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171 result/s found for Revolt, in despair

... grace but will regard it as a true grace and help to their sadhana. There are others who cannot bear this method — if it was continued they would run a thousand miles away in misunderstanding and revolt and despair. What the Mother wants is for people to have their full chance for their soul, be the method short and swift or long and tortuous. Each she must treat according to his nature. (9.5.33) ...

... grace but will regard it as a true grace and a help to their sadhana. There are others who cannot bear this method—if it was continued they would run a thousand miles away in misunderstanding, revolt and despair. What the Mother wants is for people to have their full chance for their souls, be the method short and swift or long and tortuous. Each she must treat according to his nature. 9 May 1933 ...

... they are advocating an extreme attitude and extreme methods in a spirit of desperate impatience. The Extremist propaganda is, therefore, a protest against misgovernment and a movement of despair driving towards revolt. We are unable to accept this statement of the Nationalist position. On the contrary it so successfully represents the new politics to be what they are not, that we choose it as a star... should and will become a great, free and united nation. It is not a negative current of destruction, but a positive, constructive impulse towards the making of modern India. It is not a cry of revolt and despair, but a gospel of national faith and hope. Its true description is not Extremism, but Democratic Nationalism. These are the real issues. There are at present not two parties in India, but three... true nature and turn from it with repugnance before they have given themselves time to understand it. The most obstinate of these misapprehensions is the idea that the new politics is a counsel of despair, a mad revolutionary fury induced by Curzonian reaction. We can afford to pass over this misapprehension with contempt, when it is put forward by foolish, prejudiced or conceited critics who are merely ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Bande Mataram
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... have seen any number of cases in which the sadhak is going on well or even having high experiences and change of consciousness and suddenly this imagination comes across and all is confusion, revolt, sorrow, despair and the inner work is interrupted and endangered. In most cases this attack brings with it a sensory delusion so that even if the Mother smiles more than usual or gives the blessing with all... the cause is that the sadhaks apply the movements of a vital human love to the Mother and the ordinary vital human love is full of contrary movements of distrust, misunderstanding, jealousy, anger, despair. But in Yoga this is most undesirable—for here trust in the Mother, faith in her divine Love is of great importance; anything that denies or disturbs it opens the door to obstacles and wrong reactions... sadhana was certainly not profiting! 30 June 1935 Today after the Pranam, even though the Mother did not smile or put her hand as usual, my consciousness remained high. The ego determines its revolt according to her smile and touch, but today it remained quiescent. I don't know how it happened. The ego acts according to these things when it dominates; when it does not dominate or is not present ...

... What to do when the vital refuses bluntly to assent to the true movement?       It must be made to assent — and the first thing is to detach yourself from it and refuse to accept its revolts and despairs as your own.         You said, "The tendency to be miserable is a matter of habit in the vital. It can come up at any time so long as the habitual movement has not been entirely ... pure neutrality or indifference, that is, no delight, no depression. Some central part of my being may accept this as an alternative to a constant struggling and despair.       It is certainly better than dissatisfaction, despair and depression. The main point is that the sadhana seems to refuse to go on on a vital basis and the vital or at least a part of it refuses to participate in the sadhana... and coercing and dominating the rest, it will do so, until you throw off this inertia and complete the work that was left unfinished.         The present absence of demand, struggle or despair is not because my vital has adopted any right attitude.       The point round which the condition revolves is this: "I can't have any demands, very well, I abdicate." Or, "How can I have any ...

... him from which he seeks release. On the other hand if in writing his vital gets seized by the thing he is writing of, and takes up the pen for him,—expressing and often supporting doubt, revolt, depression, despair, it becomes a very different Page 703 matter. Even here sometimes the expression acts as a purge; but also the statement of the condition may lend energy to the attack at least ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV
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... depression and despair that come from vital dissatisfaction and revolt. When I get depressed, I would like it to be on account of these big movements, not petty ones such as dullness. They can hardly be called big movements. The real distinction is that they are rajasic movements, not tamasic. 1 March 1936 Movements of depression or despair that stem from vital dissatisfaction or revolt—are these... not big movements? They are not big—they are small movements of the vital ego—I mean the movements of vital dissatisfaction which cause people here to be depressed and revolt and despair. If the resultant depression or despair is strong, that simply means that the minds of the people here are seeing things out of all right measure and proportion, magnifying trifles into tremendous things, swelling... How can I live to make the Mother happy? Would living in sorrow and despair please her? I don't think she would like me to be dejected. May she throw these things out of me. I want to live happily beside her. It is not at all the Mother's wish or will that you or anyone should remain in grief and despair; what she likes is that you should confide in her and be happy and cheerful. ...

... great, free and united again. He clarified that it was not a negative current of destruction, but a positive, constructive impulse towards the making of a modern India, that it was not a cry of revolt and despair, but a gospel of national faith and hope. He said that its true description was not Extremism but Nationalism. Continuing his argument, Sri Aurobindo pointed out that there were not two... if they succeed in developing the necessary fitness, they would do better for themselves and mankind by remaining as a province of the British Empire; any attempt at freedom will, they think, be a revolt against Providence and can bring nothing but disaster on the country. The Loyalist view is that India cannot, should not and will not be a free, great and united nation. The Moderates believe the nation... involved a series of strikes on a gigantic scale that manifested widespread, desperate and unappeasable anarchy. The third course open to an oppressed nation, Sri Aurobindo contended, was of an armed revolt. Sri Aurobindo argued that the choice by subject nation of the means it will use for vindicating its liberty, is best determined by the circumstances of its servitude. On this point, Sri Aurobindo ...

... raise its hood. "If in writing," Sri Aurobindo adds, "the sadhak's vital gets seized by the thing he is writing of and takes up the pen for him, - expressing and often supporting doubt, revolt, depression, despair, it becomes a very different matter." Even then, the very writing may act "as a purge" and give some relief, but only to return later on with perhaps redoubled force, landing the sadhak ...

[closest]

... should and will become a great, free and united nation. It is not a negative current of destruction, but a positive, constructive impulse towards the making of modern India. It is not a cry of revolt and despair, but a gospel of national faith and hope. Its true description is not Extremism, but Democratic Nationalism. ‘These are the real issues. There are at present not two parties in India but three... jee and others, Sri Aurobindo had kept himself closely informed of the developments in Bengal, and he sent his directives saying, 'Take advantage of this intense discontent and spread the seeds of revolt amongst the youth. Enlist them in the revolutionary camp.... This is a very fine opportunity. Carry on the anti-partition agitation powerfully. We will get many workers for the movement.' The 'settled... and joined. Swadeshi, boycott, national education, rural uplift —these were the slogans dwelt upon everywhere. And with it all there went on, in secret, underground preparations for revolution and revolt and armed attack.' However the Government was not to be caught napping. They resolved to crush the movement and came down with ruthless force on the people. Meetings and processions were banned ...

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... tamasic.       They are not big - they are small movements of the vital ego -I mean the movements of vital dissatisfaction which cause people here to be depressed and revolt and despair. If the resultant depression or despair is strong, that simply means that the minds of the people here are seeing things out of all right measure and proportion, magnifying trifles into tremendous things, swelling... evolution towards the Divine.   Depression and Despair         I heard that some people here remain constantly in despair and gloom because they have become conscious of their minutest imperfections and defects which they are unable to get rid of.       They are unable for two reasons: (1) because they yield to despair and gloom and the illusion of impotence, (2) because they... bring in depression and despair in order to prove that their love for the Mother is overflowing!       This theory is terrible nonsense. It is applying the formulae of the most vital kind of love to the Yoga. This vital idea of love for the Divine has been a great stumbling-block in the Yoga in the Ashram.         Are not the movements of depression and despair big and strong movements ...

... him from which he seeks release. On the other hand if in writing his vital gets seized by the thing he is writing of, and takes up the pen for him,—expressing and often supporting doubt, revolt, depression, despair, it becomes a very different matter. Even here sometimes the expression acts as a purge; but also the statement of the condition may lend energy to the attack at least for the moment and... the usual wrong attitude of the vital which is the stumbling-block for so many sadhaks and prevents true psychic love from developing, replacing it by the vital kind full of demand, ego, jealousy, revolt etc.—and it has been the ruin of some. All that you had thrown out of the higher parts, and quieted it elsewhere, but it remained sticking somewhere and when correspondence was suspended, the hostile... for the withdrawal of the notice—not all of course, but many. And there is a stack of outside correspondence still unanswered! I am persuading my eye, but it is still red and sulky and reproachful. Revolted, what? Thinks too much is imposed on it and no attention paid to its needs, desires, preferences etc. Will have to reason with it for a day or two longer. How I wish, as a medical man, I mean ...

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... the mind sanctions or justifies, it will persist or recur. If sorrow there must be, the other kind you described in the previous letter is preferable, the sadness that has a sweetness in it, no revolt, no despair, only the psychic longing for the true thing to come. It is not by prāyopaveśana or anything of the kind that it must come, but by the increase of the pure and true bhakti. You have been... yourself that has to see and then there is no difficulty. Fortunately, you are moving near to that. Nor would I trouble at all about this point, if you did not make of it a support for depression and despair. Otherwise it would have no importance, since with one idea or with the other one can arrive at the goal because the soul drives towards it. The Sunlit Way of Yoga Peace was the very first thing... anything but an obstacle. The Gita specially says, "Practise the Yoga with an undespondent heart", anirviṇṇacetasā . I know perfectly well that pain and suffering and struggle and excesses of despair are natural—though not inevitable—on the way,—not because they are helps, but because they are imposed on us by the darkness of this human nature out of which we have to struggle into the Light. I ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - II
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... him from which he seeks release. On the other hand, if in writing his vital gets seized by the thing he is writing of and takes up the pen for him,— expressing and often supporting doubt, revolt, depression, despair, it becomes a very different matter. Even here some times the expression acts as a purge; but also the statement of the condition may lend energy to the attack, at least for the moment,... sufficient, we will try again and again till you have got the trick and are able to turn the key in the door. I absolutely refuse to accept your plea of inability or admit any ground for outcry and despair. You have got to root out this self-discouraging attitude from your vital and to succeed. May 5, 1932 You have been allowing yourself to get upset and depressed again and, as usual, this... teaching or to her own practice. The vital nature on the surface (the depths of the true vital are different) is attached on the one side to a superficial mirth and enjoyment, on the other to sorrow and despair and gloom and tragedy,—for these are for it the cherished lights and shades of life; but a bright or wide and free peace or an ā nandamaya intensity or, best, a fusing of both in one is the true ...

... surface — for there is a rock of support and certitude at the base, which even if partially covered cannot disappear altogether. Mostly however the constant recurrence of depression and despair or of doubt and revolt is due to a mental or vital formation which takes hold of the vital mind and makes it run round always in the same circle at the slightest provoking cause or even without cause. It is like... is complete when the psychic becomes the basis or the leader of the consciousness and mind and vital and body are led by it and obey it. Of course if that once happens fully, doubt, depression and despair cannot come any longer, although there may be and are difficulties still. If it is not fully, but still fundamentally accomplished, even then these things either do not come or are brief passing clouds... that is the secret of the system. So too if the vital mind withdraws its consent, refuses to be dominated by the habitual suggestions and the habitual movement, these recurrences of depression and despair can be made soon to cease. But it is not easy for this mind, once it has got into the habit of consent, even a quite passive and suffering and reluctant consent, to cancel the habit and get rid of ...

... should feel sad and be in despair about myself. It is clear that I am not able to do what should be done. SRI AUROBINDO: It was from your description of the reaction that I said there was a vital demand. In the pure psychic or spiritual self-giving there are no reactions of this kind; no despondency or despair, no saying “What have I gained by seeking the Divine,” no anger, revolt, abhiman , wish to ...

... কেছুই হালনা". 2 A vital so ready to despair that even after a "glorious" flood of poetry, it uses the occasion to preach the gospel of despair. I have passed through most of the difficulties of the sadhak, but I cannot recollect to have looked on delight of poetical creation or concentration in Page 196 it as something undivine and a cause for despair. This seems to me excessive. ... touch of the All-Blissful, the Ishwara. Despair and Despondency Despair and despondency are always wrong. If you make a mistake, quietly observe it and correct the tendency next time. Even if the mistake recurs often, you have only to persevere quietly—remembering that nature cannot be changed in a day. Page 206 These feelings of despair and exaggerated sense of self-depreciation... though not uninterrupted experience. This has happened even to those who are troubled by these circular movements and have been again and again on the point of rushing away in despair. There is nothing more futile than to despair in the spiritual path and throw up the game: it is to break a working which would have led one to the realisation asked for if one had persevered. Thirst for the Divine ...

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

... gives firmness, balance, a strong support to the whole being and a powerful reason for the will to act. Accept too the help we can give you, not shutting yourself against it by disbelief, despair or unfounded revolt. At present you cannot prevail because you have not fixed in yourself a faith, an aim, a settled confidence; the black mood has been able to cloud your whole consciousness. But if you have... to throw off clouds that gather in your vital nature. It is this that the Mother has always tried to make grow in you and bring to the front. When one has that in oneself, there is no ground for despair, no just reason for any talk of impossibility. If you could once firmly accept this as your true self, (as in- deed it is, for the inner being is your true self and the external, to which the cause... and finally, all disturbance ceases altogether. Even the experience which so alarms you, of states of consciousness in which you say and do things contrary to your true will, is not a reason for despair. It is a common experience in one form or another of all who try to rise above their ordinary nature. Not only those who practise Yoga, but religious men and even those who seek only a moral control ...

... purpose beyond itself. July 25, 1934 Mother, there are days when I am awfully afraid to go to pranam, lest I should have the misfortune to see your grave face, with no smile at all. All my despair, melancholy, etc., is intensified after that, while your smile disperses all gloom. All this about the Mother's smile and her gravity is simply a trick of the vital. Very often I notice people... there is anything bad or wrong in him. I have told this a hundred times to any number of sadhaks—but in many the vital does not want to accept that because it would lose its main source of grievance, revolt, abhiman, 11 desire to go away or give up the Yoga, things which are very precious to it. The very fact that it has these results and leads to nothing but these darknesses ought to be enough to ...

... If one really wants to have a glimpse of freedom, it is not possible through mere ire, spite, disbelief, despair or at easy ease. Fitness for freedom has to be acquired. The essential requisite is yoga, arduous yoga. Fear not – the first step towards freedom is the consciousness of and revolt against subjection. If the ordinary life of the world is felt as the domain of a Non-God – if there be a ...

... behind, a faith which is there even when the mind doubts and the vital despairs and the physical wants to collapse, and after the attack is over, reappears and pushes on the path again. It may be strong and bright, it may be pale and in appearance weak, but if it persists each time in going on, it is the real thing. Fits of despair and darkness are a tradition in the path of sadhana—in all Yogas oriental... cells is an actual fact and a law of Nature and has been demonstrated often enough even apart from Yoga. The way to get faith and everything else is to insist on having them and refuse to flag or despair or give up until one has them—it is the way by which everything has been got since this difficult world began to have thinking and aspiring creatures upon it. It is to open always, always to the Light... heart within based on that faith and love which is the only sure guiding star. Faith in its essence is a light in the soul which turns towards the truth even when the mind doubts or the vital revolts or the physical consciousness denies it. When this extends itself to the instruments, it becomes a fixed belief in the mind, a sort of inner knowledge which resists all apparent denial by circumstances ...

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

... gives firmness, balance, a strong support to the whole being and a powerful reason for the will to act. Accept too the help we can give you, not shutting yourself against it by disbelief, despair or unfounded revolt. At present you cannot prevail because you have not fixed in yourself a faith, an aim, a settled confidence; the black mood has been able to cloud your whole consciousness. But if you have... wanting its own desires, not the Truth and the Divine. When it returns like this and covers you up, all these old ideas and feelings which are always the same take hold of you and try to push you to despair—for it is an enemy force that pushes them back into you. The difficulty is that your physical consciousness does not yet know how to reject this when it comes. The inner being rejects it, but as the... experiences. I don't advise this procedure to anybody—mind you. I only want to say that the feeling of never having had a response does not mean that there never will be a response and that fits of despair at having arrived nowhere do not mean that one will never arrive. The thing is that it is unavoidable in the course of the sadhana that some parts of the being should be less open, less advanced ...

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

... me very clearly, a poignant knot, ever ready for an absolute negation. I saw it and I said to you, 'Mother, only your grace can remove this.' I said this to you in the temple that morning, in total despair. And then, the knot was undone. X's action contributed a lot, with your grace acting through him. But truly, I have traversed a veritable hell this last while. X continues his work on me daily;... suddenly, I was breathing easily. And it happened just as I was despairing of ever getting out of it. I seemed to be touching a kind of fundamental bedrock, so painful, so suffering, and full of revolt because of too much suffering. And I saw that all my efforts, all the meditations, aspirations, mantras, were only covering up this suffering bedrock without touching it. I saw this fundamental thing ...

... hampers you from getting what it wants—it is only when it is calm and confident that things can be done. The outward revolt is the refusal of discipline and obedience—the inward revolt is of many kinds, it may take many forms, e.g. a revolt of the vital against the Mother, a revolt of the mind against the Truth, a rejection of the spiritual life, a demand to enthrone the ego as the Divine or to serve... front the acuteness of the disturbance can disappear and the road become shorter. Usually the vital tries to resist the call to change. That is what is meant by revolt or opposition. If the inner will insists and forbids revolt or opposition, the vital unwillingness may often take the form of depression and dejection accompanied by a resistance in the physical mind which supports the repetition... serve something that flatters the vital ego and supports its demands and call that the Divine, a response to vital suggestions of distrust, despair, self-destruction or departure—and many others. Page 142 The difficulty must have come from distrust and disobedience. For distrust and disobedience are like falsehood (they are themselves a falsity, based on false ideas and impulses), they ...

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

... only to die? Why all this effort for development, progress, the flowering of the faculties, if it is to come to a diminution ending in decline and disintegration?..." Some feel a revolt in them, others less strong feel despair and always this question arises: "If there is a conscious Will behind all that, this Will seems to be monstrous." But here Sri Aurobindo tells us that this was an indispensable ...

... than good as has been seen in many cases where it has been unduly attempted. A cheerful and sunny life is as good an atmosphere for Yoga as any the Himalayas can give. Why then this depression and despair? I may say that I am not responsible for your loss of zest in the vital. This vairagya, or loss of zest, as you have yourself said, began before you came here. I have indeed laid some stress... one's inner being forcing its way by that means through the difficulties of the nature—is on that line, it must be recognised as a valid line. What has to be got rid of in that case is the note of despair in the vital which responds to the cry you speak of—that it will never gain the Divine because it has not yet got the Divine or that there has been no progress. There has certainly been a progress... acknowledge the utility of a temporary state of vairagya as an antidote to the too strong pull of the vital. But vairagya always tends to a turning away from life and a tamasic element in vairagya, despair, depression etc., often dilapidates the force of the being and may even lead in some cases to falling between two stools so that one loses earth and misses heaven. I therefore prefer to replace vairagya ...

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

... did not wish this distinction to be kept up, you could have told Mother so and sent back the five rupees or else asked her why she wanted you to have the Rs. 5 with you. These violent fits of despair or revolt because of trivial difficulties like this are not the right way of meeting them. Mother had not the slightest intention of hurting you or keeping you aloof from her. Why can you not have more ...

... hope that it might turn out to be unreal or change into a faery beauty. What I am writing now is not about the play of forces, but about confusion, conflict and despair in me. O Lord God! again despair! The confusion and despair are because I don't seem to have any go at all. Pshaw! Pooh! Rubbish! Not a day has gone when I could say I have aspired strongly for anything. Well then... into the silence of Nirvana. Not so easy to do it as to write it. However, what shall I hear from the mighty pen as a remedy to my chronic despair and impatience? Now look here, as to the Yuga, etc., if I can be patient with you and your despairs, why can't you be patient with the forces? Let me give you a "concrete" instance. X is a sadhak of whom it might be said that if anyone could be... more abysmally ignorant and inconscient?). If this theory be true, can it be said that when one fails in sadhana due to the lower nature's revolt, the soul has sanctioned it for further experiences of life? That is only another way of putting the revolt of the lower nature. For it is not the soul, the psychic being, but the vital and the physical consciousness that refuse to go farther. For ...

... here of the truth of your being. And yet, sometimes He does fashion Himself according to your outer aspirations, and if, like the devotees, you live alternately in separation and union, ecstasy and despair, the Divine also will separate from you and unite with you, according as you believe. The attitude is thus very important, even the outer attitude. People do not know how important is faith, how faith... in my active consciousness for a time, for the time necessary. And this tie between you and me is never cut. There are Page 174 people who have long ago left the Ashram, in a state of revolt, and yet I keep myself informed of them, I attend to them. You are never abandoned. In fact I hold myself responsible for everyone, even for those whom I have met only for one second in my life ...

... situation becomes serious; discouragement changes into revolt and depression into dissatisfaction: I speak of people who are rather ill-natured—there are people who are ill-natured (it is not their fault!) and there are people who are good-natured (it is not their fault either!) but things are like that—well, those who are ill-natured get angry, revolt, want to break and pull down everything: "You will... often, but at times there is a little glimmer of reason somewhere which tells you, "Ah, enough of this comedy!" But if this becomes very strong and you do not react in time, then you fall into despair: "Really this life is not made for people like me; I would be happier elsewhere, in heaven where everybody is very nice and one can do whatever one wants", etc., whence paradisiac conceptions—indeed... 25 January 1951 "The vital being in us is the seat of impulses and desires, of enthusiasm and violence, of dynamic energy and desperate depression, of passions and revolt. It can set in motion everything, build up and realise, it can also destroy and mar everything. It seems to be, in the human being, the most difficult part to train. It is a long labour requiring great ...

... like everything else; and if they give up their revolt and separation and aspire to return to their source, they can very well be converted. It may require much more effort from them than is necessary for a human being to change his defects, that of course is obvious. It is a much greater effort and, above all, much deeper, because the origin of their revolt is very deep; it is not superficial. But still... want them, and not only resist but revolt—which happens often—this indeed creates a terrible inner cerebral struggle, first mental and then cerebral, and this may bring about a serious mental imbalance. There are cases in which it is precisely the opening to a suggestion, an adverse influence, an opening which is the result of a wrong movement—a movement of revolt or of hatred or of violent desire... then they leave the path. So, obviously, if they leave the path, they will never succeed. This is to lose one's faith. To keep one's faith is to say, "Good, I have difficulties but I am going on." Despair—that's what cuts off your legs, stops you, leaves you like this: "It is over, I can't go on any longer." It is indeed finished, and that's something which should not be allowed. When you have started ...

... wants to have and do what one wants to do. This is much more important. Source Guard against Despair For some people events are always contrary to what they desire or aspire for or believe to be good for them. They often despair. Is this a necessity for their progress? Despair is never a necessity for progress, it is always a sign of weakness and tamas; it often indicates the presence... of life you must always be very careful to guard against despair. Besides, this habit of being sombre, morose, of despairing, does not truly depend on events, but on a lack of faith in the nature. One who has faith, even if only in himself, can face all difficulties, all circumstances, even the most adverse, without discouragement or despair. He fights like a man to the end. Natures that lack faith... so serious", and when the other part returns, once again, one repents bitterly: "I was a fool, I have wasted my time, now I must begin again...." At times there is one part that's ill-humoured, in revolt, full of worries, and another which is progressive, full of surrender. All that, one after the other. There is but one remedy: that signpost must always be there, a mirror well placed in one's feelings ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Sunlit Path

... which is there even when the mind doubts and the vital despairs and the physical wants to collapse, and after the attack is over reappears and pushes on the path again. It may be strong and bright, it may be pale and in appearance weak, but if it persists each time in going on, it is the real thing. Fits of depression and darkness and despair are a tradition in the path of sadhana — in all yogas... absence of all indications, feels to be true or supremely worth following or achieving. This thing within us can last even when there is no fixed belief in the mind, even when the vital struggles and revolts and refuses. Who is there that practises the yoga and has not his periods, long periods of disappointment and failure and disbelief and darkness? But there is something that sustains him and even ...

... because of the nature of the vital, its unquiet passions, desires, ardours, troubled emotions, cloudings, depressions, despairs. The psychic can have a psychic sorrow when things go against its diviner yearnings, but this sorrow has in it no touch of torment, depression or despair. Nevertheless all cannot approach, at least cannot at once approach the Divine in the pure psychic way—the mental and vital... produce depression. There is no unfitness, no bad thing inside that comes across, no lack of aspiration causing the cessation of experience. It is the depression, the self-distrust, the readiness to despair which are the only cause; there is no other. To all sadhaks, as I wrote to you, even to the best and strongest there come interruptions in the flow of the sadhana; that is not a cause for thinking... human nature is there to see to that. To each his own difficulties seem enormous and radical and even incurable by their continuity and persistence and induce long periods of despondency and crises of despair. To have faith enough or enough psychic sight to react at once or almost at once and prevent these attacks is given hardly to two or three in a hundred. But one ought not to settle down into a fixed ...

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

... ss to emerge and with the Mother's Force working in it deliver the being from all return of the movements of the old nature. Why do you indulge in these exaggerated feelings of remorse and despair when these things come up from the subconscient? They do not help and make it more, not less difficult to eliminate what comes. Such returns of an old nature that is long expelled from the conscious... calling down more and more of the love and Ananda, turning more and more exclusively to the Mother. That is the true way—and there is no other. There is no reason to be so much cut down or despair of your progress. Evidently you have had a surging up of the old movements, but that can always happen so long as there is not an entire change of the old nature both in the conscious and subconscient... that the Mother's force may work in you and bring down what is above. No man ever succeeded in this sadhana by his own merit. To become open and plastic to the Mother is the one thing needed. Despair is absurd and talking of suicide quite out of place. However a man may stumble, the Divine Grace will be there so long as he aspires for it and in the end lead him through. If she remains firm ...

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

... exacerbation of the resistance of the lower vital and an exaggeration of the obstruction (inertia, passive resistance) in the physical which then admit these suggestions of self-destruction, depression or despair. It is more the lack of sleep that is responsible [ for the physical weakness ], I think; also the excess of struggle which the constant pressure of the vital disturbances and the physical tamas... earth itself and their readiness for the spiritual descent and fulfilment. At every step of the journey, they are there attacking furiously, criticising, suggesting, imposing despondency or inciting to revolt, raising unbelief, amassing difficulties. No doubt, they put a very exaggerated interpretation on the rights given them by their function, making mountains even out of what seems to us a mole-hill... attachment to the familiar movements of the Ignorance, desire, vanity, pride, lust, self-will etc., but they are not in their nature hostile. The hostile Forces are those whose very raison d'être is revolt against the Divine, against the Light and Truth and enmity to the Divine Work. Normal human defects are one thing—they are the working of the lower nature of the Ignorance. The action of the ...

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

... Renascence, modern Europe. This revolt in its extreme form tried to destroy religion altogether, boasted indeed of having killed the religious instinct in man,—a vain and ignorant boast, as we now see, for the religious instinct in man is most of all the one instinct in him that cannot be killed, it only changes its form. In its more moderate movements the revolt put religion aside into a corner of... undivine, though in it there is the secret of the divine, and it can only be divinised by finding the higher law and the spiritual illumination. On the other hand, the impatience which condemns or despairs of life or discourages its growth because it is at present undivine and is not in harmony with the spiritual life, is an equal ignorance, andhaṁ tamaḥ . The world-shunning monk, the mere ascetic... and their hierarchs and exponents have too often been a force for retardation, have too often thrown their weight on the side of darkness, oppression and ignorance, and that it has needed a denial, a revolt of the oppressed human mind and heart to correct these errors and set religion right. And why should this have been if religion is the true and sufficient guide and regulator of all human activities ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Human Cycle

... speaking here of the truth of your being. Yet sometimes He does fashion himself according to your outer aspirations; and if, like the devout, you live alternately in estrangement and embrace, ecstasy and despair, the Divine too will be estranged from you or draw near, according to your belief. Therefore, one's attitude is extremely important, even one's outer attitude. People do not know just how important... active, that you are even in my active consciousness for some time—the time needed. And this bond between you and me is never cut. There are people who left the Ashram a long time ago, in a state of revolt, and yet I continue to know them and to take care of them. You are never abandoned. In truth, I feel responsible for everyone, even for people I have met for only one second in my life. Now, ...

... Imprisoned within the walls raised by modern scientific conveniences, man is groping in the dark in the fond hope of touching some secret that will open up an escape from this labyrinth. In their despair, the Western people have turned to India in search of a solution to these burning problems of life, and realization of the goal of life. And when they turn to India they find that they have stumbled... for individual pleasure resulting in more unhappiness and distress. All happiness, all satisfaction and all peace reside in the Lord. This hard fact is ignored and modern life is virtually in an open revolt against the Almighty as Milton's Satan did in Paradise Lost . It is small wonder therefore, that man has lost his paradise, his happiness, and finds himself groping in the pervading gloom without... , harmony, progress and treasures are embodied in the Incarnate Lord in human frame. This God wills to express Himself in human form with all His powers and glory. As a result of opposition to and revolt against His appearance or expression in human frame today's life has become individualistic, egoistic, discordant and bleak, whose Satanic gloom is smothering the whole world. The whole world, both ...

... not itself experienced and even it doubts what it has itself experienced if that experience is no longer there or immediately palpable to it—the vital brings in the suggestions of despondency and despair to reinforce the doubt and prevent clear seeing. It is therefore a difficulty that cannot be effectively combated by the logical reason alone, but best by the clear perception that it is a self created... have poured on you my force to develop your powers—until the time should come for you to make an equal development in the Yoga. We claim the right to keep you as our own here with us. Throw away this despair—rise above the provocations of others—turn back to the Mother. 16 May 1937 (2) I want to love and love completely and lose myself in love. If one can think of losing oneself for mortal... conditions without which they cannot be effective. Meditates, japs, prays himself into pits of dullness and disappears. Also tries in spite of my objections a wrestling tapasya which puts his vital into revolt. Then by a stroke of good luck I succeed unexpectedly in making a sort of psychic opening. Decides to try surrender, purification of the heart, rejection of ego, true humility etc.—tries a little of ...

... own defects and willing to get rid of them; it must decide to throw away its vanities, ambitions, lusts and longings, its rancours and revolts and all the rest of the impure stuff and unclean movements within it. This is the time of the greatest difficulties, revolts and dangers. The vital ego hates being opposed in its desires, resents disappointment, is furious against wounds to its pride and vanity;... anything but an obstacle. The Gita specially says, "Practise the Yoga with an undespondent heart", anirviṇṇacetasā . I know perfectly well that pain and suffering and struggle and excesses of despair are natural—though not inevitable—on the way,—not because they are helps, but because they are imposed on us by the darkness of this human nature out of which we have to struggle into the Light...... easiest, but still we find constant complaints that one is always seeking but never finding and even at the best there is a constant ebb and tide, milana and viraha , joy and weeping, ecstasy and despair. If one has the faith or in the absence of faith the will to go through, one passes on and enters into the joy and light of the divine realisation. If one gets some habit of true surrender, then all ...

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

... austerity and grandeur takes my breath away, making my heart palpitate! Sri Aurobindo: O rubbish! I am austere and grand, grim and stern! every blasted thing I never was! I groan in an un-Aurobindian despair when I hear such things. What has happened to the common sense of all of you people? In order to reach the Overmind it is not at all necessary to take leave of this simple but useful quality. Common... in the world), it is simply looking at things as they are without inflation or deflation — not imagining wild imaginations — or for that matter Page 364 despairing "I know not why" despairs." (13) Rose-leaf princess sadhaks! NB: S asked for meals at home . Because of the rainy weather he says he feels unwell. Sri Aurobindo: What delicate people all are becoming! ... Obviously if N becomes a supramental, everybody can!" 48 (7)"Good Lord! you are not part of the world." 49 "Good Lord! what a Falstaff of a fountain-pen!" 30 (8)"O Lord God! again despair!" 51 (9)"Glorious! You must begin glittering at once..." 52 (10)"Gracious heavens! you are really a poet." 53 (11)"Lord God in omnibus!" 34 (12)"By Jove, yes!" 55 ...

... Yahya Khan to "fulfill his constitutional responsibility" and impose martial law. He closed with a wish that "we continue to march towards progress and prosperity along the path of democracy." In despair, Ayub Khan said, it "is impossible for me to preside over the destruction of our country." Privately, he confided that he had failed, and added that there was no leader in the opposition who would... procession turned violent and the resulting killings sowed the seeds of ethnic polarization. It completely alienated Pakistan's largest city from Ayub Khan, and accelerated his downfall in 1969. The revolt was especially strong in East Pakistan since it had been seriously neglected during Ayub's period. The gap in per capita income between the two wings had doubled in percentage terms, so that in 1969/70... rule East Pakistan, they put him in jail. Origins of the Crisis The dawn of 1971 saw a great human tragedy unfolding in erstwhile East Pakistan. Entire East Pakistan was in revolt. In the West, General Yahya Khan, who had appointed himself President in 1969, had given the job of pacifying East Pakistan to his junior, General Tikka Khan. The crackdown of Mar. 25, 1971, ordered ...

... what is it? That is usually called depression.   At times, parts of my being do not feel happy, yet neither do they feel depression or despair. If dullness and unhappiness are not depression, I do not know what depression means. Despair is another matter.   To be desireless does not need a long tapasya. There are people in the world who keep themselves detached from desires... sufficient. There must be something throwing out the ego from the vital.   My vital has become extremely unstable. When its views are even slightly contradicted, it invariably sinks into despair. I often try to stop it but it always returns to its nature. It is because the vital was very much under the grip of its desires and so, now that it is separately active, not controlled by... order to have an excuse for being dissatisfied. It is the nature of the vital, there is no other why.   It seems something has happened in my vital being. The displeasure, depression and despair it now feels really have nothing to do with physical occurrences; they are only excuses it projects for its justification. For while these outer circumstances have remained the same, it is only now ...

... uneasiness; it means ugliness that despairs of its own ugliness. * when you are good, when you are generous, noble, disinterested, kind, you create in you, around you, a particular atmosphere and this atmosphere is a sort of luminous release. You breathe, you blossom like a flower in the sun; there is no painful recoil on yourself, no bitterness, no revolt, no miseries. Spontaneously, naturally ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Sunlit Path

... demand with all its consequent revolts and disturbances that made it necessary for Mother to limit the physical manifestation of nearness to a minimum. 17 April 1935 Whatever you may say to suppress our desire for the Mother's nearness ... If one has the desire or the claim, one brings in all sorts of Page 497 demands, anger, jealousies, despairs, revolts etc., which spoil the sadhana... anybody's difficulties are removed by their coming to Mother or by their sitting one hour or two hours or even three hours with her. Plenty of people have done that and gone away as glum, desperate and revolted as they came. Among the people who see the Mother are some who have crises as bad as yours and as frequent. It is also not true that those who have talked much with Mother (about houses, repairs, ...

... defects and willing to get rid of them; it must decide to throw away its vanities, ambitions, lusts and longings, its rancours and revolts and all the rest of the impure stuff and unclean movements within it. This is the time of the greatest difficulties, revolts and dangers. The vital ego hates being opposed in its desires, resents disappointment, is furious against wounds to its pride and vanity;... easiest, but still we find constant complaints that one is always seeking but never finding and even at the best there is a constant ebb and tide, milan and viraba, joy and weeping, ecstasy and despair. If one has the faith or in the absence of faith the will to go through, one passes on and enters into the joy and light of the divine realisation. If one gets some habit of true surrender, then... absence of light, and apravrtti, a tendency to inertia, inactivity, unwillingness to make an effort and, as a result, even when the effort is made, a constant readiness to doubt, to despond and despair, to give up, renounce the aim and the endeavour, collapse. Fortunately, there is also in human nature a sattwic element which turns towards light and a rajasic or kinetic element which desires ...

... surrender of all parts, especially of the whole vital, is certainly difficult. It can only come with the development of the consciousness. Meanwhile, that it has not fully come, is no reason for despair or giving up. You are taking too black a view of things, the usual result of your giving way to depression. You used to have this before and you got over it by persistence. Now also by ... be anything but an obstacle. The Gita especially says, “Practise the Yoga with an undespondent heart, anirvinnacetasa.” I know perfectly well that pain and suffering and struggle and despair are natural – though not inevitable – on the way – not because they are helps, but because they are imposed on us by the darkness of this human nature out of which we have to struggle into the Light... in her are able to follow the sunlit path and even those who cannot, yet when they do put the trust, find their path suddenly easy and, if it becomes difficult again, it is only when distrust, revolt, abhiman or other darknesses come upon them. The sunlit path is not altogether a fable. Page 34 But you will ask what of those who cannot? Well, it is for them I am putting ...

... and honour, and everything else that we normally covet, but, all of a Page 390 sudden, something may surge up from the subsoil of our being, and we are overwhelmed with a sense of despair or frustration, and a dark cloud settles upon our being. The sunshine and laughter are suddenly eclipsed by lamentation and gloom. Or, even when we are at the height of our powers, some unforeseen... ailment or affliction, and our happiness is engulfed in misery. A smile from a person we love and adore sends us into raptures, and a frown or a frigid look of indifference casts us into the pit of despair. It is the world that makes us smile or weep, rejoice or repine. It is the world's baubles that we run madly after, delighted, if we snatch them for a moment, miserable if they elude our grasp. We... upon factors over which I have no control. It is circumstances that determine the trend of my nature, the direction of my thoughts and the form and quality of my action. If I muster courage enough to revolt and react against circumstances, I find to my bewilderment that I am swept by forces within me which defy all control. I become a sport of them. I painfully realise my inner slavery even while I struggle ...

... heart, he cannot fail to find the Mother's smile there. Why go out of one's heart, then, and seek for her smile outside? Why are so many here burdened with difficulties, falls, attacks, gloom and despair? Is it not because they seek the external part of the Mother, her physical nearness, touch, etc., instead of going inside? Quite right. To live inside is the first principle of spiritual life and... (which in itself, rightly understood, was not to be discouraged as a phase) and also of certain other misunderstood notions—not only abhimāna , but egoistic unspiritual demand, hostile criticism, revolt, anger and other still more undesirable vital reactions (usually supposed to be foreign to the spiritual consciousness) have been put forward by some, admitted by many in practice, as a part of the... with the Mother must be one of love, faith, trust, confidence, surrender—any other relation of the vital ordinary kind brings reactions contrary to the sadhana,—desire, egoistic abhimāna , demand, revolt and all the disturbance of ignorant Page 450 rajasic human nature from which it is the object of the sadhana to escape. 26 April 1933 I am afraid you have allowed some old movement ...

... often hears in Europe—without this action being based on a "being" which it expresses and of which it is but the material translation, appears to them a strange attitude. Neither the despair, the silence or the revolt, nor the absurd pointlessness that sometimes surrounds the death of many of your heroes escape them. They feel that your heroes flee from themselves rather than express themselves. This... The young Indian students with whom I discuss your books understand perhaps better than Westerners the reason for all those bloody and apparently useless sacrifices—the torments conflicts and revolts of your heroes condemned to death, the great Hunger that drives them beyond themselves—for they know that these are like the contractions of childbirth, and that the thick shell of egoism, routine ...

... surface—for there is a rock of support and certitude at the base, which even if partially covered cannot disappear altogether. Mostly however the constant recurrence of depression and despair or of doubt and revolt is due to a mental or vital formation which takes hold of the vital mind and makes it run round always in the same circle at the slightest provoking cause or even without cause. It is like... is complete when the psychic becomes the basis or the leader of the consciousness and mind and vital and body are led by it and obey it. Of course if that once happens fully, doubt, depression and despair cannot come any longer, although there may be and are difficulties still. If it is not fully, but still fundamentally accomplished, even then these things either do not come or are brief passing clouds... was the secret of the Coué system. So too if the vital mind withdraws its consent, refuses to be dominated by the habitual suggestions and the habitual movements, these recurrences of depression and despair can be made soon to cease. But it is not easy for this mind, once it has got into the habit of consent, even a quite passive and suffering and reluctant consent, to cancel the habit and get rid of ...

... and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy — ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it... not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built. How, in such an alien and inhuman world, can so powerless a creature as Man preserve his aspirations untarnished? A strange mystery it is... stone in the sacred temple. Except for those rare spirits that are born without sin, there is a cavern of darkness to be traversed before that temple can be entered. The gate of the cavern is despair, and its floor is paved with the gravestones of abandoned hopes. There Self must die; there the eagerness, the greed of untamed desire must be slain, for only so can the soul be freed from the empire ...

... for the development of faculties, if it is to arrive at an impoverishment and finally at decline and decomposition?' Some submit passively to a fate that seems inexorable, others revolt or, if they are less strong, despair." 5 While discussing the necessity and justification and the culmination and self-fulfilment of the process of death, we must at the very outset try to get rid of a basic ...

... throat pain denote a strong resistance of the physical mind, the throat being the centre of the physical mind? Evidently, in its origin it must be due to that.         I sometimes despair because of the constant weakness of the body which, even when there is no sciatica, does not allow me to do prolonged physical work.       That also is tamas. If you throw off the idea of weakness... detachment of the physical mind is not so easy to acquire. 1         Even when the soul docs not identify itself with the nature-parts, why arc there so many difficulties, sufferings, revolts at present?       Because the mind does identify itself. If the mind as well as the soul kept separate, the higher vital would follow suit, and these things would become again suggestions only ...

... Disobedience is the highest respect to the Guru, anger and revolt are the noblest worship one can give to the Divine. 5) One who takes the blows of Mahakali with joy as a means of discovering his faults and increasing in light and strength and purity is a sheep and unworthy of disciplehood—one who responds to the quietest pressure to change by revolt and persisting in his errors is a strong man and a mighty... can no longer touch; what will be there is the inner peace and happiness, the untroubled aspiration, the presence or nearness of the Mother. To indulge in the emotions, love, grief, sorrow, despair, emotional joy etc. for their own sake with a sort of mental-vital over-emphasis on them is what is called sentimentalism. There should be even in deep feeling a calm, a control, a purifying restraint... uneasiness, realisations in pure Ananda that belong to the more developed sadhana. The pure feeling of viraha is psychic—but if rajasic or tamasic movements come in (such as depression, complaint, revolt etc.) then it becomes tamasic or rajasic. Pangs of separation belong to the vital, not to the psychic; the psychic having no pangs need not express them. The psychic is always turned towards ...

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

... felt a great despair and sadness—so much that I think if it goes on for a few days more, it may be very difficult for me to get rid of these things. I don't know what is going to happen, but I can't help thinking that if I remain in this condition all the time and if I can't ever be happy, it will soon be impossible for me to live. During these two days, in this sadness and despair, I had the idea... not be sad when you turn your back on your soul, and that simply out of pride! Mother, rid me of this discouragement and this revolt, please. Will You not save me from them? With all my will I want to save you, but you must allow me to do so. To revolt is to reject the Divine Love and only the Divine Love has the power to save. 28 December 1932 Dear Mother, Am I not Your... subtle world just as in the outer world. But you must close to them the doors of your thoughts and feelings as carefully as a prudent man bolts the doors of his house. These suggestions of sadness, despair and suicide come from them (the thieves of the vital world), because it is when you are depressed that they are best able to rob you. You must not listen to them—you must reject the wicked suggestions ...

... the fire that burned in him. It is a historical fact that he was the first to take the standpoint of absolute independence for his motherland, even when the general atmosphere was one of “apathy and despair” and absolute independence was still held to be “an insane chimera”. For a time Aravinda preferred to act behind the scenes. He was initiated in the Western Secret Society in Bombay, and administered... Aravinda received an excellent private education. “I knew nothing of India and her culture”, he would write later. In the young boy, a precocious poet, a very strong feeling arose when he read Shelley’s Revolt of Islam . “I used to read it again and again – of course without understanding everything. Evidently it appealed to some part of the being … I had a thought that I would dedicate my life to a similar ...

... "allowing the revolt to come through the physical consciousness". How was the revolt allowed? Page 25       It is through the physical consciousness and its inertia and its mantra of "I can't, I can't, I can't" that it is able to come in.       When the physical mind acquiesces and says "I can't will, I can't do anything against the inertia, I can't prevent the revolt", that...       Up to yesterday there was but sheer inertia, so the struggle was of a passive kind. But now the adverse forces seem to prepare for an active revolt.       Once they have succeeded with the inertia they always proceed to press for the active revolt.         The inertia simply prepares the ground — when there is the inert passivity, the adverse Force tries to take advantage of it... stop so long as you say Yes to the vital and accept its discouragement and restlessness and anguish and the rest of it as your own? Detachment is absolutely necessary.         I agree that despair or depression is becoming rather Page 12   frequent nowadays. But you say that I am struggling all the time!       If you are not struggling what are you doing? Letting ...

... a big universal working and it is impossible any longer to explain everything as the result of one's own sole and independent personality. You yourself have at one time written that your crises of despair etc. came upon you as if thrown on you and worked themselves out without your being able to determine or put an end to them. That means an action of universal forces and not merely an independent action... to push it out of contact with his being. When it has gone from him, then there will be no longer any serious difficulties in his sadhana. The hostile Forces are Powers of Darkness who are in revolt against the Light and the Truth and want to keep this world under their rule in darkness and ignorance. Whenever anyone wants to reach the Truth, to realise the Divine, they stand in the way as much ...

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

... weak part in the vital which does not know how to bear suffering or disappointment or delay or temporary failure. When these things come, it winces away from them, revolts, cries out, makes a scene within, calls in despondency, despair, unbelief, darkness of the mind, denial—begins to think of abandonment of the effort or death as the only way out of its trouble. It is the very opposite of that equanimity... Immediately they give a blow to that part of the vital—or arrange things so that it shall get a blow or what it thinks to be a blow and sets it in motion with its round of sadness, suffering, outcry and despair. It clouds the mind with its sorrow and then gets that clouded mind to find justifications for its attitude—it has established a fixed formation, a certain round of ideas, arguments, feelings which ...

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

... have been swept away and the path made clear.       Some people who have fallen into the habit of struggling may well ask: "Why do we then find the journey full of difficulties, gloom and despair? All sorts of suggestions and attacks surround us from all sides to drive us out of the path." They undergo all these because they take an indirect road, not the one made ready for us by the Mother... Obviously, it is in order to destroy the sadhana and get you under its control. These suggestions are made to many in the Ashram and a few are from time to time possessed by them — and become dark and revolted, stop eating, threaten suicide etc.         Which are the parts that accept those suggestions? Page 164       The outer mind and vital that were accustomed to think ...

... country as India and with Page 245 the smallness of the regular British armies, even a guerrilla war­fare accompanied by general resistance and revolt might be effective. There was also the possibility of a general revolt in the Indian army. At the same time he had studied the temperament and characteristics of the British people and the turn of their political instincts, and he believed... partition of Bengal and a general outburst of revolt which favoured the rise of the extremist party and the great Nationalist movement. Sri Aurobindo’s activities were then turned more and more in this direction and the secret action became a secondary and subordinate element. He took advantage, however, of the Swadeshi movement to popularise the idea of violent revolt in the future. At Barin's suggestion he... be, an open revolt all over the country. This plan included a boycott of British trade, the substitution of national schools for the Government institutions, the creation of arbitration courts to Page 250 which the people could resort instead of depending on the ordinary courts of law, the creation of volunteer forces which would be the nucleus of an army of open revolt, and all other ...

... teaching or to her own practice. The vital nature on the surface (the depths of the true vital are different) is attached on the one side to a superficial mirth and enjoyment, on the other to sorrow and despair and gloom and tragedy,—for these are for it the cherished lights and shades of life; but a bright or wide and free peace or an ānandamaya intensity or, best, a fusing of both in one is the true poise... mean that it is in full control of the vital or cannot be clouded over. The condition some of those you mentioned have attained now is that the psychic is in control of the vital so that doubts and revolts are not possible or are rapidly rejected—and that was the condition to which you were coming before this (it seems to me quite causeless and accidental) lapse. So I wrote that there was no reason why ...

... effectuation in spiritual life. But this intervention is held to be mysterious and unpredictable. Grace blows like the wind, "where it listeth". No virtues can claim it, and no sin, however black, need despair of it. It visits the broken hearts of the fallen and the deluded, and heals them with its balm of love; while it passes by the arrogant great, and lets the unrepentant stew in their own juice. It... know how to proceed, a ray of light is shot into our being and a nameless force carries us out of the wood. There can be no moment, no circumstance, no happening in which we need feel depressed or despair. Thanks to Grace, "each beat of the wing of sorrow can be a soar towards glory. ”² There is an eye that is sleepless in its loving vigil, and a hand that is tireless in rendering help ¹... ears : "Aham twām sarvapāpebhyaḥ mokṣayiṣyāmi mā śucaḥ” (I will deliver thee from all sin, do not grieve). When harried by some impetuous desire, or blinded by some passion or delusion, we revolt against the Will of the Divine, Grace smites us with disgrace and calamity, and makes us smart with sharp pain, so that the desire or delusion may be burnt out in the fire of suffering, and we may ...

... The Revolt Of The Earth This book was originally published in French under the title La Révolte de la Terre © Editions Institut de Recherches ÉVOLUTIVES, Paris, 1990. The Revolt Of The Earth is the English translation © Institut de Recherches ÉVOLUTIVES, Paris, 1998. On a very narrow ridge between the Marvel and the disaster. S. ... more stifling than that of the Capetians or the Inquisition. Our murders and violence, our drugs and viruses are the cry of the Earth, an ultimate revolt against ourselves, for want of having found our own sense of being, just as the materialist revolt was against an ecclesiastical prison, only more radical and deeper in our cells. Will the religious and scientific Middle Ages be followed only... goes on beneath the great Serpent of Thebes, soon to be devoured by formidable jaws. What was it that so revolted me in this human condition? I stared and stared, sharpening my dark gaze. Still, there had been Spartacus and his band of rebellious slaves, who believed they had successfully revolted against the Romans, but then came Glaber, and the vile Crassus, who had six thousand of Spartacus' ...

... absence of light, and apravṛtti , a tendency to inertia, inactivity, unwillingness to make an effort and, as a result, even when the effort is made, a constant readiness to doubt, to despond and despair, to give up, renounce the aim and the endeavour, collapse. Fortunately, there is also in human nature a sattwic element which turns towards light and a rajasic or kinetic element which desires and... confidence in the Divine Grace. It needs either a calm resolute will governing the whole being or a very great samatā to have a quite smooth transformation. If they are there, then there are no revolts though there may be difficulties, no attacks, only a conscious dealing with the defects of the nature, no falls but only setting right of wrong steps or movements. These obstacles can only be... obstacles. The resistance of the vital has a more violent character than the others and it brings to the aid of the others its own violence and passion and that is a source of all the acute difficulty, revolt, upheavals and disorders which mar the course of the Yoga. The Divine is there, but He does not ignore the conditions, the laws, the circumstances of Nature; it is under these conditions that He does ...

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

... worship. What is needed is to get a full opening in which you will become conscious of the Mother. These things will bring the opening. Only, even if it takes time, you must not get depression, despair or revolt—for these things get into the way of the opening. The whole thing is to keep yourself open to the Mother. The preparation of the nature for the decisive experiences always takes time and ...

... consciousness must press on it to change its attitude.         What should be our proper attitude when confronted with obstructions, attacks and revolts on the way?       Keep yourself separate always from all attack and revolt, regarding it steadily as the not-I — for these things do not belong to the true self, the true being.         This afternoon I met H. A short talk... difficulties of the physical consciousness at present — though of course to one like Anilbaran the suggestion of revolt cannot come — at least it has never done so up to now.         It is a bit of a surprise to learn that there is only one sadhak to whom a suggestion of revolt cannot come. I thought there were some more, like Khirod. Dyuman, Pavitra.       Khirod was not mentioned... around in the atmosphere. It is not sufficient to avoid this or that person. You have to learn to be on your guard and self-contained.         This morning a strong wave of depression and despair vehemently knocked at my environmental consciousness. I felt as if it came from the atmosphere.       Evidently these things come from the atmosphere — especially when somebody is being upset ...

... and prevent the Truth and Light which are descending from having any fruition. There is no truth behind it, it is a Force of the Devil or Falsehood—there is no rational ground for the feelings of despair it suggests, but it throws itself with fury on the mind and vital and tries to possess them, ousting the Truth and the Divine Presence. Even the strongest have felt its attacks. You must understand... lose their rule and so when these movements are thrown out, they throw them back on the sadhak in strong waves or with great violence. Or they create in the vital a great depression, discouragement, despair—that is their favourite weapon—because it is losing its former field of desires and has not yet in any continuity something that would replace it, the assured continuous psychic or spiritual condition... separate. Obstacles have to be looked at as something wrong in the machinery of human nature which has to be changed—they should not be regarded Page 798 as sins or wrongdoings which make one despair of oneself and of the sadhana. You ask whether the adverse Force is stronger than the Divine Force. The implication is that a man has no responsibility for his action and whatever he does or ...

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

... Doubtful reading; MS mutilated. × Probably Sri Aurobindo meant to write "despair" or "despairs". ... but to the emphasising of it by the poems. X says he has given the order to print and it is not worth while upsetting that now. Let it stand. I am merely repeating the words "impurity, desire, despair", in my poetry. Well, everybody repeats himself. A time will come when this trinity will disappear, let us hope. Did you seriously write that I would have been " a talented young man" [21.5... depend on the condition of the sadhaks, and now you speak of the Supramental coming as fast as we will allow. You have mistaken the sense altogether. It simply means if with the bother of your revolts, depressions, illnesses, shouts, quarrels and all the rest of it, I can get time to go on rapidly. Nothing more, sir. If we fellows have to allow, you had better close down the shop and enjoy your ...

... more of these favours than itself, then says that the Divine has no love for it and assigns reasons which are either derogatory to the Divine or, as in your letter, self-depreciatory and a cause for despair. It is not in you alone that this part feels and acts like that, it is in almost everybody. If that were the only thing in you or the others, then indeed there would be no possibility of Yoga. But... can be done by reassuring the vital ego. But there is nothing new in all that—it is part of human nature and has always been there, hampering and limiting the sadhana. Its existence is no reason for despair—everyone has it and the sadhana has to be done in spite of it, in spite of the mixture it brings till the time comes when it has to be definitely converted or rejected. It is difficult to do it, but... physical knows and to them it almost automatically responds; it is these movements that always easily took hold of you, mixed in the sadhana, even in the higher experience sometimes and cherished the revolt against the Mother because always her force was pressing for their removal; it was this pressure that they resented and felt as an absence of love. The mind in you is able to separate itself from these ...

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

... countries and it was only a minority who hailed from England or America. Russia is different—unlike the others it had lingered in mediaeval religionism and not passed through any period of revolt—so when the revolt came it was naturally anti-religious and atheistic. It is only when this phase is exhausted that Russian mysticism can revive and take not a narrow religious but the spiritual direction. It... feeling of your incapacity and the impossibility of the sadhana. Get rid of that and a great obstacle disappears. You would then see that there is no reason for the constant sense of grief and despair that reacts upon your effort and makes it sterile. I simply want you to put yourself, if it is possible, in that state of quietude and openness which is favourable to the higher consciousness and its... something deeper. That was a pre-war phenomenon, and began when there was no menace of Communism and the capitalistic world was at its height of insolent success and triumph, and it came rather as a revolt against the materialistic bourgeois life and its ideals, not as an attempt to serve or sanctify it. It has been at once served and opposed by the post-war disillusionment—opposed because the post-war ...

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

... 342 (13)O Nirod of little faith and less patience! NB: What shall I hear from the mighty pen as a remedy for my chronic despair and impatience? Sri Aurobindo: Now look here, as to the Yoga etc., if I can become patient with you and your despairs, why can't you be patient with the forces? Let me give you a "concrete" instance. X is a sadhak of whom it might be said that if anyone... Ignorance is a glorious action of the soul and not a revolt of the lower nature? I suppose you are floundering about in the confusion of the idea that "desire-soul" in the vital is the true psyche of man. If you like - but that is no part of my explanation of things; I make a clear distinction between the two, so I refuse to sanctify the revolt of the lower nature by calling it the sanction of the... come, I am equally glad to see you go. All is Divine and A.I.* — all has the soul's sanction; so go and mud away to your soul's content." 46 NB: If failures are due to the revolt of the lower nature, why should that revolt occur in A's case and not in B's? Sri Aurobindo: Because A is not B and B is not A. Why do you expect all to be alike and fare alike and run abreast all the way and all arrive ...

... despondency; when one has progressed as far as you did, that is, so far as to feel and maintain the calm and have so much of the psychic discrimination and the psychic feeling, one has no right to despair of one's spiritual future. You could not yet carry out the discrimination into an entire psychic change, because a large part of the outer physical consciousness still took some pleasure in old movements... all your thoughts and acts and movements in your true being, the psychic being. Never consent to the ideas, suggestions, feelings that bring back the cloud, the Page 711 confusion and the revolt. It is the consent that makes them strong to recur. Refuse the consent and they will be obliged to retire either immediately or after a time. Remain fixed in the sunlight of the true consciousness—for... feeling and knowledge. Your being does want to be free and at peace and happy in the light—it is this Falsehood seizing hold of your external mind that makes you want to be more dark and miserable and revolted and hate yourself and not to live. Such feelings, such a perverted will is entirely opposed to the normal feelings of the nature and cannot be "true" and right. There is nobody who asks you to pr ...

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

... it hides in a corner and does not budge. And then you have no more energy, no more strength, you have no courage left. Your will is like… like a withering plant. All resentment, disgust, fury, all despair, grief, anger—all that comes from this gentleman. For it is energy in action. Therefore, it depends on which side it turns. And I tell you, it has a very strong habit of going on strike. That is... vital that thought is transformed into will and becomes a dynamism for action. It is also true that the vital is the seat of desires and passions, of violent impulses and equally violent reactions, of revolt and depression. The normal remedy is to strangle and starve the vital by depriving it of all sensation; sensations are indeed its main sustenance and without them it falls asleep, grows sluggish and ...

... vanished and returned, those revolutionaries from here and there with no revolution ever, and again our blood, again our sorrows, always our death? Will this passerby with so much hope, so much despair, find what makes him cry today, cry out again as if for lost joy, for a never-rising sun, for a "nothing" which was the only thing ever found? Will this simple wild bird, which cried out on a desert... the day, I met Sri Aurobindo, I met Mother—their gaze rested on me. I was still twenty-two, just out of the death camps, I was in the ruin of everything, of my heart and soul and life. I was in revolt against everything, like an earthquake from top to bottom: it was No to men, No to life, No to the West, and goodness knows what else to the East behind different faces. Yet those Eyes looked at ...

... hat is that not of a priest, but of an envoy, one of the elders of the colony come to negotiate for the restoration of the captives; the girl with whom he converses & from whom he turns in shocked despair, is one of the daughters of the woman seen in the earliest of this series of images, now a slave & concubine of the chief. At first, the colonists were unwilling to use violence lest the captives should... to irremediable indignity, has just come to the knowledge of the elder along with other facts, eg the unwillingness of the chiefs to make any reparation, & accounts for the action which indicates despair of peace or any fruitful negotiation. The series is not yet complete, but awaits the unfolding of farther events already very vaguely indicated by the vijnana. The other image has no connection with... to re-invigorate the over-refined type that has been evolved. The young chief of the image is a sort Page 1327 of Caesar-Augustus or Alaric of the barbarians. He takes the lead of their revolt which is at first a disordered movement of indignation (lipi Indignation alternating with indigenous)[,] systematises it, conquers & enslaves the Gandharvas, learns from them their civilisation and ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Record of Yoga

... or anguish or despair; but it has a psychic sorrow which is different from these things. It has a kind of quiet sweet sadness of yearning which it feels when things go against the Divine, when the obscurity and obstacles are too heavy, when the mind, vital and physical follow after other things, when evil and falsehood and darkness seem to be too strong for the Light. It does not despair, but feels that... Ignorance is a glorious action of the soul and not a revolt of the lower nature? I suppose you are floundering about in the confusion of the idea that the "desire-soul" in the vital is the true psyche of man. If you like—but that is no part of my explanation of things; I make a clear distinction between the two, so I refuse to sanctify the revolt of the lower nature by calling it the sanction of the ...

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

... indefinite, but— ... Despair doesn't seem to help. It doesn't. On the other hand, it hinders, doesn't it? Yes. A quiet aspiration with faith works best. Quite so. Preaching? Very correct preach. I told J confidently that poetry is bound to develop. Of course it will. Today J named me an "angel of hope", Sir. From a "devil of despair" to an "angel of hope"?... idea of taking Y with him (so it is reported) and went to her. She gave him a scolding and lecture. Result—he came gloomy to the Mother, found her "stern" (which she was not) and broke into a tragic despair, praying for death and saying that he would never come back or write again etc. If he is to go, it is surely better that he should go gladly and cheerfully and not in this spirit. As to the madness... almost) and is so unable to get rid of it that he is unable to have any outward progress until it is broken and no progress (a quiet inward psychic growth he does not want) throws him into fits of despair after every calm period of a few days. He wants to escape or get relief from it by going out. Well, let him try it, by a miracle it might succeed. In any case to hold back always when he says he is ...

... book like The Life Divine. But if you declare that you have given days and nights to the consideration of Sri Aurobindo's vision and yoga and yet found nothing new, I am brought to the verge of despair. How shall I strike upon your eyes the novel shades of his thought, the original turns of his experience? Perhaps it is best to concentrate on presenting his newness under one aspect that would... him. In this nucleus the seekers have to grow out of the habits and tendencies created by the past opposite trends of human existence, the clinging to the egoistic life and its ignorance and the revolt against life and finally the satisfaction with a half and half spiritual effort and realisation, and so make themselves fit for the final movement of an integral and supramental Yoga. A successful ...

... perhaps, under his mental collar of iron. On April 23, another wave—or still the same one—seized the students of Columbia University in New York: "The revolt"... against what? No one really knows, or they put labels and banners on it, but it is really the revolt, quite simply. Then on May 2, Nanterre, the University of Paris: "The student strike"—It doesn't look like a strike at all, it looks like a revolution... bright side, and everything changes. One breathes again and everything is clear. Those things did not exist! And each country, everything, is learning the lesson of the Miracle. So who are those who despair of the world?... Those who hold on steadfastly to the web. Those who want death. But let the others breathe in the great mouthfuls of air! Let them not be suffocated by the Unreality—it will suffocate... and more and more so), men establish mental rules according to their conceptions and their ideal, then they apply them. And that's absolutely false, arbitrary, unreal, so the result is that things revolt, or else waste away and disappear.... Its the experience of LIFE ITSELF that must slowly work out rules as supple and vast as possible, in order that they ever remain progressive. Nothing must be fixed ...

... going somewhere, even if that somewhere is at the end of a hundred thousand shafts of mantras, we know there is something to find... It doesn't matter, I will go through to the end. And there was despair in that “through to the end”. The siren rent the air again. —I remember, Erik used to say: “The siren is the journey; afterwards, it is as before.” And it is true, there is no journey! No journey... eternal vibration. I was going like a luminous blindman under sacred slabs, a very tiny image borne along by a smile, and everything was lived through in a flash, misery upon misery, the hopes and the despair, ah! what remained? A single love had ensnared all my eyes, veiling with light the unending race, the abysses after abysses, the deaths, the fruitless lives, and I was advancing as if to a sacring... Gorom (that's what he calls me), you will repeat this one a hundred thousand times. Afterwards, we'll see if you are ready for the final mantra”... Do you see? I did not see, but I felt Björn's revolt, and it was dark and painful. —Drop it, Björn, let's go and have a look at the sea. The air was almost cool. The street was deserted, the sand-storm had not yet started. A siren filled the dawn ...

... October. In between, on 19 October, Sri Aurobindo wrote to a disciple admitting that things were "certainly very bad" in Bengal, and that the condition of the Hindus there might become even worse. But despair was not the way out of the difficulty. Surely, if Hitler couldn't quite exterminate the Jews, the Muslim fanatics too wouldn't succeed in liquidating the Bengal Hindus. As for Hindu culture, it... Aurobindo while on a visit to Pondicherry that "he would not like the British to go out until this dangerous [communal] problem had been settled". All the same, it would be unwise to surrender to despair: I know and have experienced hundreds of times that beyond the blackest darkness there lies for one who is a divine instrument the light of God's victory.... There was a time when Hitler was... dead-locked Interim Government, the Hindu-Muslim confrontation in many parts of India, the proliferation of the communal virus, the retreat of the 'unity' ideal, the insane spread of defeatism and despair. The cumulative situation wasn't unlike the reign of Inconscience delineated by Sri Aurobindo in the opening canto of Savitri which appeared on 15 August 1946 in the fifth volume of Sri Aurobindo ...

... at the suggestion of Barin, Aurobindo agreed to start a paper in Bengali, Yugantar (The Changing Age), ‘which was to preach open revolt and the absolute denial of the British rule.’ 37 The aim of this publication was to openly popularize the idea of violent revolt. The editors of Yugantar, under the supervision of Aurobindo, ‘were in fact the leaders of the first revolutionary group in India... Aurobindo. 22 It would be an illusion to suppose that there was much political activity in India at the time. The prevailing mood in that large, multifaceted and divided land was ‘apathy and despair.’ ‘The country which the mighty Muslims, constantly growing in power, took hundreds of years to conquer with the greatest difficulty and could never rule over in perfect security, that very country... guidance and became a sanyasi. Barin returned to Baroda together with his sejda. Much of the revolutionary grassroots work in Bengal came to nothing. Again the general mood was one of ‘apathy and despair.’ The restless Barin continued his search for gurus – he had several – and for anything that could further his spiritual development. It was he who introduced Aurobindo to spiritism and sessions ...

... fact (you are that in essence but not in fact), you have always a long way to go to reach the Truth and sincerity. You need not look unhappy because it is like that. It is like those people in despair who tell you, "Why is the world so frightful?" What is the use of lamenting, since it is like that? The only thing you can do is to work to change it. Naturally, from a speculative point of view one... long time, keep it carefully and, as it is wanted, I shall call upon your goodwill. You will show that you are full of goodwill, you will obey, you won't grumble, you will not protest, you will not revolt, you will say 'yes, yes', you will make a little sacrifice when asked, you will say 'yes' whole-heartedly." So we get started on the path. But the road is very long. Many things happen on the way ...

... the vital nervous. One may be as strong as a bull and hardy as an evergreen, yet have neurasthenia. Its mark is depression, gloom, reiteration of melancholy slogans, broodings on darkness, death, despair. The bull indulges in a sorrowful lowing; the evergreen moans, "Sunshine? sunshine? it is a fable—there is only cloud, mist, rain and tears!" That's neurasthenia! Of course there are other and more... oneself which may take any form. One must do what is to be done but abstain from all such weakness. Neurasthenia It is not, certainly, your own vital that engenders these movements, but its revolts seem to have made it subject to the suggestions of a hostile force from outside. If the suggestions had been confined to mental thoughts, that would have been normal, but it seems to have taken power ...

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

... them, attributes the wrong causes and motives, draws the wrong inferences and makes of them an unreal picture. The ego-centric’s small lower vital makes use of that to justify its revolts or its despondencies and despairs and its assertions of a failure final and irrevocable. It is not true, for instance, that I have become more and more aloof and indifferent or that I am too much preoccupied with... cannot be your way. I believe that you are quite capable of attaining this and realising the Divine and I have never been able to share your constantly recurring doubts about your capacity or the despair that arises in you so violently when there are these attacks, nor is their persistent recurrence a valid ground for believing that they can never be overcome. Such a persistent recurrence has been... same adverse resistance, thoughts destructive of all belief and faith and confidence in the future of the sadhana, frustrating doubts of what one has known as the truth, voices of despondency and despair, urgings to abandonment of the yoga or to suicide or else other disastrous counsels of decheance. The course taken by the attacks is not indeed the same for all, but still they have strong family ...

... indifferent or to be purified, then comes ‘Mister Ego’ to proclaim his authority by announcing just the contrary movement and to undo — by all sorts of revolts, chaos and the decision not to cooperate, and implanting in the being doubt and despair — the good work accomplished. For all these effervescences and these unnecessary bubblings, one must know how to take a true attitude — first of all, to... indifferent to all that is happening outside. In fact, the psychic itself does not suffer like the vital and the body; it does not have or does not feel the pain, the anguish, the torment, the despair; — but it experiences a sorrow, a sort of affliction like a distress which is completely different from what we usually imagine. It is a sort of sadness which is peaceful or somewhat lovable, which... work so well conceived, then the psychic feels a sadness and does not understand how the mental and the vital, which were moreover collaborating so well to have the contact, have suddenly reacted in a revolt. This happens and also many unexpected things which one never foresaw…. But suddenly there is a fall, or, without knowing, one slips down from a consciousness which was vibrating with joy and one loses ...

... carried forward, on lines I had foreseen, by others, and that the ultimate triumph of the movement I had initiated was sure without my personal action or presence. There was not the least motive of despair or sense of futility behind my withdrawal. For the rest, I have never known any will of mine for any major event in the conduct of the world affairs to fail in the end, although it may take a long... wings to the Independence Movement. First, there was the external political and constitutional movement. And secondly there was the revolutionary movement which meant a preparation for an armed revolt. He considered both the movements necessary and had his share in preparing both. 19 April 1949 The Swadeshi Movement (1905-1910) and Later Developments When I read the speeches you delivered ...

... at any moment act suddenly, but over that one has no control, because it comes by an incalculable Will which sees things that the mind cannot see. It is precisely the reason why one should never despair,—that and also because no sincere aspiration to the Divine can fail in the end. Trust in the Divine Grace Face all these things [ inner disturbances ] quietly and firmly with perseverance in... deprecate insistence, it is because I have always found it creates difficulties and delays—owing to a strain and restlessness which is created in the nature and Page 173 despondencies and revolts of the vital when the insistence is not satisfied. The Divine knows best and one has to have trust in His wisdom and attune oneself with His will. Length of time is no proof of an ultimate incapacity ...

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

... harmony, wideness, unity and ascending growth comes from the Truth; while all that carries with it restlessness, doubt, scepticism, sorrow, discord, selfishness, narrowness, inertia, discouragement and despair comes straight from the falsehood. 6 There is also the linking up of Truth and Love. This Eternal Love is not sex, nor vital attraction and interchange, nor yet the heart's hunger for affection;... on 10 March: Behind all destructions, whether the immense destructions of Nature, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, cyclones, floods, etc., or the violent human destructions, wars, revolutions, revolts, I find the power of Kali, who is working in the earth-atmosphere to hasten the progress of transformation. All that is not only divine in essence but also divine in realisation is by its very ...

... description of the reaction that I said there was a vital demand. In the pure psychic or spiritual self-giving there are no reactions of this kind, no despondency or despair, no saying, "What have I gained by seeking the Divine?", no anger, revolt, abhiman, wish to go away—such as you describe Page 74 here—but an absolute confidence and a persistence in clinging to the Divine under all conditions... struggle. It is what these forces want—to make you feel helpless, defeated, overborne. You must not allow it. You are always expecting the Mother to do it [ remove vital dissatisfaction and revolt ]—and here again the laziness and tamas come in—it is the spirit of tamasic surrender. If the Mother puts you back into a good condition, your vital pulls you down again. How is that to stop so long ...

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

... backs, though others have dallied with him. I admit that recently this minority has increased in numbers—the subconscient, I suppose! We hear that you also had to undergo a lot of suffering and despair—to the extent of wanting to commit suicide!!! What nonsense! Suicide! Who the devil told you that? Even if I knew that all was going to collapse tomorrow, I would not think of suicide, but go on... swollen. June 11, 1935 S has again the pains and the [...] 98 etc. Has she taken her course of Fandorine? (I may add in strict privacy that this has happened after a quarrel in the D.R., a revolt of feelings against the Mother and a day and a half hunger-strike; but as this is Yogic or rather unYogic and not medical, you should pretend not to know anything about it.) I leave your "special... cheerful fellow at school and college. So I ant afraid he is a contribution, partly at least, of your Yoga. Not of my Yoga, but of the blasted atmosphere that has been created here by the theory that revolt, doubt and resultant sorrow and struggle and all that rot are the best way to progress. The Asram has never been able. to get out of it, but only some people have escaped. The others have opened themselves ...

... utmost effect. I do not think his Satan would have had to such a superb and unrivalled degree the adamantine will of Milton's: a less heroic figure, he would have alternated between defiance and despair, not submitting or yielding but gnawed more miserably by a secret remorse. Whereas, if the poet had gone beyond the loss of heaven to the temptation of Adam and Eve and if the incidents in the Garden... When a voice said: — 'O thou of hearts the weakest, The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest.' Then I — 'Where?' — the world's echo answered 'where', And in that silence and in my despair, I questioned every tongueless wind that flew Over my tower of mourning if it knew Whither 'twas fled, this soul out of my soul; And murmured names and spells which have control ... of its hero moves in a storm of word-thunder and imaginative lightning. The conception underlying it is the titan-soul's battle with destiny: Tamburlaine, a Scythian shepherd, raises the banner of revolt against Persia and rides victorious over half the world in a gigantic beauty of arrogance and ambition and defiance of man and God, with only one joint in his armour — the love which ravages his heart ...

... the force that slays, the joys that hurt". It brought about a surging of the opposite powers into the being,—ascent and sinking, tenderness and hate, laughter and tears, fears and joys, ecstasy and despair, These were the movements of the Life-force, ''full of ardour". They had their higher movements full of mixture. For example, one could enter here into "the valley of the wondering Gleam", intermediate... the advent of God and in the consequent transformation: Thou art a universal aspect of my divine being put forth to bear the "unbearable sorrow of the. world." It is thy presence that saves man from despair and gives him hope. "But thine is the power to solace, not to save, One day I will return, a bringer of strength Page 318 Then "Misery shall pass abolished from earth". ... delight in his sorrow. The Page 317 voice said: "I am the Man of Sorrows". I am he "who is nailed on the wide cross of the universe". He complains against God and voices his defiance and revolt against him, because of the injustice done to him. "I am the seeker who can never find, I am the fighter who can never win, I am the runner who never touched his goal". The eternal ...

... will becomes or changes into desire when it comes down into the lower nature? It usually does so in the vital or at least it gets a strong mixture of desire.   I suppose the vital despair is the cause of my not being able to Page 11 put up a persistent and calm aspiration and will. The calm and steady will must be the mental being's. There is... and rajasic wrong impulse.   Can a purely sattwic man become very angry or passionate? No - he can only be firm or severe when severity is needed.   Are depression, despair and fear reactions of tamas or rajas? Tamas.   "Not only will the Purusha stand apart and be trigunatita, beyond the three gunas, but the Prakriti, though using the gunas, will... n increases, the gunas change more and more towards their divine equivalents, but it is only when the supramental comes that there is the full change.   I encounter so much resistance, revolt and attack from my physical nature while trying only to enlighten it. How much resistance you and the Mother must be facing while supramen-talising the whole material Nature! How do you manage it? ...

... Ajax managed to carry it back to the camp. His body was cremated and a magnificent tomb was built. After the death of Achilles, there was such a great vacuum that the Greeks were gripped by despair. However, in the course of the war, Paris was killed by Philoctetes, who avenged the death of Achilles. At the same time, Odysseus, king of Ithaca, thought of a plan, and all the other leaders agreed... Aulis, the winds stopped blowing, and the ships could not move forward. It was suggested to Agamemnon to sacrifice his elder daughter, beautiful Iphigenia, but Agamemnon refused.The troops, however, revolted, and so Odysseus prepared a plan, according to which a message was sent to the Palace at Mycenae. The message was that Iphigenia should go over to Aulis with her mother, Clytemnestra (who was the ...

... And, yet, in man's imperfect state there is a godhead struggling. And the real leader of the course of human evolution is God himself behind the apparent veil of ignorance. Therefore, we need not despair of man. "His failure is not failure whom God leads; "And how shall the end be vain when God is guide?" In spite of the resistance of the flesh, the vital and the mind, the... old ideal voices wandering moaned And pleaded for a heavenly leniency To the gracious imperfections of our earth". There were also instincts taking refuge in the subconscious and revolts in his nature that had not yet taken shape. Aswapathy resolved to detect and exile from his nature all these imperfections. Yet, as he went on working he found that "...the Inconscient ...

... nts me." The defect that opened the way to the bodily and other troubles was the faltering in your resolution to conquer the vital and follow the straight and high path and the consequent violent despair and depression it brought in its wake. Let those disappear altogether and do not allow them to rise in that way again. The path of spiritual calm and strength and the consecration of all your forces... altogether. To yield to depression when things go wrong is the worst way of meeting the difficulty. There must be some desire or demand within you, conscious or subconscious, that gets excited and revolts against its not being satisfied. The best way is to be conscious of it, face it calmly and steadily throw it out. If the lower vital (not the mind only) could permanently make up its mind that all ...

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

... divine principle's greatness. Thus, after one of the bravest outbursts at almost the beginning, 5 we get the depreciating "aside" on "the Apostate Angel": Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair... 6 Again, in Book I itself we are told of his high words that bore Semblance of worth, not substance... 7 Page 152 In Book IV we overhear him soliloquising... on Milton's high "aim" and lofty "subject", writes: "there is nowhere any more magnificently successful opening than the conception and execution of his Satan and Hell, the living spirit of egoistic revolt fallen to its natural element of darkness and pain, yet preserving still the greatness of the divine principle from which he was born." 4 Sri Aurobindo here catches Milton's supreme insight in a ...

... against the wall; she was standing in front of me, she looked like a poor little cornered animal: —But it is not that, Nil, it's not that!... pas ҫa! She hammered out her words with a sort of despair. —It's not that, Nil, it's not that,—an “other” life! —Ah! leave it, they are lying, they... She put her hand on my lips. —Don't speak Nil, I beseech you, don't speak, let me go. I barred... madness or the bursting forth of several memories: one is no longer one being but a world of disappeared beings who return and spring up suddenly with all the multiplied intensity of a pain and a revolt never dissolved. I was like a pillar of anger—oh! so miserable, a poor puppet. I saw myself at the foot of those steps,—saw myself fully—very small, my clenched fist, livid, in front of Batcha lost ...

... the word "Romantic", understanding by it Mediaeval trappings such as his father had immured him amongst during his boyhood. But there was in him not only a queer blend of the emotional Byronic despair and the Stoic defiance of a Vigny: there was also the belief in the bursting of great truths with startling suddenness and ecstatic vividness over which the mind has little control and there was... less. Sri Aurobindo 8 writes: "The descent from the uncertain but high elevations of the first romantic, half spiritual outbreak is very marked, baffling and sudden. This is not in the nature of a revolt, an energetic audacity of some new thing, - except for a moment in Swinburne, - but a change of levels, a transition to other more varied but less elevated interests, the substitution of a more curious... friends are exultations, agonies, And love, and man's unconquerable mind. The same can be said in comparison with Shelley's passionately noble conclusion to his drama about Prometheus in revolt against all autocracy of the Magnified Ego whether by a human king or a priest-conceived God of wrath and terror: To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than ...

... principal sign and knot of ego. It is desire that makes you go on saying I and mine, and subjects you through a persistent egoism to satisfaction and dissatisfaction, liking and disliking, hope and despair, joy and grief, to your petty loves and hatreds, to wrath and passion, to your attachment to success and things pleasant and to the sorrow and suffering of failure and of things unpleasant. Desire... free will, for it is the divine Will alone that is free and sovereign. Detachment, equality and surrender, as the Mother teaches us, will achieve the conquest of desire, which has been the despair of all ethical disciplines and ascetic austerities. It is only a question of the right attitude and the action of the divine Grace. "Each wave of desire as it comes must be observed, as quietly... excitement is an unmistakable sign of desire. Next, to ask oneself, "If I don't get it ?". The immediate reaction of this thought will be a depression or a sense of uneasiness or disquiet, or even revolt in the vital being, which is another sign of desire. But if the vital being remains calm in either case, then one may be more or less sure that one is dealing with a necessity and not a desire. ...

... right to think as well as to see and feel, his right to 'dare to philosophise'. I agree with the modernists in their revolt against the romanticist's insistence on emotionalism and his objection to thinking and philosophical reflection in poetry. But the modernist went too far in his revolt. In trying to avoid what I may call poeticism he ceased to be poetic; wishing to escape from rhetorical writing,... The Secret Splendour 4   OUT OF THE UNKNOWN   Out of the unknown, like meteor-rain Fell glimmering on my dark despair The syllables of a prophetic tongue: "O heart disconsolate, beauty-wrung, Wanderer unsated, not in vain A voice of unattainable melody Winging in heavenly air, Came Brindavan's immortal memory And turned ...

... touches which are more buoyant and hopeful and confident than the atmosphere of the original would tolerate. That atmosphere is one of abandonment, darkness, where all the circumstances justify despair—with it resignation, faith in the eventual utility of it all, a stoic-spiritual courage to go through, but all these like a flame burning under the weight of the thick darknesses—not the sense of... and a law of Nature and has been demonstrated often enough even apart from Yoga. The way to get faith and Page 298 everything else is to insist on having them and refuse to flag or despair or give up until one has them—it is the way by which everything has been got since this difficult world began to have thinking and aspiring creatures upon it. It is to open always, always to the Light... have made inwardly steps in front in the last two or three months which had seemed impossible because of the obstinate resistance for years together and it is not an experience which pushes me to despair and give up. If there is much resistance on one side, there have been large gains on the other—all has not been a picture of sterile darkness. You yourself are kept back only by the demon of doubt ...

... passion, his instincts of possession and appropriation and domination and the background of vanity which supports them, together with their counterparts of weakness, discouragement, depression and despair." (M C W , Vol. 12, pp. 21-22) Third Step: On some occasions this vital element will come with almost an irresistible urge to propel the sadhaka along a specific course of action and... self-manifestation rouses in the vital fie ld the fury of all kind s of desires and emotions, vanity and Page 284 self-importance, possessive tendency, the spirit of defiance and revolt, and finally an urge to destruction. For, because of its dynamic propensity the vital is always in movement but, depending on the special situation and circumstance, this dynamic play may be ...

... hope of revival, what was the political condition of the people, and whether there was the possibility of a real movement", what he actually found there was "that the prevailing mood was apathy and despair. People had believed that regeneration could only come from outside, that another nation would take us by the hand and lift us up", and there was nothing we had ourselves to do! 15 That illusion had... to him - this was almost seventy years ago! - that "in so vast a country as India and with the smallness of the regular British armies, even a guerilla warfare accompanied by general resistance and revolt might be effective". 21 Besides, from his intuitive knowledge of British character, Sri Aurobindo had the feeling that, driven to a comer, the "alien" rulers - unlike, for example, the Russians -... It is possible that Bankim Chandra's most famous novel, Ananda Math (1882), usually cited as the main inspiration behind the 'Bhavani Mandir' scheme, was itself inspired by the sannyasins' revolt of 1772 at Rungpur. That Bankim's novels generally, and Ananda Math in particular, exercised a potent influence on Sri Aurobindo may be inferred both from his early articles in the Indu Prakash ...

... and no Yoga.’ 29 Telling words indeed, addressed to the right person at the right moment. The Mother had to bear it all: the resistance of the sadhaks, their revolt, their hatred, their dissatisfaction, discouragement, despair, misunderstanding, dullness and malevolence. They projected everything on her and she had to deal with it as if it were her own condition; she had to bring it into the... Nirodbaran. He writes on 28 July 1934: ‘Mother, 92 there are days when I am awfully afraid to go to pranam , lest I should have the misfortune to see your grave face, with no smile at all. All my despair, melancholy, etc., is intensified after that, while your smile disperses all gloom.’ To which Sri Aurobindo answers: ‘All this about the Mother’s smile and her gravity is simply a trick of the vital... there is anything bad or wrong in him. I have told this a hundred times to any number of sadhaks — but in many the vital does not want to accept that because it would lose its main source of grievance, revolt, abhiman [wounded pride], desire to go away or give up the Yoga, things which are very precious to it.’ 40 The problem — a wrong interpretation of the facial expression, corporeal attitude or ...

... go on seeking till one finds. One may have hard moments of anguish or despair because the human vital is weak, but still one goes on because the soul insists. But there is no logic in the position that because my need of the Divine is entire and even in six years I have not got him, therefore the proper thing to do is to despair and give up. The logical position is, my need for the Divine is entire... crags to the shore. I plumped for the rod like a shot of course and tried to reach the shore with its help. But alas, again! it was far , from easy to reach the shore sliding along a slippery rod. I despaired, when, lo, again, Guru,' what do you think happened, eh? ! bet you will be at the end of your resources to guess: the rod came to life as it were, and swam along towards the shore—fancy that!!'... the vital nervous. One may be as strong as a bull and hardy as an evergreen, yet have neurasthenia. Its mark is depression, gloom, reiteration of melancholy slogans, broodings on darkness, death, despair. The bull indulges in a sorrowful lowing: the evergreen moans "Sun- shine? sunshine? it is a fable—there is only cloud, mist, rain and tears!" That's neurasthenia! Of course there are other and more ...

... realised it myself whatever you may say for the suppression of our desire for the Mother's nearness. If one has the desire or the claim, one brings in all sorts of demands, anger, jealousies, despairs, revolts, etc., which spoil the sadhana and do not help it. To others the nearness becomes a mixture. If you say that there is always an interchange going on between people, surely one who often comes... resistance—law of physics—isn't it? In a certain sense it is true, but it was not inevitable—if the sadhaks had been a less neurotic company, it could have been done quietly. As it is there is the Revolt of the Subconscient. In one letter you wrote that you were able to push on; in another that the hostile forces were out of date. That was a year ago. When we read this we thought that it would... to put a comfortable interpretation even on uncomfortable statements. I have heard that even N had a terrible attack recently. He almost left the Asram! D wanted to commit suicide, and H is in revolt! How many underground tragedies! ... And all these despite your continuous day and night fight. There are only 2 or 3 in the Asram to whom this word "even" would apply. I won't mention their names ...

... that—how to put it?—takes pleasure in being ill. Oh! there are many reasons. There are people who are ill out of spite, there are people who are ill out of hate, there are people who are ill through despair, there are people... And these are not formidable movements: it is quite a small movement in the being: one is vexed and says: "You will see what is going to happen, you will see the consequences of... the matter [the causes of illness]. There is what comes from outside and there is what comes from your inner condition. Your inner condition becomes a cause of illness when there is a resistance or revolt in it or when there is some part in you that does not respond to the protection; or even there may be something there that almost willingly and wilfully calls in the adverse forces. It is enough if... You understand also "going out of the protection"? If you do something contrary, for example, if you are under the protection of the Divine and for a moment you have a thought of doubt or ill-will or revolt, immediately you go out of the protection. So the protection acts around you to prevent adverse forces from coming upon you or an accident from happening, that is to say, even if you lose consciousness ...

... context of broadly affined moods. We shall take two passages from Milton. One of them is already familiar to us in part: Me miserable! which way shall I fly Infinite wrath and infinite despair? Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell; And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep Still threatening to devour me opens wide, To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven. O then at... (Far other once beheld in bliss), condemned For ever now to have their lot in pain – Millions of spirits for his fault amerced Of Heaven and from eternal splendours flung For his revolt - yet faithful how they stood, Their glory withered; as, when heaven's fire Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines, With singed top their stately growth, though bare, Stands ...

... that Satan's conspiracy of revolt occurs when "ambrosial Night, with clouds exhal'd", 153 has come over the bright face of Heaven: Soon as midnight brought on the dusky hour Friendliest to sleep and silence, he resolv'd With all his legions to dislodge, and leave Unworshipp'd, unobey'd, the Throne supreme... 154 The theme of night-revolt is further pursued when Satan... Their Wings waving over the bottomless Immense, to bear Their awful charge back to his native home... 284 the immortal Wings labour'd against Cliff after cliff & over Valleys of despair & death. 285 Thus Los can contribute to make Christ fly on wings in The Tyger - Christ who, in the mythology including both him and Los, gets, as we have mentioned, completely identified... pitched in Heaven and interpreted as the going forth of the Divine Fire in a destructive symbol-form expressive of Christ, the heavenly unity-in-multiplicity, to quell Satan-Urizen and his partners in revolt. Our essentially Miltonic reading of the poem gets certainly a general support in Blake's other writings. Do these writings support also our seeing of Satan and his company in the "spear"-bearing ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Blake's Tyger

... at any moment act suddenly, but over that one has no control, because it comes by an incalculable Will which sees things that the mind cannot see. It is precisely the reason why one should never despair,—that and also because no sincere aspiration to the Divine can fail in the end. Mother does not remember having said to X what you report—it may have been something in another sense which X ... but certainly it should not be in that way. Whatever else you doubt, you should not doubt that our love and affection will be always with you. But I still hope that you will be able to overcome this despair and this impulse of flight and develop the quiet force of intense will which brings the Light that is sure to come. May 1936 I have analysed and analysed myself, and have found that I have no... be foolish to walk off under the instigation of this old Mother Gloom-Gloom. Stick on and you will get the soul's reward hereafter. 14 June 1936 There is no reason to be so much cut down or despair of your progress. Evidently you have had a surging up of the old movements, but that can always happen so long as there is not an entire change of the old nature both in the conscious and subconscient ...

... the midst of a big universal working and it is impossible any longer to explain everything as the result of one's own and sole personality. You yourself have at one time written that your crises of despair etc. came upon you as if thrown on you and worked themselves out without your being able to determine or put an end to them. That means an action of universal forces and not merely an independent... with hopes dancing like flowers, certitudes glowing like sunbeams and aspirations soaring like birds, one sees only doubts blasting like poison-fumes, chafings irrational like thorns and a sentimental revolt that gesticulates like a demon deprived of his mask. Time and again did this happen to me and, often enough, just when on top of the weather, there, out of a clear sky, a wrong suggestion dropped into ...

... Brahman to K's baby. Are you by chance under the impression that E is 77 years old instead of her apparent age? Who has invented this supreme jest? Tell us something—give us a word of hope or of despair, But only be fair! There are already more than 5 or 6 in the Asram who have had some realisation at least of the Divine—so take comfort. May 6, 1935 I hear there are some who proceed... almost all the time of the day (I had S particularly in mind), still Mother is Grace herself with her." And the same persons make comparisons of Mother's behaviour with others and get into fits of revolt and abhiman, and what not! What a mad Asram! I feel these formations are not true but I can't throw them away ... Why not, I should like to know? But this resistance must go. I quite ...

... Meditations - Mirra is speaking as a rule, not exactly or exclusively for herself but on behalf of and often in the name of the earth and its sorrowing inhabitants with their ardours, hopes, set­backs, despairs as also aspirations for a better world - still this particular entry seems to have leapt out, like a spark from the anvil, of some immediate rebuff or the sudden registering of a cumulative finality... energy. He does not know and yet he is arrogant, arrogant in his little knowledge, his petty power, in his blind self-sufficiency. Furthermore, besides ignorance and arrogance there is an element of revolt in him, for in his half-wakefulness with his rudimentary consciousness, if he ever came in contact with something that is above and beyond him, if a shadow of another world happens to cross his ...

... death, even death has passed; it is with the living, it is before the shipwreck; it is loving and not loving, willing and not willing; there was no more abyss, no more anguish, no more fall, no more despair, nor even the quiver of a hope; only the great smooth waters of the beginning, only a great tranquil lake filling itself with its own eternity, and something which gazes... gazes, as if it had always... you there is no error, ever. The error is not to understand the true meaning of what one does You think you went away to be free, and you think you are returning for her; you think it is through revolt that you raise your fist and you think it is to kill yourself that you have climbed up here. But you know nothing. In truth, men do what I will, they make the necessary gesture without knowing why ...

... live in a sordid selfishness, unscrupulous self-interest, ruthless bad will, that is what you will breathe every moment of your life and that means misery, constant uneasiness; it means ugliness that despairs of its own ugliness. And you must not believe that by leaving the body you will free yourself of this atmosphere; on the contrary, the body is a kind of a veil of unconsciousness which diminishes... particular atmosphere and this atmosphere is a sort of luminous release. You breathe, you blossom like a flower in Page 199 the sun; there is no painful recoil on yourself, no bitterness, no revolt, no miseries. Spontaneously, naturally, the atmosphere becomes luminous and the air you breathe is full of happiness. And this is the air that you breathe, in your body and out of your body, in the ...

... sacrifice. They had passed the second portal, they had entered the room with chemical baths, the immense, white-tiled creosote pit; they had left behind their impurities, abandoned their hopes, their despairs, their names, their ages, their times; they went two-by-two in silence, bereft of hate, of fear, of surprise even, under the fiery sprays, the icy sprays, under the fierce white light of a frightful... chanting theoria which came from the depths of lives, from the depths of deaths, each one with his offering of fire: all the forms they had adored, sung, carved or painted, all their hopes, their despairs, their sacrifices, all their given loves, their dead beauties, their summits of greatness and their eversame distress: pyre upon pyre and imperious idols, white gods, black gods and robes of all colours... knew not why or how. And if I stopped for a moment, with closed eyes, he would pull me brutally: —Hey! boy, what are you meditating about!... Come on, let's be on our way. Sometimes, a wave of revolt swept over me. —But what the... Then he picked up a handful of dust from the road and threw it in my face with a burst of laughter: —Ah! you rascal, you want to eat dust? Well then, eat it ...

... before my eyes Loom like an irony of ironies; Life seemed to jeer at me for having hoped At all for bliss in our world of suffering. I drew my every breath in pain in the frozen Gloom of despair: every touch and tremor Reminded me of my Gopal I had lost. To have savoured nectar and then to be invited By the turbid waters of the stagnant pools! My soul, in torment, could not see a thing... shall his footprints cherish. Here let me only speak of how, at last, My Gopal came to claim him for His own. ( After a pause ) A few years after my initiation He told me one day, in despair, that he Had lost heart and so must resign. It is A story far too long to be told fully; So I shall leave it at that — unless he Volunteers to relate it all himself. ( After a hesitant... I wept in silence ...Blessing me, he went To pray to His Lord. But strange is Gopal's lila: The prayer that he voiced was not the one He had resolved to offer at His feet! For it was not despair or grief that welled Out from his heart: it was a moving song He sang whose theme was utter self-surrender. And this was what he sang before the Image In an ecstasy, as tears coursed down his cheeks: ...

... a false science, a false self, and a small Kodak in my hand to tickle the Sphinx. —Listen, Nil, I don't know what you're seeking, but I can feel, because I love you. You are going to end up in despair. You will be all alone with your chromium mines, which are not worth any more than my mica mines. You are running away. —It's not true. —Death is upon you. —This is blackmail. —Death is... all that art of dressing up the emptiness and stuffing the mannequin. I, I am the nil, the void, the skin of the mannequin who wants the real thing and no nonsense. I want the full, the real. And no revolt : I say no to you’re a yes and no to your nays—nothing to curse, nothing to forget, all is the same: your liberties are slammed shut like your doors, your tendernesses are the two grasping arms of... your straw. I leave the mannequin and what remains? The house was lit up, “our” home... The verandah was streaming with light under the gusts of rain; my forehead was bleeding. No, I was not in revolt, and I cried out “liberty”, but it was simply that , just a gasping for air— autre chose, autre chose ... something else, something else... a complete “elseness”, ah! which was not other. I ran in ...

... so strong that they will keep the coward safe. It is said that when he was besieging the fortress of a ruler named Sisimithres, which was situated upon a steep and inaccessible rock, his soldiers despaired of capturing it. Alexander asked Oxyartes whether Sisimithres himself was a man of spirit and received the reply that he was the greatest coward in the world. "Then what you are telling me", Alexander... refrain from using any force against them. As for the barbarian tribes, they considered that he should try to win them back to their allegiance by using milder methods, and forestall the first signs of revolt by offering them concessions. Alexander, however, chose precisely the opposite course, and decided that the only way to make his kingdom safe was to act with audacity and a lofty spirit, for he was... uprisings among the barbarians by advancing with his army as far as the Danube, where he overcame Syrmus, the king of the Triballi, in a great battle. Then when the news reached him that the Thebans had revolted and were being supported by the Athenians, he immediately marched south through the pass of Thermopylae. "Demosthenes," he said, "called me a boy while I was in Illyria and among the Triballi, and ...

... steps in front in the last two or three months which had seemed impossible because of the obstinate resistance for Page 324 years together and it is not an experience which pushes me to despair and give up. If there is much resistance on one side, there have been large gains on the other—all has not been a picture of sterile darkness. You yourself are kept back only by the demon of doubt... attitude, but if they could not yet reach that, we had of course to go on anyhow until the supramental descent came down to the material level. Finally, you must get rid of this gratuitous tendency to despair. The difficulty for you has been created by the indulgence given to this formation I speak of; that finally dismissed, the difficulty would disappear. Progress might be slow at first, but progress... resistance—law of physics, isn't it? In a certain sense it is true, but it was not inevitable—if the sadhaks had been a less neurotic company, it could have been done quietly. As it is there is the Revolt of the Subconscient. In one letter you wrote that you were able to push on; in another that the hostile forces were out of date [ p. 639 ]. That was a year ago. When we read this we thought that ...

... weak part in the vital which does not know how to bear suffering or disappointment or delay or temporary failure. When these things come, it winces away from them, revolts, cries out, makes a scene within, calls in despondency, despair, unbelief, darkness of the mind, denial—begins to think of abandonment of the effort or death as the only way out of its trouble. It is the very opposite of that... happened]". A vital so ready to despair that even after a "glorious" flood of poetry, it uses the occasion to preach the Page 188 gospel of despair. I have passed through most of the difficulties of the sadhaks, but I cannot recollect to have looked on delight of poetical creation or concentration in it as something undivine and a cause for despair- This seems to me excessive. Even... being behind, which is there even when the mind doubts and the vital despairs and the physical wants to collapse, and after the attack is over reappears and pushes on the path again. It may be strong and bright, it may be pale and in appearance weak, but if it persists each time in going on, it is the real thing. Fits of despair and dark- ness are a tradition in the path of sadhana—in all Yogas oriental ...

... no such conviction because of the blessed "coating". So he groans and writhes in agony, doubt and despair. How many times in the midst of struggles have I not said to myself that Yoga is beyond my capacities! Now, if I knew for certain that I was an extraordinary being, say an Avatar, I would not despair. This is why I said that the difficulties of Avatars are not real, but shams—not that they have no... no sting in them, but that the luminous consciousness bears them easily and goes on in spite of them. You think then that in me (I do not bring in the Mother), there was never any doubt or despair, no attacks of that kind. I have borne every attack which human beings have borne, otherwise I would be unable to assure anybody "This too can be conquered". At least I would have no right to say so.... for the withdrawal of the notice—not all of course, but many. And there is a stack of outside correspondence still unanswered! I am persuading my eye, but it is still red and sulky and reproachful. Revolted, what? Thinks too much is imposed on it and no attention paid to its needs, desires, preferences etc. Will have to reason with it for a day or two longer. How I wish, as a medical man, I mean ...

... phenomenon of sadhana that Sri Aurobindo has reminded us: "Patience is our first great necessary lesson... a patience full of a calm and gathering strength." He has also said: "Those who hope violently, despair swiftly: neither hope nor fear, but be sure of God's purpose and thy will to accomplish." (1984 Ashram Diary, November 19 and 15) The sadhaka of the Integral Yoga should not miss the import... seriously afflicting our mind and heart and even the physical system will be able to raise in the sadhaka' s consciousness even the slightest hint of protest and complaint, far be it to speak of any revolt and back-tracking; our faith and confidence in the Divine and his love will not suffer even the minimal dent; no peril of the Path will come to us as a peril at all; and no outer pain will occasion ...

... "the old old story" smile of our up-to-date rationalism. Well, his also is the old old story repeated without any satisfactory result or liberating end. 20 August 1935 Here is Subhas the despairer: "It is no use trying to argue with you. You are quite blind. Reason is but the slave of your faith. When I think how a person of your calibre can surrender his reasoning in this way, I feel like... them out. The Mother knows the Japanese nation well and was positive about that. Okawa, the leader of the Black Dragon (the one who shammed mad and got off at the Tokyo trial) told her that if India revolted against the British, Japan would send her Navy to help, but he said that he would not like the Japanese to land because if they once got hold of Indian soil they would never leave it, and it was true ...

... could not do as she wanted, because the body was failing, and the dirt and dust that we were throwing upon her was increasing, increasing and increasing, I felt and I have seen also some kind of despair and I think these two things were fully responsible. If she had been in good health and if she had possessed a strong body I am sure she would have fought the other side out; but if the heart went... an ordinary life. As I had no connection with this .unconscious part I' could not in any way control it . And so, unable to satiate their desires, my mind and Page 340 vital would revolt and not cooperate and as a result I would fall into a depression. Mother illuminated this dark part of my being and by purifying it she saved me. And I became rightfully a vessel of pure ananda ...

... here of the truth of your being. And yet, sometimes he does fashion himself according to your outer aspirations, and if, like the devotees, you live alternately in separation and union, ecstasy and despair, the Divine also will separate from you and unite with you, according as you believe. The attitude is thus very important, even the outer attitude. People do not know how important is faith, how faith... active, you come into my active consciousness for a time, for the time necessary. And this tie between you and me is never cut. There are people who have long ago left the Ashram, in a state of revolt, and yet I keep myself informed of them, I attend to them. You are never abandoned. In truth, I hold myself responsible for everyone, even for those whom I have met only for one second in my life... the Divine. With my love and blessing. 5 November 1947 You must learn once and for all that whatever mistakes people commit, it cannot vex me nor displease me. If there is bad will or revolt, Kali may come and chastise but she always does it with love. 23 March 1954 Page 89 Way of Working People say that you always admire the things we do, no matter what they are ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - I

... the hammers, Yet in the end there is rest on the peak of a labour accomplished. Nor shall the might of the thinker be quelled by that iron oppression, Nor shall the soul of the warrior despair in the darkness triumphant, For when the night shall be deepest, dawn shall increase on the mountains And in the heart of the worst the best shall be born by my wisdom. Pallas thy sister... the sunset Dregs of my wine Pandemian missing the Uranian sweetness. So shall the night descend on the greatness and rapture of living; Creeds that refuse shall persuade the world to revolt from its mother. Pallas' adorers shall loathe me and Hera's scorn me for lowness; Beauty shall pass from men's work and delight from, theirplay and their labour; Earth restored to the... and kindles the fire for a mortal. "Thou, my son, art obedient always. Wisdom is with thee, Therefore thou know'st and obeyest. Submission is wisdom and knowledge; He who is blind revolts and he who is limited struggles: Strife is not for the infinite; wisdom observes to accomplish. Troy and her sons and her works are thy food today, O Hephaestus." And to his father ...

... have liked to work through existing institutions wherever possible. Again, although he had ideals, he was no simple dreamer or idealist; he had a practical shrewdness of judgement which was the despair of his political opponents. The man was so remarkable that the will of the nation could have said, "This man and his life mean what I have in my heart and in my purpose." 41 With Tilak there was... attack on the Beast of Intellectualism: What then does this intellectual process lead you to? This intellectual process, if it is used honestly, if it is followed to the very end, leads you to despair. It leads you to death. You have nothing which can help you, because you have no material strength at present which the adversary cannot crush and the adversary will certainly not be so foolish... majority who were eager for internal autonomy but unwilling to use extreme methods, and a small but vigorous minority of extremists with men like John Adams at their head who pushed the country into revolt and created a nation. The history of the Italian revolution tells the same story. Even in Japan, it was when the issue between the moderate Shogun party and the extremist Mikado party was settled ...

... prophets who understood that God was soon going to intervene in this world, overthrow the forces of evil that ran it, and bring in a new kingdom in which there would be no more war, disease, catastrophe, despair, hatred, sin, or death.” 4 For instance in the gospel of Mark, now generally accepted as the earliest of the four gospels, we find Jesus quoted as having said: “Truly I tell you, some of you... terrestrial evolution, of a new world. 20 The effects of this manifestation were immediate, for instance in the phenomenon called “the Sixties”: the decade of the New Age movement, the student revolts of ’68, and the Velvet Revolution of the same year in Prague. There was also the technological acceleration resulting in the global spread of television, the space technology of Sputnik, Apollo 11 ...

... and to seek in silence the source of the highest aspiration. VII In a spiritual adventure, in the, battle for Light as against the reigning Darkness, in the see-saw between hope and despair, the average sadhak is understandably often confused, and in an extremity he needs must appeal to the Guru who is the living God. Read in cold print, the neophyte's questions - the enumeration of... from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and the sadhaks open to him and advancing their mission and, on the other hand, the scattered isolated pockets of doubt, dissidence, darkness, negation and even revolt in which the hostile forces found a favourable soil for their anti-divine work. Writing on 15 March 1937, Sri Aurobindo made a reference to this dichotomy: When people with a little perceptiveness ...

... passenger sitting beside him by chance, and when I wanted to attract his attention, he turned his back on me and went on counting the rudraksha beads of his necklace. Sometimes, I was so full of despair in those stations that I would have kissed his hands if he had had only one word of affection for me, or perhaps I would have started weeping pail-fulls of tears like an idiot. So, I gritted my teeth... behold, that fire was like love. A pure love, for nothing, for everything, comme ҫa , simply because it burned. It burned all, devoured all: the past, the present, the future, good and evil, hopes and despair—it did not want anything, did not ask for anything except that one merge with it—annihilate oneself in it. It had no need of anything, but to burn, to keep on burning, to burn for ever. An abyss of... come back, but it is not from death! And it was even more stifling now; I held it, I almost touched it down to my flesh, that single crime, that root of everything—of all maladies, all suffering, all revolt, all the aberrations that perturb man: that simple sorrow of being small, so very small—in a body. In the immensity, there is not a single scar of suffering. It was that which I held in both hands ...

... the physical consciousness, begin to disbelieve, despond, stand aghast at the contradiction between our hopes and beliefs and the present facts, and they even turn in their rage of disbelief and despair to deny and destroy the structure of their inner thought and life which was bearing them on, tear up even the compass which was their help and guide, even to reject the needle, the great constant... Mother is a rigid disciplinarian. On the contrary, I have seen with what a constant leniency, tolerant patience and kindness she has met the huge mass of indiscipline, disobedience, self-assertion, revolt that has surrounded her even to abuse to her very face and violent letters overwhelming her with the worst kind of vituperation. A rigid disciplinarian would not have treated these things like that... elsewhere except in the matter of cleanliness and hygiene, which are surely not objectionable. I may say that you are mistaken in thinking that everybody who stays in Golconde is in a state of misery or revolt. On the contrary there are many who have asked for it and are put there at their own request every time they come. And they are not Europeans. Mother highly appreciated and praised the old Indian ...

... receives; and in the intimacy of this self-giving one can become conscious of the inner Presence and the joy it brings. 28 On 3 August 1936, when Vasudha sounds an SOS, a note of urgency and despair ("I find that I have lost everything: All that was good in me, all is lost."), the Mother tells her "dear little child" hat the possible reason for the bleak feeling was the "clouding of the c... rushes to rescue and reassure her child: Poor little one, I very gladly take you on my lap and cradle you to my heart to soothe this heavy sorrow which has no cause and to quell this great revolt which has no reason. Let me take you in my arms, bathe you in my love and wipe away even the memory of this unfortunate incident. 27 Evidently the cure is not complete, for Vasudha writes... nature is one thing - to call in the hostile forces is quite another. Whoever does the latter .. .is going towards the opposite camp - for the marks of the hostile Force are contempt of the Divine, revolt and hatred against the Mother, disbelief in the Yoga, assertion of ego against the Divine Being, preference of falsehood to Truth, seeking after false gods and rejection of the Eternal. 59 ...

... who “pretends” to suffer like humans but knows nothing of their woes—“sham,” one of them would literally say. You think then that in me (I don’t bring in the Mother) there was never any doubt or despair, no attacks of that kind. I have borne every attack which human beings have borne, otherwise I would be unable to assure anybody “This too can be conquered. ” I had to work on each problem and on each... from one person to another, seeing to every­thing down to each nook and cranny: the quality of the flour, the wall to be repaired, the semicolon, the bowl badly washed, this one’s scratch, that one’s revolt, these quarrels or those stupidities. She repaired, rectified, silently encour­aged or directed Her pure light onto each point, smiled and flooded hearts with a sparkle of mischief or sweetness, or... : It seems another victory has been won by you. Some people saw red-crimson lights around the Mother... (Sri Aurobindo): But after­wards all the mud arose and it stopped.... As it is, there is the Revolt of the Subconscient. 61 August 1935 Now I have got the hang of the whole hanged thing—like a very Einstein I have got the math­ematical formula of the whole affair (unintelli­gible as in his ...

... there are of day and night, illumination and darkness, calm and construction or battle and upheaval, the presence of the growing Divine Consciousness and its absence, heights of hope and abysses of despair, the clasp of the Beloved and the anguish of its absence, the overwhelming invasion, the compelling deceit, the fierce opposition, the disabling mockery of hostile Powers or the help and comfort and... impulse. Always the greater part of the motive and action of these powers clings to the old law, the deceiving tablets, the cherished inferior movements of Nature and they meet with reluctance, alarm or revolt or obstructing inertia the voices and the forces that call and impel us to exceed and transform ourselves into a greater being and a wider Nature. In their major part the response is either a resistance... darkness, heady rapture and bitter torture. It loves these things and would have more and more of them or, even when it suffers and cries out against them, can accept or joy in nothing else; it hates and revolts against higher things and in its fury would trample, tear or crucify any diviner Power that has the presumption to offer to make life pure, luminous and happy and snatch from its lips the fiery brew ...

... form the consummation of mystic life." I don't agree—unless it is a sadhana of the vital plane which then naturally expresses the vital being = love-excitement, love-quarrels, viraha , 75 revolt, despair, rupture etc., etc., frequent surrenders, unions, partings. Dutt has said that according to the Ancients, pleasure of the sex-act is something akin to the Ananda of Brahman. Why? In answer ...

... life-partisans a black element stole in (not one of the personalities, but a formation, a dark intrusion from outside), which wanted to turn the whole thing into a drama or tragedy of despairdespair of life but despair of the Divine also. That has to be rejected, the rest changed and harmonised. That is the only true explanation of the whole difficulty in your nature. January 24,1936 ... though not uninterrupted experience. This has happened even to those who are troubled by these circular movements and have been again and again on the point of rushing away in despair. There is nothing more futile than to despair in the spiritual path and throw up the game: it is to break a working which would have led one to the realisation asked for if one had persevered. I have always said that since... you. You can understand the reason. What shall I do? Our ways are apart—but let us continue to be friends. Maybe, one day we shall meet — who knows ? Yours in love, Subhas" Despair not—the letter is still flowing on my head (I mean Page 18 the rest of it or of them) before it flows in inksome lines on paper. As for the desperate Subhash, why the deuce does ...

... into the most material level,—the marble—, and make it vibrate to its love. He asks "the star of eternal possibles" to "aim for the fringe, the thinnest curve Where strength of possible despairs; The missing but imagined arc For which the circle aches, The vistas waiting to be seen",... In a situation where "the possible" gives way and the curve becomes thin and weak, he... a hindrance by Walt Whitman who regards it at best as a petty ornament. After him, poetry dominated by thought-element came in vogue. And now today, in the words of W. B. Yeats, "younger men are in revolt against irrelevant description of Nature, scientific moral discursiveness, political eloquence" and what they call "psychological curiosity". Many poets are trying something like poetic journalism ...

... the following historical account makes interesting reading: In 1772, in Rangpur, a district in Bengal, there was a revolt of Sannyasis (ascetics) against the British rule. These Sannyasis belonged to North India. Bankim Chandra's famous novel, Ananda Math, was inspired by this revolt. He had composed the Bande Mataram seven or eight years before he wrote Ananda Math. Even as early as 1763, the insurgent... italics are ours. Page 108 India and with the smallness of the regular British armies, even a guerrilla warfare accompanied by general resistance and revolt might be effective. There was also the possibility of a general revolt in the Indian army. At the same time he had studied the temperament and characteristics of the British people and the turn of their political instincts, and he... general political situation of the province. It was now felt that an organ was urgently needed to popularise the idea of violent revolt, and, so, Yugantar, a Bengali paper, was started. It was Barin's project, approved by Sri Aurobindo. It was "to preach open revolt and the absolute denial of the British rule and include such items as a series of articles containing instructions for guerrilla ...

... the Yoga.   When my mind presses the vital and the ego for an inward turn, they start a revolt. That brings in all sorts of wrong forces. The sadhana then becomes difficult and dangerous instead of simple, happy and safe. There is no reason to accept their despair, depression or revolt. One has persistently to separate oneself from these things - if one separates oneself they cannot ...

... Page 156 If truly you are no longer attached to anything, it is a great yogic realisation and it would be wrong of you to complain about it. The whole world is against me and I am in despair. Why do you want to think the whole world is against you? This is childish. My physical mind is not yet convinced that human life is capable of overcoming all suffering and even death.... this that I want to learn to see in myself and others. 1st sign: One feels far away from Sri Aurobindo and me. 2nd: One loses confidence, begins to criticise, is not satisfied. 3rd: One revolts and sinks into falsehood. Do not grieve. Always the same battle must be won several times, especially when it is waged against the hostile forces. That is why one must be armed with patience ...

... clutched the tulsi garlands or the fair white flower or the bright red rose. "I cannot believe... I want to believe... I must believe... I will believe": thus even the agnostic prayed, and hope and despair warred in his bosom, and he held the garland in a yet firmer grip. The last turn taken, one's eyes grazed over the intervening forms and rested on the two figures seated together in unblenched... occasions, wrote thrice a day: and they wrote about their trials, their hopes, their dark nights, their dreary days, their sudden exultations and exhilarations, their strange fears and their leaden-eyed despairs - or they wrote about problems of philosophy, or Yoga theory and practice, or poetic inspiration and technique - or even on contemporary Indian and world politics. And the reply came giving the true... [15th - the next darśan]. Will you kindly come down and help the poor amateur Yogi out of these inexplicable meshes? Sri Aurobindo: Come down? into Erebus? No, thank you.... But why hug despair without a cause - Dilipian or other? Come to your senses and develop a Nirodian jollity instead.... Laugh and be fat - then dance to keep the fat down - that is a sounder programme. 94 This ...

... Here, where men sit and hear each other groan... Where youth grows pale and spectre-thin and dies... Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs; 13 and hence we should learn (the only knowledge that is worth our while to learn) to minimise our demands upon life. And, after all, life is only for a brief now - let us, then, brave... Crime and Punishment images it to be) a mere bathroom somewhere with overhanging spider's webs? It is enough to "puzzle the will" and leave one stranded on the bleak rocks of bewilderment and despair. This, then, is the human predicament. "Sorrow Is", evil and pain are the duumvirate ruling our terrestrial existence, and there seem to be only two ways of combating, or rather of by-passing... phenomenon, has served aspiring man by boldly adventuring into the unknown and giving him intimations of the infinitudes of the Spirit. Page 421 It is also clear that neither the Western revolt of Matter against Spirit nor the Indian recoil of Spirit from Matter can yield a harmony. The materialist's Denial is one version of Reality, the ascetic's Refusal is another. The problem therefore ...

... Brother, the King! Timocles has been tearing at the robe round his neck. Phayllus, Melitus and others crowd round to support him as he falls. NICANOR It is a fit at worst Which anger and despair have forced him to. PHAYLLUS It is not death? I live then. NICANOR Death, thou intriguer! Art thou not Death who with thy wicked promptings And poisonous whispers worked to dangerous... me; I do not think that I shall long displease you Hereafter. She goes, attended by Melitus. NICANOR Follow her, Callicrates, And let no dangerous edge or lethal drink Be near to her despair. Callicrates follows. THOAS This cannot keep us From those we loved. Page 323 NICANOR Syrians, what yet remains Of this storm-visited, bolt-shattered house Let us rebuild... King Timocles. LEOSTHENES Slay them, cut down The party of the liars. There is a shouting and tumult with drawing and movement of swords. NICANOR Protect the King. Let insolent revolt at once be quenched And sink in its own blood. LEOSTHENES I slay all strife With the usurper. THOAS Stay, stay, Leosthenes. ANTIOCHUS Forbear! forbear, I say! let all be still ...

... house of woe and pain. Here too we get a vivid, but compact description. It at once evokes the image of the pang, the loneliness, the ceaseless thirst, the vastness of Hell with its unending despair. Listen to this majestic roll: Page 315 One spirit in them ruled, and every eye Glared lightning, and shot forth pernicious fire Among the accursed, that withered all their... this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through Eternity, To perish rather, swallowed up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated Night. Here boldness stands up, revolts and permits no influence to curb it. It defies all; its power is a living presence, an organic reality. It has deeper roots than a common rational mind. It is vibrant, intense; it strikes and awakes... enrich his poem, but lend grace and give a sense of expansiveness by their reference to subjects not related to the poem. Similes also come as refreshing elements and in a tale of pathos, strife, revolt and resulting sin, they for a brief moment make us forget the dreariness and the overshadowing presence of Satan. Sometimes they uplift the act, the image, the gesture by widening the scope. Finally ...

... abso­lute faith and make the right choice. If you make the wrong choice I cannot protect you. You must know that this is not a simple affair at all. It is not a revolt against the British Government which any one can easily do. It is, in fact, a revolt against the whole universal Nature and so one must think deeply before enrolling oneself with me. There will be tremendous forces that will attack you and... individual and collective life of man today. It is the international form of the fundamental elements of Indian culture. It is, as Dr. S. K. Maitra says, the message which holds out hope in a world of despair. This aspect of Sri Aurobindo’s vision attracted me as much as the natural affinity which I had felt on seeing him. I found on making a serious study of the Arya that it led me to very rational ...

... cannot be complete, if there is any kind of revolt or vehement impatience. Revolt and impatience mean always that there is a part of the being or something in the being which does not submit, has not given itself to God, but insists on God going out of his way to obey it. That may be very well in the Bhaktimarga, but it will not do on this Way. The revolt and impatience may come and will come in the... counteract the administration. But Nandagopalu instead of intimidating is himself intimidated; he is hiding in his house & sending obsequious messages to Gaebelé & Martineau. So great at one time was the despair of the Lemairistes, that Pierre offered through Richard to withdraw Lemaire, if Gaebelé withdraws Bluysen, the two enemies then to shake hands & unite in support of Richard or another candidate. Gaebelé... in that is obedience to the law of the Yoga I have given to you. If you bring in things which do not belong to it at all and are quite foreign to it, such as "hunger-strikes" and vehement emotional revolt against the divine Will, it is idle to expect any rapid progress. That means that you insist on going on your own bypath and yet demand of me that I shall bring you to my goal. All difficulties can ...

... I have no time to write more. But note how entirely conscious your inner being is when it does come into action,— which perfectly justifies what I wrote to you about it at a time when you were in despair over your incapacity and unfitness for Yoga! You will see now that I was right and your fits of despondency had no true ground—and also that I knew what was in you better than you yourself knew it... mean by the word. Desire often leads either to excess of effort, meaning often much labour and a limited fruit with strain, exhaustion and in case of difficulty or failure, despondence, disbelief or revolt; or else it leads to pulling down the force. That can be done, but except for the yogically strong and experienced, it is not always safe, though it may be often very effective; Page 74 ... has had this or that thought about me or feeling towards me, she is displeased with me, unfair to me, partial to others, etc. etc. etc.; next, discouragement, wounded feelings, jealousy, despondency, revolt or any other kindred vital downfall or upheaval; result, the impulse to withdraw from the Mother, not to give her flowers or take Page 78 flowers, to go away from soup 1 or pranam, ...

... from the starry list To quench in dull despair the God-given light. [ cf. p. 19 ] Any punctuation missing in the first line? Perhaps a dash after "refused" as well as after "list"? I omitted any punctuation because it is a compressed construction Page 295 meant to signify refused to be struck from the starry list and quenched in dull despair etc.—the quenching being the act of assent... right to think as well as to see and feel, his right to "dare to philosophise". I agree with the modernists in their revolt against the romanticist's insistence on emotionalism and his objection to thinking and philosophical reflection in poetry. But the modernist went too far in his revolt. In trying to avoid what I may call poeticism he ceased to be poetic, wishing to escape from rhetorical writing, ...

... progress? Certainly NOT. 26 August 1935 Is it true that it is not easy for You to work on each individual—that there is almost always some resistance or revolt? Certainly there is resistance in almost everybody, and revolt in many. 27 August 1935 X says that her way is clear, but that there is one difficulty which can only be removed by You and no one else can help her. I don't... uneasiness. I think it is the Page 35 vital that caught the uneasiness, but I don't understand why I felt this uneasiness when I saw her. Some people carry around them these ideas of despair and depression and are harassed by them. These ideas are contagious, like an illness, and one catches them just as one catches any other illness. 14 May 1934 How can I avoid being attacked... time to take action and avoid the influences that estrange you from me and make you unhappy. Nothing is lost if you take immediate action. 23 October 1947 Mother, just now I feel full of despair and I cannot find Your support. My mind is full of tension and it is making me ill. Obviously it is enough to make anyone ill!... It is not possible to serve two masters at once. You wanted ...

... ( The disciple recounted his discussion with somebody on the subject of work. The letter ends: ) For us the one certainty was, "Whatever Mother accepts as work is work." I am not in despair; I am amused and I have to continue to do what I do not regard as even the A-B-C of work!!, because your compassion accepts it! R, you are becoming very wise and approaching the realisation that... invites such allegations. This is exactly the kind of treatment the Divine receives from the world. Even Sri Aurobindo was not spared. You see that you are in good company and there is no reason to despair. 23 October 1965 Mother, For giving true education you have said: "Get out of conventions and insist on the growth of the soul." I can write two pages on this, but actually I do not... nor any of these things which move the human sentiments and make them dominate for a while the material desires named "needs". Money difficulties make generally people dry and even bitter, if not revolted. And I know of some people who are on the verge of losing their FAITH because I do not have all the money I need! 6 February 1964 Mother, After trying for 26 years I find I am still ...

... breath away, making my heart palpitate!' And do you know what Sri Aurobindo replied, 'O rubbish! I am austere and grand, grim and stern! every blasted thing that I never was! I groan in unAurobindonian despair when I hear such things.' " There was loud laughter. Sri Aurobindo also laughed and asked, "But... haven't we moved very far away from our topic? What were we discussing earlier?" "Your school-days... authorities, who but I could have such a clever, cunning brain that could work out this complex network of plots of which even their most alert police officers had not had the least inkling? Almost in despair, they sent spies and search parties in every direction and that is how, one day, they discovered the bomb factory at the Maniktola Garden. Barin and his companions were immediately arrested, and so... Nature had reduced herself to just one single tree and a tiny little square of sky no bigger than a handkerchief! It was too joyless a scene to bring me any kind of comfort or consolation. Almost in despair, I began to look around me when I found some big black ants on the floor. So I began to spend my time observing their comings and goings. La Fontaine too, it is said, enjoyed studying the movements ...

... The soul of the poet may be like a star and dwell apart; even, his work may seem not merely a variation from but a revolt against the limitations of the national mind. But still the roots of his personality are there in its spirit and even his variation and revolt are an attempt to bring out something that is latent and suppressed or at least something which is trying to surge up from the... Like Paris in Troy, Odysseus wins here, and the climactic death-grapple becomes inevitable. For almost ten years the war has been going on, this see-saw between victory and defeat, and hope and despair: All went backwards and forwards tossed in the swing of the death-game. Vain was the toil of the heroes, the blood of the mighty was squandered. Spray as of surf on the cliffs when ...

... the young of horses or donkeys and not in horses and donkeys themselves. No, Meletus; there is not avoiding the conclusion that you brought this charge against me as a test of my wisdom, or else in despair of finding a genuine offence of which to accuse me. As for your prospect of convincing any living person with even a smattering of intelligence that belief in supernatural and divine activities does... of mythology. 22 son of Thetis: Achilles. The passage, which Socrates partly paraphrases and partly quotes, is Iliad XViii. 94-106. 23 Potidaea in Chalcidice revolted from Athens in 432 and was reduced two years later. In the preliminary fighting Socrates saved the life of Alcibiades, as the latter relates in the Symposium (220 D). 24 Amphipolis: ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Socrates

... must not be impatient, you must be very persevering. You do the wrong thing ten times for every time that you do the right thing. But when you do the wrong thing you must not give up everything in despair, but tell yourself that the Grace will never abandon you and that next time it will be better.       So, in conclusion, we shall say that in order to know things as they are you must first unite... so serious", and when the other part returns, once again, one repents bitterly: "I was a fool, I have wasted my time, now I must begin again.... " At times there is one part that's ill-humoured, in revolt, full of worries, and another which is progressive, full of surrender. All that, one after the other.       There is but one remedy: that signpost must always be there, a mirror well placed in... it is in the depths of the consciousness and supports all that you do, and you never lose the contact. Then many things disappear. For instance, depression is one of these things, discontentment, revolt, fatigue, depression, all these difficulties. And if one makes it a habit to step back, as we say, in one's consciousness and see on the screen of one's psychic consciousness — see all the circumstances ...

... the young of horses or donkeys and not in horses and donkeys themselves. No, Meletus; there is not avoiding the conclusion that you brought this charge against me as a test of my wisdom, or else in despair of finding a genuine offence of which to accuse me. As for your prospect of convincing any living person with even a smattering of intelligence that belief in supernatural and divine activities does... heroes and demigods of mythology. son of Thetis: Achilles. The passage which Socrates partly paraphrases and partly quotes is Iliad XViii. 94-106. Potidaea in Chalcidice revolted from Athens in 432 and was reduced two years later. In the preliminary fighting Socrates saved the life of Alcibiades, as the latter relates in the Symposium (220 D). Amphipolis: An ...

... stout soldier Raoul de Gaucourt, Bailly of Orleans, with orders to prevent Joan from getting out and resuming the attack on the Tourelles, and this shameful thing had plunged the city into sorrow and despair. But that feeling was gone now. They believed the Maid was a match for the council, and they were right. When we reached the gate, Joan told Gaucourt to open it and let her pass. He said... altogether. These rebellions were hopeless; untrained and poorly armed peasants were no match for an aristocracy with a strong military tradition. But the fact that the peasants did rebel reveals the despair and the tendency to violence that marked the end of the Page 116 Middle Ages. (taken from: The Mainstream of Civilization, by Joseph R. Strayer & Hans W. Gatze, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich... for the vanquished. With governments discredited by futile and costly wars, many men lost faith in their political leaders and turned to rebellion and civil war. Page 115 The leaders of revolt, however, showed no more ability than the kings and princes against whom they were rebelling. Many of the leaders were members of the landed nobility who still had wealth and influence even though ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Joan of Arc

... the creation tardy in its coming or interrupted in its triumph. The night returns again and again and the day lingers or seems even to have been a false dawning. Despair not therefore but watch and work. Those who hope violently, despair swiftly: neither hope nor fear, but be sure of God's purpose and thy will to accomplish. Wherefore God hammers so fiercely at his world, tramples and kneads it... which we lost it, by liberating our minds in all subjects from the thralldom to authority. That is not what reformers and the Anglicised require of us. They ask us, indeed, to abandon authority, to revolt against custom and superstition, to have free and enlightened minds. But they mean by these sounding recommendations that we should renounce the authority of Sayana for the authority of Max Muller ...

... must perish! Heaviest toils they must bear; they must wrestle with Fate and her Titans, And when some leader returns from the battle sole of his thousands Crushed by the hammers of God, yet never despair of their country. Dread not the ruin, fear not the storm-blast, yield not, O Trojans. Zeus shall rebuild. Death ends not our days, the fire shall not triumph. Death? I have faced it. Fire? I have... clang of the hammers; Yet in the end there is rest on the peak of a labour accomplished. Nor shall the might of the thinker be quelled by that iron oppression, Nor shall the soul of the warrior despair in the darkness triumphant; For when the night shall be deepest, dawn shall increase on the mountains And in the heart of the worst the best shall be born by my wisdom. Pallas thy sister shall guard... by Hecuba's daughter, Or with our souls reconciled in some careless and rapturous midnight Drank of the sweetness of Phrygian wine, admiring your bodies Shaped by the gods indeed, and my spirit revolted from hatred,– Softening it yearned in its strings to the beauty and joy of its foemen, Yearned from the death that o'ertakes and the flame that cries and desires Even at the end to save and even ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Collected Poems

... any of all that, neither our gilded miseries, nor our captivating lights nor our good nor our evil, nor any of that whole polychromatic array in which each color changes into the other: hope into despair, effort into backlash, heaven into prison, summit into abyss, love into hate, and each wrested victory into a new defeat, as if each plus attracted its minus, each for its against, and everything... thousand times, the seeker is confronted with those microtyphoons, those minute whirlwinds that abruptly overturn the whole equilibrium of the being, becloud everything, give a taste of ashes and despair to the slightest gesture, decompose the air he breathes and decompose everything – an instantaneous general decomposition for one second, ten seconds. A hardening of everything. The seeker is suddenly... which suddenly come back to seize us again amid that orange explosion – as if we had been all those pains and faces and beings on the millions of paths of the earth, and all their songs of hope and despair, all their lost and departed loves, all their never-extinguished Page 183 music – in that one little golden note which bursts out for a second on the wild foam and fills everything with ...

... , their daring is ever on the increase, their noble contagion is extending to other quarters. In short, the spirit that gives rise to epoch-making events is once more in our midst, and let nobody despair of the future.” Bande Mataram, September 15, 1907 The two papers, Yugantara in Bengali and Bande Mataram in English, continued with a mounting intensity of patriotic passion their... Bombay and Madras - but, as we have seen, it was the tyrant desire to cow down and crush the agitation for national freedom. And how did Bengal meet the Challenge? The whole province rose in indignant revolt to oppose the Partition, and continued to oppose it so long as it was not abrogated. And abrogated it was, though after a long and bitter struggle. The rebel spirit of freedom compelled the British... Tilak's confidence in Sri Aurobindo's state of a sthitaprajna, his biographers, Pradhan and Bhagwat, observe: "Tilak knew very well that strategically it was desirable to keep the two planks of civil revolt and revolutionary activity away from each other.... As a leader, however, it was his responsibility to see that all efforts for achieving freedom were carried on in the correct manner, and he therefore ...

... mountains, I would have been attacked there and targeted by the forces there all the same, but if Land's End is the chosen place, the defence will be there . It is not an act against Auroville (!) nor despair of Auroville, but a simple and occult act of security. So I wrote to Tata in order to get some information about the possibilities of purchasing a second-hand offset press (Heidelberg model)... team embraces you — it is really a happy Page 85 little world and a "Playground" that will delight Mother, after the prison of Pondicherry. Tenderly Satprem P.S.: No, I don't despair of or have any doubt about Auroville, in spite of its childish quarrels and games — but they need a serious lesson, and I think Mother is giving them that lesson. What is disastrous or regrettable... that Mother had said: "In twenty years." This "coincidence" Page 238 made her so light hearted! She died seven days before. So, where is this Earth going? Not for one second do I despair of the final Victory, but what will we have to go through to reach it? It is urgent, this volume XIII must be released — we have been rushing for this for eight years.... To wait until next February ...

... a recrudescence of certain movements which you yourself say was slight or the sense of the difficulty of overcoming egoism (which everybody feels and not only yourself) lead to such persistence in despair and a turning away from help and light? “I hope you will gather yourself together, make an effort and get out of this groove quickly into the joy and love of the Divine which you had before. On... arrive to Thee: “Lord, Lord, everywhere Thy enemies appear triumphant; falsehood is the monarch of the world; life without Thee is a death, a perpetual hell; doubt has usurped the place of Hope and revolt has pushed out Submission; Faith is spent, Gratitude is not born; blind passions and murderous instincts and a guilty weakness have covered and stifled Thy Sweet Law of Love. Lord, wilt Thou permit ...

... yourself? The way you make people talk is getting simply unbearable." Ram gulped down his mouthful indignantly. "What people?" he challenged. "Give me their names." Narayani heaved a sigh of despair. 'That's you, all over! I have to supply you, have I, with a long list of the culprits?" VII A few months later, things took an unexpected turn. Narayani's widowed mother, Digambari... chatter! How can you expect a boy who has never so much as poured himself a glass of water to turn into a chef overnight!" She had worked in the house for over ten years, and her loyal if simple soul revolted at what seemed to her the utter unnaturalness of this punishment. Meanwhile Surodhuni, following her mother's example, had also been peeping furtively through the partition slits. About an hour ...

... Syria childless, end A line that started from the gods. Thinkst thou It will be tamely suffered? What have we To lose, if we lose this? I bid thee again Take heed: drive not a queen to strong despair. I am no tame-souled peasant, but a princess And great Chaldea's child. POLYDAON ( after a pause ) Wilt thou confirm Thy treasury and all the promised honours, If I excuse the deed? CEPHEUS... For ever. IOLAUS Therops? THEROPS I have abjured rebellion. IOLAUS Lead then my royal parents to their home With martial pomp and music. And let the people Cover their foul revolt with meek obedience. One guiltiest head shall pay your forfeit: the rest, Since terror and religious frenzy moved To mutiny, not their sober wills, shall all Be pardoned. CRIES Iolaus! Iolaus ...

... aspired so much through lives and lives of pain and despair, through millenniums of futile stupidity. And then, one was there.... But understandably, one had to plunge there, one had to melt there, for if one did not melt, if one resisted, if there were some “I” whatsoever in the middle of that torrent of power, it would break or grate or revolt. It was unbearable. And all the little specimens ...