the true union to be made. When the individualisation is complete then He lets you merge your ego into the Divine, you live and exist... The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 8 To Melt into the Divine How to melt into the Divine? That is to say, how to get dissolved in the Divine, lose one's ego ? First of all, one must wish for it, will for it, aspire for it with perseverence. Everytime the ego shows itself, you must give it a tap on the nose, until it receives so much of it that it gets ...
... must understand what is meant when you say you no longer want it. It is not so easy. For while in your brain you turn and turn the idea 'I do not want ego, I do not want to be separate from the Divine', in life it has no effect; when actually you do a selfish or egoistic act, you find it quite natural; it does not even give a shock to you. We must begin by understanding what the thing really means... your true self, the divine being in you, so that the whole may be a cohesive organised entity. When thus wholly conscious, harmoniously organised around the divine centre, then it can be wholly consecrated, united with the Divine: then the time comes, the Divine permits the true union to be made. When the individualisation is complete then He lets you merge your ego into the Divine, you live and exist... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 To Melt into the Divine How to melt into the Divine? That is to say, how to get dissolved in the Divine, lose one's ego? FIRST of all, one must wish for it, will for it, aspire for it with perseverance. Every time the ego shows itself, you must give it a blow on the nose, until it receives ...
... one passes beyond the Ignorance and the lower nature into unity with the Divine and the Divine Nature. Here in the Ignorance we are not aware of the Divine and we obey the lower nature. Page 5 All that is true Truth is the direct expression in one way or another of the Divine Consciousness. Life is the dynamic expression of Consciousness-Force when thrown outward to realise itself... the Ignorance into the Light. 3) The Divine is transcendent Being and Spirit, all bliss and light and divine knowledge and power, and towards that highest divine existence and its Light we have to rise and bring down the reality of it more and more into our consciousness and life. In the ordinary nature we live in the Ignorance and do not know the Divine. The forces of the ordinary nature are... 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. The Divine is everywhere on all the planes of consciousness seen by us in different ways and aspects of his being. But there is a Supreme which is above all these ...
... menaced or darkened by the waves from the Subconscient and the Inconscient. An integral purification and transformation of the whole being is the only means of realising an integral union with the Divine in life, and for this a radical purification and conversion of the Subconscient and the Inconscient is an indispensable condition. If we have understood it, we shall be able to understand why the Mother... Inconscient will ¹Prayers and Meditations of the Mother; February 9, 1914, Page 182 mean the conquest of material life and nature, and the conversion of human nature into divine nature. The Mother says that the majority of beings, even of human beings, live constantly in the Subconscient, "few, emerge from it,” and she affirms that "this is the conquest that has to be made;... nce, there is no stirring of life or mind, only a blind mighty Energy weaving stupendous systems of worlds and suns and moons and star-clusters and planets, as if in a dumb, creative sleep. Out of this tranced involution of the Spirit in Matter evolves Life, making the earth smile with a splendour of verdant beauty and shudder with a secret, unknown delight. With Life emerges consciousness, first, ...
... will never recognise love anywhere; and the more divine the love, that is to say devoid of egoism, the less they can recognise it. *** Concentration upon oneself leads to decay and death. Solely a concentration on the Divine brings life, progress and realisation. *** It is for the Divine Grace that one must pray; if the divine justice were to manifest, they will be few who would... to laugh together. *** O Divine Force, Supreme illuminator, who can resist your Divine Power? You are the unique and supreme Reality. Listen to our prayers, do not distance yourself, or withdraw from us. Help us to fight the good fight, strengthen our resolve for the battle; grant us the force to win. May your glory be proclaimed. May your life be sanctified. May the hearts... hate!” *** He who walks in truth is not disturbed by any error, for he knows that error is the first effort of life towards the truth. *** The individual self and the universal self are one; in every world, in every being, in everything, in every atom is the Divine Presence, and man’s mission is to manifest it. If we all brought here an ardent aspiration for more knowledge and ...
... ( Mother holds out a note ) "You seem to forget that, by the very fact that you live in the Ashram, you work neither for yourselves nor for an employer, but for the Divine. Your life must be a consecration to the divine Work and cannot be governed by petty human considerations." Would you like to publish it, or have it posted up? Maybe it's a bit too public.... What we could do... clearly and strongly to the will. It seems more receptive. It's more supple, more expressive too. But materialized, it would appear like pure chaos. It seems to me to be the symbolic place of physical life. For example, within a small space, you can have a very wide action, which reaches very far.... In that way there were, as though in adjacent rooms, people who live very far, in North India or in another ...
... greatness, Mother would never cease repeating. Sri Aurobindo listened to the tally, or perhaps the tales, of the Aryan Stores, while correcting the proofs of Arya and finalizing The Life Divine —the life divine begins with the first rectified idiocy, and God knows there are millions of them everyday, in our words, gestures, looks, a whole swarm of inexactitudes checking the pure flow of the Shakti... Mother or The Divine Materialism - I 16: One Pure Little Cell She would come to see him every afternoon on the spacious veranda of the Guest House, and He taught her Sanskrit; we can picture her poring over those beautiful characters that seem charged with power, and the silence between them. Or else practical pieces of news—Mother was always practical... between “big things” and "small ones.” We do not realize how absolutely important everything is and how the least gesture reverberates throughout the world if it is absolutely the gesture— if it is. Life does not happen the way we think; there is a totally different way that needs to be learned—the way of ONENESS. Then we realize that a point shining here, in this banality, is the only thing that shines ...
... swoon of being into which the ecstasy of divine love casts the soul. To enter into it is the supreme step of the ladder of Yogic practice in Rajayoga and Hathayoga. What then is the nature of Samadhi or the utility of its trance in an integral Yoga? It is evident that where our objective includes the possession of the Divine in life, a state of cessation of life cannot be the last consummating step or... consciousness of life, and the body is left, maintained indeed in its set position, not dead by dissolution, but incapable of recovering the ensouled life which had inhabited it. Finally, the Yogin acquires at a certain stage of development the power of abandoning his body definitively without the ordinary phenomena of death, by an act of will, 1 or by a process of withdrawing the pranic life-force through... ever deeper vision and identification, for access to the Divine, the supreme Self, the transcendent Truth, both in its principles and powers and manifestations and in its highest original Being. Or it can by an absorbed inner joy and emotion, as in a sealed and secluded chamber of the soul, prepare itself for the delight of union with the divine Beloved, the Master of all bliss, rapture and Ananda. ...
... made it subservient to life. Art was like that in Japan in its best moments; it was like that in all the best moments in the history of art. But most artists are like parasites growing on the margin of Page 108 life; they do not seem to know that art should be the expression of the Divine in life and through life. In everything, everywhere, in all relations truth must be brought out in its... nothing that cannot be used for the Divine purpose—just as anything can pretend to be the Divine and yet be of the mushroom species. Among the great modern musicians there have been several whose consciousness, when they created, came into touch with a higher consciousness. César Franck played on the organ as one inspired; he had an opening into the psychic life and he was conscious of it and to a... of the highest expressions of the inner life; it was associated with religion and it was an important limb in sacred ceremony, in the celebration of festivals, in the adoration of the Divine. In some countries it reached a very high degree of beauty and an extraordinary perfection. In Japan they kept up the tradition of the dance as a part of the religious life and, because the strict sense of beauty ...
... races have always considered art as a part of life and made it subservient to life. Art was like that in Japan in its best moments; it was like that in all the best moments in the history of art. But most artists are like parasites growing on the margin of life; they do not seem to know that art should be the expression of the Divine in life and through life. In everything, everywhere, in all relations... nothing that cannot be used for the Divine purpose—just as anything can pretend to be the Divine and yet be of the mushroom species. Among the great modern musicians there have been several whose consciousness, when they created, came into touch with a higher consciousness. Cesar Franck played on the organ as one inspired; he had an opening into the psychic life and he was conscious of it and to... of the highest expressions of the inner life; it was associated with religion and it was an important limb in sacred ceremony, in the celebration of festivals, in the adoration of the Divine. In some countries it reached a very high degree of beauty and an extraordinary perfection. In Japan they kept up the tradition of the dance as a part of the religious life and, because the strict sense of beauty ...
... ntal, but a supramental or divine perfection. If the mind, even the enlightened mind, remains the dominant and directing agent of life's activities, the perfection we aim at cannot be realised. The perfection of Karmayoga, as Sri Aurobindo understands it, must be a total perfection, in the fulfilment of the divine Will in the life of the human individual. And the divine Will can fulfil itself only... the Bliss and the Beauty of the Divine—a radiating centre of His unthinkable splendours. Though living in a mortal, material body, he is a child of immortality, amrtasya putrah . His unwalled consciousness knows no limit, no death, and no bondage to anything in the world. Deathless and free, he is a playmate of God in His universal līlā . Life after life, unwearied and unworn, he plays his... determine his movements. His actions well straight out of his swabhāva , his essential self-nature, which is in perfect union with the Will of the Divine. His life is a spontaneous flowering of his self-nature, revealing a distinctive individual aspect of the Divine. His swabhāva and swadharma furnish the force, the form, and the right rhythm to his outgoing energies. "The work (of the perfected ...
... the Divine Will is leading us, through every circumstance, towards the final Realisation." 11 "There is a return for all the trials and ordeals of the spiritual life." 12 "Whatever I may be, my soul is a child of the Divine and must reach the Divine sooner or later. I am Page 127 imperfect, but seek after the perfection of the Divine in me and that not I but the Divine Grace... Ignorance of mind, life and body tempered by an imperfect knowledge and is trying to lead us into the light of the Spirit, to lift us into that light and to bring the light down into us, into body and life as well as mind and heart and to fill with it all that we are. This and its consequences, of which the Page 125 greatest is the union with the Divine and life in the divine consciousness... what others do, because, after all, it is not your business. And the best way to the true attitude is simply to say, 'All those around me, all the circumstances of my life, all the people near me, are a mirror held up to me by the Divine Consciousness to show me the progress I must make. Everything that shocks me in others means a work I have to do in myself.' "And perhaps if one carried true perfection ...
... hold, the truth of your divine possibilities and the call of the higher Light to your nature.... Fix upon your mind and heart the resolution to live for the divine Truth and for that alone.. 1 Amal Kiran has been single-minded about his quest all his life like a yogi. Even at an early age of twenty-three, he had expressed to the Mother, "I have seen everything in life. Now I want only God."... sons of God and must be even as he: His human portion, we must grow divine. Our life is a paradox with God for key. 12 Regarding the influence of Sri Aurobindo on his quest, Amal conveys in his introspective Introduction of The Secret Splendour, "...he (Sri Aurobindo) has been the end of my quest for a life-transforming spirituality as well as a poetry seeking a new intensity of... recover thy hid self, In silence seek God's meaning in thy depths, Then mortal nature change to the divine. 14 Sri Aurobindo has helped us with the framework of the blue-print of life's evolutionary mission but it is our choice to follow it. The choice is always ours - The Divine does not dictate the course of action. If the evolution is the driving force of the mystifying universe, ...
... The Life Divine Between February 1916 and April 1917 Sri Aurobindo wrote "arguments" for Chapters XIX to XXXIII of The Life Divine as they originally appeared in the Arya . The first argument was followed by this note: In response to the desire of some of our subscribers we shall prefix henceforth a brief summary or argument to each chapter of the "Life Divine". ... dated 30 December 1948 Page 603 Perfection of the Body. Published in the Bulletin in April 1949; dated 23 March 1949. The Divine Body. Published in the Bulletin in August 1949. Supermind and the Life Divine. Published in the Bulletin in November 1949. Supermind and Humanity. Published in the Bulletin in February 1950; dated 13 January 1950. ... The Life Divine was revised before publication as a book in 1939 - 40 At this time Sri Aurobindo renumbered Arya Chapters XXVIII to XXXIII as Book Two, Part I, Chapters VII, VIII, IX, XI, XV and XVII. In the revised text all the arguments published in the Arya were omitted. In December 1940 Sri Aurobindo wrote an "Argument in Brief" and a "Shorter Synopsis" of the first chapter ...
... distant summits. All other Yogas regard this life as an illusion or a passing phase; the supramental Yoga alone regards it as a thing created by the Divine for a progressive manifestation and takes the fulfilment of the life and the body for its object. The Supramental is simply the Truth-Consciousness and what it brings in its descent is the full truth of life, the full truth of consciousness in Matter... spiritual impulse of the God-mooded Indian (who has experienced the Divine Reality) to aspire to bring the Divine Grace to bear on the din and dark discord of dismal life in order to resolve it all into harmony — the impulse which had made him pray so Page 84 beautifully to the World-Mother overarching our gloom-ridden earth-life: On this dark spirit-main Rise as a full-orbed moon,... part in life's battles but seen that something greater is demanded of the soul, is perfectly helpful and a good gate to the Yoga....By ascetic Page 85 vairagya I mean that which denies life and world altogether and wants to disappear into the Indefinable — I object to it for those who come to yoga because it is incompatible with my aim which is to bring the Divine into life. But if ...
... In the Mother's Light Transformation IF a perfect manifestation of the Divine in material life is the end of evolution, transformation of human nature is the principal means of achieving it. Man in his unregenerate state manifests not the Divine but the animal from which he has emerged and upon which he stands in his endeavour to transcend himself. His inherent... Subliminal, the mentally Conscient, the Subconscient and the Inconscient—and discover the supreme divine Principle whose all-achieving dynamic could effect a total transformation of human nature. So, in spite of high transcendental realisations, they could not compel life to be the manifesting instrument of the Divine. As we have said above, by transformation the Mother means not a mere purification and... of the nature of man are the physical body, the vital, that is to say, the principle and active formation of life, and the mind. Behind this triple formation is the psyche or the soul evolving in this nature for a divinely perfect self-expression and self-fulfilment on earth. But the body, life, and mind, being derived from material inconscience, are normally turbid and impure, and cannot mirror the ...
... provide the conditions of life and growth by which individual Man,—not isolated men or a class or a privileged race, but all individual men according to their capacity,—and the race through the growth Page 65 of its individuals may travel towards this divine perfection. It must be, secondly, as mankind generally more and more grows near to some figure of the Divine in life and more and more men... use them and then exceed them, train and teach his individuality by them, but assert it always in the end in its divine freedom. Always he is the traveller of the cycles and his road is forward. True, his life and growth are for the sake of the world, but he can help the world by his life and growth only in proportion as he can be more and more freely and widely his own real self. Page 67 ... both his use and misuse of his materials are overruled in their results by the universal Will so as to assist eventually the development of his law of being and his destiny. All life around him is a help towards the divine purpose in him; every human being is his fellow worker and assists him whether by association and union or by strife and opposition. Nor does he achieve his destiny as the individual ...
... To reach the last infinity's unknown. ² The self-manifestation of the Divine in transformed Matter, the outflowing of His splendours in terrestrial life, the unimpeded fulfilment of His Will and purpose in a New Creation, the evolution of the supramental race of men and the establishment of the Life Divine, the life of inalienable unity and harmony and dynamic peace—this, then, is the destiny... to life. Ever since it has gone in search of this divine source of life, but it has taken in its search every kind of wrong turn and mistaken way; it has wandered hither and thither in the dark. The mass of this creation has moved on its road like the blind seeking for the unknown, seeking but ignorant of what it sought. Once the creation is conscious, awakened, open to love for the Divine, the... only field in the whole universe for the highest divine realisation and revelation. Human life here is a rare privilege and opportunity which, whatever the aim and objective—if it has any—of modem scientific culture, can bear resplendent fruits, only if it turns integrally to its supernal source—Light. Man ascending to the Divine and the Divine descending into man and revealing Himself in Matter ...
... call and the response. By the call we do not mean merely an aspiration for the Divine, or a yearning for Page 72 the bliss of the unitive life, but a definite call of our whole- being, its unceasing and unflagging invocation to the Supreme to descend into us and manifest His supernal- splendour in our life and nature. It is a call for the closest and completest union, but a constantly... d of Matter, and tired of the tossings of life, longs to reach its eternal Home of Love and Bliss. But, however intense and insistent this longing may be, it does not exhaust all the potentialities of the soul's aspiration. The mature soul, unveiling the mystery of life, regards this flight as a defeat and a frustration, and determines to fulfil the divine mission for which it has come down. Its call... on the other. Much of the criticism and suspicion to which religious or spiritual life is often exposed derives its justification from this want of calm and collected poise in its followers. A calm and confident strength, entirely reliant" upon the divine Grace, is the best condition for progress. in the spiritual life. Equality and calm go hand in hand, helping each other., The Gitâ, following ...
... vision".— Life Divine. "Even to what is discordant it gives a place in the system of cosmic concordances—discords become a part of a vast harmony therefore of beauty. It feels Oneness, sympathy, love for all—sees the face of the Divine everywhere".— Life Divine. "The Overmind is a principle of cosmic Truth and a vast and endless catholicity is its very spirit".— Life Divine. ... and withheld realities".— Life Divine. Besides, "it has a cosmic character, not the stamp of an individual thinking".— Life Divine. He makes it further clear: "If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth—an image which in this experience becomes a reality,— we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine".— Life Divine. "This higher co... of massive lightnings of flaming Sun-Stuff"— Life Divine. The "Illumined-Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision; thought is only a subordinate movement expressive of sight" — Life Divine. "The perceptual power of the inner sight is greater and more direct than the perceptional power of thought". — Life Divine. Page 260 "As the Higher Mind ...
... into mind, life, body, change and repair their diminished and diluted and incapable substance, convert it into its own higher and stronger dynamics of spirit and intrinsic form and force of reality."4 __________________________________ ¹ Letters ² Life Divine ³ Ibid. 4 Ibid. Page 96 Would these gradations automatically succeed when they descend into Mind, Life and Body... great ring of pure and endless light All calm as it was bright, And around beneath it. Time, in hours, days, years Driven by the spheres, ________________________ 6 Life Divine 7. Life Literature, Yoga Page 98 Like a vast shadow moved in which the world And all her train were hurled" Vaugham Intuition: "Still beyond can be met a yet greater... when it sees objects, it sees in them what the mind cannot see."4 _____________________________________ ³ Life Divine 4 Letters Vol. III Page 101 "As yet there is no Overmind language created Overmind, used by Overmind beings." "Overmind has to take mind, life and Matter as its medium and field, work under their dominant condition accept their fundamental law and method ...
... (commentaries and essays published in Archives and Research) shows not a single instance of the term "the Divine" and hundreds of instances of "God". The earliest use of the term occurs in the September 1914 issue of Arya: it occurs on p. 9 in the second chapter of The Life Divine and p. 48 in the second chapter of The Synthesis of Yoga, as published in that journal. However... the god says: '...I had not spoken so much but that it is in the nature of a god to struggle for ever with the dust and the darkness, and to drag from them, by the force of his longing for the divine, more life and more light.' Now here is the use we are looking for in English literature itself and by one of the most modern minds. What is equally striking is that - but for the small d - the utterance... where it would be natural, is not "the Divine" but "the deity" or the "the Godhead". She supposes that Sri Aurobindo used the expression "the Divine"- out of deference to the Mother's wishes, "because he wrote "The Hour of God' and 'God shall grow up while wise men talk and sleep' and 'A step and all is sky and God.' He did not write 'The Hour of the Divine' -thanks be to God!" Page 107 ...
... attempt to spiritualise human life. The true and full spiritual aim in society will regard man not as a mind, a life and a body, but as a soul incarnated for a divine fulfilment upon earth, not only in heavens beyond, which after all it need not have left if it had no divine business here in the world of physical, vital and mental nature. It will therefore regard the life, mind and body neither as ends... barren contempt for physical life or a denial of Matter, but pursue rather the sceptical mind into its own affirmations and denials and show it there the Divine. If it cannot do that, it is proved that it is itself unenlightened or deficient, because onesided, in its light. It will not try to slay the vitality in man by denying life, but will rather reveal to life the divine in itself as the principle... Immortality that dwells within and build up in his outer life also the kingdom of God which is first discovered within us. It will show man the way to seek for the Divine in every way of his being, sarvabhāvena , 1 and so find it and live in it, that however—even in all kinds of ways—he lives and acts, he shall live and act in that, 2 in the Divine, in the Spirit, in the eternal Reality of his being ...
... according to the line of his personality, his svadharma , but Page 141 in life, in action, not outside life and action. Yes, there is a truth in that, replies the Gita; the fulfilment of God in man, the play of the Divine in life is part of the ideal perfection. But if you seek it only in the external, in life, in the principle of action, you will never find it; for you will then not only act... fulfilment of that activity, he might say, is my idea of human perfection, of the divine possibility in man; some ideal that satisfies the intellect, the heart, the moral being, some ideal of our human nature in its action can alone satisfy the human being; he must have something that he can seek in the workings of his mind and life and body. For that is his nature, his dharma , and how can he be fulfilled... that which is founded in the highest principle, in the soul. Only when you have attained to peace of soul, can you become capable of a free and divine action. The quietist, the ascetic, on the other hand cannot see any possibility of perfection into which life and action enter. Are they not the very seat of bondage and imperfection? Is not all action imperfect in its nature, like a fire that must produce ...
... a coloured sketch of that figure. At the very first meeting with Sri Aurobindo she recognised in him the master of her occult life. We Page 118 may observe here that Sri Aurobindo, during his political life in British India, had raised the cry of "The Divine Mother", the World -Creatrix whose frontal aspect was to him the Soul of India, the presiding Goddess of this country's career... again a glorified Page 125 shortcoming. The Supramental Body, like the Divine Consciousness which has shaped itself into it, will be free in all respects. It can dissolve at will and re-form at will. Who can say for sure how long evolution will take to arrive at a wholly divine physical life? Sri Aurobindo once remarked that perhaps 300 years would be wanted. The change has certainly... history. On meeting the Mother, Sri Aurobindo recognised an incarnation of the Divine Mother he had worshipped. The meeting of the two represents the coming together of the necessary creative powers by whom a new age would be born. And it is to be noted that both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had been pursuing the inner life on essentially identical lines which would unite Spirit and Matter. So their ...
... one enters the path of spiritual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new Page 150 factor, the Divine Grace, the help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma, which can lift the sadhak beyond the present possibilities of his nature. One's spiritual destiny is then the divine election which ensures the future... the Life Divine. They will not yield to mortality. Savitri denies death and affirms life: I am stronger than death and greater than my fate; My love shall outlast the world, doom falls from me Helpless against my immortality. Fate's law may change, but not my spirit's will". 221 Page 157 And now comes a very curious passage. Like... of his future and his destined rise to the godhead: He sang of the glory and marvel still to be born, Of Godhead throwing off at last its veil, Of bodies made divine and life made bliss, Immortal sweetness clasping immortal might,... 204 As he steps into Aswapati's palace, Narad's face wears "a beautiful mask of antique joy", and the king and queen ...
... satisfying theme, "with no need left to aspire", as Sri Aurobindo says in his poem "The Life Heavens". To adopt Tennyson's words, only on earth are there Tears from the depth of some divine despair and hence an environment and provision to seek a remedy for its ache and realise the Divine. Bodily life is precious for the chance given us of questing for God through birth after birth and... oneness with the secret blissful basis of all that exists - the Divine Mystery which is always waiting to enfold our sighs and our sufferings because of that most wonderful of all paradoxes: Etermity in love with Time. I am glad you are constantly reading those two supreme masterpieces of Sri Aurobindo: Savitri and The Life Divine. They are also rated as perhaps the most difficult of his... This way of reading and of receptivity holds even more for Savitri, since Savitri is in tenser literature than The Life Divine. Not only does it go into more vivid disclosures of spiritual reality: it also comes with what one may designate as the very life-throb of occult realms, it carries in its surge or sway of interrelated words and modulated metre the footprints and footfalls, as ...
... Naturally, the hostile forces are always on the watch to rob what they can of the things received by the sadhak—not that they profit by them, but they prevent them from being used to build up the divine in life. Attacks Often Follow a Progress It often happens like that. When a progress has been made (here it is the opening of the inner vision) the hostiles attack in a fury. You must be especially... negatively; first by depression, then by refusal at once of ordinary life and of sadhana. Attacks through Suggestions Indirect attacks are not of this kind, a violent rush and covering by hostile forces—they are done through covert suggestions, half-truth, half-falsehood, attempts to represent the falsehood in the garb of the Divine Truth or to mix the lower consciousness cleverly with the higher... ignorance is the truth for you because you are still ignorant in your external consciousness and that if the divine Light and Truth are not perfectly established in the ignorance, then the Light and Truth are false and the ignorance is the only truth and that to believe in the Truth and the Divine is a pretence. Nothing can be more irrational than these arguments of the dark Forces to which your external ...
... moments in the history of art. But most artists are like parasites growing on the margin of life; they do not seem to know that art should be the expression of the Divine in life and through life. In everything, everywhere, in all relations truth must be brought out in its all-embracing rhythm and every movement of life should be an expression of beauty and harmony. Skill is not art, talent is not art. Art... intense—that the world manifests the Divine, that there is something behind the world which is the Divine. Source True Art True art is intended to express the beautiful, but in close intimacy with the universal movement. The greatest nations and the most cultured races have always considered art as a part of life and made it subservient to life. Art was like that in Japan in its best... of Gratitude ... That kind of sense of gratitude that the Divine exists; that feeling of a marvelling thankfulness which truly fills you with a sublime joy at the fact that the Divine exists, that there is something in the universe which is the Divine, that it is not just the monstrosity we see, that there is the Divine, the Divine exists. And each time that the least thing puts you either directly ...
... yourself nor for a boss that you are working, but for the Divine. Your life must be entirely consecrated to the Divine Work and cannot be governed by petty human considerations. 28 May 1970 Whatever is done here, must be done in a spirit of complete collaboration with one single aim in view―the service of the Divine. A community life must necessarily have a discipline in order that the weaker... discipline no proper life is possible. And above all, without discipline no Sadhana is possible. Each department has necessarily a discipline and you must follow the discipline of your department. Personal feelings, grudges and misunderstandings must never interfere with the work which is done as a service to the Divine and not for human interests. Your service to the Divine must be scrupulously... of mind and, if possible, by him or by those who are conscious of the Divine Presence and are surrendered to that. For the earth to be happy, power should be in the hands of those alone who are conscious of the Divine Will. But this is impossible at the moment because the number of those who are truly conscious of the Divine Will is negligible and these have necessarily no ambition. To tell ...
... Ganges a sufficient machinery of salvation. The divine subjective becoming on which the mind has to be fixed firmly in the moment of the physical death, yaṁ smaran bhāvaṁ tyajati ante kalevaram , must have been one into which the soul was at each moment growing inwardly during the physical life, sadā tad-bhāva-bhāvitaḥ . "Therefore," says the divine Teacher, "at all times remember Me and ... the mind of the Yogin in which he passes from life through death to this supreme divine existence. A motionless mind, a soul armed with the strength of Yoga, a union with God in bhakti,—the union by love is not here superseded by the featureless unification through knowledge, it remains to the end a part of the supreme force of the Yoga,—and the life-force entirely drawn up and set between the... constant undeviating memory of the Divine in life, even in action and battle— mām anusmara yudhya ca —and the turning of the whole act of living into an uninterrupted Yoga, nitya-yoga . Whoever does that, finds Me easy to attain, says the Godhead; he is the great soul who reaches the supreme perfection. The condition to which the soul arrives when it thus departs from life is supracosmic. The highest ...
... so completely the life of a long formative age, that it is said of it in a popular saying which has the justice if also the exaggeration of a too apt epigram, "What is not in this Bharata, is not in Bharatavarsha (India)," and the Ramayana, the greatest and most remarkable poem of its kind, that most sublime and beautiful epic of ethical idealism and a heroic semi-divine human life, and the marvellous... community, but the life of the mass dull, void and miserable. Or, finally, there may be all the ordinary materials and circumstances of mere living, but if life is not uplifted by great hopes, aspirations and ideals, then we may well say that the community does not really live; it is defective in the characteristic greatness of the human spirit. The ancient and mediaeval life of India was not wanting... mind,—it testifies at least to a continuous creative activity. And creation is proof of life and great creation of greatness of life. But these things are, it may be said, the things of the mind, and the intellect, imagination and aesthetic mind of India may have been creatively active, but yet her outward life depressed, dull, poor, gloomy with the hues of asceticism, void of willpower and personality ...
... loving is the best condition for a peaceful and happy life; it amounts, in other words, to loving the Divine in all things. If this culminates in wanting only what the Divine wants, then there is perfect peace. 5 January 1972 The figure 100 in itself has no special significance for the length of a human life. But simply because human life has become so complex, it has also become relatively... relatively short, and it is now rare to live to be a hundred. When man lived in harmony with Nature, his life lasted longer. Page 371 When man lives by and for the Divine, his life will be longer, and one day the Divine will reveal to him the secret of immortality. 6 January 1972 It is the invocation of the people who are celebrating Sri Aurobindo's centenary which makes his presence... yourself to receive the divine force from above. 1 July 1960 Sweet Mother, Write something for me that I can remember throughout the year. Our aim is to realise the perfection of our being and to change the human animal into the divine man. With my blessings. 5 July 1960 Page 355 Sweet Mother, If a soul has taken birth as a boy in one life, does it always remain ...
... climbs back to the plenary splendour of the Divine consciousness. Mind evolved out of Life because Mind was involved in Life, and Life evolved out of Matter because it was involved in Matter. Evolution is not mechanical; it has a goal and it is upward bound. The higher level of consciousness is always the emergent principle, and it is the Divine who is both the alpha and the omega of evolution... transform the lower nature so that there can be a divine fulfilment of life. The objective here is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth consciousness as a whole. No Plato and no Marx ever thought of such a Republic based on a communism of the spirit. The Divine Materialism and Spiritual Communism advocated by... And the miracle other transforming hands, Of life that slumbers in the stone and sun And mind subliminal in mindless life, And the consciousness that wakes in beasts and men. He sang of the glory and marvel still to be born, Of the Godhead throwing off at last its veil, Of bodies made divine and life made bliss, Immortal sweetness clasping immortal ...
... your own being contact with the Divine Presence. So you must concentrate in silence and try to enter deep within to discover the Divine Presence in the depths of your consciousness, beyond all mental activity. 16 December 1971 * * There comes a moment when life becomes intolerable without the Divine Presence. Give yourself, therefore, entirely to the Divine and you will rise up into the... loving is the best condition for a peaceful and happy life; it amounts, in other words, to loving the Divine in all things. If this culminates in wanting only what the Divine wants, then there is perfect peace. 5 January 1972 * * * The figure 100 has no special significance in itself for the length of human life. But simply because human life has become so complex, it has also become relatively... when one gets rid of the ego that one becomes a free being. To be free, one must belong only to the Divine. 3 December 1971 * * * In the difficult hours of life, the imperative duty of each one is to overcome his ego in a total and unconditional selfgiving to the Divine. Then the Divine will make you do what you have to do. 4 December 1971 * * * Supreme Lord, Infinite Wisdom, ...
... human consciousness, there is the Divine Nature, the Divine Consciousness. It is only in the light of this Divine Consciousness that life can be changed and transformed. But for that man has to consciously will it. He has to call into him that Divine Consciousness. From below man has to invoke, to aspire for that Divine Consciousness and from above this Divine Consciousness will respond in answer... recourse to the Divine Consciousness and Force. The Divine Man shall emerge with the joint endeavour, the joint yagna (askesis) of Man and the Divine. This then is what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother called the "Sunlit Path" of human life. So in brief this is what we must do now. We must try to: 1. Do our work as properly and as perfectly as we can. 2. Develop our mind, life and body, with... called Spiritual Height and Material Perfection. If there is any purpose in human life, any goal, then this is the purpose and goal. In this "yagna of transformation" the gods too come down to help man. They are born in human form. So that they can guide man from his ignorant, human life to the divine god-life. I remember reading about this during my childhood school days. I still remember something ...
... to the Divine. The first mark of the suprarational, when it intervenes to take up any portion of our being, is the growth of absolute ideals; and since life is Being and Force and the divine state of being is unity and the Divine in force is God as Power taking possession, the absolute vital ideals must be of that nature. Nowhere are they wanting. If we take the domestic and social life of man,... Human Cycle Chapter XVI The Suprarational Ultimate of Life In all the higher powers of his life man may be said to be seeking, blindly enough, for God. To get at the Divine and Eternal in himself and the world and to harmonise them, to put his being and his life in tune with the Infinite reveals itself in these parts of his nature as his concealed aim and... abandoned their bodily life for a cause; for without heroism man cannot grow into the Godhead; courage, energy and strength are among the very first principles of the divine nature in action. All this great vital, political, economic life of man with its two powers of competition and cooperation is stumbling blindly forward towards some realisation of power and unity,—in two divine directions, therefore ...
... This attitude is of those who believe that God is not only transcendent of life, but also immanent in it; and that it is His unblemished manifestation in terrestrial life that is the object of the soul's descent into birth. A calm and integral rejection of desire for the discovery of the divine Will and its creative play in life, constitutes the cardinal principle of the second attitude, which we shall... man and lifts his life from the whirlpool of desires into the creative glory of a God-possessed and God-guided existence. Here, again, we must remember that surrender, like detachment and equality, should be dynamic and not only passive. If we want a rich and radiant life, a life of manifold creation and divine self-expression, of high adventures and noble achievements, all the means we adopt for... barred out for ever. He may slip out of life, if be is so inclined, and merge in some infinite Void or indefinable immutable Existence; but that would be a flight and not a conquest. Page 224 How to conquer desire and lead a divine, desireless life . of joyous freedom, richly and resplendently creative, is the problem man must solve, if he is to achieve this highest perfection on earth ...
... contact with the Divine. Letters on Yoga, p. 743 Immersion in Sachchidananda is a state one can get in the waking condition without samadhi.... Letters on Yoga, p. 741 What then is the nature of Samadhi or the utility of its trance in an integral Yoga? It is evident that where our objective includes the possession of the Divine in life, a state of cessation of life cannot be the... 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... miracle of the divine Existence, in the universe, yet always beyond it and even, as it were, beyond itself. The opposite experience could only be a concentration of mentality in the individual upon Non-existence with the result of an oblivion and personal withdrawal from a cosmic activity still and always proceeding in the consciousness of the Eternal Being. The Life Divine, pp. 29-30 ...
... is the most important mission in Savitri: A quest for the Divine within mortality. The timeless must look with the eyes of time and not vice versa; the Divine must be made incarnate, must be made manifest in the flesh, to experience Him in one's own mortal body. Life must return to Satyavan in order to experience the Divine; the life must be brought with ceaseless striving of Savitri. Eternity... temporal life has significance only in its reference to the infinity for which man strives. For man time would lose meaning without infinity. The temporal life is meaningful only if one is able to enkindle the Life Divine, which is the true nature of the Self. 22 Savitri, p. 256. 23 Ibid., p. 336. 24 Ibid ., p. 339 Page 314 Consolation of Life ... great opportunity this mortal life is. His supreme teaching to make the best of it while attending to one's duty but never yearning for results is a pilgrim's light. The exposition in The Life Divine teaches us the central core of the meaning of life — Sachchidananda. Sat, (Truth) Cit (Consciousness) and Ananda (Bliss) are the three jewels of an opportune life. This is the state of a realised ...
... students. ‘If we have a school here, it is because we want it to be different from the million schools in the world, it is to give the children a chance of discerning between ordinary life and the life divine, the life of truth, of seeing things differently,’ 12 the Mother impressed upon them. ‘We are not here to do only a little better what others do, we are here to do what others cannot do, because... may put that still very far ahead of you, but you may say: “Yes, the Gnostic life is a certainty, for its realization has begun.”’ 25 The Gnostic life is the supramental life, and that ‘one body’ cannot have been another than hers. In her Entretien of 19 April 1951 she talks about the surrender to the Divine, the fundamental attitude in the Integral Yoga. ‘This now has become the very... × The Life Divine 258, 269 and 271 × Entretiens 56, 89 × The Life Divine , 664 ...
... their insufficiencies, till a spirit of largest love and a stainless divine delight arises out of the flame and smoke and frankincense. It is the divine love which so emerges that, extended in inward feeling to the Divine in man and all creatures in an active universal equality, will be more potent for the perfectibility of life and a more real instrument than the ineffective mental ideal of brotherhood... being, the essence of the ever-blissful Spirit. The divineness of Light has to manifest in our mental thought, giving us the truth-sight by which that Beauty may be kept unperverted by ignorance. The divineness of Power has to manifest in our will, giving us the energy to guard and carry out the truth-sight in all our inner activity. The divineness of Life has to manifest in our embodied vitality, our physical... Mediatrix—is the form of a fivefold divineness of being. The Rose of God is a perfection crystallised from the substance of an absolute Bliss, an absolute Light, an absolute Power, an absolute Life, an absolute Love. And through its crystallised perfection these five divinenesses can become active and transformative in the finite substance of mortal man. The divineness to which Sri Aurobindo devotes ...
... cured by the inner experience of union with the Divine; no human association can fill the void. In the same way, for the spiritual life the harmony with others Page 310 must be founded not on mental and vital affinities, but on the divine consciousness and the union with the Divine. When one finds the Divine and finds others in the Divine, then the real harmony comes. Meanwhile what there... reason why the human being would ever seek the Divine. He would remain satisfied in the ordinary earth life. It is only when the Divine is found and the consciousness lifted up into the true consciousness that the true relations with others can come. Relations which are part of the ordinary vital nature in human life are of no value in the spiritual life—they rather interfere with the progress; for... Yoga—nor in true love, psychic or divine. In Yoga all love should be turned towards the Divine and to human or other beings only as vessels of the Divine—abhiman and the rest should have no place in it. I have always said that the vital is indispensable for the divine or spiritual action—without it there can be no complete expression, no realisation in life—hardly even any realisation in sadhana ...
... shall descend and make earth's life divine". Summits of man's being are divine; there Eternity Page 312 and Divinity are his birth right. We can feel the presence of this true self in us: "One speaks within. Light comes to us from above". Even in the imperfect life, subject to ignorance, man seeks Good and Beauty, God and Truth. There is in us a greater Life-Being. Man put his consciousness... true Self of man; true Self is hidden and lives within. Human nature holds within itself both the divine and the undivine powers: "Careless guardian of his nature's powers". "Man harbours dangerous forces in his house". These lower powers "can act in his acts, infest his thought and life". They can even take possession of the human being and act violently in it and they can "break... is some other will—a divine power—that works out the "intricate plan". It waits for its time and circumstances. Man is not what he appears to be on the surface of his consciousness: "A vast subliminal is man's measureless part". Like the ice-berg much of man's being is hidden below the surface—in the subliminal. Tendencies and movements rejected from the surface or from outer life persist in "our unconscious ...
... nothing to do with the divine work. All that idea about patit-pāvan and adham uddhār means only this that however bad or seemingly wicked the external life may be, the man can yet be saved if he has something in him which can receive the Truth. One may say that even for grace to descend there are conditions. Disciple : Are there conditions determined by the Divine ? Sri Aurobindo ... ; your duty ends there. In that case you need not have any bojhāpadā – understanding – with the universal forces. But we look upon money as a power of the Divine, and, as with everything else, we want to conquer it for the Divine in life. Hence, in our case an "understanding" is necessary. As the money-power to-day is in the hands of the hostile forces, naturally, we have to fight them. Whenever... that is not the way things are done in this universe. We can expect a small beginning. When the highest Truth comes down in its full power then humanity may manifest even the perfection of the Divine in life in this world. But that is not yet. 107 1881926 Disciple ; Is it possible to have some idea of the minimum requirement for being a Superman ? Sri Aurobindo : Is this ...
... attends to the work. Did not the old Yogas always say that the approach to the Divine is more easy and direct through meditation than through work? They wanted to get away from life, so necessarily work was unfavourable for them since work is part of life. Our Yoga is to find the Divine in life also. It is sometimes easier to keep the right consciousness in the work than... the work as the Mother's - done by the Mother's Force for the sake of the Divine Purpose. Personal action is the result of the personal initiation, for that makes the action personal. Page 142 In inaction, sometimes my consciousness becomes completely blank and forgetful of the mind, life and body. But then there is hardly any deeper or higher experience during... of the vital desires is a normal feature of the ordinary life, only it must be controlled and regulated by the mental will, so that one may not be enslaved to the desires. It is only if one turns to the spiritual life that one has to get rid of vital desires. Once one takes up the spiritual life, what is done in the worldly life can no longer be a standard to be followed. ...
... problem of man's destiny. Savitri lifts us out of the mundane and the ordinary rut of human life to a point of view from where we see the whole play of life, in fact, the whole cosmos, with a cosmic vision of a divine Purpose trying to work itself out through the life of man. The ultimate significance of life as emanating from the Mahabharata is often ambiguous, depending upon individual interpretation... between Eternity and Time seems to be resolved in human life by the intervention of a power of the Divine. It is She who acts as an "ambassadress" between Eternity and Time. She embodies herself forth in the form of Divine Love, or rather, of a being carrying the saving power of the Divine Love within herself. All true human love has this divine element in it, however, perverted it may be in its actual... sublime throb of an organic divine creation. This is because Sri Aurobindo's life-work comes naturally in a line with that of the Rishis of the Veda and the Upanishads. His work in fact adds to the rich spiritual treasures of the past by giving to mankind his great vision of the Supermind, — the divine gnosis, — and by his insistence that life must be related to the Divine if man wants to arrive at ...
... problem of man's destiny. Sāvitrī lifts us out of the mundane and the ordinary rut of human life to a point of view from where we see the whole play of life, in fact, the whole cosmos, with a cosmic vision of a divine Purpose trying to work itself out through the life of man. The ultimate significance of life as emanating from the Mahābhārata is often ambiguous, depending upon individual interpretation... manifesting the Divine in life. What then would happen? The Master envisages an endless divine unfoldment in time. Says he: "The Spirit's greatness is our timeless source And it shall be our crown in endless Time". Sāvitrī, Book II, Canto 1. The opposition between Eternity and Time seems to be resolved in human life by the intervention of a power of the Divine. It is She... sublime throb of an organic divine creation. This is because Sri Aurobindo's life-work comes naturally in a line with that of the Rishis of the Veda and the Upanishads. His work in fact adds to the rich spiritual treasures of the past by giving to mankind his great vision of the Supermind,—the divine gnosis,—and by his insistence that life must be related to the Divine if man wants to arrive at the ...
... or my sorrow, my pleasure or my pain; whatever you do with me, whatever comes to me from you will lead me to the Divine Rapture." In a previous life, Mother had said, Amma was a Rishi’s wife. That is to say, she was born in this life with the adhikara to receive and retain the Divine’s Grace, and, consequently, her uncluttered sattwic mind and pure heart weathered the cruellest attacks of the adverse... Madhuridi, she came up with this story: "One day, I asked Nolini-da, ‘You people know Life Divine, Synthesis, Savitri, etc. and so do this Yoga so well, but we understand only some things in Prayers and Meditations . How then can we do this yoga?’ You know what he said? ‘Actually, you people will realise the Divine before us intellectuals, because your faith and surrender are spontaneous, while we... and even one’s progress? This relief, this deliverance Thou hast granted to me, O Thou, Divine Master, Life of my life and Light of my light, O Thou who unceasingly teachest me love and makest me know the purpose of my existence…. The second was the one of January 17, 1915: Now, Lord, things have changed. The time of rest and preparation is over. Thou has willed that from the passive ...
... obscure is the whole subject that many are inclined to regard life as a divine mystery, breathed by God into the world or introduced, as if it were a sort of psychical meteoric dust, from some other planet. Upanishadic philosophy accounts for the appearance of Life in a more calm and rational manner. Life, it would say, is in a sense a divine mystery but no more and no less so than the existence of inanimate... —this our Self too is Brahman. The Karmayogin who has realised it, must hold all existence divine, all life a sacrament, all thought and action a self-dedication to the Eternal. It is within all this, It too is without all. Brahman is within the whole Universe; every object however inanimate, every form of life however vile, is brim-full with the presence of God. The heathen who worships stocks and... culture which in the Roman were hard, cold, narrow and without any touch of the spirit in man or the sense of his divine individuality, the Hindus warmed & softened with emotional & spiritual meaning and made broad and elastic by accepting the supreme importance of the soul's individual life as overriding and governing the firm organization of morals and society. They were not purely devoted to the worship ...
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