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... even this success that he has gained is rather a thing in potentiality than in actual accomplishment. There is always a disharmony and a discord between the moral law in the individual and the law of his needs and desires, between the moral law proposed to society and the physical and vital needs, desires, customs, prejudices, interests and passions of the caste, the clan, the religious community, the... desires and the natural communal law which sets up as a superior standard the satisfaction of the needs, preferences and desires of the community as a whole, there had to arise the notion of an ideal moral law which is not the satisfaction of need and desire, but controls and even coerces or annuls them in the interests of an ideal order that is not animal, not vital and physical, but mental, a creation... vain his absolute ethical standard and calls upon all to be faithful to it without regard to consequences. To him the needs and desires of the individual are invalid if they are in conflict with the moral law, and the social law has no claims upon him if it is opposed to his sense of right and denied by his conscience. This is his absolute solution for the individual that he shall cherish no desires and ...

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... I individually by satisfying the moral law may get out of the tangle away to the pleasures of a better world or to the bodiless and mindless peace of Nirvana. But the question is whether this is not a rather childish and impatient mood and whether these solutions come anywhere near solving the whole complexity of the problem. Let us grant that a dominant moral law governs, not action,—for that is... we say that at least the good and the evil are justly dealt with according to their kind, this duly rewarded and that duly punished in other worlds or other births, there is therefore a dominant moral law and we may cherish a faith that the good will prevail, Ahuramazda conquer and not Ahriman, Page 386 and on the whole all is as it should be. Or if not, if the tangle is inextricable, if... result of action in the world and that a supreme good will work itself out in the end. The difficulty remains why that good should use evil as one and almost the chief of its means or the dominant moral law, sovereign, unescapable, categorical, imperative, the practical governor, if not the reason of our existence, should be compelled to fulfil itself through so much that is immoral and by the agency ...

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... pleasure and profit, artha, kāma , the power of the conception of a mental truth, justice, right, the conception of Dharma. The greater practical part of the Dharma is ethical, it is the idea of the moral law. The first mind movement is non-moral or not at all characteristically moral, has only, if at all, the conception of a standard of action justified by custom, the received rule of life and therefore... or helpful to efficiency, power, success, to victory, honour, approval, good fortune. The idea of Dharma is on the contrary predominantly moral in its essence. Dharma on its heights holds up the moral law in its own right and for its own sake to human acceptance and observance. The larger idea of Dharma is indeed a conception of the true law of all energies and includes a conscience, a rectitude in... Right ethical action comes therefore to seem to man at this stage the one thing binding upon him among the many standards raised by the mind, the moral claim the one categorical imperative, the moral law the whole of his Dharma. At first however the moral conceptions of man and the direction and output and the demand of return of the ethical energy in him get themselves inextricably mixed with ...

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... concern you so much because you have been brought here by your own parents. So that is moral law. When you belong to society, you have to obey the rules of the society. If your parents have brought you up, fed you and bred you and married you off, for good or for ill, you have to obey those rules. This is moral law. You can break the moral laws only when you have another call from above - the spiritual... could not obey the command of that psychic being because he was morally bound to his emperor. He would betray the emperor if he obeyed the inner voice. So that shows the distinction between the moral law and the spiritual law. He wasted a great chance that the Mother had granted him. As you know very well, we are trying hard to awaken in us the psychic being, which, as per the Katha Upanishad,... the sake of a greater world. Moral laws can be ignored only when the spiritual call is there, not otherwise. So this is the call of the spirit! The call of the spirit does not obey this moral law because it is a higher law; it is the law of God, whereas the moral laws are the laws of man. This is, in a nutshell, the distinction Page 55 between the two. So the Japanese and ...

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... of Jinnah. ( Laughter ) SATYENDRA: Moral law is not the creator and upholder of creation. SRI AUROBINDO: No, prior to man there was no moral law. In the material or vital world, moral law doesn't exist. It comes in with man, and at a certain stage of his development it is useful. Even then, it is a social necessity, because without some kind of moral law society can't exist. But to say that the... the world is regulated by moral law is to deny the facts of existence. That is absurd. There are two ways: one can either go beyond moral law as we seek to do by spirituality or one can uphold moral law as an ideal to be realised. This is understandable. If there is a moral legislator of the world, why does he give the same punishment for different sins? PURANI: K says man ought to learn lessons... AUROBINDO: That doesn't always hold. The head may ache without any stomach upset or the hand may indulge in stealing without the back getting beaten. PURANI: In his view the question is whether the moral law is partially active or absolutely active. Is there any room for accident or chance? SRI AUROBINDO: Why take for granted that these are the sole alternatives? There may be so many other factors ...

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... That surely much more than the rule of electrons or the possibilities of a more omnipotent physical machinery and more powerful explosives is the real human question. The Buddhists' mental and moral law of Karma comes in at this difficult point with a clue and an opening. As Science fills our mind with the idea of a universal government of Law in the physical and outward world and in our relations... some other ungrasped Infinite,—here covered by the concept of Chance,—the Buddhist conception too fills the spaces of our mental and moral being with the same sense of a government of mental and moral Law: but this too erects behind that Law a great unanswered query, an agnosticism, the blank of an ungrasped Infinite. But here the covering word is more grandly intangible; it is the mystery of Nirvana... assures its will by law and fixed relation and steady succession and the links of ascertainable cause and effectuality. To be assured that there is an all-pervading mental law and an all-pervading moral law, is a great gain, a supporting foundation. That in the mental and moral as in the physical world what I sow in the proper soil, I shall assuredly reap, is a guarantee of divine government, of equilibrium ...

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... egoistic ethical hedonism came, in due course, to be defended in the name of altruism and, eventually, run over by universal ethical hedonism that embodied the force of collectivistic ideals. This moral law advocated, in effect, the search for maximum pleasure for maximum number of people. To use the terms of Indian philosophy, the demands of vyashti and samashti came to be pressed forward against... capable of uplifting himself to a state of intrinsic and universal values. Consequently, it came to be advocated that the needs and desires of individuals are to be surpassed in obedience to the moral law, and even the social law has no claims upon him if it is opposed to his sense of right and denied by Conscience or by the categorical imperative. In regard to the conflict between the individual and... nature; ego is only a temporary construction, but behind it there is the unegoistic centre of universality and universality finds its concentrated centre of fullness in the individual. Beyond the moral law are spiritual ideals. These ideals are not limited to moral data but embrace the totality of our Page 218 being and totality of existence. The true divine law is not fully represented ...

... mores , and outside its conventional circle he allows himself an easy latitude. The reason generalises the idea of a moral law carrying with it an obligation man should heed and obey but may disregard at this outer or that inner peril, and it insists first and most on a moral law, an obligation of self-control, justice, righteousness, conduct, rather than a law of truth, beauty and harmony, love,... equanimity or the ideal life tolerate in practice. And even to the larger ideal mind this absoluteness becomes untrustworthy if it is an obedience not to the higher law of the soul, but to an outward moral law, a code of conduct. For then in place of a lifting enthusiasm we have the rigidity of the Pharisee, a puritan fierceness or narrowness or the life-killing tyranny of a single insufficient side of... his act, the calm, peace, satisfaction of the soul fulfilled in right, or an inner calamity, the suffering, disturbance, unease and malady of its descent or failure, but he can demand from God or moral Law no other. The ethical soul,—not the counterfeit but the real,—accepts the pains and sufferings and difficulties and fierce intimidations of life, not as a punishment for its sins, but as an opportunity ...

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... ethical hedonism came, in due course, to be defended in the name of altruism and, eventually, run over by universal ethical hedonism that embodied the force of collectivistic ideals. This moral law advocated, in effect, the search for maximum pleasure for maxi mum number of people. To use the terms of Indian philosophy, the demands of vyashti and samashti came to be pressed forward against... capable of uplifting himself to a state of intrinsic and universal values. Consequently, it came to be advocated that the needs and desires of individuals are to be surpassed in obedience to the moral law, and even the social law has no claims upon him if it is opposed to his sense of right and denied by Conscience or by the categorical imperative. In regard to the conflict between the individual... points out: There alone can we touch the harmony of the divine powers that are poorly mispresented to our mind or framed into a false figure by the conflicting or wavering elements of the moral law. There alone the unification of the transformed vital and physical and the illumined mental man becomes possible in that supramental spirit which is at once the secret source and goal of our mind ...

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... delivers, there is the fulfillment of the highest that morality and religion in their deepest core seek and succeed only when they cease to be limited within their specific boundaries. It replaces the moral law by a progressive law of self-perfection spontaneously expressing itself through the individual nature. In this operation, no more is the imposition of a rule or an imperative on the nature of an... individual and can be known and made operative only during the course of the change of consciousness. In its progressive movement, it may, if necessary, provide a sort of long period of governance by a moral law, but always as a provisional device and always looking for going beyond into a plane of spontaneous expression of the Right and the Good. To spiritual consciousness, moral virtue is not valuable ...

... delivers, there is the fulfilment of the highest that morality and religion in their deepest core seek and succeed only when they cease to be limited within their specific boundaries. It replaces the moral law by a progressive law of self-perfection spontaneously expressing itself through the individual nature. In this operation, no more is the imposition of a rule or an imperative on the nature of an ... individual and can be known and made operative only during the course of the change of consciousness. In its progressive movement, it may, if necessary, provide a sort of long period of governance by a moral law, but always as a provisional device and always looking for going beyond into a plane of spontaneous expression of the Right and the Good. To spiritual consciousness, moral virtue is not valuable in ...

... march of Time. In the Yogic consciousness and in the knowledge and the effectivity that it produces the highest elements that morality in the deepest core seeks are fulfilled. But Yoga replaces the moral law by a progressive law of self- perfection, spontaneously expressing itself through individual nature. The spiritual law that yoga presents respects the individual nature, modifies and perfects it.... by a gradual progression of consciousness and, more and more, by an entry into the real self. In its progressive movement, it may, if necessary, permit a short or a long period of governance by a moral law but always as a provisional device. It always looks forward to a time when one can arrive at a higher plane of consciousness in which the Right and the Good can find spontaneous expression. To the ...

... Gita. Sattwa, rajas and tamas are the three chains which bind us and, like Arjuna, most of our being is rajasic and pragmatic, with a degree of purer sattwa in respect to our attitude towards moral law, society and the claims of others upon Page 63 us.' To study Arjuna is to study ourselves. We have included here a most illuminating study of Arjuna, found in Sri Aurobindo's Essays... principles of the time and society in which he has lived and the religion and ethics to which he has been brought up. He is egoistic like other men, but with the purer or sattwic egoism which regards the moral law and society and the claims of others and not only or predominantly his own interests, desires and passions. He has lived and guided himself by the Shastra, the moral and social code. The thought which... destroyed by this civil war; the family itself will be brought to the point of annihilation, corruption of morals and loss of the purity of race will be engendered, the eternal laws of the race and moral law of the family will be destroyed. Ruin of the race, the collapse of its high traditions, ethical degradation and hell for the authors of such a crime, these are the only practical results possible ...

... murderer. And so long as these positions are accepted, the duty remains clear, a practical matter of course even when it is not a point of honour or affection, and overrides the absolute religious or moral law. But what if the inner view is changed, if the lawyer is awakened to the absolute sinfulness of falsehood, the judge becomes convinced that capital punishment is a crime against humanity, the man... conscientious objector of today or as a Tolstoy would feel, that Page 34 in no circumstances is it permissible to take human life any more than to eat human flesh? It is obvious that here the moral law which is above all relative duties must prevail; and that law depends on no social relation or conception of duty but on the awakened inner perception of man, the moral being. There are in the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita
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... principles of the time and society in which he has lived and the religion and ethics to which he has been brought up. He is egoistic like other men, but with the purer or sattwic egoism which regards the moral law and society and the claims of others and not only or predominantly his own interests, desires and passions. He has lived and guided himself by the Shastra, the moral and social code. The thought which... this civil war; the family itself will be brought to the point of annihilation, corruption of morals and loss of the purity of race will be engendered, the eternal laws of the race and moral law of the family will be destroyed. Ruin of the race, the collapse of its high traditions, ethical degradation and hell for the authors of such a crime, these are the only practical results possible ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita
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... are alien to his vision. Ethical powers of the life-forces and intellectual powers of the mind are synthesised with the physical and sensuous powers of matter. But this synthesis is aesthetic: moral law ( dharma ), philosophical ideas and the world of the senses are aesthetically transformed:"... morality is aestheticised, intellect suffused and governed with the sense of beauty." 85 Sensual love... recognises it as the essence of the three ideals of human life: dharma...tri-varga-sāraḥ 85 i.e. sensual love and material prosperity should be guided and purified by the principle of higher moral law. 87 This expresses also the idea propounded by Krishna when he declares, in the Gita, that in all creatures he is that kāma which is not contrary to dharma : dharmāviruddho bhūteṣu ...

... delivers, there is the fulfillment of the highest that morality and religion in their deepest core seek and succeed only when they cease to be limited within their specific boundaries. It replaces the moral law by a progressive law of self-perfection spontaneously expressing itself through the individual nature. No more in this operation is the imposition of a rule or an imperative on the individual nature... and made operative only during the course of the change of consciousness. In its progressive movement, it may, if necessary, provide Page 24 a short or long period of governance by a moral law, but always as a provisional device and always looking for going beyond into a plane of spontaneous expression of the Right and the Good. To spiritual consciousness, moral virtue is not valuable in ...

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... there is the fulfillment of the highest that morality and religion in the their deepest core seek and succeed only when they cease to be limited within their specific boundaries. It replaces the moral law by a progressive law of self-perfection spontaneously expressing itself through the individual nature. In this operation, no more is the imposition of a rule or an imperative on the nature of an ... individual and can be known and made operative only during the course of the change of consciousness. In its progressive movement, it may, if necessary, provide a short of long period of governance by a moral law, but always as a provisional device and always looking for going beyond into a plane of spontaneous expression of the Right and the Good. To spiritual consciousness, moral virtue is not valuable in ...

... the knowledge and the effectivity that it delivers, there is the fulfilment of the highest element that morality and religion in their deepest core seek for but fail to realise. Yoga replaces the moral law by a progressive law of self-perfection spontaneously expressing itself through the individual nature. No more in this operation is the imposition of a rule or an imperative on the individual nature;... known and made operative only by a change of consciousness and by an entry into the real self. In its progressive movement, it may, if necessary, permit a short or a long period of governance by a moral law, but always as a provisional device and ever looking for going beyond into a plane of a spontaneous expression of the Right and the Good. To the yogic consciousness, moral virtue is not valuable in ...

... murderer. And so long as these positions are accepted, the duty remains clear, a practical matter of course even when it is not a point of honour or affection, and overrides the absolute religious or moral law. But what if the inner view is changed, if the lawyer is awakened to the absolute sinfulness of falsehood, the judge becomes convinced that capital punishment is a crime against humanity, the man... feels, like the conscientious objector of today or as a Tolstoy would feel, that in no circumstances is it permissible to take human life any more than to eat human flesh? It is obvious that here the moral law which is above all relative duties must prevail; and that law depends on no social relation or conception of duty but on the awakened inner perception of man, the moral being. There are in the ...

... communal life. The Gita's message to the mind occupied with the pursuit of intellectual, ethical and social standards, the mind that insists on salvation by the observance of established dharmas, the moral law, social duty and function or the solutions of the liberated intelligence, is that this is indeed a very necessary stage, the dharma has indeed to be observed and, rightly observed, can raise the stature ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita
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... Cambridge, 1922-55, Vol, II, p. 551). R.C, Zaehner opines that it was composed in the third or fourth century B.C. {Hinduism, New York, Oxford University Press, 1962, p. 93). 3.Dharma = right moral law. 4.The Message of the Gita, as interpreted by Sri Aurobindo, edited by Anilbaran Roy (George Allen & Unwin Ltd,, London, 1946), pp. 67, 68-69. 5.Ibid., p. 70, fn. 1 (Continued ...

... affected not only by its own energies but by the energies of others and by universal Forces, and all this vast interplay cannot be determined in its results solely by the one factor of an all-governing moral law and its exclusive attention to the merits and demerits, the sins and virtues of individual human beings. Nor can good fortune and evil fortune, pleasure and pain, happiness and misery and suffering ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine
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... and supplication and atonement; he is capable too of partiality, and his partiality can be attracted by gifts, by prayer and by praise. Therefore instead of relying solely on the observation of the moral law, worship as prayer and propitiation is still continued. Along with these motives there arises another development of personal feeling, first of the awe which one naturally feels for something vast ...

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... happens in oneself. To master oneself means to do what one has decided to do, to do nothing but that, not to listen to or follow impulses, desires or fancies. To give a moral law to a child is evidently not anideal thing; but it is very difficult to do without it. The child can be taught, as he grows up, the relativity of all moral and social laws so that he may find in himself ...

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... born to dwell with me in the forest, 0 princess of Mithila, you are incapable of being abandoned by me even as compassion cannot be given up by a man of self knowledge. (29) I shall abide by the moral law actually followed by the virtuous (dwellers in the forest) in the past, 0 one with comely limbs! Follow me (now even) as Suvarcala (wife of the sun god) does the sun god. (30) Of course it cannot ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Rama
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... Page 55 in oneself. To master oneself means to do what one has decided to do, to do nothing but that, not to listen to or follow impulses, desires or fancies. To give a moral law to a child is evidently not an ideal thing; but it is very difficult to do without it. The child can be taught, as he grows up, the relativity of all moral and social laws so that he may find in himself ...

... which the observance leads to or helps well-being and of which the violation imposes suffering; but all of them cannot be given a moral significance. Then there is the certainty that there must be a moral law of cause and consequence in the total web of her weaving and this we would perhaps currently put into the formula that good produces good and evil evil, which is a proposition of undoubted truth, ...

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... indolence. The whole law of the cosmic action or even the one law governing all the others cannot well be the measure of a physical, mechanical and chemical energy, nor the law of a life force, nor a moral law or law of mind or of idea forces; for it is evident that none of these things by its single self covers or accounts for all the fundamental powers. There is likely to be something else of which all ...

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... and the how of all that happens in oneself. To master oneself means to do what one has decided to do, to do nothing but that, not to listen to or follow impulses, desires or fancies. To give a moral law to a child is evidently not an ideal thing; but it is very difficult to do without it. The child can be taught, as he grows up, the relativity of all moral and social laws so that he may find in himself ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   On Education
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... economic age of mankind, a period in which the ethical mind persisted painfully, but with decreasing self-confidence, an increasing self-questioning and a tendency to yield up the fortress of the moral law to the life-instinct, the aesthetic instinct and intelligence flourished as a rather glaring exotic ornament, a sort of rare orchid in the button-hole of the vital man, and reason became the magnificent ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Human Cycle
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... movement towards the changing, exceeding or Page 211 abolition of existing laws and forms for the sake of a freer larger life necessary to the world's progress. There is still left the moral law or the ideal and these, even to many who think themselves free, appear for ever sacred and intangible. But the sadhaka, his gaze turned always to the heights, will abandon them to Him whom all ideals ...

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... Supernature, would act through the gnostic being with his full participation, is founded the freedom of the gnostic being; it is this unity that gives him his liberty. The freedom from law, including the moral law, so frequently affirmed of the spiritual being, is founded on this unity of its will with the will of the Eternal. All the mental standards would disappear because all necessity for them would cease; ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine
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... Mother - III Morality You have no right to dispense with morality unless you submit yourself to a law that is higher and much more rigorous than any moral law. 28 May 1947 You can break the moral rules only when you observe the Divine Law. Moral laws have only a very relative value from the point of view of Truth. Besides, they vary considerably ...

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... that egoistic hedonism came, in due course, to be defended in the name of altruism and, eventually, was run over by universal ethical hedonism that embodied the force of collectivistic ideals. This moral law advocated, in effect, the search for maximum pleasure for maximum number of people. To use the term of Indian philosophy, the demands of samasti came to be pressed forward against the claims of ...

... complete law of existence. (Vide, SABCL, Vol. 13, pp. 549-50) (2)"...the pursuit of intellectual, ethical and social standards, the mind that insists on salvation by the observance of... moral law, social duty and function or the solutions of the liberated intelligence, is... indeed a very necessary stage" of human development, but it is not the complete and last truth of existence. "The soul ...

... Christian idea of service. SRI AUROBINDO: But the Christian idea is quite different from that. The Christians want to do what is God's will. That is a sort of religious law to them, while here it is a moral law, seen from the standpoint of Reason. SATYENDRA: Christians have the idea of going to heaven by doing their duty. SRI AUROBINDO: Their idea is more than that. They want to do what bears the seal ...

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... Blessings. 31 August 1966 Freedom is to do only what the Supreme Consciousness makes us do. In every other case one is a slave, whether of the will of others, or of conventions, or of moral laws, or of vital impulses, or of mental fancies, or, above all, of the desires of the EGO. 21 September 1969 Freedom is far from meaning disorder and confusion. It is the inner liberty that ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - II
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... I seem to be told, "This is worth seeing." So I look at it. "And ( laughing ) don't bother about that"! On the 15th, that boy, the Communist architect who was here left, because he found that "moral laws aren't sufficiently respected'!... His very words. He left. But then, his thought keeps coming all the time—not "thought": something from here ( the heart ), it keeps coming and coming. He must be ...

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... The Mother on Auroville Guidance in Yoga Moral laws have only a very relative value from the point of view of Truth, besides they vary considerably according to the country, the climate and the period. Discussions are generally sterile and without productive value. If each individual makes a personal effort of perfect sincerity, uprightness and good ...

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... consciousness, a sincerity that stand all tests. Now, I may put you on your guard against... people who live in their vital consciousness and say, "I indeed am above moral laws, I follow a higher law, I am free from all moral laws." And they say this because they want to indulge in all irregularities. These people, then, have a double impurity: they have spiritual impurity and in addition social... not depend on any moral or social law, any mental convention of any kind. It depends exclusively on this: when all the elements and all the movements of the being adhere exclusively and totally to the divine Will. ...As soon as you speak of purity, a moral monument comes in front of you which completely falsifies your notion. And note that it is infinitely easier to be moral from the social point... desires and impulses does one have the right to be free. But neither should people who are very reasonable, very moral according to ordinary social laws, think themselves wise, for their wisdom is an illusion and holds no profound truth. One who would break the law must be above the law. One who would ignore conventions must be above conventions. One who would despise all rules must be above all ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Sunlit Path
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... something—I think it is precisely in this very book that Sri Aurobindo has spoken about it—about people who live in their vital consciousness and say, "I indeed am above moral laws, I follow a higher law, I am free from all moral laws." And they say this because they want to indulge in all irregularities. These people, then, have a Page 439 double impurity: they have spiritual impurity and... view of purity, these are the real impurities. For example, if you take your stand on a moral viewpoint—which is itself altogether wrong from the spiritual point of view—there are people who apparently lead an altogether perfectly moral life, who conform to all the social laws, all the customs, the moral conventions, and who are a mass of impurity—from the spiritual point of view these beings are... truly perfectly pure only when the whole being, in all its elements and all its movements, adheres fully, exclusively, to the divine Will. This indeed is total purity. It does not depend on any moral or social law, any mental convention of any kind. It depends exclusively on this: when all the elements and all the movements of the being adhere exclusively and totally to the divine Will. Now, there are ...

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... time arguing and gossiping! And they send me letters. The whole mental ego of all of them is seething with agitation. You've seen them? * This is the exact text of Mother's answer: "Moral laws have only a very relative value from the point of view of Truth, besides they vary considerably according to the country, the climate and the period. Discussions are generally sterile and without... the trouble of looking at". Then I look. "And this (laughing), isn't worth the bother"! On the 15th, that boy, the communist architect who was here, left, because he found we "didn't respect moral laws enough"!... Word for word. He left. But then his thought is coming all the time — not "thought": something from here (heart), it comes and comes. He must be very unhappy at having left! And so... There is another one who is a communist. He's a Russian who lives in Paris. He asked me if it wasn't necessary for all the workers of Auroville to meet and "discuss" (Mother laughs) the necessity of "moral conduct"! (It seems he keeps them all discussing until three in the morning.) So I answered him (laughing) that the value of morality is very relative from the standpoint of Truth: that it changes ...

... Bengali equivalent of religion —dharma —is still more complex. Dharma is not religion though it has become customary to translate "religion" by "dharma." Dharma is law—it includes the social and moral laws; also the law of one's own being, one's own nature is said to be dharma— swadharma. August 7, 1926 (A disciple:) What are the characteristics of Indian politicians? ... structure of religion—I do not mean narrow religion but the highest law of our being. The whole social fabric was built up to fulfil that purpose. There was no talk in those days of individual liberty in the present sense of the term, but there was absolute communal liberty. Every community was completely free to develop its own religion—the law of its being. Even the selection of the line was a matter of... father. Each ruled over either a small State or a group of small States or republics. The king was not a law-maker and he was not at the head to put his hand over all organizations and keep them down. If he interfered with them he was deposed because each of these organizations had its own laws which had been established for long ages. The machinery of the State also was not so mechanical as in ...

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... life an attitude of worship, an attitude very similar to that of the mystic. Even if the world is not rooted in some absolute and omniscient reality, even if the world is not governed by inexorable moral laws, even then it is possible to formulate and develop a noble attitude towards life. A Free Man's Worship was first published in December 1903, when Russell was only thirty-one, and is considered... unresolved questions both about life and about the world. It is this spirit which is reflected in A Free Man's Worship. It is sometimes held that if one discards the belief in design or in the moral order of the universe or in the governance of the world by God, one is led to deny the basis for any aim of life except that of snatching transient happiness. "From dust we rise, to dust we return... two... makes philosophy a greater thing than either science or religion. "' In that sense, he finds mysticism to be perfectly consistent with a world-view in which there is no place for God or for a moral order. There is another side of Bertrand Russell, and that is his scientific objectivism which gave him a sharp and uncompromising attitude towards the distinction between mind and matter. "The ...

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... the name of Christ or his presence. Or why should that even be allowed by the critical light of the intelligence? A Reason or Power, called God for want of a better name, represented by the moral and physical Law in the material universe, is quite sufficient for any rational mind, Page 141 —and so we get to Deism, to a vacant intellectual formula. Or why should there be any God at all? The... conduct; but conduct for the Indian mind is only one means of expression and sign of a soul-state. Hinduism only incidentally strings together a number of commandments for observance, a table of moral laws; more deeply it enjoins a spiritual or ethical purity of the mind with action as one outward index. It says strongly enough, almost too strongly, "Thou shouldst not kill," but insists more firmly... discovered that Hinduism is not an ennobling or even a morally helpful religion; if it has talked much of righteousness, it has never claimed moral teaching as one of its functions. A religion that can talk much of righteousness without performing the function of moral teaching, sounds rather like a square which can make no claim to be a quadrilateral; but let that pass. If the Hindu is comparatively free ...

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... and living being.’ 23 Further on in the same book, he writes: ‘If we are to be free in the Spirit, if we are to be subject only to the supreme Truth, we must discard the idea that our mental or moral laws are binding on the Infinite or that there can be anything sacrosanct, absolute or eternal even in the highest of our existing standards of conduct.’ 24 ‘For the Sadhaka [practitioner] of the integral... an ever higher level and directed towards a goal). His superman was the product of a Wille-zur-Macht, an attitude of superiority and hunger for power and the will by which he had to rise above all moral norms to become the master, driven by an inspiration of which the source is difficult to define. The higher characteristics of this superman are not the (by us still unrealized) spiritual qualities... Not always indeed; for sometimes he rose beyond his personal temperament and individual mind, his European inheritance and environment, his revolt against the Christ-idea, his war against current moral values, and spoke out the Word as he had heard it, the Truth as he had seen it, bare, luminous, impersonal and therefore flawless and imperishable. But for the most part this message that had come to ...

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... plane of consciousness. A spiritual life therefore cannot be founded on a moral basis, it must be founded on a spiritual basis. This does not mean that the spiritual man must be immoral—as if there were no other law of conduct than the moral. The law of action of the spiritual consciousness is higher not lower than the moral,—it is founded on union with the Divine and living in the Divine Consciousness... movements to those who have no business to know it, who are incapable Page 205 of understanding or who would act as enemies or spoil all as a result of their knowledge.... No moral or spiritual law commands us to make ourselves naked to the world or open up our hearts and minds for public inspection. Gandhi talked about secrecy being a sin but that is one of his many extravagances.' 17... greatly the mind of his hearers. The idea behind is that his function is an indispensable service to the society, quite as much as the Brahmin's, but, that being disagreeable, it would need a special moral heroism to choose it voluntarily and he thinks as if the soul freely chose it as such a heroic service and as reward of righteous acts—but that is hardly likely. The service of the scavenger is ind ...

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... plane of consciousness. A spiritual life therefore cannot be founded on a moral basis, it must be founded on a spiritual basis. This does not mean that the spiritual man must be immoral—as if there were no other law of conduct than the moral. The law of action of the spiritual consciousness is higher, not lower than the moral—it is founded on union with Page 422 the Divine and living in... not only consider the temporary good to humanity, but certain inner laws. He thinks the harm, violence or cruelty to other beings is not compensated and can not be justified by some physical good to a section of humanity or even to humanity as a whole; such methods awake, in his opinion, a sort of Karmic reaction apart from the moral harm to the men who do these things. He is also of the opinion that... strong mind and mental will and others are vital men in whom the vital passions are stronger or more on the surface. Some do not think control necessary and let themselves go. In sadhana the mental or moral control has to be replaced by the spiritual mastery—for the mental control is only partial and it controls but does not liberate; it is only the psychic and spiritual that can do that. That is the main ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I
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