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Savitri [8]
Significance of Indian Yoga [1]
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Socrates [1]
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Sudhir Kumar Sarkar: A Spirit Indomitable [1]
Synthesis of Yoga in the Upanishads [1]
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Teilhard de Chardin and our Time [2]
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The Destiny of the Body [6]
The Divine Collaborators [4]
The Future Poetry [1]
The Gita and its Synthesis of Yoga [2]
The Golden Path [4]
The Good Teacher and The Good Pupil [3]
The Grace [1]
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Varieties of Yogic Experience and Integral Realisation [3]
Vedic and Philological Studies [1]
Visions of Champaklal [1]
Wager of Ambrosia [2]
What I Have Learnt From The Mother [2]
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A Scheme for The Education of Bengal [4]
A Vision of United India [4]
Amal Kiran's Correspondence with The Mother [2]
Amal-Kiran - Poet and Critic [1]
Arguments for the Existence of God [1]
Arjuna's Argument At Kurukshetra And Sri Krishna's Answers [3]
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Child, Teacher and Teacher Education [3]
Classical and Romantic [1]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 [6]
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Conversations with Sri Aurobindo [1]
Down Memory Lane [1]
Early Cultural Writings [2]
Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo [8]
Education and the Aim of human life [2]
Education at Crossroads [1]
Emergence of the Psychic [1]
Essays Divine and Human [1]
Essays in Philosophy and Yoga [7]
Essays on the Gita [13]
Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo [12]
Evolution and the Earthly Destiny [7]
Evolution, Religion and the Unknown God [1]
Finding the Psychic Being [1]
From Man Human to Man Divine [2]
Gautam Chawalla's Correspondence with The Mother [3]
Growing up with the Mother [1]
Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 1 [2]
Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 2 [4]
Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 3 [3]
Guidance on Education [1]
Hitler and his God [1]
Ideals of Auroville [1]
Images Of The Future [1]
In the Mother's Light [17]
India's Rebirth [6]
Indian Identity and Cultural Continuity [2]
Indian Poets and English Poetry [2]
Inspiration and Effort [2]
Integral Yoga of Transformation [1]
Integral Yoga, Evolution and the Next Species [1]
Integral yoga and Evolutionary Mutation [1]
Isha Upanishad [4]
Jayantilal's Correspondence with The Mother [2]
Karmayogin [1]
Landmarks of Hinduism [7]
Lectures on Savitri [2]
Letters on Himself and the Ashram [20]
Letters on Poetry and Art [3]
Letters on Yoga - I [10]
Letters on Yoga - II [19]
Letters on Yoga - III [8]
Letters on Yoga - IV [21]
Life of Sri Aurobindo [7]
Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 1) [4]
Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2) [10]
Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3) [10]
Lights on Yoga [1]
Living in The Presence [1]
Memorable Contacts with The Mother [3]
More Answers from the Mother [2]
Mother or The Divine Materialism - I [3]
Mother or The New Species - II [3]
Mother steers Auroville [1]
Mother's Chronicles - Book Five [8]
Mother's Chronicles - Book Four [4]
Mother's Chronicles - Book Six [3]
Mother's Chronicles - Book Three [1]
Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960 [6]
Mother’s Agenda 1961 [5]
Mother’s Agenda 1962 [11]
Mother’s Agenda 1963 [3]
Mother’s Agenda 1964 [3]
Mother’s Agenda 1965 [4]
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Mother’s Agenda 1967 [4]
Mother’s Agenda 1968 [1]
Mother’s Agenda 1969 [1]
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Mother’s Agenda 1971 [1]
Mother’s Agenda 1972-1973 [1]
Mrinalini Devi [1]
My Pilgrimage to the Spirit [2]
My Savitri work with the Mother [5]
Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth [2]
Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body [1]
Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo [12]
Nishikanto - the Brahmaputra of inspiration [1]
Notes on the Way [2]
On Art - Addresses and Writings [1]
On Education [10]
On Savitri [2]
On The Mother [23]
On Thoughts and Aphorisms [7]
On the Path [1]
Our Light and Delight [5]
Our Many Selves [3]
Overhead Poetry [1]
Overman [3]
Parables from the Upanishads [1]
Patterns of the Present [1]
Perspectives of Savitri - Part 1 [2]
Perspectives of Savitri - Part 2 [5]
Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays [5]
Philosophy of Value-Oriented Education [3]
Pictures of Sri Aurobindo's poems [1]
Prayers and Meditations [3]
Preparing for the Miraculous [1]
Principles and Goals of Integral Education [3]
Problems of Early Christianity [1]
Psychology, Mental Health and Yoga [3]
Questions and Answers (1929-1931) [12]
Questions and Answers (1950-1951) [11]
Questions and Answers (1953) [5]
Questions and Answers (1954) [7]
Questions and Answers (1955) [9]
Questions and Answers (1956) [10]
Questions and Answers (1957-1958) [17]
Reminiscences [1]
Savitri [8]
Significance of Indian Yoga [1]
Six Talks [2]
Socrates [1]
Some Answers from the Mother [5]
Spiritual bouquets to a friend [2]
Sri Aurobindo - A dream-dialogue with children [1]
Sri Aurobindo - His Life Unique [3]
Sri Aurobindo - The Poet [2]
Sri Aurobindo - The Smiling Master [2]
Sri Aurobindo - a biography and a history [11]
Sri Aurobindo - some aspects of His Vision [1]
Sri Aurobindo And The Mother [1]
Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny [12]
Sri Aurobindo and Integral Yoga [1]
Sri Aurobindo came to Me [8]
Sri Aurobindo for All Ages [5]
Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness [1]
Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume I [3]
Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume II [2]
Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume III [2]
Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume IV [6]
Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine [9]
Sri Aurobindo's Message [1]
Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects [9]
Sri Aurobindo's Savitri - An Approach And A Study [3]
Sri Krishna In Brindavan [1]
Sudhir Kumar Sarkar: A Spirit Indomitable [1]
Synthesis of Yoga in the Upanishads [1]
Talks by Nirodbaran [8]
Talks with Sri Aurobindo [10]
Teilhard de Chardin and our Time [2]
The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri [1]
The Destiny of the Body [6]
The Divine Collaborators [4]
The Future Poetry [1]
The Gita and its Synthesis of Yoga [2]
The Golden Path [4]
The Good Teacher and The Good Pupil [3]
The Grace [1]
The Growth of a Flame [2]
The Hidden Forces of Life [5]
The Human Cycle [13]
The Indian Spirit and the World's Future [7]
The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo [15]
The Life Divine [7]
The Mind Of The Cells [1]
The Mother (biography) [9]
The Mother - Past-Present-Future [1]
The Mother Abides - Final Reflections [6]
The Mother on Auroville [1]
The Mother with Letters on the Mother [16]
The New Synthesis of Yoga [2]
The Practice of the Integral Yoga [22]
The Problem Of Aryan Origins [2]
The Psychic Being [7]
The Renaissance in India [7]
The Riddle of This World [3]
The Role of South India in the Freedom Movement [2]
The Secret Splendour [1]
The Secret of the Veda [3]
The Signature Of Truth [1]
The Spirit of Auroville [1]
The Story of a Soul [8]
The Sun and The Rainbow [5]
The Sunlit Path [6]
The Synthesis of Yoga [17]
The Veda and Indian Culture [2]
The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo [3]
The Wonder that is K D Sethna alias Amal Kiran [1]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 1 [1]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10 [3]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 11 [2]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 3 [4]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 5 [2]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 6 [1]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 7 [1]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 8 [1]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 9 [1]
Towards A New Social Order [1]
Towards A New Society [1]
Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo [2]
Varieties of Yogic Experience and Integral Realisation [3]
Vedic and Philological Studies [1]
Visions of Champaklal [1]
Wager of Ambrosia [2]
What I Have Learnt From The Mother [2]
White Roses [1]
Words of Long Ago [1]
Words of the Mother - I [7]
Words of the Mother - II [9]
Words of the Mother - III [6]
Work - an offering [3]
Writings in Bengali and Sanskrit [1]
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Showing 600 of 1028 result/s found for Spiritual Life

Letters on Yoga - IV  >  Human Relations and the Spiritual Life

... family duties exist so long as one is in the ordinary consciousness of the grahasthan; if the call to a spiritual life comes, whether one keeps to them or not depends partly upon the way of Yoga one follows, partly on one's own spiritual necessity. There are many who pursue inwardly the spiritual life and keep the family duties, not as social duties but as a field for the practice of karmayoga, others... some seeming in conflict with others. Service to parents is part of family and social duty. It has nothing to do in itself with Yoga. Yoga is truth not of family or society, but of spiritual life, and in spiritual life the seeking for the Divine takes precedence of everything. If we ask you to remain still with your father and mother, it is not from the point of view of Truth, but of charity. Four... bring up the child. All these are social relations (and it is not at all a one-sided debt of the child to the father, either), but whatever they are, they cease once one takes to the spiritual life. For the spiritual life does not at all rest on the external physical relations; it is the Divine alone with whom one has then to do. The attachment to parents belongs to the ordinary physical nature—it ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV
[exact]

Letters on Himself and the Ashram  >  Admission, Staying, Departure

... keep him here; forces took him away. Doubts! I repeat that he took himself away. No Force can take a man away, who really wants not to go and really wants the spiritual life. X wanted the "Divine Response" only, not spiritual life—his doubts all rose from that. 2 August 1937 Yes, you can do as you propose. So long as you have the attachment to the family, it is not possible to do any good... uncertain about their capacity or their call, are sometimes allowed to live here outside the Asram (at their own expense), but in connection with it for a time. It is only when they have accepted the spiritual life and are accepted that they can be admitted in the Asram as its members and workers or allowed to stay there for a long time on the same footing as the members. 10 December 1929 I want to... contact with the Force that comes from here. 3 July 1930 Page 572 Write to him that it will be better for him to wait until he has from within himself the true and complete turn to a spiritual life. It is not in his mind only but in his vital nature that there are obstacles to a complete consecration. To come here might give him a stimulus, but it is not sure that it will be anything more ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Himself and the Ashram
[exact]

Letters on Himself and the Ashram  >  Human Relations and the Ashram

... existence which is the spiritual life alone and it could not do that without losing its object and true character. These considerations are placed before you so that you may know the position and keep them in view in advising Z . For she does not seem to understand them and it is this that has created difficulties with X ; he feels that he is being pressed to abandon the spiritual life and that is why... family duties exist so long as one is in the ordinary consciousness of the grihastha; if the call to a spiritual life comes, whether one keeps to them or not depends partly upon the way of Yoga one follows, partly on one's own spiritual necessity. There are many who pursue inwardly the spiritual life and keep the family duties, not as social duties but as a field for the practice of karmayoga, others... thing is for each to do his sadhana to arrive at that new consciousness and realise oneness there. 31 October 1935 I don't think it is much use writing about personal relations in the true spiritual life (which does not yet exist here). None would understand it except as a form of words. Only three points— (1) Its very base would have to be spiritual and psychic and not vital. The vital would ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Himself and the Ashram
[exact]

Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume I  >  1932

... letter, it has become more insistent and abiding. So long as a man has that, he is marked for the spiritual life and I will say that, even if his nature is full of obstacles and crammed with denials and difficulties, and even if he has many years of struggle, he is marked out for success in the spiritual life. What you really have not yet a fixed faith in is the guidance of the Divine, his will to... greater consciousness that we can see whether Doubt is of any utility for the spiritual life. To believe anything and everything is certainly not demanded of the spiritual seeker; such a promiscuous and imbecile credulity would be not only unintellectual, but in the last degree unspiritual. At every moment of the spiritual life until one has got fully into the higher Light, one has to be on one's guard... in your lower vital still regrets what it has lost or, as a price for its adhesion or a compensation—a price to be immediately paid down to it—asks for something similar and equivalent in the spiritual life. It refuses to believe that there is a greater compensation, a larger vital life waiting for it, something positive in which there shall not be the old inadequacy and unrest and final dissatisfaction ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume I
[exact]

Sri Aurobindo - His Life Unique  >  Sri Aurobindo in Baroda

... Rajnarayan Bose.... In his mind and life he was at once a Hindu Maharshi, a Moslem Sufi and a Christian theist of the Unitarian type... He... seemed to have worked out a synthesis in his own spiritual life between the three dominant world cultures that have come face to face in modern times... He was Aravinda's maternal grandfather; and Aravinda owed not only his rich spiritual nature but even... virile affirmation of life, but of a life for God and in God; it was a 35. "It was something from behind which got the idea accepted by the mind; mine was a side door entry into the spiritual life." Life of Sri Aurobindo by A.B.Purani. 36. "To reach Nirvana was the first radical result of my own Yoga.... I lived in that Nirvana day and night before it began to admit other things... attention: it is his complete, unreserved, and joyous surrender to God. The whole secret of Sri Aurobindo's greatness lies in this integral surrender. But more of this when we come to study his spiritual life. We offer below an English translation of some of the most important passages from Sri Aurobindo's letters to his wife: My dearest Mrinalini, I have received your letter of the ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo - His Life Unique
[exact]

Letters on Yoga - I  >  Morality and Yoga

... Religion, Idealism, Morality and Yoga Letters on Yoga - I Chapter III Morality and Yoga The Spiritual Life and the Ordinary Life The spiritual life ( adhyātma jīvana ), the religious life ( dharma jīvana ) and the ordinary human life of which morality is a part are three quite different things and one must know which one desires and not confuse the... religious life may be the first approach to the spiritual, but very often it is only a turning about in a round of rites, ceremonies and practices or set ideas and forms without any issue. The spiritual life, on the contrary, proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant and separated from its true self and from God, to a greater consciousness in... Morality is a part of the ordinary life; it is an attempt to govern the outward conduct by certain mental rules or to form the character by these rules in the image of a certain mental ideal. The spiritual life goes beyond the mind; it enters into the deeper consciousness of the Spirit and acts out of the truth of the Spirit. As for the question about the ethical life and the need to realise God, it depends ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I
[exact]

Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume III  >  Correspondence 1936

... see I was obliged by the irony of things or rather by the inexorable truth to become a Guru and preach the Guruvada [the school of thought in which the help of the Guru is indispensable for spiritual life]. Such is Fate. Shall send Force. But don't wrestle too much; go slowly and let the Force work. January 20,1936 I note the offer for the houses—a chance, but I suppose the... we will keep it hanging in the clouds for the gods to deal with it. Page 55 What is most important is that you should not rush away throwing behind you your aspiration and your spiritual life and indulging dark suggestions of death and defeat. To go in that way or that mood would be disastrous and must be avoided altogether. For the rest we will make an effort for the "real relief... if not already repenting. He has suffered anyhow. I have not myself read Amiel. I knew of him only from things written about him. He appears to have been a man with some insight into spiritual life and a settled aspiration towards it. As for Saurin he has written expressing repentance and the desire to change. But we have to wait to see him in his acts—there is much that is mixed ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume III
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Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness

... individual. And for good reason: this is not about learning a foreign language but about oneself, and no two natures are alike: The ideal I put before our yoga does not bind all spiritual life and endeavor. The spiritual life is not a thing that can be formulated in a rigid definition or bound by a fixed mental rule; it is a vast field of evolution, an immense kingdom potentially larger than the other... intense, within the cells of the body. It is the heat released by the awakening of the Consciousness-Force in Matter: It's as if our spiritual life were made of silver , explains the Mother, while the supramental life is made of gold; as if the whole spiritual life here were a silvery vibration – not cold, but just a light, a light that goes to the top, a light altogether pure, pure and intense; but... everyday life appears as a network filled with signs waiting to be recognized. Everything is connected. The world is a miracle. Page 99 We may make a childish mistake when we imagine spiritual life to be full of visions and apparitions and "supernatural" phenomena. The Divine is nearer to us than we think, the "miracle" less pompous and more profound than all this primitive imagery. Once ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
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Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo  >  Mind and the Spiritual Life

... Mind and the Spiritual Life There are similarities as well as differences in the perspectives of Eckhart and Sri Aurobindo regarding the role of mind in the spiritual life. To Eckhart, mind, from the spiritual viewpoint, is the absence of consciousness. To be identified with mind is to be unconscious; it is to be not present. The one aim of the spiritual life is to liberate oneself... teaching, whereas Sri Aurobindo regards an intellectual preparation as a possible "first step in a powerful Yoga" in spiritual life. This is probably because Eckhart had a transformative experience Page 87 without any prior acquisition of mental knowledge about spiritual life. The mental understanding of his experience, as he says, came to him considerably later when he read spiritual... a form of intelligence or consciousness; it is only a tiny aspect of the vast Intelligence that operates in the universe. Mind, Eckhart says, is a wonderful tool for practical purposes, but in spiritual life it has no helpful role. On the contrary, it is the greatest hindrance to be overcome because one tends to identify with it and mistake it for the self. Therefore, Eckhart employs only a few mental ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo
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In the Mother's Light  >  The Mind

... In the Mother's Light The Mind WHAT is the proper place and function of the mind in spiritual life ? Is it a help or a hindrance ? Can spiritual illumination come by mere intellectual development ? How should one deal with the mind in order to make it aid and subserve one's spiritual end? The mind is the pride, power and highest possession of man until he rises... immensity and complexity can- w achieve so prompt an ascent.”¹ A clear light in the intelligence ¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother. Page 195 is a great asset in spiritual life. A wide sweep of perception, a penetrating discernment, a calm and balanced judgment and a constant uplook are the best mental safeguard against the insidious attacks of the lower nature. ... was the helper; Reason is the bar.”¹ Let us first pass in brief and rapid review the characteristic traits of the human mind before we proceed to consider how we ought to deal with it in spiritual life. The mind is an instrument of analysis and synthesis. It cuts up things from the whole and deals with them as if they were separate integers. It takes an obvious parcel of a whole and dissects ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   In the Mother's Light
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Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  22 October 1958

... in some cases quite definitively, irrevocably. And as soon as one is turned towards the spiritual life and reality, one touches the Infinite, the Eternal, and there can no longer be any question of a greater or smaller number of capacities or possibilities. It is the mental conception of spiritual life which may say that one has more or less capacity to live spiritually, but this is not at all... established in that state oneself, when one lives within it and not when one is trying to live within it—when one is there. And that is why all those who truly have a spiritual life cannot be deceived. An imitation of spiritual life may delude people who still live in the mind, but those who have realised this reversal of consciousness in themselves, whose relation with the outer being is completely... does not understand. So long as one is in the mental consciousness, even the highest, and sees the spiritual life from outside, one judges with one's mental faculties, with the habit of seeking, erring, correcting, progressing, and seeking once again; and one thinks that those who are in the spiritual life suffer from the same incapacity, but that is a very gross mistake! When the reversal of the being ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)
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Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo  >  Psychology

... for the spiritual life comes to a man is also sometimes very sudden. For instance, in the case of Lala it came in the following way. One day he was going on the way when he heard two fisher-women speaking to each other. One said "It is late, darkness is coming, difficulties may come, Page 196 let us hurry ." This gave him the necessary push for entering the spiritual life. Sri... it with calm and equality – Samata – and try to understand what it is and what place it occupies in the Lila and its purpose. Disciple : Generally, it is supposed that a man takes to the spiritual life as a result of dissatisfaction. Is the dissatisfaction a psychic dissatisfaction in its nature ? Sri Aurobindo : What do you mean by psychic dissatisfaction ? Disciple : The psychic... Sri Aurobindo : Yes. Generally most of man's activities are dictated from outside influences and not from the inner being. Disciple : So it is the soul that receives the call for the spiritual life ? Page 195 Sri Aurobindo : Yes. Disciple : Is it possible for the whole psychic being to cone at once to the surface or does it come gradually ? Sri Aurobindo . ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5  >  More of Yajnavalkya

... of domestic life and is now at the end of it. He thinks the time has now come to him to take to spiritual life and enter into vānaprastha. He had married and had two wives. So one day he called the first wife, Katyayani, and said to her: "Katyayani, I am now leaving this life and entering the spiritual life. You have given me comfort and happiness. I am thankful to you for that. Whatever I have, my ... Yajnavalkya when he had become a full-fledged rishi, a guru with an Ashram and disciples. Today I will tell you something of the earlier Yajnavalkya, the beginning of his rishihood, the start of his spiritual life. You know the structure of the old Indian society, it consisted of four castes, varnas, and four stages, āśramas. I shall speak of the āśramas now. Each individual person had to follow a definite... gārhashtya. Next when you have fully enjoyed or fulfilled the duty of the worldly life, you pass on to the next stage that is called the vānaprastha . That is the hermit life, the beginning of the true spiritual life. Finally at the   Page 53 end of the vānaprastha, you pass still beyond and adopt the life of the sannyasi, abandoning everything, concentrating wholly on the ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5
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Six Talks  >  MORE OF YAJNAVALKYA

... domestic life and is now at the end of it. He thinks the time has now come to him to take to spiritual life and enter into vanaprastha. He had married and had two wives. So one day he called the first wife, Katyayani, and said to her: "Katyayani, I am now leaving this life and entering the spiritual life. You have given me comfort and happiness. I am thankful to you for that. Whatever I have, my... Yajnavalkya when he had become a full-fledged rishi, a guru with an Ashram and disciples. Today I will tell you something of the earlier Yajnavalkya, the beginning of his rishihood, the start of his spiritual life. You know the structure of the old Indian society, it consisted of four castes, varnas, and four stages, asramas. I shall speak of the asramas now. Each individual person had to follow a... Next when you have fully enjoyed or fulfilled the duty of the worldly life, you pass on to the next stage that is called the vanaprastha. That is the hermit life, the beginning of the true spiritual life. Finally at the end of the vanaprastha, you pass still beyond and adopt the life of the sannyasi, abandoning everything, concentrating wholly on the Supreme Truth and merging into it. Now ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Six Talks
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Guidance on Education  >  Conversations

... the teachers were to concentrate solely on the subjects they are teaching, for you are taking care of the spiritual life?" I shall give him this reply: There is no "spiritual life"! It is still the old idea, still the old idea of the sage, the sanyasin, the... who represents spiritual life, while all the others represent ordinary life and it is not true, it is not true, it is not true at all... species. Reason is the master of the nature of mankind. One must obey reason and absolutely refuse to be the slave of instincts. And here I am not talking to you about yoga, I am not talking about spiritual life, not at all; it has nothing to do with that. It is the basic wisdom of human life, purely human life: every human being who obeys anything other than reason is a kind of brute lower than the animal... difficult to obtain, and you make a great effort to deserve it. Page-208 Most of you came here when you were very small, at an age when there can be no question of the spiritual life or spiritual teaching it would be altogether premature. You have indeed lived in this atmosphere but without even being aware of it; you are accustomed to seeing me, hearing me; I speak to you ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Guidance on Education
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Sri Aurobindo - A dream-dialogue with children  >  The Ashram Children And Sri Aurobindo’s Life—A Dream-Dialogue

... He does not keep me in want; then why should I worry?' " "And I had so many other things to attend to. Also, I grew progressively more involved with my country's problems. Add to them my own spiritual life. Each problem was Page 95 complex, and most of them quite urgent. In fact, if I begin telling you about my political activities my stories will resemble the Arabian Nights! And I am... captive nation the fire and force enabling it to become free. "All these are instances of the power of the mantra - in the field of nationalism and politics. But its effect in poetry and in the spiritual life is truly miraculous. Have you heard about the Rishis of the Vedas and the Upanishads, and of the Riks or Shiokas they uttered? A divine hearing had revealed these verses to them, and so it is said... involved in the Nationalist Movement, I had sought to share my path with my wife, so that she might be my support and a partner in my endeavour. But the moment I realised that I was meant to lead a spiritual life, I tried to prepare her too for such a life." "Didn't she suffer terribly when they arrested you? She hadn't had any spiritual realisations then, had she?" "No, of course not! But she already ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo - A dream-dialogue with children
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The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Threefold Life

... all things, equally blissful in universe and outside it, untouched by Page 21 the imperfections and limitations of the forms and activities in which it dwells, are the glory of the spiritual life. In each of these forms Nature acts both individually and collectively; for the Eternal affirms Himself equally in the single form and in the group-existence, whether family, clan and nation... priest or the learned theologian who can be trusted to provide him with a safe and ordinary spiritual pabulum. But to the man who would assert for himself the liberty of spiritual experience and the spiritual life, he assigns, if he admits him at all, not the vestment of the priest but the robe of the Sannyasin. Outside society let him exercise his dangerous freedom. So he may even serve as a human lightning-rod... not of the Truth but of every lie and illusion, not of Love and Beauty but of an encompassing discord and ugliness, not of the Law of Truth but of victorious selfishness and sin? Therefore the spiritual life tends easily in the saint and Sannyasin to withdraw from the material existence and reject it either wholly and physically or in the spirit. It sees this world as the kingdom of evil or of ignorance ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga
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Mother’s Agenda 1967  >  April 5, 1967

... y on the subjects they teach, for you are there to look after spiritual life?" For? "For you are there to look after spiritual life." I am going to answer him, "There's no such thing as 'spiritual life'!" It's still the old idea. Still the old idea of the sage, the yogi, the sannyasi, the ... who represents spiritual life, while all others represent ordinary life—but it's not true! It's... question. Have you heard what I said to the School teachers?... 1 They've asked me another question. This is the beginning of my answer: "It is the division between 'ordinary life' and 'spiritual life' which is antiquated and obsolete...." ( Then Mother gives Satprem roses and a garland of flowers called "adoration" ) 2 Do you want this? ( Satprem accepts unenthusiastically... I can't quote because I'll quote it incorrectly, but he had this experience, "If men knew how marvellous it is, they wouldn't hesitate for a minute." Now they still make a distinction: the "spiritual life" and the "ordinary life." Only, one should have what I had when I was very young: the sense of material realization in its utmost perfection, the will for perfection THERE. One should have this ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1967
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Sri Aurobindo - His Life Unique  >  Sri Aurobindo at Pondicherry

... always laid a dominant stress and I now lay an entire stress on the spiritual life, but my idea of spirituality has nothing to do with ascetic withdrawal or contempt or disgust of secular things. There is to me nothing Page 416 secular, all human activity is for me a thing to be included in a complete spiritual life, and the importance of politics at the present time is very great... methods and habits of the past can no longer be of any use. It seems to me that what was once a result is now only a preparation. I feel as if I had done nothing yet, as if I had not lived the spiritual life, as if I was only entering upon the way which leads to it; it seems to me that I know nothing, that I am incapable of formulating anything, that all experience is yet to commence. It is as if... dominate the mental and physical life; to develop the most profound and vital methods of psychological self-discipline and self-development so that the mental and psychical life of man may express the spiritual life through the utmost possible expansion of its own riches, power and complexity; and to seek for the means and motives by which his external life, his society and his institutions may remould themselves ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo - His Life Unique
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Letters on Yoga - II  >  Seeking the Divine

... unready. But of course that is not the spiritual life, it is only a sort of elementary religious approach. For the spiritual life to give and not to demand is the rule. The sadhak however can ask for the Divine Force to aid him in keeping his health or recovering it if he does that as part of his sadhana so that his body may be able and fit for the spiritual life and a capable instrument for the Divine... Chapter I Seeking the Divine The True Object of Spiritual Seeking To find the Divine is indeed the first reason for seeking the spiritual Truth and the spiritual life; it is the one thing indispensable and all the rest is nothing without it. The Divine once found, to manifest Him,—that is, first of all to transform one's own limited consciousness into the Divine... down when she said this; it was simply a suggestion which, if something in you could seize and profit by it, would make things less slow and difficult than they actually are. Dedication to the Spiritual Life This Yoga demands a total dedication of the life to the aspiration for the discovery and embodiment of the Divine Truth and to nothing else whatever. To divide your life between the Divine and ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - II
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The Life Divine  >  The Divine Life

... realised life of the spirit in the manifestation in earth-nature. It is almost universally supposed that spiritual life must necessarily be a life of ascetic spareness, a pushing away of all that is not absolutely needed for the bare maintenance of the body; and this is valid for a spiritual life which is in its nature and intention a life of withdrawal from life. Even apart from that ideal, it might... spiritual being in us and the divine life of a perfected consciousness in a supramental or gnostic power of spiritual being that must be the secret burden and intention of evolutionary Nature. All spiritual life is in its principle a growth into divine living. It is difficult to fix the frontier where the mental ceases and the divine life begins, for the two project into each other and there is a long... of the being and, with that perfection and as a necessity of its complete action, it must have evolved its own dynamis and instrumentation of the outer existence. There can undoubtedly be a spiritual life within, a kingdom of heaven within us which is not dependent on any outer manifestation or instrumentation or formula of external being. The inner life has a supreme spiritual importance and the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine
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Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume II  >  Correspondence 1935

... but allowing all kinds of forces to play through them, e.g., in the typical description of the Paramahamsa. The ideal I put before our Yoga is one thing but it does not bind all spiritual life and endeavour. The spiritual life is not a thing that can be formulated in a rigid definition or bound by a fixed mental rule; it is a vast field of evolution, an immense kingdom potentially larger than the other... emphasis on the mastery of the vital, its subordination and subjection to the spiritual and the psychic is also nothing new, strange or exorbitant. It has been insisted on always for any kind of spiritual life; even the Yogas which seek most to use the vital/ like certain forms of Vaishnavism,, yet insist on the purification and the total offering of it to, the Divine—and the relations with the Divine... like Harm's qua aesthetic poetry. But it is not what I was going to say. I was going to say that Harin's collapse—he looked perfectly annihilated—made me think why should a seeker, like him, after spiritual life (for a seeker he was, was he not?) head so straight for disaster especially with you and Mother as his gurus? And if a man refuses to listen to his gurus and claims to be wiser and more righteous ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume II
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Sri Aurobindo - a biography and a history  >  The Yoga and The Ashram

... the instrument one and the same, the Divine itself? The sadhaks have no doubt come to the Ashram to live the higher spiritual life, but this life is still of the earth, and has to stand the tests of viability and effectivity. The Ashram doesn't treat "spiritual life" as something apart from - much less quite antagonistic to - everyday life. The "spiritual" problem is to open one's consciousness... background, he will deal with each in a manner appropriate to him alone. But of course there must be some wide base of shared faith among the disciples and a feeling of reverence for the Guru. The spiritual life implies an impulse towards the illimitable, the immaculate, the perfect. The pull is always from the narrow, the selfish, the egoistic, the temporal to the horizons of the higher knowledge, leading... Ashram together. The problem of 'human relationships' is a ticklish one for the sadhak, but Sri Aurobindo's guidelines in the matter can give no room for ambiguity: When one enters the spiritual life, the family ties which belong to the ordinary nature fall away - one becomes indifferent to the old things.... There need be no harshness in it at all. To remain tied to the old physical affections ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo - a biography and a history
[exact]

The Renaissance in India  >  Indian Spirituality and Life - 2

... into stuff of the spiritual life. And every excess of emphasis on the splendour and richness and power and pleasures of life had its recoil and was balanced by a corresponding potent stress on spiritual asceticism as the higher way. The two trends, on one side an extreme of the richness of life experience, on the other an extreme and pure rigorous intensity of the spiritual life, accompanied each other;... an incomplete, outward and superficial knowledge. To have made the discovery of our deepest being and hidden spiritual nature is the first necessity and to have erected the living of an inmost spiritual life into the aim of existence is the characteristic sign of a spiritual culture. This endeavour takes in certain religions the form of a spiritual exclusiveness which revolts from the outward existence... its intense experiences as the one thing needful; the development of the ethical sense was the sole mental necessity, its translation into act the sole indispensable condition or result of the spiritual life. Indian spirituality reposed on too wide and many-sided a culture to admit as its base this narrow movement; but on its more solitary summits, at least in its later period, it tended to a spiritual ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Renaissance in India
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Questions and Answers (1929-1931)  >  Conjugate Verses

... no lack of men who wear the yellow robe but are not purified of their taints. The yellow robe is taken as the symbol of consecration to the spiritual life, the external sign of renunciation of all that is not an exclusive concentration upon the spiritual life. What Buddhism means by "impurities" is chiefly egoism and ignorance; because, from the Buddhist standpoint, the greatest of all taints is... his senses, who knows not how to moderate his appetite, who is lazy and wastes his energies. In Buddhist literature, Mara represents the Spirit of Evil, all that is contrary or opposed to the spiritual life; in certain cases he represents death—not so much physical death as death to truth, to the spiritual being. Here, it means that so long as one does not control one's senses and desires, and... insisted upon here are lack of self-control and lack of loyalty. Loyalty means here sincerity, honesty; what the Dhammapada censures most severely is hypocrisy: to pretend that you want to live the spiritual life and not to do it, to pretend that you want to seek the truth and not to do it, to display the external signs of consecration to the divine life—here symbolised by the yellow robe—but within to ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1929-1931)
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Questions and Answers (1954)  >  6 October 1954

... are enclosed in your own spiritual atmosphere. And that is how one obtains it: by turning Page 356 one's attention solely to the spiritual life, by reading only what can help in the spiritual life, by doing only what leads you to the spiritual life, and so on. Then you create your own atmosphere. But naturally, if you open all the doors, listen to what people tell you, follow the advice... proportion to the result, because these are side issues, not the central, the most important thing. These are side issues which may be interesting, but in itself this is not the spiritual life; one may have a spiritual life without this. Now, the two together can give you perhaps a greater capacity. But for this too you must tell yourself, "If I ought to have it—if I take the true attitude of surrender... intellectual and spiritual preparation, and who through some sort of fantasy would like to have experiences. You could say to him, "Yes, what's the use? It is not this that will lead you to the spiritual life. It can help you if you have taken up the path. And if you have taken up the path in all sincerity, well, they will come to the extent that they are useful. But to seek experience for experience's ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1954)
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The Sunlit Path  >  Morality, Religion, Yoga

... pattern, everybody is to be made uniformly and faultlessly the same. It is because morality is of this rigid unreal nature that it is in its principle and its working the contrary of the spiritual life. The spiritual life reveals the one essence in all, but reveals too its infinite diversity; it works for diversity in oneness and for perfection in that diversity. Morality lifts up one artificial standard... Morality, Religion, Yoga Spirituality and Morality [There is a] great difference between spirituality and morality, two things that are constantly confused with each other. The spiritual life, the life of Yoga, has for its object to grow into the divine consciousness and for its result to purify, intensify, glorify and perfect what is in you. It makes you a power for manifesting of... differing climates and times, epochs and countries. The moral notion goes so far as to say that there are good desires and bad desires and calls on you to accept the one and reject the other. But the spiritual life demands that you should reject desire altogether. Its law is that you must cast aside all movements that draw you away from the Divine. You must reject them, not because they are bad in themselves ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Sunlit Path
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Principles and Goals of Integral Education  >  SAICE: Courses of Study

... teachers were to concentrate solely on the subjects they are teaching, for you are taking care of the spiritual life?" The Mother's Rejoinder: "There is no 'spiritual life'! It is still the old idea, still the old idea of the sage, the sannyasin, the... who represents spiritual life, while all the others represent ordinary life —and it is not true, it is not true, it is not true... synthesis, a University will be established for all kinds of studies. Our school will form a nucleus of that University." (CWM, Vol. 12, p. 218) (2)"The division between 'ordinary life' and 'spiritual life' is an outdated antiquity." (Ibid., p. 403) (3)A teacher complained to the Mother that [what, according to his estimation, were] trivial and useless things were being taught [to the students... Page 99 know from you [Mother,] if the warning given by Sri Aurobindo in this letter against enthusiastically communicating to the young people the ideas and feelings about spiritual life should be kept in mind while speaking to our students in the class? Is there a danger of 'lighting an imitative and unreal fire' in them as Sri Aurobindo says here?" The Mother's Answer: ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Principles and Goals of Integral Education
[exact]

Letters on Himself and the Ashram  >  Entering Sri Aurobindo's Path

... political call, he certainly cannot come here. It is better if he exhausts these desires of the ordinary nature, before he takes up the spiritual life. If at any time he feels them fallen away from him and only the spiritual attraction left, he can then take up the spiritual life, though it would still remain to be decided which path was the right one for him. Sri Aurobindo's path of Yoga is a very difficult... ask about your friend, X . It is very evident from his own letter that he is not ready for the spiritual life or fit for Yoga. If he were to attempt it in his present condition, he would only be wasting time and energy (which could be turned to other purposes) in a futile endeavour. The spiritual life is only for those who have a single-minded or else a dominant turn towards it sufficient to carry... You may get his photograph—it may help to see what kind of nature he has. But there is no need to go out of the way to persuade him; from his letter he does not seem altogether ready for the spiritual life. His idea of life seems to be rather moral and philanthropic than spiritual at present; and behind it is the attachment to the family life. If the impulse to seek the Divine of which he speaks ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Himself and the Ashram
[exact]

Letters on Yoga - IV  >  Sex

... delight, there is a rasa in torturing oneself, the masochistic delight—modern psychology is full of these two. Merely having a rasa is not a sufficient reason for keeping things as part of the spiritual life. It is possible for anger to be felt as pleasant—there are many people who dislike sweet things—so also there are many, especially women, who dislike the sex-sensation, even hate it. 4... equality with ambition etc. from the point of view of danger, only its action is usually less ostensible—i.e. the Hostiles don't put it forward so openly as a thing to be followed after in the spiritual life. This movement [ of vital interchange ] is a wrong and a dangerous one. It is not so much repeating the old game under the garb of Yoga, but, what is worse, turning the Yoga-power itself... increasing of the difficulties. For the spiritual endeavour is part of your nature and, if it is difficult to get rid of the sex-impulse, you would find it still more difficult to do without the spiritual life in you. Sex is the one difficulty in its way that is hardest to get rid of, because it sticks and returns, but one has to be more persistent than the difficulty—there is no other way. By ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV
[exact]

Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects  >  Continence In Spiritual Life

... can be no basis of spiritual life. ' Naturally, when one begins spiritual life under the aegis of a Guru or competent spiritual teacher, many of these qualities will be lacking in the seeker but by practice one comes to acquire them and slowly and gradually enter into spiritual life. The one most imperative need on the part of the seeker is sincerity without which spiritual life is impossible. So... Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects Continence In Spiritual Life Spiritual seekers all over the world know that spiritual life is based upon certain moral rules and principles. These are truthfulness, non-injury to others, non-stealing, continence etc. called Yama in Raja Yoga. The others are Niyama which consists of cleanliness, contentment... So those who aspire for spiritual life must be above all very sincere. In spite of his failings in other respects, if he is sincere, he must arrive at the goal one day be it in this or some other life. The spiritual quest is such that once it is begun it will continue throughout our lives till the goal, that is, Yoga (Union) with the Divine is achieved. It may take 'more or less time but patience and ...

Jibendra Kumar Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects
[exact]

The Practice of the Integral Yoga  >  The Ninefold Daily Sadhana

... The only reason is that our seeking for the Divine and for spiritual life lacks in genuine commitment and sufficient intensity. It is not supported by any ardent will; it arises out of a tepid wish and an easily dispensable thirst for the attainment. The normal attitude of an average sadhaka takes this regrettable form: 'If the spiritual life comes to me, well and good; but for whatever reason if it... The Practice of the Integral Yoga II The Ninefold Daily Sadhana It is often seen that although many of us would like to lead a spiritual life and have for our Goal the union with the Divine, yet days and months and years pass without contributing in any way to our progress on the chosen Path. To our utter dismay we discover that we have been... expression. But the sadhaka being a sadhaka cannot mortgage his freedom in such an ignoble way. He has to reject without exception all the pushes which are incompatible with his avowed aim of leading a spiritual life. But rejection is never an easy affair. It inevitably encounters a very serious resistance from ingrained habits and the promptings of the instincts. At these moments the sadhaka may feel tempted ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Practice of the Integral Yoga
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In the Mother's Light  >  Yogic Action-2

... would do well to lay to heart and practise. The first is that the external circumstances have not much intrinsic importance. Their value lies in the idea we form and the use we make of them. In spiritual life it is always the inner condition, the trend and drift of the psychological elements, the attitude and the spirit that count, and not so much the outer circumstances, whose favour and menace... Providence that is working out, in its inscrutable way, the liberation and perfection of his complex nature. He ceases to take the circumstances at their face value, for, in fact, they have none in spiritual life, but goes behind them to glimpse the hand of the Guide. Proceeding still farther, he learns to look upon all circumstances, good and bad, scowling and smiling, with the calm gaze of eternity—they... and domination of the mental ego spells an arrest of the spiritual evolution, though it may rig out an ethical Joseph and make him masquerade as a spiritual Paul. What is most needed in spiritual life is an infinite plasticity and an ungrudging capacity for renouncing the lower for the sake of the higher, and ascending from the plains to the plateaus and from the plateaus to the radiant peaks ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   In the Mother's Light
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Questions and Answers (1929-1931)  >  21 April 1929

... to live the spiritual life. When it takes an effort to come out of it, then indeed your meditation can be an indication that you are in the spiritual life. There are disciplines such as Hatha Yoga and Raja Yoga that one can practise and yet have nothing to do with the spiritual life; the former arrives mostly at body control, the latter at mind control. But to enter the spiritual life means to take... are thinking all the time, "Ah, but there may be a stone here or a stone there", you cannot dive. But you see the sea and so you can jump straight into it. But how are you to jump into the spiritual life? Of course, you must have had some glimpse of the Divine Reality, as you must see the sea and know something of it before you can jump into it. That glimpse is usually the awakening of the... it, you may do Yoga for years and yet know nothing of a true spiritual living. Take the whole and entire plunge and you will be free from this outer confusion and get the true experience of the spiritual life. Page 22 ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1929-1931)
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Questions and Answers (1953)  >  2 September 1953

... very much restricted. Do castes have any importance in the spiritual life? Castes? What has that got to do with spiritual life? Absolutely nothing. It is merely a social organisation, that is all. It is said that the Brahmins are more advanced for serving the Divine? They say many things. Page 245 Spiritual life does not depend upon these considerations, not at all. Certain... reach identification with the Divine? Page 244 It is impossible. Religion is always a limitation for the spirit. If a man has a spiritual life independently of his mental formations and the set limits in which he lives, then this spiritual life makes him, so to say, cross the religious principles and enter something higher. But his consecration must come from within and not be formal... the supreme, the only truth, all others are in falsehood or inferior'.... "This attitude is natural to the religious mind; but it is just that which makes religion stand in the way of the spiritual life. The articles and dogmas of a religion are mind-made things and, if you cling to them and shut yourself up in a code of life made out for you, you do not know and cannot know the truth of the spirit ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1953)
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Mother’s Agenda 1971  >  April 17, 1971

... consciousness. "When we begin living the spiritual life, a reversal of consciousness takes place which for us is the proof that we have entered the spiritual life; well, yet another one occurs when we enter the supramental world. "And in fact each time a new world opens up, there will perhaps be a new reversal of this kind. "It's as if our entire spiritual life were made of silver, whereas the supramental... supramental life is made of gold—as if our entire spiritual life Page 104 here were a silvery vibration, not cold but simply a light, a light that goes right to the summit, an absolutely pure light—pure and intense—but in the other, in the supramental world, there is a richness and a power that makes all the difference. This whole spiritual life of the psychic being and of all our present c... the Divine. The Divine is everywhere, in everything, and if he is hidden, it is because we do not take the trouble to find him." ( Questions and Answers , 8.13.1958 ) And again this: "For many, spiritual life is meditation. As long as that nonsense is not uprooted from human consciousness, the supramental force will always find it very difficult not to be swallowed up in the obscurity of an uncomprehending ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1971
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The Practice of the Integral Yoga  >  The Conquest of Self-love

... XIV The Conquest of Self-love A total and unreserved self-giving to the Divine on the part of a sadhaka is the key secret of living a truly spiritual life. And Sri Aurobindo has reminded us that, in practice, this "self-giving... means a change from ego-centricity to God-centricity". (Letters on Yoga, p. 1374) But this 'God-centricity' is not... question is addressed to us seeking some clarification: "How do you know that you really love the Divine?", our reply will perhaps be: "Well, we intensely like any discussion about the Divine and spiritual life; we sit in meditation at regular intervals; praying to the Divine is a normal feature of our life; we do not forget to offer flowers before the Images; and, of course, an attentive reading of... water on the top of its branches with a hope to nourish it, will the tree grow in its stature or even survive? To allow self-love to sneak in is tantamount to the cutting of the roots of our spiritual life. Sri Aurobindo pin-points the real malady afflicting many sadhakas when he writes: "Even in their sadhana the I is always there, — my sadhana, my progress, my everything.... it ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Practice of the Integral Yoga
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The Veda and Indian Culture  >  The Ancient Book of Wisdom

... of the terrestrial and physical life. Not only in India, but all over the world, there has been a dichotomy and opposition between the spiritual life and physical life. There has been the rejection of Matter by those who uphold the ideal of spiritual life, and there has been the rejection of the Spirit by those who uphold the ideal of a perfect physical life. It seems now as though these rejections... n to leave ordinary life by enlargement, by travel, and by detachment, symbolized by dwelling in the forest), and sanyasa (final renunciation of ordinary life for the exclusive pursuit of spiritual life), were conceived as psychological stages of a large and flexible framework for the growth of the individual. And the general conditions of social life were so organized as to provide to each... and totemism have been allowed to play a role in its complex totality, although their external forms have been discouraged and are not valid or applicable to those who lead an inner mental and spiritual life. It is this complexity that bewilders the foreign student when he tries to define Indian spirituality and religion in terms and under criteria that are not born of the Indian experiment. But ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Veda and Indian Culture
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Life of Sri Aurobindo  >  Pondicherry: 1910-1926

... them. I have always laid a dominant stress and I now lay an entire stress on the spiritual life, but my idea of spirituality has nothing to do with ascetic withdrawal or contempt or disgust of secular things. There is to me nothing secular, all human activity is for me a thing to be included in a complete spiritual life, and the importance of politics at the present time is very great. But my line and... Ibid., pp. 208-09. Page 186 present political situation and Das's own spiritual life were the main topics of conversation. There was also some talk about the Swarajya Party: Sri Aurobindo gave his support to the for­mation of the party. Sri Aurobindo was ready to help Das in his spiritual life, if Das was willing to leave politics and devote himself exclusively to sadhana. As Das... dominate the mental and physical life; to develop the most profound and vital methods of psychological self-discipline and self-development so that the mental and psychical life of man may express the spiritual life through the utmost possible expansion ¹ Sri Aurobindo, Supplement , p. 456. ² Sri Aurobindo, On Himself , p. 374. Page 156 of its own richness, power and ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life of Sri Aurobindo
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Mother or The New Species - II  >  8: The Triple End

... reversal of consciousness. When we begin living the spiritual life, a reversal of consciousness takes place which for us is the proof that we have entered the spiritual life; well, yet another occurs when we enter the supramental world. And probably each time a new world opens up, there will again be a new reversal. This is why even our spiritual life, which is such a total reversal compared to ordinary... entire spiritual life were made of silver, whereas the supramental life is made of gold—as if our entire spiritual life here were a vibration of silver, not cold but simply a light, a light that goes right to the summit, an absolutely pure light, pure and intense; but in the other, in the supramental one, there is a richness and a power that make all the difference. This whole spiritual life of the ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The New Species - II
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Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  13 August 1958

... about spiritual life?... Do you have a particular question? You mean you have started the meditations, Mother? Yes!... And giving you explanations on what I read. We have even begun, in the small class, to meditate on the disciplines which are necessary to lead a spiritual life. And when I took up the reading of the Dhammapada, we read many things leading to the knowledge of spiritual life. But... 13 August 1958 Sweet Mother, in July 1953 you told us that after five years you would give us lessons on spiritual life. 1 I have brought what you said, Sweet Mother. Really! That is interesting! ( Mother reads the text given by the child ) Has it been printed? No, Mother. Oh! I like the last... on that day, I... Oh! I wrote here—it is something I wrote... It is written in Conversations, 2 Sweet Mother. There I have written about the confusion made between asceticism and spiritual life, and then I promise that one day I shall speak to you about the confusion people make between what they call God and what I call the Divine. But I have already spoken to you about that several ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)
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Questions and Answers (1956)  >  9 May 1956

... Sweet Mother, where does our true spiritual life begin? The true spiritual life begins when one is in communion with the Divine in the psychic, when one is conscious of the divine Presence in the psychic and in constant communion with the psychic. Then the spiritual life begins, not before. The true spiritual life. When one is united with one's psychic being and conscious... from this divine Presence, and when the will has become a conscious collaborator with the divine Will―that is the starting-point. Before that, one may be an aspirant to the spiritual life, but one doesn't have a spiritual life. Sweet Mother, I would like to have the explanation of a sentence. Sri Aurobindo has said somewhere, "Materially you are nothing, spiritually you are everything." That ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1956)
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On Education  >  5 April 1967

... the teachers were to concentrate solely on the subjects they are teaching, for you are taking care of the spiritual life?" I shall give him this reply: There is no "spiritual life"! It is still the old idea, still the old idea of the sage, the sannyasin, the... who represents spiritual life, while all the others represent ordinary life—and it is not true, it is not true, it is not true at all. ... an answer to a question. Do you know what I told the teachers of the school? I have been asked another question. Here is the beginning of my reply: "The division between 'ordinary life' and 'spiritual life' is an outdated antiquity." Did you read his question? Read it again to me. "We discussed the future. It seemed to me that nearly all the teachers were eager to do something so that the... opposition between Truth and Falsehood, it is a little better; I don't say it is perfect, but it is a little better. So, in all things, Falsehood and Truth are mixed everywhere: in the so-called "spiritual life", in sannyasins, in swamis, in those who think they represent the life divine on earth, all that—there also, there is a mixture of Falsehood and Truth. It would be better not to make any division ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   On Education
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Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960  >  November 15, 1958

... reversal of consciousness. When we begin living the spiritual life, a reversal of consciousness takes place which for us is the proof that we have entered the spiritual life; well, yet another occurs when we enter the supramental world. And probably each time a new world opens up, there will again be a new reversal. This is why even our spiritual life, which is such a total reversal compared to ordinary... values are almost opposite. It can be expressed in this way (but it's quite approximate, more than diminished or deformed): it's as if our entire spiritual life were made of silver, whereas the supramental life is made of gold—as if our entire spiritual life here were a vibration of silver, not gold but simply a light, a light that goes right to the summit, an absolutely pure light, pure and intense;... intense; but in the other, in the supramental world, there is a richness and a power that make all Page 236 the difference. This whole spiritual life of the psychic being and of all our present consciousness that appears so warm, so full, so wonderful, so luminous to the ordinary consciousness, well, all this splendor seems poor in comparison to the splendor of the new world. I can explain ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960
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Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume IV  >  Correspondence 1949

... her children and the sense of obligation to them which she is indulging that are helping him in his purpose. These are old vital samskaras which conflict with her determination to lead the spiritual life or to come here for at least the necessary time; but these contradictions are always cropping up in the sadhak’s endeavour and they can be overcome. I will say nothing here about her spiritual... and not attempt anything out of the way. Perhaps I should have insisted more on present limitations but that I should now make clear. For the immediate object of my endeavours is to establish spiritual life on earth and for that the first necessity must always be to realise the Divine; only then can life be spiritualised or what I have called the Life Divine be made possible. The creation of something... either for drawing the conclusion that this was to be for the future a normal feature of her action or a permanent change in it or in the life of the Ashram ending in a complete withdrawal from spiritual life and an apotheosis of the deity of sport. Those who voiced this idea or declared that sport would henceforth be obligatory on all were indulging in fantasies that have no claim to credibility ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume IV
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More Answers from the Mother  >  Series One (1931 - 1949)

... avoid these wrong movements. Yes, it is very good to learn the habit of pausing a few seconds before acting in order to ask oneself whether the action is truly helpful from the standpoint of spiritual life. 4 February 1935 It is said that knowledge is already within us, but I think that knowledge is received by the soul and transmitted to the mind and vital. I see no contradiction in... sincerity? Life is becoming more and more boring. It will certainly take a long time to get this sincerity, but how can I live without it? Patience is one of the most essential conditions of the spiritual life. One must know how to wait in order to receive. 23 December 1935 Page 124 Please tell me how my consciousness got carried away to the very material and half-conscious domain... frankly, I will tell you that I do not want to intervene because I am not sure that you will have the strength and firmness to persist in doing what I Page 129 tell you to do. And for spiritual life it is better to act in ignorance than to act in disobedience to the command of one's guru. 21 April 1936 What do You mean by a life of true sincerity? To make all your actions conform ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   More Answers from the Mother
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Words of the Mother - III  >  15 November 1958

... When we begin to live the spiritual life, a reversal of consciousness takes place which is for us the proof that we have entered the spiritual life; well, another reversal of consciousness occurs when one enters the supramental world. Besides, perhaps each time that a new world opens up, there will again be a new reversal of this kind. Thus even our spiritual life—which is such a total reversal... entire spiritual life were made of silver whereas the supramental is made of gold, as if the whole spiritual life here below were a vibration of silver, not lustreless, but merely a light, a light that goes up to the summit, a light quite pure, pure and intense; but in the other life, the supramental life, there is a richness and a power that makes all the difference. This whole spiritual life of our ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - III
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Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo  >  Sadhana

... turn these obstacles to account and, taking help from these, they build up spiritual life. Sri Aurobindo : How? Disciple : That is my question. Sri Aurobindo : I have no objection to taking fish and even you can take wine, if it suits you, but how can the sexual act be made to help in spiritual life ? In itself the sexual act is not bad as the moralists believe. It is a movement... mental development – I mean the outer man's development – is not at all proportionate. There is the psychic being ready in many Page 74 cases, there is the aspiration for spiritual life and faith also. But mind, reason, intelligence – the dynamic mind – are very crude. That is why I hesitate sometimes to give the yoga.   In Europe the outer parts are very well developed... developed – reason, expression, the dynamic mind etc. But then there the whole thing ends. There is a great poverty in the inner being. Some of the Europeans are, really, babies in spiritual life. To combine the inner development with the outer would be ideal. Science, for instance, steadies reason arid gives a firm grounding to the physical mind. Art – I mean the appreciation of beauty pure and simple ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo
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Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo  >  Eckhart Comes to Me

... timely point when Theosophy was beginning to pall on me. Theosophical teachings had well satisfied my need for a philosophical understanding of questions pertaining to life, but for leading a spiritual life, all it offered was basically a path founded on the philosophical concept of the brotherhood of mankind and the ethical ideal of service to humanity. There was a yearning in me, as yet unformulated... Christian religion—a single God, jealous, severe, despotic and so much in the image of man that one wonders if it is not a demiurge as Anatole Fiancé said—these people when they want to lead a spiritual life no longer want the personal God, because they are Page 5 too frightened lest the personal God resemble the one they have been taught about; they want an impersonal Godhead, something... power of his words lies not so much in their informational content as in the "high-energy frequency of Presence which they carry." 11 A word regarding the relevance of philosophy for the spiritual life from the viewpoint of Sri Aurobindo. He states: It is only if there is a greater consciousness beyond Mind and that consciousness is accessible to us that we can know and enter into the ultimate ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo
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Sri Aurobindo came to Me  >  Avowedly Personal

... of forces to fly through them, e.g. in the typical description of the Paramhansa. The ideal I put before our Yoga Page 166 is one thing but it does not bind all spiritual life and endeavour. The spiritual life is not a thing that can be formulated in a rigid definition or bound by a fixed mental rule; it is a vast field of evolution, an immense kingdom potentially larger than the other... resolution are necessary in every method of sadhana. "Strength is all right for the strong — but aspiration and the Grace answering to it are not altogether myths; they are great realities of the spiritual life. Again, you see, I am muddling the human mind — like Krishna of the Gita — by supporting contrary things at the same time — can't help it — it is my nature. "But I am unable to explain further... at anybody coming to his retreat because he did not want : disciples and found no other way of warding off the flood of candidates. I at least would hesitate to pronounce that such people had no spiritual life or experience. Certainly, I prefer that sadhakas should be reasonably considerate towards each other, but that is for the rule of collective life and harmony, not as a siddhi of the Yoga or ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo came to Me
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Letters on Poetry and Art  >  Literature and Yoga

... sinking into tamas and nervous troubles. 6 September 1934 There is no incompatibility between spirituality and creative activity—they can be united. Creative Activity Subordinate to One's Spiritual Life Nirod, Nolini and Sahana are all wrong in laying down a rule of that kind for my conduct. I do not base my action on mental rules which have to be applied to every case. It is a still greater... bound to do it for everybody and to complain of our not doing it as "making a difference". All that belongs to the ignorance and clamour of the vital egoistic nature and has nothing to do with spiritual life. I cannot allow myself to be drawn back into a preoccupation with the poetry of the sadhaks. I have much more serious things to deal with on which depends the whole work and Yoga. I have ceased... Neither on his own nor on Romen's poems have I need to spend a long time. Even so, I do it only because I have a few moments to dispose of; if they claimed it as a right, I would refuse. The spiritual life and one's own inner psychic and spiritual Page 724 change should be the first preoccupation of a sadhak—poetry or painting is something quite subordinate and even then it should be ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Poetry and Art
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Letters on Yoga - IV  >  Imperfections and Periods of Arrest

... allowing all kinds of forces to play through them, e.g., as in the typical description of the Paramhansa. The ideal I put before our Yoga is one thing, but it does not bind all spiritual life and endeavour. The spiritual life is not a thing that can be formulated in a rigid definition or bound by a fixed mental rule; it is a vast field of evolution, an immense kingdom potentially larger Page 656... at anybody coming to his retreat because he did not want disciples and found no other way of warding off the flood of candidates. I at least would hesitate to pronounce that such people had no spiritual life or experience. Certainly, I prefer that sadhaks should be reasonably considerate towards each other, but that is for the sake of collective life and harmony, not as a siddhi of the Yoga or an ... spiritual experience or realisation, one must at once become a perfect person without defects or weaknesses. That is to make a demand which it is impossible to satisfy and it is to ignore the fact that spiritual life is a growth and not a sudden and inexplicable miracle. No sadhak can be judged as if he were already a siddha Yogi, least of all those who have only travelled a quarter or less of a very long path ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV
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Questions and Answers (1929-1931)  >  9 June 1929

... spiritual aspiration. In every religion there are some who have evolved a high spiritual life. But it is not the religion that gave them their spirituality; it is they who have put their spirituality into the religion. Put anywhere else, born into any other cult, they would have found there and lived there the same spiritual life. It is their own capacity, it is some power of their inner being and not the... Questions and Answers (1929-1931) 9 June 1929 What is exactly the nature of religion? Is it an obstacle in the way of the spiritual life? Religion belongs to the higher mind of humanity. It is the effort of man's higher mind to approach, as far as lies in its power, something beyond it, something to which humanity gives the name God or Spirit... highest truth, you will not be able to impress people and make them flock to you. This attitude is natural to the religious mind; but it is just that which makes religion stand in the way of the spiritual life. Page 77 The articles and dogmas of a religion are mind-made things and, if you cling to them and shut yourself up in a code of life made out for you, you do not know and cannot know ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1929-1931)
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Questions and Answers (1955)  >  25 May 1955

... to the spiritual life? Because it understands nothing about it. Spiritual life goes beyond it, it is not its domain, and it doesn't understand anything there. It is a very good instrument for all ethics, morality, self-control, but spiritual life goes beyond these things and reason understands nothing of it. But if one truly has reason, then reason has to admit that the spiritual life is higher... life. So, this is its full domain; that's what Sri Aurobindo says. But in order to know the value of a religion, whether it truly has the power to put you into contact with the Divine, with the spiritual life, to lead you to it, how can the reason judge, since it is beyond its domain? It knows nothing about it. It is not its field, it understands nothing there. We must use other means. Naturally, that's ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1955)
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7  >  Spirituality in Art

... inspiration. The spiritual knowledge is the supreme knowledge, and the rest is the ordinary knowledge. The spiritual life is alone the best and the only thing worth aspiring for. If this is the only truth then men will aspire for nothing except that which is helpful to the spiritual life. Men will keep aloof from whatever is an obstacle to it. Every branch of the ordinary knowledge should be made... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Spirituality in Art Is there any natural opposition between art and the spiritual life? The Puritans had cast aside poetry and music like poison. In the Talmud (the scripture of the Jews) there is the total prohibition to draw the picture of anybody, be he a man or a God. Plato in his Republic refused... refused to award a locus to the poet. Even in the world of to-day, behind the externals we are after Idealism that awakens the higher emotions, the spiritual perception, and inspires the spiritual life in poetry, music, painting and sculpture. We want to do away with mundane art and have the art that helps to acquaint us with God. We want to turn our eyes from the art that depicts the lower propensities ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7
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Sri Aurobindo - a biography and a history  >  The Ten Limbs of The Yoga

... much progress as persistence through the perpetuation of the species. In mental life, the keynote is continual enlargement, improvement and the pull towards endless change and variability. In spiritual life or divine existence, the mind longs for a self-existent perfection and immutable infinity and can find peace only when these are realised. If the mind starts regulating the bodily life, the externals... the physical base of life in samādhi, but rather its transfiguration through the descent of the Spirit that is the aim of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. "Our object is," says Sri Aurobindo, "to make the spiritual life and its experiences fully active and fully utilisable in the waking state and even in the normal use of the functions." 11 There are, then, the three classical paths - Karma Yoga, Jnana... puissance, liberation, enjoyment - these too would seem to have divine origin, divine sustenance, divine sanction and divine participation. Page 561 IV In his own spiritual life, Sri Aurobindo had moved, as we saw in some of the earlier chapters, from one or two unexpected experiences to the tentative period of prānāyāma and then on to the all-annihilating experience ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo - a biography and a history
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On The Mother  >  Mother is Eighty

... Playground: "My children, in five years I shall take with you a study course of spiritual life. I give you five years to prepare yourselves." 12 On 13 August 1958, one of the audience reminded the Mother of that promise showing her the reported text of the earlier talk. Well, hadn't she been speaking about the spiritual life already, and about the difference between the popular notion of God and her... and without attachment, look at what is happening day by day. 5 In a talk given over seven months later (on 22 October), the Mother remarks that without a reversal of consciousness, the spiritual life will not be possible. The ordinary human consciousness is a movement turned or spread outwards. Then suddenly something happens, and the consciousness is turned inwards and from within upwards... her own idea of the Divine? There had been readings from the Dhammapada, followed by meditations and discussions; wasn't all that about spiritual life? And she was always willing to answer specific queries. Now one of the children asked: "Why don't we profit as Page 668 much as we should by our presence here in the Ashram?" The Mother's answer was that things were too easy in the ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On The Mother
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Questions and Answers (1953)  >  15 July 1953

... limits which your mental constructions have built around you and which prevent your opening to the Light and the Truth." Questions and Answers 1929-1931 ( 19 May 1929 ) When we come to the spiritual life with an aspiration, can the adverse forces attack us? Everybody, without exception. Even though they look very nice? Sometimes, yes. Sometimes these are the most dangerous. But... very dangerous. The very opposite thing may happen: "After all, perhaps I am good for nothing. Is it worth while my making any effort? Nothing will come out of this effort. Am I capable of the spiritual life? Probably I shall never do anything, I am giving up tangible things for the sake of an unrealisable dream. And what am I after all? A grain of dust. Is it worth my making an effort to find the... it was as you thought! Then you know: yes, it is that small voice which one must listen to always. It is that which is the truth and the other can't trouble you any longer. If you come to the spiritual life with a sincere aspiration, sometimes an avalanche of unpleasant things falls upon you: you quarrel with your best friends, your family kicks you out of the house, you lose what you thought you ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1953)
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Letters on Himself and the Ashram  >  Life and Death in the Ashram

... whatever you can for yourself, to have pleasure and enjoyment, to get everything that anybody else may have. All that is utterly false for the spiritual life. These are the aims that selfish, worldly and ambitious men seek in the ordinary life. The spiritual life has nothing to do with these things. One is here only for two things, to realise the Divine and to transform the consciousness and nature into... these things, that all work can be done if it is done according to the dharma and, if it is rightly done, it does not prevent the approach to the Divine or the access to spiritual knowledge and the spiritual life. There is of course also the ascetic ideal which is necessary for many and has its place in the spiritual order. I would myself say that no man can be spiritually complete if he cannot live... Kurukshetra, but only one more great anchorite. The Indian scriptures and Indian tradition, in the Mahabharata and elsewhere, make room both for the spirituality of the renunciation of life and for the spiritual life of action. One cannot say that one only is the Indian tradition and that the acceptance of life and works of all kinds, sarvakarmāṇi , is un-Indian, European or Western and unspiritual. Food ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Himself and the Ashram
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India's Rebirth  >  1910-1922: Essays, Letters and Articles

... them. I have always laid a dominant stress and I now lay an entire stress on the spiritual life, but my idea of spirituality has nothing to do with ascetic withdrawal or contempt or disgust of secular things. There is to me nothing secular, all human activity is for me a thing to be included in a complete spiritual life, and the importance of politics at the present time is very great. But my line and... We await a broader, bolder and un blinkered scholarship, which will neither ignore the elements supplied by archaeology, nor close its eyes to what has been for millennia the source of India's spiritual life and strength. Page 98 merely a desideratum for our modern intellectual curiosity, but a practical necessity for the future of the human race. For I believe firmly that the... Aurobindo's "concluding words were spoken in a very solemn mood":] It is more important that the thought of India should come out of the philosophical school and renew its contact with life, and the spiritual life of India issue out of the cave and the temple and, adapting itself to new forms, lay its hand upon the world. I believe also that humanity is about to enlarge its scope by new knowledge, new powers ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   India's Rebirth
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The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo  >  Sri Aurobindo and Human Evolution

... be taken in general to suggest Sri Aurobindo's keen sense of the need for a new principle and power of spiritual life to solve the many- sided problem of man's imperfect nature. To grasp what Sri Aurobindo stands for, we must first seize the significance of the phrase "spiritual life". Historical India has had no uncertainty about it. "Spiritual" does not mean merely "cultural" or, as... self-expression to an ultimate identity with the Supreme Spirit above Nature. Ascetic quietism, ecstatic devotionalism, enlightened dynamism have been the three main strands of the Indian spiritual life. But the first has acquired prominence because of a tremendous trenchancy in it, its impatience with any kind of "make-do" with a world which, whatever the transformative influence brought... discolouration.¹ Sri Aurobindo's samadhi (resting-place) has grown a venue of pilgrimage. The Ashram instead of suffering a setback by his departure developed on the contrary a new intensity of spiritual life, as if the passing of the Master whom innumerable people had known by experience to possess supernormal power over even physical circumstances were a sort of strategic sacrifice in the interests ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo
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Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume III  >  Correspondence 1937

... unready. But of course that is not the spiritual life, it is only a sort of elementary religious approach. For the spiritual life to give and not to demand is the rule. The sadhak, however, can ask for the Divine Force to aid him in keeping his health or recovering it if he does that as part of his sadhana so that his body may be able and fit for the spiritual life and a capable instrument for the... other people's ideas have no relevance. I have read with interest your account of Baron's talk with you. I am quite willing to help him in his aspiration if he decides to take up the inner spiritual life. We shall see him on the 21 st and see what he is—everybody seems to be favourably impressed by him already. Mother will see B. and hear his music tomorrow at 12.30. So you will come with... decided to go and told us so, nobody would have stood in her way, although we would not have been lost in admiration at the spiritual wisdom of her choice. Our view is that once the full separate spiritual life is chosen, to cling and turn back to the ordinary one is an error. But if there are circumstances that make the (temporary) departure either harmless or psychologically or otherwise inevitable ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume III
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Mother’s Agenda 1965  >  May 29, 1965

... change the human position with regard to deities. It's interesting, it's a whole interesting field... which to me does not represent the true thing. They on their part think that is spiritual life—it's not spiritual life, but it is a higher mental region which borders on the Overmind, which even enters into the Overmind, and which is completely organized; it's a sort of "legislation" of the relationships... things. At any rate, he shouldn't have told her, because it interrupted all my work—all my work was to make her unite with her soul before she went, so that all that could be taken along in the spiritual life would be taken along. And I was working at it, but then when the other one told her she was going to live ten years, naturally she wasn't in a hurry anymore! I lost at least ten days because of... very interesting, the very day he was on his way here (I wasn't thinking of him—I never "think" of people), suddenly I saw all that the knowledge of the pundits and those who profess to follow a spiritual life (the whole class of sannyasins, pundits, purohits, 1 etc.), all that that represents. (I am not referring to religions in other countries: it's specific to India.) And they are people who have ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1965
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Teilhard de Chardin and our Time  >  Teilhardism and the Modern Religious Intuition

... truly speaking worship a little piece of metal" and he adds that in this movement "there was a strong sense of self-giving and a whole train of obligations all mixed up together and my whole spiritual life has merely been the development of this". 23 At the back of his discovery of Omega lay his pantheist tendency, his "general cosmic sense", to whose developed form the entire structure of his... Christology from all the 'gnostic' or gnosticising Christologies. Personal God, historic Jesus: these are the two fixed poles of all his effort of intelligent faith (whence the constancy, in his spiritual life, of the prayer, the love, and the fidelity to the Church which preserve for us the presence of Christ). To tell the truth, we notice no fundamental evolution in his thought in this regard. When... sur soi de l'Univers..." Page 305 to John Janssens, General of the Jesuits, speaks of "the congenital quality (or weakness) which brings it about that, since my childhood, my spiritual life has not ceased being completely dominated by a sort of profound 'feeling' of the organic reality of the World; a feeling originally rather vague in my mind and heart, - but a feeling gradually ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Teilhard de Chardin and our Time
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Arjuna's Argument At Kurukshetra And Sri Krishna's Answers  >  Appendices

... is yet another, the Tantric, 1 which though less subtle and spiritually profound, is even more bold and forceful than the synthesis of the Gita, — for it seizes even upon the obstacles to the spiritual life and compels them to become the means for a richer spiritual conquest and enables us to embrace the whole of Life in our divine scope as the Lila 2 Page 57 of the Divine; and... to adhere to one of the theistic religions of the past or to entrench ourselves within the four corners of the teaching of the Gita. That would be to limit ourselves and to attempt to create our spiritual life out of the being, knowledge and nature of others, of the men of the past, instead of building it out of our own being and potentialities. We do not belong to the past dawns, but to the noons of... upon the essential idea, the central heart of the teaching is especially necessary here because the Gita with its rich and many-sided thought, its synthetically grasp of different aspects of the spiritual life and the fluent winding motion of its argument lends itself, even more than other scriptures, to one-sided misrepresentations born of a partisan intellectuality. The unconscious or half-conscious ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Arjuna's Argument At Kurukshetra And Sri Krishna's Answers
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The Practice of the Integral Yoga  >  Foreword

... second chapter of the book, though an entire chapter is devoted to the topic of meditation. For, the attitude that looks upon spiritual life as consisting in following certain set practices tends to lead to a compartmentalisation of life, creating a division between the spiritual life and the ordinary life. However, from the viewpoint of Integral Yoga, sadhana is not a part-time practice meant to be pursued... people, even among spiritual aspirants, fail to understand the distinction between the spiritual life and a life governed by morality or religion. The basic attitudes and the limbs of daily sadhana dealt with in the first two chapters of this book throw ample light on what is meant by leading a spiritual life from the viewpoint of Integral Yoga. Regarding yoga and its method of practice... Zen Buddhism, spiritual practice is regarded as almost synonymous with the practice of meditation. Referring to this attitude in a critical vein, the Mother remarks, "...when they think of the spiritual life, they immediately think of meditation." (Questions and Answers '57-'58, Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 9, p. 88.) However, even meditation, as a set practice, is not an indispensable part ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Practice of the Integral Yoga
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Talks by Nirodbaran  >  30 July 1969

... entire stress on the spiritual life, but my idea of spirituality has nothing to do with ascetic withdrawal or contempt or disgust of secular things. There is to me nothing secular, all human activity is for me a thing to be included in a complete spiritual life. That is why He says all life is yoga: all human activity is included in a complete spiritual life. What preoccupies... them. I have always laid a dominant stress and I now lay an entire stress on the spiritual life, but my idea of spirituality has nothing to do with ascetic withdrawal or contempt or disgust of secular things. There is to me nothing secular, all human activity is for me a thing to be included in a complete spiritual life, and the importance of politics at the present time is very great. But my line ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Talks by Nirodbaran
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Conversations with Sri Aurobindo  >  Conversations 1926

... them have had glimpses of the spiritual life, but in none of those I know has it been truly organised. Whilst in other men, who don't claim to be guided by perfect masters, one often finds much more spirituality, as in some Yogis and other people. Their conception is mental and ethical, not spiritual. And as ethical, it has nothing remarkable. In spiritual life, one must always be ready to reject... reject every system and all constructions. For a time a certain form is useful, then it becomes harm­ful. In my spiritual life, since I was forty I have three or four times completely discarded and broken the system I had arrived at. If our disciples at X could not be brought back, the fault lies in their ambition, that kind of spiritual ambition, so dangerous for a yogi, which endows us with a... Of course, the life energy he speaks of is a vital energy and it catches ideals and ideas to support itself. This is a common fact and it is all right for those who are not destined for the spiritual life. In such a case one has to recognize that such ideals are not final and to understand their proper nature. But to destroy this would mean that you would have something higher to give him. ...

Pavitra   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Conversations with Sri Aurobindo
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Sri Aurobindo came to Me  >  Messenger of the Incommunicable

... adhere to one of the theistic religions of the past or to entrench ourselves within the four corners of the teaching of the Gita. That would be to limit ourselves and to attempt to create our spiritual life out of the being, knowledge and nature of others, of the men of the past, instead of building it out of our own being and potentialities. We do not belong to the past dawns, but to the noons of... on the contrary indiscipline, individualism and strife; that is one reason why India collapsed and entered into servitude. Organisation and order were attempted but failed to endure. Even in the spiritual life India has had not only the free wandering ascetic, a law to himself, but has felt impelled to create orders to sannyasins with their rules and governing bodies and there have also been monastic... health and physical life in myself and in others .... I put a value on the body first as an instrument, dharmasadhana, or, more fully, as a centre of manifested personality in action, a basis of spiritual life and activity as of all life and activity upon earth, but also because, for me, the body as well as the mind and life is a part of the Divine Whole, a form of the Spirit and therefore not to be ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo came to Me
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Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume II  >  Correspondence 1934

... mislaid the letter it is thus: Amal21 told me Vairagya was morbid and a friend of mine wrote to me in Yogic Sadhan you strongly disapproved of Vairagya. But I marvel how one could stick to spiritual life without an intense Vairagya. In my own case I find I have been favoured with not more than one concrete spiritual realisation: that is, Vairagya. But I believe it is this that has been my saviour... care what he did or did not do, only to see Him, meet Him, feel the Light, the Presence, the Love, the Ananda is what matters. So it is always for the spiritual aspirations—it is the law of the spiritual life. Don't waste time any longer in these ideas of the mind or in any starts of the vital—blow these clouds away. Keep fixed on the one thing indispensable. May 8, 1934 I should... spiritual or their inferiority to vital pleasure are strange, because they contradict all psychic and spiritual experience except that of the mere vairāgis [renunciates] and the choice of the spiritual life itself (Nirvana seekers excepted) quite inexplicable. Your arguments are not convincing. what have Ramakrishna's cancer or the fluctuations of Vivekananda's vital receptivity between exaltation ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume II
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Autobiographical Notes  >  Note on the Texts

... politics. The material in this part has been arranged by the editors in three sections: (1) Letters on Personal, Practical and Political Matters, 1890 - 1926; (2) Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life, 1911 - 1928; and (3) Other Letters of Historical Interest on Yoga and Practical Life, 1921 - 1938.   Page 569 Section One Letters on Personal, Practical and... Chronicle a day or two after the passing of Chittaranjan Das on 16 June 1925. The message was published in the newspaper on 22 June 1925. Section Two Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life, 1911 - 1928 Sri Aurobindo began the practice of yoga in 1905. Between then and 1911 he made few references to yoga in his letters. The first people to whom he wrote about spiritual things... of Baroda, one of the letters to the editor of the Hindu , and one of the letters to the editor of New India were included in the same volume. Some of the "Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life" and "Letters and Telegrams to Political and Professional Associates" came out in Champaklal's Treasures (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1976). The letters to Lord Kimberley were first ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes
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Our Many Selves  >  The Mental

... to the spiritual life? Because it understands nothing about it. Spiritual life goes beyond it, it is not its domain, and it doesn’t understand anything there. It is a very good instrument for all ethics, morality, self-control, but spiritual life goes beyond these things and reason understands nothing of it. But if one truly has reason, then reason has to admit that the spiritual life is higher ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Our Many Selves
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Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  24 April 1957

... lower perfection is human perfection carried to its maximum limits, and this may be quite independent of all spiritual life, all spiritual aspiration. One can be a genius without having any spiritual aspiration. One can have all the most extraordinary moral qualities without having any spiritual life. And even, usually, those who have a very great power of human realisation are satisfied—more or less s... happened, but it is very rare. Only those who are conscious incarnations of the Divine naturally carry in themselves the possibility of the two perfections, but this is exceptional. People who had a spiritual life, a great spiritual realisation, were able at certain exceptional moments to have a capacity for outward realisation; this also was exceptional, but it was intermittent and never had the integrality... realisation. And this is why those who live only in the external consciousness, for whom the earthly material life is all that really exists, concrete and tangible, perceptible to all, always feel that spiritual life is something hazy, something almost mediocre from the material point of view. I have met many people—"many", well, quite a number Page 93 —who wanted to demonstrate that spiritual ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)
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Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  17 April 1957

... e antagonism between material and spiritual life. And it is something so deep-rooted in human consciousness that it is very difficult to eradicate it, even in those who think they have understood Sri Aurobindo's teaching! And many people said, when for altogether different reasons I began to hold meditations again, "Ah! At last! We are returning to spiritual life...." This was indeed what prevented... finished reading it, I shall be able to tell you why we have started the meditations again—but certainly not "to return to spiritual life"! And it is so deep-rooted. Oh! Even those who outwardly Page 88 profess to understand—when they think of the spiritual life, they immediately think of meditation. There we are. Now, we shall have one all the same, but for another reason! ( ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)
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Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects  >  Spiritual Life and Family Alignments

... the utility of such ties in spiritual life is absolutely nil. So long as there is any" attachment to individuals as members of family— an attachment which flows from particular relationship, such as husband and wife, father and son, brother and sister etc, the prospect of any spiritual liberation and up lift ment of consciousness is a far cry. In spiritual life we have to outgrow all our personal... Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects Spiritual Life and Family Alignments All attachments is a hindrance to spiritual seeking. Family ties constitute one of the greatest, strongest and most persistent attachments of all. Needless to say that whatever be the necessity of such attachment to keep up the stability and solidarity of family life... cudgel on behalf of our father, mother, brother, sister, husband and wife when they are wrong just because we belong Page 92 to some family. Such an attitude will be fatal to spiritual life which insists on Truth and nothing but truth and rejection of falsehood and error, and all hasty and summary judgments. This was the compelling reason why all spiritual aspirants left their ...

Jibendra Kumar Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects
[exact]

The Practice of the Integral Yoga  >  Eleven Basic Attitudes

... situation, our consciousness gets easily clouded, judgments falsified, emotions bruised, and our heart filled with unbearable distress and disorder. But if we would like to build up a genuine spiritual life, it is essential that we change our way of viewing things. Faced with any unforeseen event or situation in our life, we must learn to perceive at once the positive side of it in all its happy ... order to be able to keep one's sang-froid in these difficult and dangerous situations, the sadhaka has to imprint in his heart from the very beginning of his sadhana the following cardinal truth of spiritual life concerning the Divine's dealings and immediately fall back upon it each time he feels like straying away from the right path: "The ways of the Divine are not like those of the human mind... too cannot be attained in a short span of time. Every sadhaka of this Path has to clearly understand from the very beginning that a spirit of impatience on the one hand and the building up of the spiritual life on the other are totally incompatible with each other. If one steps on the Way with the vain hope that he will conquer the fort in a day and attain to his realisation in a relatively short time ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Practice of the Integral Yoga
[exact]

The Practice of the Integral Yoga  >  The problem of Rght Action: How to Recognise the Divine will?

... have to say in answer is meant solely for those who sincerely want to lead a spiritual life; our words and recommendations have no validity nor any relevance in the case of others. Page 157 Conditions for recognising the Divine's Will First condition — The Divine and the spiritual life should occupy the place of prime importance in the sadhaka' s life. Everything... concrete spiritual experience of the Presence of either the Divine or the psychic being. That experience will surely come with the further advancement of his sadhana. But at this early stage of his spiritual life, the sadhaka can at best expect to receive just a sign of the divine Will and that too expressed through the medium of one of the conventional standards of conduct and principles of right action... that it is not so much the outer form of action that matters but the spirit behind it. The Mother has often insisted upon this point. Here is a typical citation: "From the point of view of a spiritual life, it is not what you do that maters most, but the way in which it is done and the consciousness you put into it." (M C W, Vol. 14, p. 36) And about this right spirit and attitude Sri Aurobindo ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Practice of the Integral Yoga
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Varieties of Yogic Experience and Integral Realisation  >  A Synoptic Note

... radical point of departure from ordinary life to a truly spiritual life. An important example of this experience of conversion, which William James has given, is that of Saint David Brainerd. The description of this experience is appended at Appendix II (p.113) Conversion may very often be a movement as a result of which spiritual life becomes central to the seeker. But this centrality may be... be only ideative in character, in the sense that what becomes central is a cluster of ideas relating to spiritual life rather than the possession of the substance of the Spirit that makes spiritual life so very distinctive and beatific. Often conversions are temporary. At higher stages, not only the mind but also the very heart of the seeker is touched by the experience that leads to conversion, and ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Varieties of Yogic Experience and Integral Realisation
[exact]

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3  >  Yogic Initiation and Aptitude

... special training so necessary for the end in view. One cannot, at will, develop into a poet by sheer effort or culture. He alone can be a poet who is to the manner born. The same is true also of the spiritual life. But in this case, there is something more to take into account. If you enter the spiritual path, often, whether you will or not, you come in touch with hidden powers, supra-sensible forces, beings... and strengthened. Now, in secular matters, when, for example, you have the ambition to be a poet, you can try and fail, fail with impunity. But if you undertake the Page 69 spiritual life and fail, then you lose both here and hereafter. That is why the Vedic Rishis used to say that the earthen vessel meant to hold the Soma must be properly baked and made perfectly sound. It was... ordeals are mere externals; at any rate, they have no place in our sadhana. Such or similar virtues many people possess or may possess, but that is no indication that they have an opening to the true spiritual life, to the life divine that we seek. Just as accomplishments on the mental plane, – keen intellect, wide studies, profound scholarship even in the scriptures do not entitle a man to the possession ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3
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Sri Aurobindo and Integral Yoga  >  Appendix

... result of these two aims, not the primary object of the yoga. (Letters on Yoga, p. 503.) * * * To find the Divine is indeed the first reason for seeking the spiritual Truth and the spiritual life; it is the one thing indispensable and all the rest is nothing without it. The Divine once found, to manifest Him, that is, first of all to transform one's own limited consciousness into the... solely a supra-cosmic achievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing in of a Power of Consciousness (the supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active. 3. Because a method has been procognised for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the... There is yet another, the Tantric¹ which though less subtle and spiritually profound, is even more bold and forceful than the synthesis of the Gita, for it seizes even upon the obstacles to the spiritual life and compels them to become the means for a richer spiritual conquest and enables us to embrace the whole of Life in our divine scope as the Lila² of the Divine; and in some directions it is more ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo and Integral Yoga
[exact]

Sri Aurobindo - His Life Unique  >  Sri Aurobindo in Bengal

... him no long or obstinate difficulty." 121 But even this was not the end. There were other heights to scale, other victories to win. But we shall study these things when we come to study his spiritual life as a whole. We shall only quote here a short poem which he wrote much later on this initial experience of Nirvanic calm and silence: NIRVANA All is abolished but the mute Alone. ... ibid. 164. ibid. 165. ibid. Page 299 pounds in weight during that period, he felt none the worse for it. Acknowledging Swami Vivekananda's help in his spiritual life, he says in Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on The Mother, ".. .It is a fact that I was hearing constantly the voice of Vivekananda speaking to me for a fortnight in the jail in my solitary... with God, so much irradiated by His Page 309 light, and led so unmistakably by God's will. His political life was foreshadowed in his life in England and at Baroda, and his spiritual life was foreshadowed in his political life. The student life in England, the scholarly life in Baroda, the political life in Bengal, these superficial divisions are made by those only who cannot ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo - His Life Unique
[exact]

Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine  >  Conscious Force

... path. The true artists go straight to the perception of beauty in their seeking for the satisfaction of the artistic impulse, and I think they are on a very straight path for spiritual life also, because that is what spiritual life stands for. Q: Isn't our attitude toward suffering also a means for growth ? A : Suffering, if rightly taken, certainly tends to growth. It gives a good formation... before you the stage here, and then the stage is covered over. You have then to walk and walk, and make your way to that stage. That is the meaning of it. It has happened in many cases. In the spiritual life, a very high state is revealed to the aspirant, almost at the beginning, sometimes, when he has just opened, because he is very sincere at the time. All his difficulties are there in his nature... Page 102 suffering and then one knows that the tragic is not only suffering, it is delight. Otherwise people would not go to see a tragic drama. That is why art is a great ally of spiritual life. Art opens to the aspect of beauty of that Infinite Existence, Consciousness, and Bliss which is a very, very, great expression of it, the highest of it, so to say; but the modern artists do not ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine
[exact]

In the Mother's Light  >  Asceticism

... Asceticism in this sober form can be, in many individual cases, an unimpeachable, perhaps indispensable, preliminary to spiritual discipline, and those who decry or deride it are either innocent of spiritual life or addicted to an unthinking self-indulgence. However much it may be buttressed with dialectical subtlety and ingenious sophistry, indulgence of one's lower cravings is absolutely incompatible... discipline, are only deceiving themselves and wandering away from the true path of purity and freedom. An initial self-control preceding a direct, higher control is, therefore, a prerequisite of spiritual life. A resolute and persevering will, fired by a high-soaring aspiration, rejects the turbulence and waywardness of the lower nature, its disquieting desires and impulses that seek only egoistic g... for a Yogi is to be plastic and ready to obey the divine command, whatever it may be; nothing must be indispensable to him, nothing a burden. Often the first impulse of those who want to live the spiritual life is to throw away all they have; but they do it because they want to be rid of a burden, not because they want to surrender to the Divine. Men who possess wealth and are surrounded by the things ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   In the Mother's Light
[exact]

Sri Aurobindo - a biography and a history  >  Identity with God

... endeavours was rather to realise the Divine and establish spiritual life on earth, but even for this the body could not be ignored. As he wrote in a letter dated 7 December 1949: I put a value on the body first as an instrument, dharmasādhanā, or, more fully, as a centre of manifested personality in action, a basis of spiritual life and activity as of all life and activity upon the earth... my instrument)? In a subsequent letter to Dilip, Sri Aurobindo pointed out that the Indian scriptures and tradition made room for both the spirituality of the renunciation of life and for the spiritual life of action. Works of all kinds - sarva karmāni including ghoram karma - were valid provided they were done in the right spirit. 36 LEARNING SANSKRIT THROUGH SONGSV Even before... of the greatest minds of our generation". The news took Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's mind to the "very beginnings of our struggle for freedom". Dr. C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar saw in Sri Aurobindo's spiritual life "a reduplication of the quest and the askesis of the Buddha and other apostles of humanity". Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, then India's ambassador in Russia, described Sri Aurobindo as "the greatest ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo - a biography and a history
[exact]

The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo  >  The Psychic-The Delight-Soul

... on,—it can immediately tell the true from the false, the beautiful from the ugly, the good from the evil, and the divine from the undivine. when it is fully awake and in control of the nature, spiritual life becomes a triumphal progress from light to light on a surge of developing joy and power. It is the psychic alone that can give the readiest response to the divine call, and offer all itself for... and the hand that rises to strike falls limp with pain and pity. "It is always this psychic being that is the real, though often the secret, Page 161 cause of man's turning to the spiritual life and his greatest help in it."¹ THE MISSION AND ASPIRATION OF THE PSYCHIC What is the mission of the psychic ? Why does it descend into human birth? This is a moot problem of religion... the spiritual turning of a man. Some subtle intuitive perception, some inner vision or experience, some living faith and divination gives the start and serves as the germinating nucleus of the spiritual life. This tiny nucleus becomes the rock of safety against the blows and buffets of adverse forces. Deriving strength from the recondite sources, it grows and expands, annex­ing part after part of ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo
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The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo  >  The Triple Foundation

... n,. on the other. Much of the criticism and suspicion to which religious or spiritual life is often exposed derives its justification from this want of calm and collected poise in its followers. A calm and confident strength, entirely reliant" upon the divine Grace, is the best condition for progress. in the spiritual life. Equality and calm go hand in hand, helping each other., The Gitâ, following... ion. It is true that in some devotional Yogas in India, as also in some types of devotional mysticism in the West, a considerable premium is put upon over-eagerness and impatience in the spiritual life. Excessive and sloppy emotionalism is made to do duty for a quiet and intense devotion, the steady, white flame of the psychic (soul) which mounts Page 78 straight towards God.... following the spirit of the Upanishads, insists upon equality as the most essential base of the spiritual life. It even goes to the extent of asserting that equality- is Yoga itself, so great is the importance it attaches to this" bedrock quality of the soul. Describing equality Sri. Aurobindo says, "Equality means a quiet and unmoved mind and vital, it means not to be touched or disturbed by things ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo
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Letters on Himself and the Ashram  >  Rules in the Life of the Ashram

... proper to the Asram or the Yoga. 10 November 1938 No Politics in the Ashram It is supposed that all who come here come for the spiritual life and aspire to realise the Divine Truth, leaving all else behind them. If you have come here for the spiritual life, you have nothing to do with what others may be doing in the political field which you have left behind you. It is no part of your dharma... to which you should give or refuse financial assistance. As a rule we never interfere in the personal lives or affairs of others than whole-time sadhaks who have given up everything else for the spiritual life. I would suggest that the difficulty about giving shelter to Congressmen arises only when there is an arrival of a batch of Salt Law Satyagrahis sent to break the Law. If such a batch arrives... what? What big operation? There is no operation; I am not trying to Page 693 hale in X as a big fish. I am not trying to catch him or bring him in. If he comes into the true spiritual life it will be a big thing for him, no doubt, but to the work it means only a ripple more or less in the atmosphere. Kindly consider how many people big in their own eyes have come and gone ( Y, Z ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Himself and the Ashram
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The Mother on Auroville  >  Auroville and Religions

... withdraw into convents, or the sannyasins here, those who abandon life to find spiritual life, who make a division between the two and say: "It is either one or the other." We say, "That is not true." It is in life and by living life entirely that one can live the spiritual life, that one must live the spiritual life. The higher consciousness has to be brought here. From the purely material and... above religions and strives for a total Truth. It teaches us to enter into direct contact with the Divine. 12.7.1972 * Here we do not have religion. We replace religion by the spiritual life, which is truer, deeper and higher at the same time, that is to say, closer to the Divine. For the Divine is in everything, but we are not conscious of it. This is the immense progress that man ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Mother on Auroville
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Questions and Answers (1929-1931)  >  4 August 1929

... pattern, everybody is to be made uniformly and faultlessly the same. It is because morality is of this rigid unreal nature that it is in its principle and its working the contrary of the spiritual life. The spiritual life reveals the one essence in all, but reveals too its infinite diversity; it works for diversity in oneness and for perfection in that diversity. Morality lifts up one artificial standard... this, you will be ready to understand the difference, the great difference between spirituality Page 117 and morality, two things that are constantly confused with each other. The spiritual life, the life of Yoga, has for its object to grow into the divine consciousness and for its result to purify, intensify, glorify and perfect what is in you. It makes you a power for manifesting of... differing climates and times, epochs and countries. The moral notion goes so far as to say that there are good desires and bad desires and calls on you to accept the one and reject the other. But the spiritual life demands that you should reject desire altogether. Its law is that you must cast aside all movements that draw you away from the Divine. You must reject them, not because they are bad in themselves ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1929-1931)
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The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Ascent of the Sacrifice - I

... device of self-protection may be necessary for a time whether in ordinary life or in Yoga; but in Yoga it can only be the mark of a transition. A fundamental transformation and a pure wideness of spiritual life are the aim before us and, if we are to reach it, we must find a deeper solution, a surer supra-ethical dynamic principle. To be spiritual Page 136 within, ethical in the outside life... For the wider and more comprehensive the seeing, the more it contains in itself the sense of the hidden Divine in humanity and in all things and rises beyond a superficial religiosity into the spiritual life, the more luminous, flexible, deep and powerful will the Art be that springs from that high motive. The Yogin's distinction from other men is this that he lives in a higher and vaster spiritual... gain for myself; yet I do works in the world: for if I did not do works, all laws would fall into confusion, the worlds would sink towards chaos and I would be the destroyer of these peoples." The spiritual life does not need, for its purity, to destroy interest in all things except the Inexpressible or to cut at the roots of the Sciences, the Arts and Life. It may well be one of the effects of an integral ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga
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Beyond Man  >  Chapter Twenty-two: Making Possible the Impossible

... The following year the Mother said again: ‘The true spiritual life begins when one is in communion with the Divine in the psychic, when one is conscious of the divine Presence in the psychic and in constant communion with the psychic. Then spiritual life begins, not before — the true spiritual life.’ 57 The true spiritual life is the prologue to the supramental transformation. ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Beyond Man
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Words of the Mother - I  >  Conditions for Admission

... will always be with you." 30 March 1960 You say that you wish to lead the spiritual life, but for that you should understand that the first point is to overcome all the lower movements, all the attractions, all the attachments, for all these are absolutely contrary to the spiritual life. The spiritual life demands that one is exclusively turned towards the Divine and the Divine alone... whole being. I know that this cannot be done in a day. But the decision that it may be so should be taken in an unshakable manner. It is only on this condition that I can accept you for the spiritual life. 29 July 1960 Much more than any physical condition it is faithfulness to the ideal and consecration to the work that make the true disciple. 25 August 1962 First indispensable ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - I
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Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II  >  Family Life and Spiritual Life

... Family Life and Spiritual Life Sunderlal, There are many kinds of truth and in the Shastra you will find all kinds, some seeming in conflict with others. Service to parents is part of family and social duty. It has nothing to do in itself with yoga. Yoga is truth not of family or society, but of spiritual life, and in spiritual life the seeking for the Divine takes precedence... Ashram; it would be too hard a blow if you also left them now. As you have remained with them so long, you might remain a little longer. Even while in the family, you can prepare yourself for the spiritual life, by remembering the Divine in all you do and by doing it as a sacrifice for the sake of the Divine. 17 February 1932 Sri Aurobindo ...

Champaklal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II
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Varieties of Yogic Experience and Integral Realisation  >  A Preliminary Note

... marks a radical point of departure from ordinary life to a truly spiritual life. An important example of this experience of conversion, which William James has given, is that of Saint David Brainerd. The description of this experience is appended at Appendix II (p. 113). Conversion is a movement as a result of which spiritual life becomes central to the seeker. But this centrality may be only ideative... ideative in character, in the sense that what becomes central is a cluster of ideas relating to spiritual life rather than the possession of the substance of the Spirit that makes spiritual life so very distinctive and beatific. Often conversions are temporary. At higher stages, not only the mind but also the very heart of the seeker is touched by the experience leads to conversion, and it is then ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Varieties of Yogic Experience and Integral Realisation
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The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 3  >  Yogic Initiation And Aptitude

... special training so necessary for the end in view. One cannot, at will, develop into a poet by sheer effort or culture. He alone can be a poet who is to the manner born. The same is true also of the spiritual life. But in this case, there is something more to take into account. If you enter the spiritual path, often, whether you will or not, you come in touch with hidden powers, supra-sensible forces, beings... already been prepared, purified and strengthened. Now, in secular matters, when, for example, you have the ambition to be a poet, you can try and fail, fail with impunity. But if you undertake the spiritual life and fail, then you lose both here and hereafter. That is why the Vedic Rishis used to say that the earthen vessel meant to hold the Soma must be properly Page 15 baked and made... ordeals are mere externals; at any rate, they have no place in our sadhana. Such or similar virtues many people possess or may possess, but that is no indication that they have an opening to the true spiritual life, to the life divine that we seek. Just as accomplishments on the mental plane, —keen intellect, wide studies, profound scholarship even in the scriptures do not entitle a man to the possession ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 3
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On The Mother  >  Words of the Mother

... inactivity what dreams do come! Also, in the waking state itself, one may at unpredictable moments be surprised by visions. What is the role of such dreams and visions in life, especially in spiritual life? The problem bristles with so much complexity that, in Conversation III, the Mother declines to give a rough and ready answer. Visions and dreams may occur in different planes, from the most... fade away, and leave not a rack behind! Unless one can recall all the lineaments of the visions, all the details of a dream, how is one to understand them and infer their relevance to one's spiritual life? The Mother's first exhortation is: "Be conscious of the night as well as of the day." Know your dreams! Let them not sweep the firmament of our sleeping hours like mere straws in the wayward... the decision to take the plunge, the irrevocable plunge into the Divine: Take the whole and entire plunge, and you will be free from this outer confusion and get the true experience of the spiritual life. 21 V The Yoga is for union with the Divine, and for this one has to plunge into the Divine, offer everything to the Divine. This means that one should constantly recognise the fact ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On The Mother
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On The Mother  >  Readings in Dhammapada

... the spiritual life". The impurities to be purged are egoism and ignorance, intemperance and untruthfulness. Translating the surface moral code into the deeper spiritual, the Mother says: "In all truly spiritual teachings, morality as it is mentally conceived is out of place." Balance, moderation, truthfulness, sincerity, honesty- these are certainly necessary for those who aim at spiritual life, but... not desire it. Page 640 Commenting on the 7th and 8th verses about Mara and the way to withstand his assaults, the Mother says that Mara is the symbol of all that opposes the spiritual life; he is indeed the engineer of spiritual death. A gale may fell a tree, but not a rock; likewise, Mara may knock down the man of little or no faith, but not the man anchored in the true faith or... that to live well, to think well, is the result of a struggle or of a sacrifice; on the contrary it is a delightful state which cures all suffering. At that time, the time of the Buddha, to live a spiritual life was a joy, a beatitude.... It is the materialism of modern times that has turned spiritual effort into a hard struggle and a sacrifice, a painful renunciation of all the so-called joys of ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On The Mother
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Essays on the Gita  >  The Core of the Gita's Meaning

... are actually at work as a powerful shaping factor in the revival and renewal of a nation and a culture. It has even been said recently by a great voice that all we need of spiritual truth for the spiritual life is to be found in the Gita. It would be to encourage the superstition of the book to take too literally that utterance. The truth of the spirit is infinite and cannot be circumscribed in that manner... conflicting positions; greatly daring, it justifies all life to the spirit as a significant manifestation of the one Divine Being and asserts the compatibility of a complete human action and a complete spiritual life lived in union with the Infinite, consonant with the highest Self, expressive of the perfect Godhead. All the problems of human life arise from the complexity of our existence, the obscurity... liberated intelligence, is that this is indeed a very necessary stage, the dharma has indeed to be observed and, rightly observed, can raise the stature of the spirit and prepare and serve the spiritual life, but still it is not the complete and last truth of existence. The soul of man has to go beyond to some more absolute dharma of man's spiritual and immortal nature. And this can only be done if ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita
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Our Light and Delight  >  Spiritual Life in the Mother's Light

... Our Light and Delight 16 Spiritual Life in the Mother's Light In the spiritual life, even more than in other fields since the possibilities and the pitfalls are greater here, a proper assessment of oneself is salutary and helpful. Two generations ago Tagore said that although India was lying in the dust the very dust in which she lay... and delightfully ironic in the Mother. To be led by such Guruship meant extreme pleasure side by side with enormous profit. Even now, when they are no longer in material shape before us, the spiritual life for us should not change: it cannot be more pleasurable and profitable than by a continution of the same disciple-teacher relationship. For, indeed they have assured us of their nearness to ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Our Light and Delight
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Champaklal's Treasures  >  From Talks, Interviews etc.

... marrying her he made his chance secure. The spiritual bond is the third and the highest and is for him who feels the true call for spiritual life and has to find his Shakti or complementary soul who will be at once his partner and guide in his sadhana. If you have spiritual life as an ideal in view, you must not seek either an ordinary woman or a mere psychic one but a woman of that spiritual type who is... must not primarily be from the sexual desire but from something higher and the woman must have something in her in tune with the psychic part of your being. If on the other hand, your ideal is spiritual life you must think fifty times before you marry: Sri Aurobindo has already told you how rare a fit mate is for such a spiritual union. You are here given the general principles only. From its complexity ...

Champaklal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Champaklal's Treasures
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Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II  >  Correspondence with Chinmayi

... and in a few days hope to be able to let you know what can be done. I write this much today in answer to your request for an immediate decision; but I have something to say with regard to your spiritual life and its difficulties which I have not had time to finish. I will finish it tomorrow and send it to you. 3 June 1930 Sri Aurobindo Chinmayi, It will be perhaps better after all if you... I hope that this is clear and decisive and this singular misunderstand will now come to an end. Chinmayi, There are two or three things that I think it necessary to say to you about your spiritual life and your difficulties. First, I should like you to get rid of the idea that that which causes difficulties is so much a part of yourself that a true inner life is impossible to you. The inner... exceptional power like this in the nature, there is found in the exterior being some contrary element which opens it to a quite opposite influence. It is this that makes the endeavour after a spiritual life so often a difficult struggle: but the existence of this kind of contradiction even in an intense form does not make that life impossible. Doubt, struggle, efforts and failures, lapses, alternations ...

Champaklal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II
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Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II  >  A Talk of 25 October 1924

... marrying her he made his chance secure. The spiritual bond is the third and the highest and is for him who feels the true call for spiritual life and has to find his Shakti or complementary soul who will be at once his partner and guide in his sadhana. If you have spiritual life as an ideal in view, you must not seek either an ordinary Woman or a mere psychic one but a woman of that spiritual type who is... must not primarily be from the sexual desire but from something higher and the woman must have something in her in tune with the psychic part of your being. If on the other hand, your ideal is spiritual life you must think fifty times before you marry: Sri Aurobindo has already told you how rare a fit mate is for such a spiritual union. You are here given the general principles only. From its complexity ...

Champaklal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II
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Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume IV  >  Correspondence 1944

... She has been told that visions are not experiences and as such was telling me, regretfully (fancy, regretting after visioning Krishna and in you too!J these things really meant very little in spiritual life. But do tell me. How can these things mean so little? Seeing Krishna and in one’s Guru too. How I have longed for such a darshan! Visions come from all planes and are of all kinds and... Merely seeing his image is not the same thing, any more than seeing his picture on the wall is the same thing as meeting him in person. But the picture on the wall need not be useless for the spiritual life. All one can say is that one must not attach oneself too much to this gift and what it shows us, but neither is it necessary to belittle it. It has its value and sometimes a considerable spiritual... visits. My objection to retirement is that so many have “gone morbid “ by it or gone astray into zones of false vital experiences; secondly, that absolute retirement is not necessary for the spiritual life. It is different however for people like Radhananda who are to the manner born or at least perfectly trained. A “restriction of publicity “ is quite another matter. Also to be capable of solitude ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume IV
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Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume IV  >  Correspondence 1945

... the contrary indiscipline, individualism and strife; that is one reason why India collapsed and entered into servitude. Organisation and order were attempted but failed to endure. Even in the spiritual life India has had not only the free wandering ascetic, a law to himself, but has felt impelled to create orders of Sannyasins with their rules and governing bodies and there have also been monastic... trying to do, the spiritual realisation is the first necessity but it cannot be complete without an outer realisation also in life, in man, in this world. Spiritual consciousness within but also spiritual life without. The Ashram as it is now is not that ideal, for that all its members would have to live in a spiritual consciousness and not in the ordinary egoistic mind and mainly rajasic vital nature... suggested that you should write about it more as a joke and see what he would say. I understand she was inclined to give permission for him to come. However, if he is in sound earnest about the spiritual life and coming here, I suppose he will answer your letter in the right way. Hafiz is a different matter. The Mother was not enthusiastic about his coming here again; she did not take his ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume IV
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Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume IV  >  Correspondence 1947

... things, that all work can be done if it is done according to the dharma and, if it is rightly done, it does not prevent the approach to the Divine or the access to spiritual knowledge and the spiritual life. There is, of course, also the ascetic ideal which is necessary for many and has its place in the spiritual order. I would myself say that no man can be spiritually complete if he cannot... but only one more great anchorite. The Indian scriptures and Indian tradition, in the Mahabharata and elsewhere, make room both for the spirituality of the renunciation of life and for the spiritual life of action. One cannot say that one only is the Indian tradition and that the acceptance of life and works of all kinds, sarva karmani, is un-Indian, European or western and unspiritual.... abandon the ordinary life in order to seek after the Light or to practice Yoga. This is usually done by those who want to make a clean cut, to live a purely religious or exclusively inner and spiritual life, to renounce the world entirely and to depart from the cosmic existence by cessation of the human birth and a passing away into some higher state or into the transcendental Reality. Otherwise ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume IV
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Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2)  >  chapter 029

... put mere religion on a par with God-realisation. Religion at its best is a mental and emotional acceptance of the Eternal, the Infinite, the Divine. It can be a good preparation for the truly spiritual life, just as the practice of moral virtues can. But to be religious, no matter how highly, is not the same thing as to know the unitive life, the state of inner union with a more-than-human, a divine... several periodicals to bring home in various ways the newness of Sri Aurobindo, the extension he has made of India's ancient wisdom and the completeness, the integrality, to which he has carried the spiritual life and made it the fount of a dynamism and creativity in the world. Others too have written on the same theme and I may refer you to the article entitled Towards a New World by "Synergist" in the... the Allied Cause and for a post-war declaration of India's complete freedom either within the British Commonwealth or outside it. With a living grip always on fundamental realities both of the spiritual life and of the common world within which his brand of dynamic spirituality was to function, Sri Aurobindo stands out as an example par excellence of what editors of a periodical like Manas whose ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2)
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Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2)  >  chapter 002

... was as if Sri Aurobindo put her forward to face that existence while he remained behind in a sublime solitude of the Spirit. And yet the actuality is that throughout his intense exercise of the spiritual life Sri Aurobindo seldom shut his eyes! "Exercise" is indeed an appropriate word, for he at one time used to spend seven or eight hours walking up and down his room. I should know this best, for I... of his with   Those thoughts that wander through Eternity,   as a -Miltonic verse seems anticipatively to have figured it. Perhaps by the attempt to imitate his "exercise" of the spiritual life I got a far-away touch of the way he lived. For the point is that he who to all appearance remained behind, with the Mother put in the forefront, appears to have scaled spirituality's Himalayan...   Arjava is rather compact in his language and subtle in the turns of his expression. So perhaps a few elucidatory words from me to you would be in place. "Precarious boat": we come to the spiritual life, the "New Country" of the title, through events and circumstances that have both a forward and a backward tension: hence the "boat" is "precarious"-that is, dependent on chance, uncertain, insecure ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2)
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The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Systems of Yoga

... from the physical life which is our foundation and the sphere into which we have to bring our mental and spiritual gains. Especially is the spiritual life, in this system, too much associated with the state of Samadhi. Our object is to make the spiritual life and its experiences fully active and fully utilisable in the waking state and even in the normal use of the functions. But in Rajayoga it tends... uses some part of the mental being, will, heart or intellect as a starting-point and seeks by its conversion to arrive at the liberating Truth, Beatitude and Infinity which are the nature of the spiritual life. Its method is a direct commerce between the human Purusha in the individual body and the divine Purusha who dwells in every body and yet transcends all form and name. Hathayoga aims at the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga
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Letters on Yoga - II  >  Faith

... letters, it has become more insistent and abiding. So long as a man has that, he is marked for the spiritual life and I will say that, even if his nature is full of obstacles and crammed with denials and difficulties, and even if he has many years of struggle, he is marked out for success in the spiritual life. What you really have not yet a fixed faith in is the guidance of the Divine, his will to manifest... experience; it is something that is there before experience. When one starts the Yoga, it is not usually on the strength of experience, but on the strength of faith. It is so not only in Yoga and the spiritual life, but in ordinary life also. All men of action, discoverers, inventors, creators of knowledge proceed by faith and, until the proof is made or the thing done, they go on in spite of disappointment ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - II
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The Synthesis of Yoga  >  Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom

... them and a living force. As an ideal it can be revered without any need of practice. As a rule it can be observed in its outsides even if the inner sense is missed altogether. The supramental and spiritual life cannot be mechanised in this way, it cannot be turned into a mental ideal or an external rule. It has its own great lines, but these must be made real, must be the workings of an active Power felt... the transcriptions of an eternal Truth powerful to transform mind, life and body. And because it is thus real, effective, imperative, the generalisation of the supramental consciousness and the spiritual life is the sole force that can lead to individual and collective perfection in earth's highest creatures. Only by our coming into constant touch with the divine Consciousness and its absolute Truth... of the separated ego in the One who is all. A vast universality of soul and an intense unity with all is Page 204 the base and fixed condition of the supramental consciousness and spiritual life. In that universality and unity alone can we find the supreme law of the divine manifestation in the life of the embodied spirit; in that alone can we discover the supreme motion and right play ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga
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Letters on Yoga - IV  >  Interactions with Others and the Practice of Yoga

... otherwise in so acting one is opened to the influences that hang around Page 319 these outside people, one enters by sympathy with them into the movement of other forces than those of the spiritual life—and then it is quite possible that there may be untoward results as with X and Y and others too, in the physical, or in the vital, wherever there is most weakness. To give oneself to... social visits. My objection to retirement is that so many have "gone morbid" by it or gone astray into zones of false vital experiences; secondly, that absolute retirement is not necessary for the spiritual life. It is different however for people like X who are to the manner born or at least perfectly trained. A "restriction of publicity" is quite another matter. Also to be capable of solitude and to... of the ordinary mind—it is as a need that it has to be accepted, when it is felt as a need, not as a general law or rule. Relations in Ordinary Life The best way to prepare oneself for the spiritual life when one has to live in the ordinary occupations and surroundings is to cultivate an entire equality and detachment and the samatā of the Gita with the faith that the Divine is there and the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV
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Letters on Yoga - II  >  Creative Activity

... Sadhana through Work Letters on Yoga - II Chapter V Creative Activity The Arts and the Spiritual Life There is no incompatibility between spirituality and creative activity—they can be united. Any activity can be taken as part of the sadhana if it is offered to the Divine or done with the consciousness or faith that it is done by the Divine... part of the sadhana only if done for the Divine or taken up by the Divine Force, but then one should not want to be a poet for the sake of being a poet only, or for fame, applause, etc. The spiritual life and one's own inner psychic and spiritual change should be the first preoccupation of a sadhak—poetry or painting is something quite subordinate and even then it should be done not to be a great... great poet or artist but as a help to the inner sadhana. It is time that everyone got away from the vital view of things to the psychic and spiritual on which alone can stand Yoga and the spiritual life. Every artist almost (there are rare exceptions) has got something of the "public" man in him, in his vital physical parts, the need of the stimulus of an audience, social applause, satisfied vanity ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - II
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The Mother with Letters on the Mother  >  Leaving the Mother and the Ashram

... brighter. 20 November 1935 It is a question between the continuity of your concentrated spiritual life and the call of old demands belonging to the consciousness that you have left behind you. The Mother, as you well know, does not favour even a brief return to the old atmosphere once one is in the spiritual life. For one who has not yet really begun or is living as yet only a tepid half-formed surface... decided to go and told us so, nobody would have stood in her way, although we would not have been lost in admiration at the spiritual wisdom of her choice. Our view is that once the full separate spiritual life is chosen, to cling and turn back to the ordinary one is an error. But if there are circumstances that make the (temporary) departure either harmless or psychologically or otherwise inevitable ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Mother with Letters on the Mother
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Letters on Himself and the Ashram  >  On His Published Prose Writings

... lower Dharma, one has often to break it so as to arrive at a larger one. E.g. social duties, paying debts, looking after family, helping to serve your country, etc. etc. The man who turns to the spiritual life, has to leave all that behind him often and he is reproached by lots of people for his Adharma. But if he does not do this Adharma, he is bound for ever to the lower life—for there is always some... only so long as experience has not made them concrete, but once experienced they become living stuff of the consciousness and, after a certain stage, even the basis of action and growth in the spiritual life. Here I am driven to a rather lengthy digression from the main theme—for I am met by Angus' rather baffling appeal to Whitham's History of Science. What has Whitham or Science to do with spiritual... beginning and not attempt anything out of the way. Perhaps I should have insisted more on present limitations but that I should now make clear. For the immediate object of my endeavours is to establish spiritual life on earth and Page 138 for that the first necessity must always be to realise the Divine; only then can life be spiritualised or what I have called the Life Divine be made possible. ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Himself and the Ashram
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Questions and Answers (1929-1931)  >  12 May 1929

... the material and they are not veiled and dwarfed by the material consciousness as human beings are. Is it not a fact that these creatures are drawn by some peculiar fascination towards the spiritual life? Yes, because they feel they do not belong to this earth but come from somewhere else; and they feel too that they have powers they have half lost and they are eager to win them back. So whenever... seek to corrupt spirituality and build up an imitation of it in the mould of their own nature. Even then it is a kind of homage they pay, or a sort of amends they make, in their own way, to the spiritual life. And there is too some kind of attraction that compels them; they have revolted against the Divine rule, but in spite of their revolt or perhaps because of it, they feel somehow bound and are ... powerfully attracted by its presence. This is how it happens that you see them sometimes used as instruments to bring into connection with each other those who are to realise the spiritual life upon earth. They do not purposely serve this use, but are compelled to it. It is a kind of compensation that they pay. For they feel the pressure of the descending Light, they sense that the time has come ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1929-1931)
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Questions and Answers (1956)  >  28 March 1956

... departure from the world and its activities, a supreme release and quietude were the sole aim of the seeker, the three great fundamental realisations 1 would be sufficient for the fulfilment of his spiritual life: concentrated in them alone he could suffer all other divine or mundane knowledge to fall away from him and himself disencumbered depart into the eternal silence. But he has to take account of... need to know the Divine and unite with Him usually comes much later. I say usually; there are exceptions, but usually it is at first a flight from the miseries of life which pushes you towards the spiritual life. Very few people, if they were in a state of perfect inner and outer harmony and nothing unpleasant or painful happened to them, very few people would think of Page 96 the Divine; they... concern themselves with Him, they would be content with the half-measures of ordinary things and would not seek for an absolute. That is what Sri Aurobindo means. But, when one has found this spiritual life, one realises that it is everywhere behind all appearances, as well as directly, without appearances. Behind appearances it also exists; this is what he says: we must find and reconcile these ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1956)
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The Sunlit Path  >  Mundane Affairs

... to me." This is superstition, spread all over the world, but it has no value at all from the spiritual point of view. Source Spiritual Life: East and West Whatever difference there is between the West and the East in relation to spiritual life lies not in the inner being or nature, which is an invariable and constant thing, but in the mental habits, in the modes of outer expression... The Sunlit Path Mundane Affairs The Materialism of Modern Times At that time, the time of the Buddha, to live a spiritual life was a joy, a beatitude, the happiest state, which freed you from all the troubles of the world, all the sufferings, all the cares, making you happy, satisfied, contented. It is the materialism of modern times that has turned spiritual ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Sunlit Path
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Words of the Mother - I  >  Aspiration Talks

... withdraw into convents, or like the sannyasins here, those who abandon life to find spiritual life, who make a division between the two and say, "It is either one or the other." We say, "That is not true." It is in life and by living life entirely that one can live the spiritual life, that one must live the spiritual life. The supreme consciousness has to be brought here . From the purely material and ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - I
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Sri Aurobindo's Message  >  Sri Aurobindo on Religion

... Sri Aurobindo's Message Section III: (On Sociology) Sri Aurobindo on Religion The spiritual life (adhyātma-jīvana) , the religious life {dharma-jīvana) and the ordinary human life of which morality is a part are three quite different things and one must know which one desires and not confuse the three together. The ordinary life is that of the average... religious life may be the first approach to the spiritual, but very often it is only a turning about in a round of rites, ceremonies and practices or set ideas and forms without any issue. The spiritual life, on the contrary, proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant and separated from its true self and from God, to a greater consciousness... Morality is a part of the ordinary life; it is an attempt to govern the outward conduct by certain mental rules or to form the character by these rules in the image of a certain mental ideal. The spiritual life goes beyond the mind; it enters into the deeper consciousness of the Spirit and acts out of the truth of the Spirit. As for the question about the ethical life Page 18 and the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Sri Aurobindo's Message
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Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  1 October 1958

... and most remarkable—to the true spiritual life without having realised this ideal of moral perfection for a certain period of time, however brief it may be. Many people try to take a short-cut and want to assert their inner freedom before having overcome all the weaknesses of the outer nature; they are in great danger of deluding themselves. The true spiritual life, complete freedom, is something much... a moral ideal of perfection. It is the summit of man's mental evolution. Not many people do it... but still... there have been some and there still are. This is what men usually take for the spiritual life. When they meet a man of this type, they say, "Oh! He is a great spiritual being." He may be a great saint, he may be a great sage but he is not a spiritual being. And yet it is already very ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)
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Talks by Nirodbaran  >  27 November 1969

... that. We must live in a higher consciousness where this distinction does not exist. At one time in India, I don't know how this concept originated, but there was a ban on women taking part in spiritual life. Perhaps you know the Sanskrit adage: 'Nari narakasya dwaram' - woman is the gate to hell. And 'Kamini', 'kanchan (woman and gold) have to be avoided; and further on, 'Pothe nari biborjita'... you call Him in your troubles, in your difficulties, in your dangers, in whatever situation of life you are, He is sure to come to you, either visibly or invisibly . It is not only in spiritual life that He helps, remember that. Even in your physical activities, in games, in sports, in studies, He is there to help you. As I told you just now, in my poetry, in my art, in my writing, all... His life has been "a great struggle". Never did anything come smoothly to Him; He had to fight, He had to struggle, He had to work hard. Here, I have just read out to you one instance in His spiritual life. Just consider this carefully - five hours a day doing Pranayama and for five years! Can you think of it? I won't be able to do it for even five minutes a day! And even then, there was no result ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Talks by Nirodbaran
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Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 3  >  Part-V

... ordinary life, only it must be controlled and regulated by the mental will, so that one may not be enslaved to the desires. It is only if one turns to the spiritual life that one has to get rid of vital desires.   Once one takes up the spiritual life, what is done in the worldly life can no longer be a standard to be followed.   During the morning meditation my state was elevated, the... always about the Mother alone or Yoga alone! If you had, there would not have been trouble of sex or depression. You were at the very least thinking of yourself also.   When will my spiritual life take a positive and permanent step forward? It will happen I suppose when you are fit for it - i.e. when the vital and physical being begin to take an un-egoistic interest in the Yoga. ...

Nagin Doshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 3
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Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays  >  Indian Culture - Past, Present and Future

... and totemism have been allowed to play a role in its complex totality, although their external forms have been discouraged and are not valid or applicable to those who lead an inner mental and spiritual life. It is this complexity that bewilders the foreign student when he tries to define Indian spirituality and religion in terms and under criteria that are not born of the Indian experiment. But things... aesthetic nature of man and turn them Tantras are called Agamas. We do not know the exact number of Agamas, but it is estimated that there are 64 of them. Page 461 into stuff of the spiritual life. But this great effort and achievement covered all the time between the Vedic age and the decline of Buddhism. Vaishnavism and Shaivism flourished during this period, and although there were during... inner mind and life of man, but to approach his whole mental, psychical and physical living, his totality of being and activity, and to turn it into a first beginning of at least a generalised spiritual life. Philosophers and saints such as Sri Chaitanya (1485-15.33) and others of 15th and 16th centuries belong to this stage. There was also during this period a remarkable attempt to combine Vedanta ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays
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Memorable Contacts with The Mother  >  II: INITIATION

... was not at all ready for a spiritual life, I preferred to do Karmayoga outside. Strange that I used that word without knowing sufficiently Page 11 what it meant. The very next day an answer came explaining at some length that I was quite right in my decision, that Karmayoga could be practised outside and it would be a good preparation for my future spiritual life, if I turned to it afterwards... all about our initial, or shall I say "initiate", period during the one month’s sojourn. Let me mention here an indiscretion that we committed inadvertently at the very first summons to the spiritual life and for which the person involved had to suffer a lot. A friend of ours accompanied us for the Darshan without obtaining previous permission. He insisted so much on coming with us that we could ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Memorable Contacts with The Mother
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In the Mother's Light  >  Yogic Action-1

... THERE are four attitudes possible towards action in spiritual life, and all of them have important bearings on life. The first is an attitude of rejection; the second, of qualified rejection; the third of ethical acceptance, and the fourth, of divine utilization. These are the fundamental attitudes, which not only colour spiritual life in their distinctive ways, but also condition its course... Union. The third cause is that these elements enter successively and not simultaneously into the integrating and sublimating action of the Yoga. In the wise dispensation of Providence the spiritual life, as indeed all life, is so arranged that no element of it is hustled into a premature conversion, but each is given its proper time and opportunity to grow and evolve into the supreme identification ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   In the Mother's Light
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In the Mother's Light  >  Morality, Religion and Spirituality

... pattern, everybody is to be made uniformly and faultlessly the same. It is because morality is of this rigid unreal nature that it is in its principle and its working the contrary of the spiritual life. The spiritual life reveals the one essence in all, but reveals too its infinite diversity; it works for diversity in oneness and for perfection in that diversity. Morality lifts up one artificial standard... of leading the human consciousness towards the Spirit or the eternal Truth, it imprisons it in its dogmas and doctrines, cults and ceremonies, and comes to constitute a positive hindrance to the spiritual life. In its desire to make its appeal wide, it lends itself to many distortions and ends in a flat compromise with the forces of Ignorance. "All religions have each the same story to tell. The occasion ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   In the Mother's Light
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Sri Aurobindo - some aspects of His Vision  >  The Life Divine : Some Aspects

... regard this as not possible; though they have no knowledge of what spirituality is and they dub it ' escapism.' This word ' escapism ' is sometimes used to question and run down the value of spiritual life. Escape from what ? life presents so many problems and there is no one method of solving them. If, for instance, J. C. Bose retires into his laboratory to solve scientific problems and does not... , if the Spirit has assumed form, a material form, what is the place of Form in the ultimate fulfilment' Though the Upanishad has not hesitated to state that "Mattel is Brahman", the seeker of spiritual life, even the religious man finds the body a great obstacle and a bondage from which he seeks escape through ascetic rejection and even mortification. Man finds that life manifesting in Matter is compelled... mental faculties in the subtle, have been discovered by the yogis and they have found out physical exercises by which these, now closed, centres could be opened up, and man can enter into the higher spiritual life. " Our substance does not end with the physical body."6 " The conquest of physical limitations by the power of supramental substance is possible. " The verse of Swetashwatara Upanishad ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo - some aspects of His Vision
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At the feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo  >  07 October 1931

... can exist at a distance and that the Divine is not limited by place but is everywhere. It is not necessary for everybody to be at Pondicherry or physically near the Mother in order to lead the spiritual life or to practise the yoga, especially in its earlier stages. But that is only one side of the truth, there is another. Otherwise the logical conclusion might be that there was no necessity for the... well developed, well built up in the consciousness or prominent in the front; in most it is veiled, often ineffective or only an influence, not conscious enough or strong enough to support the spiritual life. It is for this reason that it is necessary for those drawn towards this truth to come here in order that they may receive the touch which will bring about or prepare the awakening of the psychic... effected, so far as the sadhak is at the moment capable of it, he returns to the outside world and under the protection and guidance even at a distance is able to keep the contact and go on with his spiritual life. But the influences of the outside world are not favourable to the psychic contact and the psychic development and, if the sadhak is not sufficiently careful or concentrated, the psychic contact ...

Sahana Devi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   At the feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo
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The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo  >  The Physical Nature and its Purification-2

... quiet persistence, calls down the Mother's Force, which begins to act on the inconscient and the subconscient for their purification and illumination. Mental knowledge does not count for much in spiritual life; more often than not it proves an impediment in that it bars the being's progress with its unenlightened constructions. It is the psychic conscious- ness that must take the lead, exercise its will... degradation and deformation of the divine Ananda, and those who seek to realise and express the latter in life must renounce all craving for the former. Sex enjoyment is absolutely incompatible with spiritual life. "...It is when one mixes up sex and spirituality that there is the greatest havoc. Even the attempt to sublimate it by turning it towards the Divine as in the Vaishnava madhura bhāva carries... of the way; otherwise there is either no safety or no free movement towards finality in the sâdhanâ"¹ It is a perilous error to think that, though the sexual act is forbidden and harmful in spiritual life, some kind of sexual or vital relation may be permitted. Dispelling ¹On Yoga—II. Page 282 all doubts and disarming all subterfuges on the point, Sri Aurobindo says: ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo
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The Mind Of The Cells

... path? Is there a path? Is there a process? — Probably not. The awareness of the enormity of the thing is given to me drop by drop ... so as not to be crushed. It has reached the point where all spiritual life, all these peoples and races who have been trying since the beginning of the earth, it all seems like nothing at all, like child's play. And then it's a work without glory: you get no results,... thousand miles away from their consciousness: their mouths are full of words, but it's only lip service. I say “no,” and they pretend they have heard “yes,” but anyway... That's life.... That's “spiritual life” for you! 64.3010 The people around me don't help. Those closest to me have no faith. 61.254 I'm not the leader of a group, oh Lord no! Not at any price! It's disgusting. I am going to... pursued all the way to the Himalayas, threatened with court cases, denounced to the Indian government, harassed by the police, and I do not know who sent that killer to the canyons. That's “spiritual” life for you, said Mother. They even published a fake “Agenda” to prevent the real one from coming out. The old anthropoids are quite merciless to those who are not of their tribe. But even ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mind Of The Cells
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The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo  >  What is Yoga

... not through the mere pursuit of any set methods or routine practices. This does not mean that spiritual exercises and practices are useless; they have their indispensable place and utility in spiritual life, and without them no stable progress can ever be assured, but in order to be able to produce any substantial change in Page 1 consciousness and being, they must be incorporated... the mass in a slow evolution, Yoga effects for the individual by a rapid revolution. It works by a quickening of all her energies, a sublimation of all her faculties. While she develops the spiritual life with difficulty and has constantly to fall back from it for the sake of her lower realisations, the sublimated force, the concentrated method of Yoga can attain directly and carry with it the... since Yoga is in its essence a Turning away from the ordinary material and animal life led by most men or from the more mental but still limited way of living followed by the few to a greater spiritual life, to the way divine, every part of our energies that is given to the lower existence in the spirit of that existence is a contradiction of our aim and our self-dedication. On the other hand, ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo
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The Renaissance in India  >  Indian Spirituality and Life - 1

... are the most essential to any religion, but Hinduism has always attached to the last also a great importance; it has left out no part of life as a thing secular and foreign to the religious and spiritual life. Still the Page 181 Indian religious tradition is not merely the form of a religio-social system, as the ignorant critic vainly imagines. However greatly that may count at the moment... religion seems to the European mind interminable, bewildering, wearisome, useless; it is unable to see the forest because of the richness and luxuriance of its vegetation; it misses the common spiritual life in the multitude of its forms. But this infinite variety is itself, as Vivekananda pertinently pointed out, a sign of a superior religious culture. The Indian mind has always realised that the... consciousness of the physical world and the ineffable superconscience of the Absolute. The third idea of strongest consequence at the base of Indian religion is the most dynamic for the inner spiritual life. It is that while the Supreme or the Divine can be approached through a universal consciousness and by piercing through all inner and outer Nature, That or He can be met by each individual soul ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Renaissance in India
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Essays on the Gita  >  The Divine Teacher

... II The Divine Teacher The peculiarity of the Gita among the great religious books of the world is that it does not stand apart as a work by itself, the fruit of the spiritual life of a creative personality like Christ, Mahomed or Buddha or of an epoch of pure spiritual searching like the Veda and Upanishads, but is given as an episode in an epic history of nations and their... everyday standards of thought and action. There are indeed three things in the Gita which are spiritually significant, almost symbolic, typical of the profoundest relations and problems of the spiritual life and of human existence at its roots; they are the divine personality of the Teacher, his characteristic relations with his disciple and the occasion of his teaching. The teacher is God himself... its sign and development in the external world. When we thus understand the conception of Avatarhood, we see that whether for the fundamental teaching of the Gita, our present subject, or for spiritual life generally the external aspect has only a secondary importance. Such controversies as the one that has raged in Europe over the historicity of Christ, would seem to a spiritually-minded Indian largely ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita
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Autobiographical Notes  >  To Mr. and Mrs. Sharman

... Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life (1911-1928) Autobiographical Notes To Mr. and Mrs. Sharman [c. January 1926] Dear Mr and Mṛṣ Sharman, I received a little while ago your Christmas card and greetings and it reminded me of a letter written long ago which I had hoped personally to answer, but could never do it, the time not having come... I take the opportunity of your card to do what I then failed to do, even after so long a lapse of time. I understand from your letter that there are around you a number of seekers after the spiritual life who have received some help from my works. I should be glad to hear more of this group and of what they and you are now doing. Perhaps it would now be possible to open a regular correspondence;... the main principles, the broad ways of spiritual progress. I have not written or prepared anything new of the kind. All intimate guidance must necessarily in so inner and delicate a thing as the spiritual life [ ] 3 be personal, suited to the recipient and the instruction given can only be effective if it is the channel for a spiritual contact and a guiding or helpful influence. In that way if you ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes
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Letters on Himself and the Ashram  >  Therapeutic Force and Healing

... not only as a blessing but as a help in illness. I put a value on the body first as an instrument, dharmasādhana , or, more fully, as a centre of manifested personality in action, a basis of spiritual life and Page 497 activity as of all life and activity upon the earth, but also because for me the body as well as the mind and life is a part of the divine whole, a form of the Spirit and... be a serious error which would not be admissible. In any case, my speculations about an extreme form of divinisation are something in a far distance and are no part of the preoccupations of the spiritual life in the near future. 7 December 1949 Grace and Therapeutic Force The Divine Grace has certainly done something. I [the Ashram doctor] acted according to your advice, and X felt better... way—any more than her talk of going has any sense or is in any way reasonable. Keep firmly to your object, develop that calm and force in the vital as well as the mind which are the basis of the spiritual life. That will help more in getting X 's morbid rushes of excitement to subside and the control to come in her also. 9 August 1936 No need to give up your faith, for it is faith that gets things ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Himself and the Ashram
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Questions and Answers (1950-1951)  >  17 April 1951

... that the choice is necessary. If you perfect your body and make of it a remarkable instrument, you must not at all think that because of that you are nearer to the spiritual life. You prepare a remarkable instrument so that this spiritual life may manifest in it, if it manifests itself. But it is for you always to choose what will be manifested. There are people who perfect their body, who build a strong... April Questions and Answers (1950-1951) 17 April 1951 "The spiritual life reveals the one essence in all, but reveals too its infinite diversity; it works for diversity in oneness and for perfection in that diversity." Questions and Answers 1929 ( 4 August ) This is the very motive of the creation of the universe, that is to say, all are ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1950-1951)
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The Sunlit Path  >  Virtue, Purity, Freedom

... and most remarkable—to the true spiritual life without having realised this ideal of moral perfection for a certain period of time, however brief it may be. Many people try to take a short-cut and want to assert their inner freedom before having overcome all the weaknesses of the outer nature; they are in great danger of deluding themselves. The true spiritual life, complete freedom, is something much... to cling and endure, all these prohibitions and this habit of cutting life in two—into small things and big things, the sacred and the profane.... "What!" say the people who profess to follow a spiritual life, "how can you make such little things, such insignificant things the object of spiritual experience?" And yet this is an experience that becomes more and more concrete and real, even materially; ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Sunlit Path
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The Sunlit Path  >  Controlling One's Thoughts

... live in, because you are enclosed in your own spiritual atmosphere. And that is how one obtains it: by turning one's attention solely to the spiritual life, by reading only what can help in the spiritual life, by doing only what leads you to the spiritual life, and so on. Then you create your own atmosphere. But naturally, if you open all the doors, listen to what people tell you, follow the advice ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Sunlit Path
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Letters on Yoga - II  >  The Call and the Capacity

... from the side of the disciples or from the side of the Masters. I do not see, either, why there should be any such unbridgeable gulf; for there is no essential difference between spiritual life in the East and spiritual life in the West,—what difference there is has always been of names, forms and symbols or else of the emphasis laid on one special aim or another or on one side or another of psychological... dissatisfaction with the ordinary life is not a sufficient preparation for this Yoga. A positive inner call, a Page 27 strong will and a great steadiness are necessary for success in the spiritual life. Knowledge of the way is not enough—one must tread it, or if one cannot do that, allow oneself to be carried along it. The human vital and physical external nature resist to the very end ...

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

... and aspire to be raised and led gradually from the lower to the higher. If he can do this, he will become fit in time to dedicate Page 234 himself to the Divine and lead a wholly spiritual life. The line that seems to be natural to him is the Karmayoga and he is therefore right in trying to live according to the teaching of the Gita; for the Gita is the great guide on this path... these things, that all work can be done if it is done according to the dharma and, if it is rightly done, it does not prevent the approach to the Divine or the access to spiritual knowledge and the spiritual life. Page 249 There is of course also the ascetic ideal which is necessary for many and has its place in the spiritual order. I would myself say that no man can be spiritually complete... Kurukshetra, but only one more great anchorite. The Indian scriptures and Indian tradition, in the Mahabharata and elsewhere, make room both for the spirituality of the renunciation of life and for the spiritual life of action. One cannot say that one only is the Indian tradition and that the acceptance of life and works of all kinds, sarvakarmāṇi , is un-Indian, European or Western and unspiritual. Interest ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - II
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Letters on Yoga - I  >  Doubt and Faith

... greater consciousness that we can see whether Doubt is of any utility for the spiritual life. To believe anything and everything is certainly not demanded of the spiritual seeker; such a promiscuous and imbecile credulity would be not only unintellectual, but in the last degree unspiritual. At every moment of the spiritual life until one has got fully into that higher Light, one has to be on one's guard... quieting itself, giving up its demands and opening and surrendering to a greater Light than it can find on its own obscurer level. This does not mean that the Mind has no place at all in the spiritual life; but it means that it cannot be even the main instrument, much less the authority to whose judgment all must submit itself, including the Divine. Mind must learn from the greater Consciousness ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I
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Letters on Yoga - IV  >  Wrong Movements of the Vital

... Mother's Force may come down into it and occupy it and work there. Vital Restlessness I have no idea why he wants to change [ his work ]. If he wants to make himself some day fit for the spiritual life, the first thing to be avoided is vital restlessness. To do the work one has to do with a quiet mind, making an offering of it to the Divine and trying to get rid of egoism and vital desire, is... easily listens to such ideas and suggestions as those you mention. Faith and devotion come from the soul and it is only when the vital has entirely submitted to the soul that one can truly lead the spiritual life. It is normal that when a special pressure is put on a vital movement, a resistance whether in the vital itself (here vital-physical) or in the subconscient should manifest itself. It is... 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 something that flatters the vital ego and supports its demands and call that the Divine, a response to vital suggestions of distrust, despair ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV
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The Life Divine  >  The Evolution of the Spiritual Man

... seek to establish a communication with what is invisible, a reliance on the surface mind as the sufficient vehicle of the spiritual endeavour; a certain dryness and a narrowness and paucity of the spiritual life have been a frequent consequence. Moreover, the intellect having denied so much, cast out so much, has found ample room and opportunity to deny more until it denies all, to negate spiritual experience... fully confirmed this intensive evolution and formation through the individual that anything radical of an expanding or dynamically diffusive character can be expected or any attempt at collective spiritual life,—such attempts have been made, but mostly as a field of protection for the growth of the individual's spirituality,—acquire a successful permanence. For till then the individual must be preoccupied... changing his mind and life into conformity with the truth of the spirit which he is achieving or has achieved in his inner being and knowledge. Any premature attempt at a large-scale collective spiritual life is exposed to vitiation by some incompleteness of the spiritual knowledge on its dynamic side, by the imperfections of the individual seekers and by the invasion of the ordinary mind and vital ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine
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The Indian Spirit and the World's Future  >  The Spiritual Life and World-Renunciation: A Letter to One Attracted by the Cloister

... The Indian Spirit and the World's Future The Spiritual Life and World-Renunciation: A Letter to One Attracted by the Cloister I READ your letter with great interest and my mind went back to my own early days of groping and struggling. When the hunger for the Divine first awoke in me, it was something devastating no less than uplifting. The devastating... out to us from every corner and every particle of His creation. This, mind you, is not just a gospel of doing one's duty and being good to people. Duty and goodness are not negligible, but the spiritual life does not stop with them or even basically consist of them. It consists essentially in increasing union with the Divine and increasing expression of the Divine as a result of that union. In whatever... ease nor hardship, but remains the same through all conditions and circumstances and gladly accepts life's abundance as it accepts life's rigours. When this sort of inner freedom is there, the spiritual life grows at the end a conquest of the world's powers for the sake of the Divine. Art is encouraged and transfigured. Beauty plays in every heart-beat and every movement. And if beauty demands a certain ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Indian Spirit and the World's Future
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Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  The "Arya's" Fourth Year

... manifest the spiritual life in the human existence is the opportunity given by the successions of rebirth. We accept the truth of evolution, not so much in the physical form given to it by the West Page 107 as in its philosophical truth, the involution of life and mind and spirit here in matter and their progressive manifestation. At the summit of this evolution is the spiritual life, the life... application of truth of spirit to the largest and most difficult part of the truth of life, to action, and a way by which action can lead us to birth into the Spirit and can be harmonised with the spiritual life. Truth of philosophy is of a merely theoretical value unless it can be lived, and we have therefore tried in the "Synthesis of Yoga" to arrive at a synthetical view of the principles and methods ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
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Mother’s Agenda 1962  >  February 13, 1962

... as something seems normal, natural, acceptable, there's no escaping it. You have one life on the side and then "this" [the life in the body], that's the way people with a spiritual life always lived: they had their spiritual life and let "this" continue on automatically, without attaching any importance to it—it's very easy. But what a relief to live the Truth at each instant!... I haven't yet... something to it?" And I understand them (even though I have a different will and vision of something to come that is not yet here), I understand the feeling of those who came into contact with spiritual life and asked, "What good is it—what good is it? Is there anything worth living in it?" We are NECESSARILY hemmed in, bound to live in narrowness and pettiness simply to keep alive, for the sake of ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1962
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Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 1)  >  chapter 024

... believed like some people that by being strictly vegetarian they were ipso facto more spiritual. There can be greed for food even in a vegetarian. It is this greed that is primarily banned in the spiritual life - and, along with greed, marked preferences. The Mother has disapproved of "the constant thinking by people of what they will eat and when they will eat and whether they are eating enough". To... you should be careful to note that the person is not entrenched bigotedly in any presently prevalent system of creed and dogma and ritual. The living awareness of someone consciously leading a spiritual life is always a help, but how will you find among your associates a companion with an inner wideness, an inner freedom from current religiosity? An open-minded, deep-hearted aspirant towards spiritual... brings forward three truths. One is that the Mother's cosciousness could catch our thoughts and feelings at any distance without any verbal transmission by us. Secondly, she wanted our choice of the spiritual life to be not only free but also whole-hearted. In the third place, her Grace, extending to us help and protection, could not be accounted for by our small-sighted vision: it did not depend on surface ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 1)
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Teilhard de Chardin and our Time  >  The Cosmic and the Christly

... of metal, there was a strong sense of self-giving and a whole train of obligations all mixed up together and my whole spiritual life has merely been the development of this."   We can clearly perceive that at the start of his inner development, at the basis of his spiritual life, Teilhard's "genuine self" was elsewhere than in devotion to the historical Christ-figure. It was only afterwards that... Teilhard de Chardin and our Time The Cosmic and the Christly       The core of Teilhard's spiritual life is laid bare in its primary colour by the reminiscence he has left to us of his earliest religious experience. He 1 writes:   "I was certainly no more than six or seven when I began to feel myself drawn by Matter - or more strictly by something ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Teilhard de Chardin and our Time
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Indian Identity and Cultural Continuity  >  Indian Culture Past,Present and Future

... and totemism have been allowed to play a role in its complex totality, although their external forms have been discouraged and are not valid or applicable to those who lead an inner mental and spiritual life. It is this complexity that bewilders the foreign student when he tries to define Indian spirituality and religion in terms and under criteria that are not born of the Indian experiment. But things... and mystic forms of disciplines attempted to seize not only the soul and the intellect, but the emotions, the senses, the vital and the aesthetic nature of man and turn them into stuff of the spiritual life. But this great effort and achievement covered all the time between the Vedic age and the decline of Buddhism. Vaishnavism and Shaivism flourished during this period, and although there were during... that there are 64 of them. Page 22 whole mental, psychical and physical living, his totality of being and activity, and to turn it into a first beginning of at least a generalised spiritual life. Philosophers and saints such as Sri Chaitanya (1485-1533) and others of 15th and 16th centuries belong to this stage. There was also during this period a remarkable attempt to combine Vedanta ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Indian Identity and Cultural Continuity
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The Practice of the Integral Yoga  >  How to Invoke the Divine's Grace?

... pre-suppositions. But even before we come to the pointing out of these wrongly assumed premises and pre-suppositions, we feel like advising a sadhaka of the Integral Yoga, who wants to build up his spiritual life, that against all negative whisperings of the adversary forces and the doubting Thomases, he should believe with all his heart and mind that there is indeed such a thing called divine Grace and... question of the 'Dispensing Grace'. In the course of our long life's journey, we feel the need of so many things, for the successful conduct of the life and, especially, for the building up of our spiritual life. But we don't know where to find these necessary things or how to procure them even when we know the Page 123 way to do so. In this case too the sadhaka's main reliance should... attitude and allow the Grace to act in an unimpeded way. In that case it is absolutely certain that no other strength or tapasya is needed for the successful building up and consummation of our spiritual life. Has not Sri Aurobindo assured us? - "Strength has a value for spiritual realisation, but to say that it can be done by strength only and by no other means is a violent exaggeration. Grace ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Practice of the Integral Yoga
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2  >  Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems

... largely moulded our taste and we have forgotten that an equally poetic world exists in the domain of spiritual life, even in its very severity, as in that of earthly life and its sweetness. And as we are passionate about the earthly life, even so Sri Auro­bindo has made a passion of the spiritual life. Poetry after all has a mission; the phrase "Art for Art's sake" may be made to mean anything. Poetry... into the midnight His shadow is thrown; When darkness was blind and engulfed within darkness, He was seated within it immense and alone.¹ or these that contain the metaphysics of a spiritual life: King, not in vain. I knew the tedious bars That I had fled, To be His arms whom I have sought; I saw How earth was made Out of his being; I perceived the Law, The Truth ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2
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Spiritual bouquets to a friend  >  Letter from Rishabhchand to Rutledge Tompkins

... by heredity, environment or any other external agency, and the other is the Dharma of the evolved mental being, a sort of crutch or prop for him to grow and develop in order to qualify for the spiritual life. Svabhava is one's essential nature & svadharma is the law of that nature. Later, when the psychic being experiences its universality and transcendence and becomes a divine child of the Divine... so ineffably, inscrutably and variably manifold! And my heart leaped up for joy when I perceived that you had performed this feat of love and devotion and surrender at the very beginning of your spiritual life! Dilip Kumar Roy's is not a solitary case, I have seen many others of the same nature—sadhaks sincerely devoted to Sri Aurobindo but Page 40 shrinking from a whole hearted... hesis, and Life Divine and the innumerable letters ? He could have given specific instructions to individual sadhakas like the Gurus of the ancient times, and guided them individually in their spiritual life. If His Yoga has no broad principles, then it is not meant for humanity, its object cannot be the birth of a new race. All his books bear ample witness to the fact, which only a blind fanatic can ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Spiritual bouquets to a friend
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In the Mother's Light  >  Reason-Its Utiliry and Limitation

... . ”¹ It is generally thought that in spiritual life one should discourage the development of reason and not allow it to interfere with the free play of the heart's emotions and intuitions. Though there is some truth in this view, it must not blind us to the fact that uncontrolled emotions and pseudo-intuitions spell a greater danger to spiritual life than the intervention and domination of reason... is to be taught to every human being as soon as he is capable of thinking is that he must obey reason which is a kind of super-instinct of the species. And I repeat that it is not a question of spiritual life, but the very elementary wisdom of human, purely human, life. Every child must know that he is created to become a mental being, and if he is to manifest his human nature, reason must govern his ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   In the Mother's Light
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In the Mother's Light  >  Grace

... Grace IN almost all theistic religions, Eastern and Western, the intervention and action of Grace has been acknowledged to be the supreme force of 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... ¹ Words of the Mother, 3rd Series, ² ibid. Page 154 spiritual influences, may perceive something of the mysterious working of Grace. But those who follow the spiritual life, particularly the life of Yoga, can never fail to testify to the fact that from "behind the appearances...this infinite, wonderful, all- powerful Grace...knows everything, organises everything... Will that arranges everything around you. ”¹ It is an all-seeing universal Love that orders and directs our life, and not a blind chance or an inscrutable conspiracy of accidents. In our spiritual life it is not unoften that we observe with a growing wonder and gratitude how experiences come into us, how veil after veil is lifted from our consciousness, truth after truth is revealed to our ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   In the Mother's Light
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Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine  >  Matter

... and not an outer birth. The second birth takes place when you awaken to your spiritual possibilities. Till one is not awakened to the idea of spiritual life, or of realizing God one is only physically born. When one awakens to the inner need of spiritual life that is the second birth. Q: Does that second birth come at the meeting, right at the beginning of the meeting, of the Guru or does it... literally; it is a symbol. The conception of the world takes place beyond mind. Shakti—the Virgin—creates directly out of the spiritual consciousness, without resorting to any material medium. Even in spiritual life, even now, the Guru who is the guide Page 239 helps the disciple by giving him a second birth. And the second birth is an inner birth, not an outer birth. Q: It is said ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine
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Sri Aurobindo - a biography and a history  >  Lighthouse

... mentality. His idea of spirituality had nothing to do with asceticism or a high disdain for secular things; he would, in fact, include all human activity - and therefore politics too - in a complete spiritual life. From 1903 to 1910, he had actively involved himself in politics "with one aim and one alone, to get into the mind of the people a settled will for freedom and the necessity of a struggle to achieve... there was much vital movement in his nature. His intellect was lucid." Page 531 It is clear Sri Aurobindo advised Das to persevere in his political work and also attend to his spiritual life to the extent possible. One agonising question seems to have come up during the discussions: Hindu-Muslim relations in India generally, and in Bengal particularly. Almost twenty-five years later... The conversation that followed seemed at first to be at cross-purposes. While Purani wanted the "go ahead!" signal for revolutionary activity, Sri Aurobindo wanted Purani to take to a spiritual life. Surely, not so long as India had not shaken off subjection? Sri Aurobindo gently pointed out that politics was necessary, and Yoga was necessary; many were called to politics, but few to Yoga ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo - a biography and a history
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Sri Aurobindo - a biography and a history  >  Arya - A God's Labour

... the mental and physical life; to develop the most profound and vital methods of psychological self-discipline and self-development so that the mental and psychical life of man may express the spiritual life through the utmost possible expansion of its own richness, power and complexity; and to seek for the means and motives by which his external life, his society and his institutions may remould... relations and the structure of society" - that surely must ensure the progress of the human race. In that respect, India if she chose could "guide the world"; but for this it was necessary that the spiritual life of India should issue out of the cave and the temple, adapt itself to new forms, and "lay its hand upon the world".* * Reproduced from Bulletin (August 1970), pp. 144-8. In the January... say, the physical being and consciousness of which the world and the body are only images. But the modern Yogas hardly recognise the possibility of a material union with the Divine. In spiritual life - even more, perhaps, than in our everyday external life - progress is seldom a steep straight line, but a zig-zagging, a spiralling, an alternation of forced marches and sudden setbacks, followed ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo - a biography and a history
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Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Supermind and the Life Divine

... life of the spirit. It would not lose these former veils but they would no longer be veils or imperfect expressions but true manifestations; they would be changed into states of light, powers of spiritual life, vehicles of a spiritual existence. But this again could not be if mind, life and body were not taken up and transformed by a state of being and a force of being superior to them, a power of Supermind... and is fulfilled in the truth-consciousness all the possibilities of the divine life. It will take up not only the whole characteristic experience which we recognise already as constituting the spiritual life, but also all which we now exclude from that category but which is capable of divinisation, not excluding whatever of the earth-nature and the earth-life can be transformed by the touch of the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
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Essays on the Gita  >  Our Demand and Need from the Gita

... is yet another, the Tantric, 1 which though less subtle and spiritually profound, is even more bold and forceful than the synthesis of the Gita,—for it seizes even upon the obstacles to the spiritual life and compels them to become the means for a richer spiritual conquest and enables us to embrace the whole Page 9 of Life in our divine scope as the Lila 2 of the Divine; and in some... to adhere to one of the theistic religions of the past or to entrench ourselves within the four corners of the teaching of the Gita. That would be to limit ourselves and to attempt to create our spiritual life out of the being, knowledge and nature of others, of the men of the past, instead of building it out of our own being and potentialities. We do not belong to the past dawns, but to the noons of ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita
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The Renaissance in India  >  Indian Spirituality and Life - 3

... first deeper approaches of man's inner mind and life to the Divine in the universe, but a greater initiation opened the way to a far more intimate truth and pushed towards an inner living of the spiritual life in all its profundity and in all the infinite possibilities of an uttermost sublime experience. There has been long in preparation a third stage which belongs to the future. Its inspiring idea... rule and injunction. A rigid observation and discipline of the social law, a larger nobler discipline and freer self-culture of the ideal side of the Dharma, a wide freedom of the religious and spiritual life became the three powers of the system. The steps of the expanding human spirit mounted through these powers to its perfection. Thus the whole general character of the application of Indian ideals ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Renaissance in India
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The Renaissance in India  >  Indian Polity - 3

... the lowest Shudras and even the despised and oppressed outcastes. The four orders grew into a fixed social hierarchy, but, leaving aside the status of the outcastes, each had attached to it a spiritual life and utility, a certain social dignity, an education, a principle of social and ethical honour and a place and duty and right in the communal body. The system served again as an automatic means... Dharma as it was understood by the Buddhists. This was, as we can at once see, precisely the principle and theory of the whole Hindu society, but given here the higher intensity possible to the spiritual life and a purely religious body. It managed its affairs too like the Indian social and political communal unities. An assembly of the order discussed debatable questions of the Dharma and its application ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Renaissance in India
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The Sun and The Rainbow  >  Sex and Spirituality

... thrust is surely the reason why the Mother and Sri Aurobindo appreciated the piece. Nobody in India can permanently find room for sex in spiritual life without violating his own deepest conviction. Not that all have refrained from mixing sex with the spiritual life — there are various cults in which erotic indulgence of the body is practised with a pseudo-mystical ecstasy accompanying its excitement ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Sun and The Rainbow
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A Centenary Tribute  >  Sri Aurobindo's Vision-Mohan Ramanan

... living manifestations of Swami Vivekananda's burning patriotism born through personal Sadhana and sacrifice. A modern intellectual in India has much to learn about social service as an aspect of spiritual life from this particular tradition.   Anyone at all alert to the spiritual and cultural barometers of our times cannot but remember the contemporaneous presence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother... patriots and their contribution to our freedom and our representation of nationhood cannot be over-emphasised.   In much of what I have said so far the relation of gender issues to the spiritual life has not been specifically addressed. Gender questions determine our imaginative conception of Page 329 nationhood. Historically the nativist response to British colonial ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Centenary Tribute
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The Golden Path  >  Anurakta

... a fashion designer. Were you aware of a spiritual presence in your childhood and when did you first aspire deeply for the spiritual life? I was slightly aware as I had one or two uplifting experiences in church as a child but I began to aspire for a truly spiritual life in East Africa in my late twenties when I discovered Hinduism. How do you see your early life as being influential to your ...

Anie Nunnally   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Golden Path
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Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo  >  Method of Spiritual Practice

... Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo Method of Spiritual Practice As stated a little earlier, Eckhart does not consider the term "practice" to be quite appropriate in spiritual life because practice implies personal effort of some sort, whereas enlightenment is not something Page 112 that can be brought about by any egoic effort; it comes about as a result... very special circumstances, violent shocks, the shocks life gives precisely with the intention of slightly reversing this movement of exteriorization of the consciousness. 86 To live a spiritual life is to open oneself to the inner world within the depths of one's being. It involves a reversal of the normal consciousness from its ordinary state of dispersion and exteriorization to one of c ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo
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Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo  >  Questions and Answers at Esalen

... ss, or Presence. It is happening. One has only to allow it to happen. DALAL: Is not spiritual practice necessary for leading a spiritual life? Doesn't spiritual practice involve time? [Eckhart has said that time is the greatest obstacle in spiritual life.] ECKHART: It may be necessary for you to have a spiritual practice, but it is not absolutely necessary for everyone to go through ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo
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Wager of Ambrosia  >  Glory be to the Guru

... ground at his feet. And yet in the evolving consciousness this separation has to be meaningfully and functionally recognised. In fact, according to the tradition, initiation of the aspirant into spiritual life is done in secrecy, with the tacit understanding that nothing of it will be spread around or disclosed to anybody. The Shishya lives in the physical presence of the Guru for three days and nights... and embraces the ready soul. But, and quite understandably, it is generally the initiator-aspect alone that we associate with the Guru. In the one we see the unborn disciple, aja , entering into spiritual life and in the other the already realised soul, pakva , living in the white radiance of the Benign. What does the Guru do? He accepts the responsibility of the Shishya in every respect, spiritually ...

R. Y. Deshpande   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Wager of Ambrosia
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Evolution, Religion and the Unknown God  >  13: Science and Religion

... ceremonies and practices or set ideas and forms without any issue. The spiritual life, on the contrary, proceeds directly by a change of the consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness in which one finds one’s true being and comes first into direct and living contact and then into union with the Divine.” 11 The spiritual life is an individual, inner exploration. The spiritual aspirant undertakes ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evolution, Religion and the Unknown God
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Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume I  >  1931

... hidden parts of your being. That which you were then was not this outer man, but the inner Dilip, the Yogin, the bhakta. When that plunge has once been taken, you are marked for the Yogic, the spiritual life and nothing can efface the seal that has been put upon you. All is there in your description of this complex experience—all the signs of this first plunge. First, the sense of going a little... of these movements show but it is not in the heart —your heart is all right—but in the lower vital nature. All your weaknesses are there; the rest of your being is quite strong enough for the spiritual life. But this inadequacy of the lower vital is not peculiar to you, it is in almost every human being. This tendency to irrational sadness and despondency and these imaginations, fears and perverse ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume I
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Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)  >  chapter 012

... immediate importance. But on rereading your letter I find that there are some other points which call for a short comment because they are based on insufficient information about Sri Aurobindo's spiritual life. As you are an admirer of Sri Aurobindo, I think you will be glad to have the correct facts.   You have written: "There is first Aurobindo the great speculative thinker, the intellect who... gifted individuals. And we may add that by the very difficulty they have accepted for us our own path becomes easier.   I hope this letter will dispel the mistaken picture of Sri Aurobindo's spiritual life that you have somehow formed.   I shall be happy to hear from you again.   With kind regards,   Yours sincerely, K. D. Sethna   1, Queen Victoria Road, New Delhi ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)
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Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)  >  chapter 009

... of the Mother to me keep ringing. In effect their import ran: "The plane of the mind is infinite. One can go on and on there, in fascinated pursuit of knowledge. No time will be left for the spiritual life. One can have a glorious time, mastering arts and sciences and making discovery after discovery. A wide surface satisfaction can be yours but, having seen beyond the mind and obtained a taste... is, more specifically than the aspirant's, to a personal Divinity and is more than the aspirant's in tune with the Grace in its particular aspect. Aspiration and prayer are both of value in the spiritual life and sometimes it is difficult to distinguish them. How would Page 101 one characterise the famous cry of the Brihadaranyaka Upa-nishad?- From the unreal lead us to the Real ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)
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Letters on Yoga - I  >  Fate, Free Will and Prediction

... of the being and the nature and energies it has accumulated in the past acting on each other and determining the present attempts and their future results. But as soon as one enters the path of spiritual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new factor, the Page 509 Divine Grace, the help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma which can lift... in which the predictions of the horoscope fulfil themselves with great accuracy up to a certain age, then apply no more. This often happens when the subject turns away from the ordinary to the spiritual life. If the turn is very radical the cessation of predictability may be immediate; otherwise certain results may still last on for a time, but there is no longer the same inevitability. This would ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I
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Letters on Yoga - I  >  Social Duties and the Divine

... often to break it so as to arrive at a Page 438 larger one. E.g. social duties, paying debts, looking after family, helping to serve your country, etc. etc. The man who turns to the spiritual life, has to leave all that behind him often and he is reproached by lots of people for his Adharma. But if he does not do this Adharma, he is bound for ever to the lower life—for there is always some... similar action is monstrous. They ought to be satisfied with praising Buddha and take care not to follow his example. The tendency you speak of, to leave the family and social life for the spiritual life, has been traditional in India for the last 2000 years and more—chiefly among men, it touches only a very small number of women. It must be remembered that Indian social life has subordinated almost ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I
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Vedic and Philological Studies  >  A Chapter for a Work on the Veda

... para. This profuse ramification of Yogic systems, like the inexhaustible fertility of religious sects and orders, is a sign and an unfailing accompaniment of the richness, power and freedom of spiritual life in this country. It is not only an accompaniment, but a necessary condition. If, for instance, Yoga had allowed itself to formalise into the strict tenets and stereotyped methods of a single school... us in the mental atmosphere from which we draw our inner sustenance, and are strong enough to emerge with something of the ancient truth which gave so ineffable a vastness and profundity to the spiritual life of our forefathers. Behind and beyond all human gurus there dwells within us all theWorld-Teacher, the universal jagadguru of whom human teachers are only the masks and nominal representatives ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Vedic and Philological Studies
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The Human Cycle  >  Summary and Conclusion

... It could be kept in being only if humanity agreed to allow all the rest of its life to be regularised for it for the sake of peace and stability and took refuge for its individual freedom in the spiritual life, as happened once under the Roman Empire. But even that would be only a temporary solution. A federal system also would tend inevitably to establish one general type for human life, institutions... that means; it has failed and deserved to fail, because there can be no universal religious system, one in mental creed and vital form. The inner spirit is indeed one, but more than any other the spiritual life insists on freedom and variation in its self-expression and means of development. A religion of humanity means the growing realisation that there is a secret Spirit, a divine Reality, in which ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Human Cycle
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Letters on Yoga - III  >  Experiences Associated with the Psychic

... Your experience was a very beautiful one—the inner being realises by such experiences that which must be established in the waking state as the foundation of the spiritual consciousness and spiritual life. Psychic Yearning The yearning of the heart may be there but it should not disturb the peace. Page 376 I think it is better to stop it [ the yearning of the heart ] for the... or in the spiritual or their inferiority to vital pleasure are strange, because they contradict all psychic and spiritual experience except that of the mere vairagis and make the choice of the spiritual life itself (Nirvana seekers excepted) quite inexplicable. Your arguments are not convincing. What have Ramakrishna's excesses or the fluctuations of Vivekananda's vital receptivity between exaltation ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - III
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Letters on Yoga - II  >  Combining Work, Meditation and Bhakti

... condition and growth of the being. There is no royal road to Page 217 the divine realisation. This is the Karmayoga as it is laid down in the Gita as I have developed it for the integral spiritual life. It is founded not on speculation and reasoning but on experience. It does not exclude meditation and it certainly does not exclude bhakti, for the self-offering to the Divine, the consecration... "Janaka and others", simply because he himself cannot find or has not yet found their deeper secret—hence my defence of works. Work and Meditation Work by itself is only a preparation [ for spiritual life ], so is meditation by itself, but work done in the increasing Yogic consciousness is a means of realisation as much as meditation is. I have not said, I hope, that work only prepares. Meditation ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - II
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Letters on Yoga - II  >  Qualities Needed for Sadhana

... in the way. Sincerity especially is indispensable to the spiritual endeavour, and crookedness a constant obstacle. The sattwic nature has always been held to be the most apt and ready for the spiritual life, while the rajasic nature is encumbered by its desires and passions. At the same time, spirituality is something above the dualities, and what is most needed for it is a true upward aspiration... dark wrappings of a divine element within which once it pierces the veil, can burn through both towards the heights of the Spirit. Humility before the Divine is also a sine qua non of the spiritual life, and spiritual pride, arrogance, or vanity and self-assurance press always downward. But confidence in the Divine and a faith in one's spiritual destiny (i.e. since my heart and Page 42 ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - II
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Letters on Yoga - IV  >  The Nature of the Vital

... are going about it in the wrong way—hence the perilous condition of Europe and of the world. Nor are these convulsed and insecure conditions a very favourable environment for the development of a spiritual life either. But it seems that it is in the midst of difficulties that it is destined to come. The times now are both worse and better than in Wordsworth's—on one side there is a collapse into... As for fitness and unfitness, nobody is entirely fit for this Yoga; one has to become fit by aspiration, by abhyāsa , by sincerity and surrender. If you have always desired the spiritual Page 108 life, it is the psychic part of you that desired it, but your vital has always come in the way. Establish a sincere will in the vital; do not allow personal desires and demands and selfishness ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV
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Letters on Yoga - IV  >  The Place of Study in Sadhana

... Yes, the scientific mind does not lead very far [ in spiritual life ]; it only multiplies experiences but brings neither the realisation, nor the knowledge. Page 75 × The correspondent asked whether a scholar would progress rapidly in spiritual life if his mind was "developed, large and enlightened through ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV
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The Mother with Letters on the Mother  >  True Relation with the Mother

... be foreign to the spiritual consciousness) have been put forward by some, admitted by many in practice, as a part of the Yoga! I do not see how such a method can lead to any good results in the spiritual life. 12 January 1932 The connection between myself and the Mother is always there, but my vital is interfering, colouring it and making it impure. Yes, the connection is always there, in... 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 from inside to reshape the physical existence. But so many insist on remaining in the external and their relation with the Mother is governed by the ordinary reactions of the external unsp ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Mother with Letters on the Mother
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The Mother with Letters on the Mother  >  Golconde

... on the contrary indiscipline, individualism and strife; that is one reason why India collapsed and entered into servitude. Organisation and order were attempted but failed to endure. Even in the spiritual life India has had not only the free wandering ascetic, a law to himself, but has felt impelled to create orders of Sannyasins with their rules and governing bodies and there have also been monastic... trying to do, the spiritual realisation is the first necessity, but it cannot be complete without an outer realisation also in life, in man, in this world. Spiritual consciousness within but also spiritual life without. The Asram as it is now is not that ideal, for that all its members would have to live in a spiritual consciousness and not in the ordinary egoistic mind and mainly rajasic vital nature ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Mother with Letters on the Mother
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Autobiographical Notes  >  To the Advance Distributing Company

... Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life (1911-1928) Autobiographical Notes To the Advance Distributing Company [1] Arya Office. Pondicherry 9 March. 1926 Advance Distributing Company Pittsburgh. Pa. Your letter of the 8th January to the Arya Publishing House has just been forwarded to me. The publishing house restricted by the ... manner of its announcement seems to be very different. I do not think it would have much success in India where there is a long tradition and in spite of much imperfection and error the standards of spiritual life are of a subtler kind. The difficulties we experience here are due rather to a wide-spread inability to go freely beyond ancient ideas and forms. Plenty of money can be had in India for orthodox ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes
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Letters on Yoga - II  >  Transformation in the Integral Yoga

... achievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing in of a Power of consciousness Page 400 (the supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active. (3) Because a method has been preconised for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz. the total... he is in entire agreement. But in the phrase "to its heights we can always reach" very obviously "we" does not refer to humanity in general but to those who have a sufficiently developed inner spiritual life. 3 It is probable that Sri Aurobindo was thinking of his own experience. After three years of spiritual effort with only minor results he was shown by a Yogi the way to silence his mind. This ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - II
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Questions and Answers (1950-1951)  >  1 March 1951

... Without the psychic, Matter would never have awakened from its inconscience, it would never have aspired for the life of its origin, the spiritual life. Therefore, the psychic being in the human being is the manifestation of spiritual aspiration; but there is a spiritual life independent of the psychic. Is there a correspondence between the psychic world and the earth? But I have already told you ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1950-1951)
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Questions and Answers (1929-1931)  >  19 May 1929

... abstinence from everything that is pleasant or comfortable. This is a mental construction which must be thrown down if you are to be free to see and follow the spiritual truth. For you come to the spiritual life with a sincere aspiration and you want to meet the Divine and realise the Divine in your consciousness and in your life; and Page 53 then what happens is that you arrive in a place... for a Yogi is to be plastic and ready to obey the Divine Command whatever it may be; nothing must be indispensable to him, nothing a burden. Often the first impulse of those who want to live the spiritual life is to throw away all they have; but they do it because they want to be rid of a burden, not because they want to surrender to the Divine. Men who possess wealth and are surrounded by the things ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1929-1931)
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Questions and Answers (1956)  >  18 January 1956

... ( Laughter ) Is it only one individual the Divine chooses to manifest Him or can He choose several?—He chooses several. But here too there is a hierarchy. One can understand nothing of the spiritual life if one does not understand the true hierarchy. Page 27 Nowadays it's not in fashion. It is something which human thought doesn't favour at all. But from the spiritual point of view... each element which is truly in its place has a total and perfect relation with the Divine—in its place. And yet, on the whole, there is a hierarchy which too is quite absolute. But to understand spiritual life one must first understand that; and it isn't very easy. Everyone can be a perfect expression of the Divine in himself, on condition that he knows his place and keeps to it. And if they do ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1956)
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Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  3 April 1957

... make a harmonious whole. And that is the essential difference between a religion and the true spiritual life. Religion exists almost exclusively in its forms, its cults, in a certain set of ideas, and it becomes great only through the spirituality of a few exceptional individuals, whereas true spiritual life, and above all what the supramental realisation will be, is independent of every precise, ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)
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Questions and Answers (1950-1951)  >  29 March 1951

... and free.... "In every religion there are some who have evolved a high spiritual life. But it is not the religion that gave them their spirituality; it is they who have put their spirituality into the religion. Put anywhere else, born into any other cult, they would have found there and lived there the same spiritual life. It is their own capacity, it is some power of their inner being and not the ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1950-1951)
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Questions and Answers (1955)  >  2 November 1955

... the Vedic times also? To find their soul and the Divine? Of course. But they did not succeed? Page 351 No, Sri Aurobindo says that in the Vedic age they tried to bring the spiritual life into the physical life, but he says that the means they employed, the paths they followed at that time are no longer any good now. Just imagine us before an altar making a Puja !... It won't do... times when I look at the sunset or Page 353 sunrise or a lovely effect of light I still recall this and tell myself, "Why! Such a dissociation... how strange that one can't live the spiritual life if one admires Nature!" So if it is true that he was like that, he was certainly at the other end of our programme. I am telling you I don't know whether it is true, but still, I am giving it ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1955)
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Emergence of the Psychic  >  The Psychic Being - Its Nature and Function

... Without the psychic, Matter would never have awakened from its inconscience, it would never have aspired for the life of its origin, the spiritual life. Therefore, the psychic being in the human being is the manifestation of spiritual aspiration; but there is a spiritual life independent of the psychic. 24 — The Mother Is there a difference between the "spiritual" and the "psychic"? Are ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Emergence of the Psychic
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Our Many Selves  >  Difference between “Spiritual” and “Psychic”

... Without the psychic, Matter would never have awakened from its inconscience, it would never have aspired for the life of its origin, the spiritual life. Therefore, the psychic being in the human being is the manifestation of spiritual aspiration; but there is a spiritual life independent of the psychic. The Mother Questions and Answers (1950 - 1951): 1 March 1951 ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Our Many Selves
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On Education  >  The Four Austerities and the Four Liberations

... tendency, unavowed and unavowable; it is an unhealthy seeking or a subconscious need for violent sensations. In reality, these things are very far removed from all spiritual life, for they are ugly and base, dark and diseased; whereas spiritual life, on the contrary, is a life of light and balance, beauty and joy. They are invented and extolled by a sort of mental and vital cruelty towards the body. But cruelty ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   On Education
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India's Rebirth  >  1893-1910: Revolutionary Writings

... this reason we always find that if it is Page 25 material force which dominates the present, it is spiritual which moulds and takes possession of the future---- Since the spiritual life of India is the first necessity of the world's future, we fight not only for our own political and spiritual freedom but for the spiritual emancipation of the human race For it is not among an... famous Alipore Bomb trial went on, Sri Aurobindo, defended by Chit-taranjan Das, spent a year in jail, during which he had crucial experiences and revelations; as he wrote later, "Now the inner spiritual life and realisation which had continually been increasing in magnitude and universality and assuming a larger place took him up entirely and his work became a part and result of it and besides far ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   India's Rebirth
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India's Rebirth  >  1923-1926: Talks (1st Series)

... much useful and in the same manner as any other form of culture, e.g., art, science, ethics, etc. All these help the development of man; they prepare the materials which will enrich his higher spiritual life.... But as the other departments of culture—aesthetics, morals, science—can be abused, so religion also can be abused and in fact is very often abused. And as it is said, when the best thing d... forms adopted in the previous movement without realizing the changed circumstances and fresh requirements of the time. Most of our workers and leaders at the present time are without any spiritual life. I cannot say anything about individuals. But the central thing in Hinduism is spirituality and there cannot be any big movement without any spirituality behind it. * * * ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   India's Rebirth
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Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  29 October 1958

... fully confirmed this intensive evolution and formation through the individual that anything radical of an expanding or dynamically diffusive character can be expected or any attempt at collective spiritual life,—such attempts have been made, but mostly as a field of protection for the growth of the individual's spirituality,—acquire a successful permanence. For till then the individual must be preoccupied... changing his mind and life into conformity with the truth of the spirit which he is achieving or has achieved in his inner being and knowledge. Any premature attempt at a large-scale collective spiritual life is exposed to vitiation by some incompleteness of the spiritual knowledge on its dynamic side, by the imperfections of the individual seekers and by the invasion of the ordinary mind and vital ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)
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Mother’s Agenda 1962  >  May 29, 1962

... say it's something beyond most people's reach—it's really a book for us, to put us into contact with all who are interested in yo public. What I see is almost a children's book, fga, in the spiritual life: an elite. It is a book for an elite, not for the generalor a whole generation aged ten to eighteen, thousands of children.... With lovely pictures. ( silence ) No, only one thing worries... meditate while walking back and forth. There was a small courtyard with a dividing wall, and shards of glass were stuck on top of the wall to keep out thieves. And I was meditating—meditating on the spiritual life—when suddenly something caught my eye: a ray of sunlight on a sharp piece of blue glass on top of the wall. And positively, spontaneously, without thinking or reflecting or anything... I saw the ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1962
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Some Answers from the Mother  >  Letters to a Young Sadhak

... one's "self". Indeed, what would it be without the feelings and thoughts which animate it? An inert, lifeless mass. Mother, what is it that will help me always remember that I am living a spiritual life? The awareness of the Divine Presence in all things and always. You have said in your Conversations that to prepare oneself for the Yoga one must first of all be conscious. To be... eating. My most beloved Mother, I think it would be better to avoid a party of this kind. Evidently, this creates an atmosphere in which food predominates; this is not very conducive to spiritual life. XI The vital is at once the place of desires and energies, impulses and passions, of cowardice, but also of heroism—to bridle it is to turn all this towards the divine Will and submit ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Some Answers from the Mother
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Mother’s Agenda 1961  >  July 15, 1961

... has evidently been some rather considerable progress, because lately the enormity of the thing has been shown to me far more... concretely, oh!... I tell you, it has reached the point where all spiritual life, all these peoples and races who have been trying since the beginning of the earth, who have made so many efforts to realize something—it all seems like nothing, like child's play. It's nothing:... Later, just before leaving: But you know, this present state gives me the feeling that actually we know nothing at all, at all, at all—nothing at all. Everything else, everything leading to the spiritual life, to liberation and so forth—well, yes, it's all very well, all very well. But compared to what one must know to do this work.... Perhaps it's better not to know. Because evidently I can't ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1961
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More Answers from the Mother  >  Series Six (1961 - 1968)

... some years ago to turn to spiritual life and has been Page 391 trying her best to do so. But she finds the pull of sex too strong and does not know how to proceed. She prays for Mother's guidance on whether it is advisable for her to marry or to persist in sadhana, whatever the difficulty. Her photo is enclosed. Let her marry now and take to spiritual life later on; she is not yet ready ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   More Answers from the Mother
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Some Answers from the Mother  >  Letters to a Young Captain (1961-1970)

... think it will help me to find the Divine, but is it an obstacle? If You think it is better for me not to have it, all right, I accept Your decision without complaint. What is an obstacle to the spiritual life is to attach importance to material comfort and to take one's desires for needs—in other words, self-deception. Now, if you have a fan and wish to use Page 294 it, you may do so,... Very good. And everything I did was precisely to bring you to this decision! 23 August 1966 Sweet Mother, India is supposed to be the Guru of the world in order to establish the spiritual life on earth. But, Mother, in order to occupy this high position she must be worthy politically, morally and physically, mustn't she? Without any doubt—and just now, there is much to be done! ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Some Answers from the Mother
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Mother’s Agenda 1966  >  November 9, 1966

... won't it look like hankering after sexual enjoyment? Because that would bring the whole thing down to a very low level. Ill-disposed people would say, "Ah, of course, sexual desire is stronger than spiritual life." It depends on the way it's put. This woman... she isn't a woman, she is almost a girl. There has never been a love relationship between them; she is a twelve- to thirteen-year-old child and... soon as you are there and in contact with the Divine, he tells you, "Go down! Don't stay here, it's not your place!" But, you know, I am desperately struggling against all those who conceive of spiritual life as... brrt! you go off. That's just the beginning. As for me, I always answer with the story of Buddha: as he was about to enter Nirvana, he suddenly realized that the earth had to be changed. ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1966
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Mother’s Agenda 1970  >  May 30, 1970

... × See Conversations with Pavitra of 11 January 1926: "In spiritual life, one should always be ready to reject every system and every construction. Any one form is helpful, then becomes harmful. In my spiritual life, since the age of forty, three or four times I have completely laid bare and broken the system I had reached." ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1970
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The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo  >  Sri Aurobindo from A to Z

... want philosophical answers to your questions about the spiritual life you wish now to begin. But I am in a poetic mood and cannot pen you a discourse. All I can write is a sort of birthday letter of the soul and send you my best wishes by giving you in a few flashes what I feel and see from several sides. What is the spiritual life? Every moment a remembrance of God, every moment ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo
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The Indian Spirit and the World's Future  >  Vivekananda and Our Spiritual Future

... pro-Jnana temper of his intellect and based on a philosophical misunderstanding of the ultimate essence of love. This misunderstanding helped to soothe somewhat the dominant conflict of his spiritual life - the unresting sense of the incompatibility of the One Perfect with the imperfect many. And it is characteristic of him to have made the significant remark that the bhakta must never argue. Love... also be an infinite or inconceivable yet real goodness and righteous power. But for Vivekananda the philosopher, a personal Creator could never be that, and if love is to be valuable as a step in spiritual life it must at least forget if not disbelieve that its object is a creative Person. Otherwise, it must go by the board; and in any case Jnana was deemed surer ground inasmuch as it tried to do away ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Indian Spirit and the World's Future
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Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo  >  October 1935

... would be about bringing down the gods fully enough (a progressive labour), not about lamentations over the ghee. [By the way, do you think that the Mother or myself or others who have taken up the spiritual life had not enjoyed life and that it is therefore that the Mother was able to speak of a joyous sacrifice to the Divine as the true spirit of spiritual sacrifice? Or do you think we spent the preliminary... to have any experience of Self, in the circumstances you have described! [In Dilip's letter.] I can't help that. It happened. The mind's canons of the rational and the possible do not give spiritual life and experience. But can you not tell us what the experience was like? Was it by any chance like the one you speak of in your Uttarpara Speech 128 —the Vasudeva experience? Great Jum ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo
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Talks with Sri Aurobindo  >  17 JANUARY 1940

... parts of art. Otherwise art is like a one stringed lyre. SRI AUROBINDO: But why should a great poet write on everything—even on matters in which he is not interested? People who are leading a spiritual life naturally express the truth and experience of that life. And do the masses appreciate poetry? I think I told you the story of a Spainyard, a commercial man, who was my brother Manmohan's friend... NIRODBARAN: We say about them, "What is all this love, love, love?" SRI AUROBINDO: What is wrong with love if they can express it with poetic feeling and power? They are not leading the spiritual life. NIRODBARAN: The only objection to limiting oneself to a single theme is that its appeal becomes circumscribed and not universal. SRI AUROBINDO: Do you mean to say that poetry is understood ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Talks with Sri Aurobindo
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Nishikanto - the Brahmaputra of inspiration  >  Nishikanto

... of leaving Santiniketan for Pondicherry. Though the people of Santiniketan loved Nishikanto and his poetry but no praise or appreciation could bind him to the place. His aspiration for a higher spiritual life made him leave Santiniketan. Before his departure he distributed his paintings among his friends and burnt all of his poems. It was in the year 1933, Nishikanto was then twenty-four years of age... variety either and she is still great… Shakespeare too has his limitations… But why should a great poet write on everything—even on matters in which he is not interested? People who are leading a spiritual life naturally express truth and experience of that life… Greatness of poetry doesn’t depend on [variety] but on whether the thing that has been created is great or not. Browning has a lot of variety ...

Nishikanto Roy Chowdhury   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Nishikanto - the Brahmaputra of inspiration
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The Story of a Soul  >  03 March 1955

... something higher and exceptional. Believe me, I was very unhappy. "I am not a coward. I haven't left the ordinary world because of difficulties and sufferings. My soul is destined to lead the spiritual life. I hope you will understand." He replied, "Yes, I do. The Mother also told us that you were not meant for the ordinary life, and that you were pure. But in case you change your mind my doors... I want you to remarry and be happy. I cannot possibly give you what is expected of a wife. Moreover you cannot give me what I have been hoping for: true, selfless love and companionship in the spiritual life. So there you are." We exchanged good wishes, and parted. The next morning, after the Mother had seen the divorce certificate which my relatives had brought with them, I signed it in front ...

Huta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Story of a Soul
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The Destiny of the Body  >  The Waking State and the 'Why' of the Samadhi-Plunge

... if ever inward (paraṁ paśyati nāntarātmari) 1 . Hence the self in this status of external wakefulness has been described as 'wise of the outward' (jāgaritasthā-no bahiḥprajña ḥ ) 2 . No spiritual life or any higher or deeper realisation becomes possible if one remains fettered to this waking state. The Dream-State : This represents the subliminal condition of our conscious existence... disciples of Sri Ramakrishna and the writer of his authoritative biography, is reporting: "In how simple terms the Thakur [i.e. Sri Ramakrishna] used to explain to us these abstruse truths of spiritual life: " 'Well, something rises from my feet and climbs towards the head. So long as it does not reach the head, I retain consciousness ; but as soon as it reaches there, an utter forgetfulness ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body
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From Man Human to Man Divine  >  Science and Spiritual Knowledge

... Religion It is not so much spirituality and Yoga as the accredited credal religions that have historically clashed with the spirit and findings of Science. For what characterises a truly spiritual life is a direct 1.Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 1054. 2. Ibid., p. 1055. 3. Questions and Answers, Cent. Vol. 3, p. 33. Page 59 contact with the spiritual... a union with the Divine and a living in the Divine Consciousness. Spirituality represents thus an essentially catholic mood, a programme of inner regeneration and finally a realised goal. The spiritual life, as distinguished from a religious life, "proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant and separated from its true self and from God, to a ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   From Man Human to Man Divine
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Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny  >  Frequent Absence from Ashram Life

... work in the Ashram and going away elsewhere in and out of season for a short or a long period of time and for reasons not at all connected with their avowed intention of building up a dedicated spiritual life. Their consciousness has become so insensitive that they feel no difference in them whether they are physically staying in the Ashram or dwelling elsewhere in an alien atmosphere. It is not a day... the Trust." Page 74 Sri Aurobindo on Sadhaks Absenting from the Ashram: (1)"No one in fact is kept here when his will or decision is to go - although the principle of the spiritual life is against any return to the old one even for a time especially if the deeper urge is there and striving towards a firm foundation of the new consciousness - for the return to the ordinary atmosphere ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny
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Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny  >  Freedom and Discipline in the Ashram

... respective places freedom and discipline should occupy in the ordering of our Ashram community. It is necessary to remember at the very outset that any attempt at a large-scale collective spiritual life is always liable to be vitiated by the imperfections of the individual seekers, also by the intrusion of the unregenerate mental, vital and physical consciousness into the higher truth that is... trying to do, the spiritual realisation is the first necessity, but it cannot be complete without an outer realisation also in life, in men, in this world. Spiritual consciousness within but also spiritual life without. ... Discipline is necessary for the overcoming of the ego and the mental preferences and the rajasic vital nature, as a help to it at any rate. ... While the present state of things exists ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny
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The Growth of a Flame  >  Introduction

... brother and sister-in-law, and two cousins Ramjibhai and Dayaben. She had inherited a liking for the spiritual life from her father, who was a devotee of Lord Krishna and had founded an Ashram at Kansia, a beautiful island a Page vii few miles from Bharuch, where he lived a spiritual life. He took a very keen interest in moulding the lives of his children, for whose sake he often invited ...

Kamala   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Growth of a Flame
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Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth  >  The Mystery of Rebirth

... , man is to move from the ignorance and the little life which he is at present in his mind and body to the Knowledge and the large spiritual life. At least, the opening out of the spirit in him, the knowledge of his real self and the leading of a genuine spiritual life as distinguished from a religio-ethical life, must be attained before he can go definitively and for ever elsewhere. But even ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth
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Landmarks of Hinduism  >  Landmarks of Hinduism

... represented an old poise between two extremes. On one side there was the crude or half-trained naturalness of the outer physical man; on the other side, there was an inner and secret psychic and spiritual life of the initiates. But this poise was disturbed because of the necessity of a large-lined advance. In its developing cycle of civilisation, India was called for a more and more generalised intellectual... divinity within him. But now at the third stage, there was an attempt to take up man's whole mental, psychical and physical living so as to arrive at the first beginning of at least a generalised spiritual life. This is what we see in the emergence of great spiritual movement of the saints and Bhaktas after the decline of Buddhism and an increasing resort to various paths of yoga. During this stage ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Landmarks of Hinduism
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Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays  >  Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

... solely a supra-cosmic achievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing in of a Power of Consciousness (the supra-mental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active. Because a method has been precognised for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the... to adhere to one of the theistic religions of the past or to entrench ourselves within the four corners of the teaching of the Gita. That would be to limit ourselves and to attempt to create our spiritual life out of the being, knowledge and nature of others, of the men of the past, instead of building it out of our own being and potentialities. We do not belong to the past dawns, but to the noons of ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays
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The Gita and its Synthesis of Yoga  >  Part One

... of action that is demanded of human agency. Gita is not a book of Practical Ethics but of the Spiritual life But before we analyze Sri Krishna's answer in detail, it may be remarked that the upshot of this answer is that the Gita is not a book of practical ethics, but of the spiritual life which permits us to transcend the clash of all dharmas that the human mind can conceive, and to discover ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Gita and its Synthesis of Yoga
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Arjuna's Argument At Kurukshetra And Sri Krishna's Answers  >  Bhagavadgita and the Contemporary Crisis

... mere theological dogma. An impartial study of the Gita will show that it contains a very rich and many-sided thought, it manifests a synthetic grasp of different aspects of the ethical and spiritual life, and that it takes us to some of the highest possible experiences of which human mind is capable. It can even be said that it contains most of the main clues of the secret of reconciliation of... coming out of the problem. But the Gita goes boldly beyond these conflicting positions. It justifies all life to the spirit, and asserts the compatibility of a complete human action and a complete spiritual life lived in reunion with the highest states of knowledge and consciousness. Let us state clearly Arjuna's arguments. In the first place, Arjuna argued that he would like to reject that aim ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Arjuna's Argument At Kurukshetra And Sri Krishna's Answers
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Indian Identity and Cultural Continuity  >  Philosophy of Indianness

... the Veda and in the Upanishads like the Isha, or Kena or Katha or Taittiriya. The fullness of spiritual life is perceived in the great pronouncement of the Vedic and the Upanishadic Rishis: तेन त्यकतेन भुञ्जीथाः (by having renounced thou shouldst enjoy) is one of the formulas of the integral spiritual life; and there are several others in the Ishopanished itself, such as those relating to the Reality ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Indian Identity and Cultural Continuity
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Bhagavadgita and Contemporary Crisis  >  Law and Life

... is inspired by the Divine Will. 'The Gita justifies all life to the spirit as a significant manifestation of Divinity and asserts the compatibility of a complete human action and complete spiritual life lived in union with the Infinite, consonant with the highest Self, expressive of the perfect Godhead. 'The central question is: "What is the Divine Will? We have to remember that Divine Will... Page 166 "My father became a disciple of Brahmadevji and during the subsequent years, he began to spend his summer vacations at Bharatvan so that he could study and practise his spiritual life under the direct supervision of Brahmadevji. "During the next five years, I studied on my own the entire history of thought, eastern and western. I had, of course, the guidance of Brahmadevji ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Bhagavadgita and Contemporary Crisis
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Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo  >  August 1937

... couldn't keep him here; forces took him away! Doubt! I repeat that he took himself away. No Force can take a man away, who really wants not to go and really wants the spiritual life. X wanted the "Divine Response" only, not spiritual life—his doubts all rose from that. Why do you lay so much stress on our writing everything to you? Can't we pray to you and ask for help? Isn't it as good as writing ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo
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Memorable Contacts with The Mother  >  I: THE GREAT MOMENT

... many surprises overtake us in a manner strange to our outward eye, and "exceeding Nature’s groove", life voyages on an uncharted sea. This is particularly true for those who are meant to embrace a spiritual life. At least, it was so in my case. When I look back, I cannot rationally explain some decisive turns my life has taken without any pre-conceived plan. And yet, as I string together these disparate... the Mother to allay my fears. Still, I felt extremely ill at ease, particularly because I had no idea of spirituality at all, nor had I much love for it. Suppose the Mother asked, "Do you want a spiritual life?" What answer would I give? Before starting, however, I thought I must take a bath. I felt even like praying a little. As soon as I sat down, my eyes closed and something startling happened of ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Memorable Contacts with The Mother
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Talks by Nirodbaran  >  16 July 1969

... being heard. So in order to be able to lead the spiritual life, you have to break some of the moral rules - the moral barriers. But so long as you don't hear that voice, you have to obey the moral law. In our land here, you see, we have become spiritual. Moral laws are not for us brothers. The first thing we have established in our spiritual life is freedom. Now the word "brother" reminds ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Talks by Nirodbaran
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Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 2  >  MOTHER'S ROLE IN OUR SADHANA

... outer and passing things only which one notes with a perfect contempt and indifference.         It is a realised fact that at Pranam the Mother could offer us all that we need for our spiritual life in a moment. For in the inner or higher worlds our earthly time does not exist. There, we can see or feel a lot of things within the fraction of a minute. To see the same things we may need here... presence etc. But the fact is that the union of our consciousness with her physical self will be actually the last in our sadhana. Quite right. To live inside is the first principle of spiritual life and from inside to reshape the physical existence. But so many insist on remaining in the external and their relation with the Mother is governed by the ordinary reactions of the external u ...

Nagin Doshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 2
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A Vision of United India  >  Hindu-Muslim unity

... cherished in different terms by the world's religions. ALL LIFE IS SPIRITUAL The division between "ordinary life and "spiritual" life is an outdated antiquity. All human beings have it in their minds, the division between leading a spiritual life and leading an ordinary life, having a spiritual consciousness and an ordinary consciousness - it is not true, there is only one consciousness ...

Prof. Kittu Reddy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Vision of United India
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  Beyond Vedanta

... Beyond Vedanta THE first step in the spiritual life is the Vedantic experience that the world is an illusion, an absolute illusion. Rather it is the Buddhist experience of nihil, nothingness, extinction that is the first step, the very basic realisation of all spiritual life. It is not the summit – the nee plus ultra , beyond which there is nothing – ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5  >  Old Bengali Mystic Poems

... other shore. Ask of Chatila – the Master has no peer.   NOTES   Life is a dangerous river. You have to cross it to go over to the other shore of safety, the spiritual life. But once in it, you are doomed. You are drowned in its fathomless depths or if you try to clamber up its sides you are bogged down in their sticky mud. The one thing to do is to build a bridge... then only, Bhushuka says, all its bond ages break away.   NOTES   This poem presents a simpler allegory and expresses a more familiar experience of the spiritual life. The mouse is the ignorant being, the small being of ignorance­ – the restless desire – soul full of hunger and hankerings – moved by the untamed vital urge ('the wind'). It is difficult ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6  >  Gods and Men

... reached a crucial stage and has to take a leap or bound into another dimension of life. The aspiration for the spiritual life means that you have now a glimpse of the true person that you are within, the beautiful person within you of whom I have spoken so often to you. Through the spiritual life you develop that beautiful personality more and more and still more, until you become a being perfectly formed ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6
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The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10  >  Beyond Vedanta

... II Beyond Vedanta The first step in the spiritual life is the Vedantic experience that the world is an illusion, an absolute illusion. Rather it is the Buddhist experience of nihil, nothingness, extinc­tion that is the first step, the very basic realisation of all spiritual life. It is not the summit—the nec plus ultra, beyond which there is nothing—but ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10
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The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 3  >  Sincerity

... The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 3 V Sincerity The first condition of the spiritual life, and the last condition as well, is sincerity. One must sincerely want the spiritual life in order to have it. The soul—the psychic being—is always sincere: it is made of the very stuff of sincerity, for it is a part, or a spark of the Divine Consciousness itself ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 3
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5  >  A Review of Our Ashram Life

... and odd that we are today, there were at that time (the time I am speaking of) barely fifty. And there were no children. ¹ And of men, only those who were allowed, who had a real call for the spiritual life, those alone who were chosen by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and permitted to live here. And here is the natural psychological reason: it was a select group who had already had an inner life... spiritual aspiration. And so they were ready for a life of surrender and self-giving, obedience and allegiance to the guru. They did not come ignorant and innocent of the rudimentary elements of spiritual life. The work that Mother could do then and was doing, she has herself described and explained to us. It was the creation of a world – a region at least – of the higher consciousness in which ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5
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A Pilgrims Quest for the Highest and the Best  >  Supermind in the Veda and the Aim of Immortality

... Sri Aurobindo, the Tantric synthesis is less subtle and spiritually profound, but it is even more bold and forceful than the synthesis of the Gita, — "for it seizes even upon the obstacles to the spiritual life and compels them to become the means for a richer spiritual conquest and enables us to embrace the whole of Life in our divine scope as the Lila of the Divine; and in some directions it is... solely a supra-cosmic achievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing in of a Power of Consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organized or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organized and made directly active. 3. Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Pilgrims Quest for the Highest and the Best
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Significance of Indian Yoga  >  Appendix

... represented an old poise between two extremes. On one side, there was the crude or half-trained naturalness of the outer physical man; on the other side, there was an inner and secret psychic and spiritual life for the initiates. But this poise was disturbed because of the necessity of a large-lined advance. In its developing cycle of civilisation, India called for a more and more generalised intellectual... divinity within him. But now in the third stage, there was an attempt to take up man's whole mental, psychical, physical living so as to arrive at a first beginning at least of a generalised spiritual Page 98 life. This is what we see after the decline of Buddhism in the emergence of great spiritual movement of the saints and bhaktas and an increasing resort to various paths of yoga. During this ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Significance of Indian Yoga
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A Scheme for The Education of Bengal  >  The Divine Body

... aspirant and weighed considerably in favour of an ascetic rejection of the body. Sex and sexuality and all that springs from sex and testifies to its existence had to be banned and discarded from the spiritual life, and this, though difficult, is not at all impossible and can be made a cardinal condition for the spiritual seeker. This is natural and unescapable in all ascetic practice and the satisfaction... first to fulfil, becomes after a time quite feasible; the overcoming of the sex-instinct and impulse is indeed binding on all Page 152 who would attain to self-mastery and lead the spiritual life. A total mastery over it is essential for all spiritual seekers, the eradication of it for the complete ascetic. This much has to be recognised and not diminished in its obligatory importance and ...

Pranab Bhattacharya (Dada)   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Scheme for The Education of Bengal
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Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine  >  The Problem of Life

... status in the Spirit and participate in world-dynamis. The ego-centre is useful for nature, the individual moves round it and it acts as the defence against the pressure of cosmic forces. But in spiritual life we must loose the 'ego'. But merely loosing the ego would not bring about true dynamism for action in life. In the traditional Vedanta the knowers of Reality—the Brahman—are classified into four... four groups. One who is like a child— b ā la; one who is mad— unmatta; one who is inert— ja ḍ a and one who is like a possessed being pi śā ca. It does not give a picture of ideal spiritual life. It would be like the condition of a king with incapable minister. Supramental transformation alone can bring about the perfect spiritual status and faultless divine dynamism. Questions and Answers ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine
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Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo  >  16th January 1939

... being applied to other fields whereas its extreme application is meant for spiritual life. Non-violence or Ahinsa as a spiritual attitude and its practice is perfectly understandable and has a standing. You may not accept it in toto but it Page 137 has a basis in the Reality. You can live it in spiritual life but to try to apply to all life seems too much. Such an application ignores ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo
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Life of Sri Aurobindo  >  Baroda

... partly connected with college work; (3) political activity – articles in the Induprakash and beginnings of the revolutionary movement, visits to Bengal during vacations for this purpose; (4) spiritual life; (5) family life. During this period Sri Aurobindo often stayed with Khaserao Jadhav in his house at Dandia Bazar. In his absence he stayed with Khaserao's brother Madhavrao Jadhav. Several... ... It was the time of 'country first, humanity afterwards and the rest nowhere'. It was something from behind which got the idea accepted by the mind; mine was a side-door entry into the Spiritual Life." Sri Aurobindo consulted engineer Devdhar, who was a disciple of Swami Brahmananda of Chandod, for details about Pranayama. There was an idea current that yoga could not be done without ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life of Sri Aurobindo
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Life of Sri Aurobindo  >  In Alipore Jail and After

... take the Divine's help in the mission that he had undertaken, but the nature of his experiences during the jail life completely changed his outlook. He decided to dedicate himself entirely to the spiritual life and his outer life thenceforward became a part of his sadhana and its result. The field of action was enlarged enormously afterwards, – from the service of the country and its freedom it became... would perish. The Sanatan Page 122 Dharma, that is nationalism. This is the message that I have to speak to you."¹ The Uttarpara speech is a public document of Sri Aurobindo's spiritual life and contains in seed form some of the basic principles of the yoga he evolved. The human in him yet spoke of the Divine and then the human was completely transformed into the Divine. The Light ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life of Sri Aurobindo
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Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo  >  On Books

... is the result of a sceptical denial of any higher possibility of spiritual and divine life on the one hand, and a spirit of mere curiosity on the other. If Europe wants something genuine in the spiritual life, it is absolutely necessary for it to throw away all this rubbish. Disciple : Is it because of its dangers ? Sri Aurobindo : Yes, the vital is always a very dangerous plane... was a Hatha Yogi and Sri Aurobindo attended his lecture in the palace on invitation. He did not meet him at his place. 5. Mohanpuri did not give him Daivi upasana – i.e. introduction to spiritual life. Page 121 Sri Aurobindo : As to the first point you write to him that it is the Higher Knowledge – its Jyoti – which illu­mines the mind. The distinction between mental ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo
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Life of Sri Aurobindo  >  Appendixes

... question in my various writings," he answered, "and have said there that the mind is an instrument of Ignorance growing towards knowledge. This does not mean that mind has no place at all in the spiritual life; but it does mean that it cannot be even the main instrument much less the authority to whose judgment all must submit themselves including the Divine. Mind must learn from the greater consciousness... appreciate his spiritual urge and the importance of his work in that field. In this respect Mr. Kulkarni's effort is superior to some others by persons incapable of understanding spirituality. If spiritual life, if Yoga and the realisation of God have to be left out from or minimised in the life of Sri Aurobindo, then the effort of writing the biography may as well be given up. But Mr. Kulkarni's book ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life of Sri Aurobindo
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On The Mother  >  A Glorified, not a Crucified, Body

... ... Religion exists almost exclusively in its forms, its cults, in a certain set of ideas, and it becomes great only through the spirituality of a few exceptional individuals, whereas true spiritual life, and above all what the supramental realisation will be, is independent of every precise, intellectual form, every limited form of life. It embraces all possibilities and manifestations and makes... Mother said on 24 April: The higher perfection is spiritual and super-human. The lower perfection is human perfection carried to its maximum limits, and this may be quite independent of all spiritual life, all spiritual aspiration. 21 Page 633 If to the lower perfection the higher spiritual perfection is also added, the results will be outstanding. That was why Sri Aurobindo has always ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On The Mother
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At the feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo  >  21 October 1933

... family duties exist so long as one is in the ordinary consciousness of the Garhastha, if the call to spiritual life comes, whether one keeps to them or not depends partly upon the way of yoga one follows, partly on one’s own spiritual necessity. There are many who pursue inwardly the spiritual life and keep the family duties, not as social duties but as a field for the practice of Karmayoga, others ...

Sahana Devi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   At the feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo
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Mother or The Divine Materialism - I  >  12: The Interregnum of the Mind

... to enter, Mother narrates. I was saying a mantra or japa when X came along; he had a terribly reproachful air! Then he smelled my hands: "It’s a bad habit to wear perfume. You cannot live a spiritual life when you wear perfume.” [Mother also wore lipstick—how frivolous!] Then I looked at him and thought, “My God, does he have to be so back­ward!" But it annoyed me, so I said, “Very well, I'm going... divorce between life and Spirit, within and without, was a ruinous distortion and that all those meditation exercises were pointless and did not change life in the least: They think that the sign of spiritual life is one’s capacity to sit down in a corner and meditate! 16 Yes, you sit down in a corner, but as soon as you leave the meditation, you leave your peace of mind at the same time. 17 Right ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The Divine Materialism - I
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The Grace  >  The Grace

... French couple who taught me Mathematics and Geography (Oh, God! how I hated those subjects!) – I forget their French family names – Sri Aurobindo gave them Suchi and Sarala as their names of the spiritual life. Madame Gaebele, the mother of my French teacher, was renamed Suvrata. Being childish and imitative by temperament, I asked for my name to be changed as well. The Master wrote that Rama – Indra... blending of the human and the divine, which far transcended the human relation of a mother for her offspring or a spiritual relation of a guru with the disciple. A black curtain was drawn over my spiritual life for several years. But even in that total change the Mother's aid was there, her hand of succour saved me from complete disaster and ruin. The last letter she wrote to me was in 1942. I returned ...

Romen Palit   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Grace
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Mother's Chronicles - Book Five  >  Lotus and Lotus

... of fourteen for his bride. Her name was Mrinalini Bose. Curiously enough 'Mrinalini' and 'Aurobindo' both mean 'Lotus.' Now olden Hindu traditions say that a wife is the partner in her husband's spiritual life, and helper in the execution of his chosen Dharma. They are companions who walk the same road in life. There is a fullness of sharing between them. Remarkably this couple shared even their names... subject, but it is a puzzle." Sri Aurobindo: "Why delicate ? and why a puzzle ? Do you think that Buddha or Confucius or myself were born with a prevision that they or I would take to the spiritual life? So long as one is in the ordinary consciousness, one lives the ordinary life —when the awakening and the new consciousness come, one leaves it nothing puzzling in that." Page 129 ...

Sujata Nahar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother's Chronicles - Book Five
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Essays on the Gita  >  The Core of the Teaching

... upon the essential idea, the central heart of the teaching is especially necessary here because the Gita with its rich and many-sided thought, its synthetical grasp of different aspects of the spiritual life and the fluent winding motion of its argument lends itself, even more than other scriptures, to one-sided misrepresentations born of a partisan intellectuality. The unconscious or half-conscious... the Master-men done impersonally for the sake of the world and as a sacrifice to Him who stands behind man and Nature. In other words, the Gita is not a book of practical ethics, but of the spiritual life. The modern mind is just now the European mind, such as it has become after having abandoned not only the philosophic idealism of the highest Graeco-Roman culture from which it started, but the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita
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Letters on Himself and the Ashram  >  Work in the Ashram

... round one's own ego instead of a running towards the Divine. 10 December 1934 Page 743 If I remember right, you wrote to me that work is only a means for the preparation of the spiritual life; otherwise it has no spiritual value. [ Sri Aurobindo underlined "only", put a question mark above it, and wrote: ] Lord God! when did I make this stupendous statement which destroys at one... service of and love of human beings and not the direct service and love of the Divine, then one is following a wrong principle—for that is the principle of the mental, vital and moral, not the spiritual life. November 1933 All work is equal—those who write or embroider are in no way superior to those who cook or prepare the grains. To speak otherwise is ignorance. 7 December 1933 Active ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Himself and the Ashram
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Questions and Answers (1954)  >  10 November 1954

... second degree. The first degree, you see, is when someone claims, for example, to have a very great aspiration and to want the spiritual life and, at the same time, does completely... how to put it?... shamelessly, things which are most contradictory to the spiritual life. This is indeed a degree of sincerity, rather of insincerity, which is most obvious. But there is a second degree which I have ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1954)
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Questions and Answers (1954)  >  7 April 1954

... will suddenly realise that he has formed very bad habits and is following a very nasty road though the mental part of the being was full of aspiration and progressing in knowledge and even in the spiritual life. If one does not pay attention, things slide very easily into a hole: one takes a false step, then slips and suddenly bumps against the bottom of the hole. Then one asks oneself, "But how did this... being Page 96 to draw you into its own field; because you did not pull it out of its way, did not compel it to follow you, it now drags you back instead. If one wants to lead the spiritual life, one must not be three-fourths asleep. It is necessary to be wide awake and very attentive, otherwise you are like a little boat upon a river or a great sea with terrible currents, and if you are ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1954)
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Autobiographical Notes  >  To and about V. Tirupati

... Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life (1911-1928) Autobiographical Notes To and about V. Tirupati [1] Pondicherry. February 21st 1926. Tirupati, my child- Our Divine Lord sends you the following message: 1 Page 306 Your letters have been received and read with pleasure. Haradhan came back yesterday morning bringing... ordinary human beings. Here also have no attachments, no shrinkings; deal with them in a quiet rational manner. Your father-in-law has repeatedly promised me that they would not interfere with your spiritual life. All they want is that you should eat and be in good health, and take their help for your needs and comforts. It was only under my instructions that they pressed you to eat. All these things ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes
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Autobiographical Notes  >  To Joseph Baptista

... them. I have always laid a dominant stress and I now lay an entire stress on the spiritual life, but my idea of spirituality has nothing to do with ascetic withdrawal or contempt or disgust of secular things. There is to me nothing secular, all human activity is for me a thing to be included in a complete spiritual life, and the importance of politics at the present time is very great. But my line and ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes
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The Psychic Being  >  The Psychic and the Spiritual

... Without the psychic, Matter would never have awakened from its inconscience, it would never have aspired for the life of its origin, the spiritual life. Therefore, the psychic being in the human being is the manifestation of spiritual aspiration; but there is a spiritual life independent of the psychic. The Mother Questions and Answers (1950 - 1951): 1 March 1951 The psychic has two aspects—there ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Psychic Being
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Letters on Himself and the Ashram  >  Heredity, Past Lives, Astrology

... April] is the birthday of Pondicherry because you came here on this date. If one can place oneself in the year 2036 A.D. he may find that 4th April is celebrated as the birthday of the Earth's spiritual life. Perhaps the horoscope of the Earth may show this more accurately; but is there a horoscope of the Earth as there are horoscopes of some villages? Pondicherry was born long ago—but if X means... about India with my disciples till I disappeared in a river (on a ferry). Even if the prediction were a correct one according to the horoscope it need not fulfil itself, because by entering the spiritual life one opens to a new force which can change one's destiny. 22 August 1937 It is no doubt possible to draw the illnesses of others upon oneself and even to do it deliberately, the instance of ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Himself and the Ashram
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Autobiographical Notes  >  Service in Baroda State

... received any such invitations. Among his brother officers the most intimate with him were Khaserao Jadhav and Barrister Keshavrao Deshpande, with whom he discussed the problems of Philosophy, Spiritual life and the reconstruction of India. The most intimate friend at Baroda was Khaserao's brother, Page 38 Lieutenant Madhavrao Jadhav who was associated with him in his political ideas... took no interest in philosophy at all at that time; he was interested in the sayings and life of Ramakrishna and the utterances and writings of Vivekananda, but that was almost all with regard to spiritual life; he had inner experiences, from the time he stepped on to the shores of India, but did not associate them at that time with Yoga about which he knew nothing. Afterwards when he learned or heard ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes
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The Mother with Letters on the Mother  >  The Mother's Attitude towards Quarrels between the Sadhaks

... they say or do. The Mother takes no sides in any quarrel or antagonism or dispute, but her silence does not mean that she approves what they may say or do when it is improper. The Asram or the spiritual life is not a stage in which some are to be prominent or take a leading part or a field of competition in which one has a claim or can rightly consider himself superior to others. These things are the... futility of all these things from the spiritual level that there can be any hope that they will cease. In all these things there is nothing that ought to drive a man Page 398 from the spiritual life or make him go away from his Guru. It seems to me that it is only the Guru who can decide whether one is fit or not; to accept the adverse opinion of someone else on that point seems to me absurd ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Mother with Letters on the Mother
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On Education  >  Four Austerities And Four Liberations (The Mother)

... or less veiled, unavowed and unavowable; it is an unhealthy seeking or a subconscient need for violent sensations. In reality, these things are very far from the spiritual life; for they are ugly and low, dark and diseased; spiritual life, on the contrary, is a life of light and balance, beauty and joy, They have been invented and extolled by a sort of mental and vital cruelty inllicted on the body ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   On Education
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Lights on Yoga  >  Work

... resolution are necessary in every method of Sadhana. Strength is all right for the strong - but aspiration and the Grace answering to it are not altogether myths; they are great realities of the spiritual life. I do not mean by work action done in the ego and the ignorance, for the satisfaction of the ego and in the drive of Rajasic desire. There can be no Karmayoga without the will to get rid of... completely according to the condition and growth of the being. There is no royal road to the divine realisation. This is the Karmayoga laid down in the Gita as I have developed it for the integral spiritual life. It is founded not on speculation and reasoning but on experience. It does not exclude meditation and certainly does not exclude Bhakti, for the self-offering to the Divine, the consecration of ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Lights on Yoga
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The Hidden Forces of Life  >  Occult Worlds and Entities

... different from what they were. Very often it is this that happens. You have said that these beings of the vital world are attracted by the spiritual life. Why? They are attracted, but this does not mean that they have decided sincerely to follow the spiritual life. The chief characteristic of these beings is falsehood: their nature is made of deceit. They have a power of illusion; they can take the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Hidden Forces of Life
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Questions and Answers (1950-1951)  >  24 February 1951

... by reasons which one is not in a condition to foresee. In a dream, I thought I saw pictures of a former ascetic life. There is such a strong suggestion here [in India] that to live the spiritual life, one must take up the life of a sannyasin, that this perhaps is the cause of your pictures. In any case, if it was really a previous life, it was not the last one. You have surely had intermediary... it had already begun. Many have had a previous ascetic life, for the collective suggestion is very strong here. It is very rare for a person not to think that to perfect oneself and to live a spiritual life one must leave the world. There are also symbolic and premonitory dreams, but very rarely do dreams consist of true memories of past lives, because for that one must dream in one's psychic ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1950-1951)
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Questions and Answers (1950-1951)  >  8 March 1951

... different from what they were. Very often it is this that happens. You have said that these beings of the vital world are attracted by the spiritual life. Why? They are attracted, but this does not mean that they have decided sincerely to follow the spiritual life. The chief characteristic of these beings is falsehood: their nature is made of deceit. They have a power of illusion; they can take the ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1950-1951)
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Words of Long Ago  >  To the Women of Japan

... No, the way to supermanhood lies in the unfolding of the ever-perfect Spirit. All would change, all would become easy if man could once consent to be spiritualised. The higher perfection of the spiritual life will come by a spontaneous obedience of spiritualised man to the truth of his own realised being, when he has become himself, found his own real nature; but this spontaneity will not be instinctive... individual or of the society becomes moral. But it is only when both, vital will and mental power, are equally submissive to something higher, to the supermind, that human life is exceeded, that true spiritual life begins, the life of the superman; for his law will come from within, it will be the divine law shining in the centre of each being and governing life from therein, the divine law multiple in its ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of Long Ago
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Questions and Answers (1950-1951)  >  12 February 1951

... there before. That does make a change; but the positive change usually comes later, very rarely does it come at first except in a flash at the time of conversion when one has decided to take up the spiritual life. Sometimes, it begins like a great illumination, a deep joy enters into you; but generally, afterwards this goes into the background, for there are too many imperfections still persisting in you... to yourself, "It was so important to me, all that? But it has no importance at all!" You have the impression that you have truly turned over to the other side. Some imagine that the sign of spiritual life is the capacity to sit in a corner and meditate! That is a very, very common idea. I do not want to be severe, but most people who make much of their capacity for meditation—I do not think they ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1950-1951)
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Questions and Answers (1956)  >  21 November 1956

... your being are fully developed like this by appropriate gymnastics. I believe I have already explained this to you once. If it were a question of leading what till today was considered the true spiritual life, that is, of giving up altogether all physical Page 365 activities in order to unite with the supreme divine Reality and remain in this union, of leaving life and all outer expression... useful for the future realisation." That is why, moreover, people who are used to judging from appearances and without knowing what they are talking about, say that in the Ashram there is no spiritual life, that we lead an altogether material life. That's how it is! But it is so much the worse for them, it is not any the worse for us; indeed it is all the same to us. There we are. No more questions ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1956)
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Questions and Answers (1956)  >  1 August 1956

... shall correct them! Here is one which has been asked in English, to which the answer is very short. I am asked: "What is the fundamental virtue to be cultivated in order to prepare for the spiritual life?" I have said this many times, but this is an opportunity to repeat it: it is sincerity . Page 247 A sincerity which must become total and absolute, for sincerity alone is your... sincere, beautiful and delightful, and even one may say that a spiritual consciousness without any aesthetic or emotional content is not entirely or at any rate not integrally spiritual. In the spiritual life the basis of the act is a spiritual consciousness perennial and renovating, moved to express itself always in new forms or able to renew the truth of a form always by the flow of the spirit, and ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1956)
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Questions and Answers (1956)  >  22 February 1956

... this has an almost immediate effect upon the other person. That gives you an idea of the power of immobility. And it is a very common fact which can occur every day; it is not a great event of spiritual life, it is something of the outer, material life. There is a tremendous power in immobility: mental immobility, sensorial immobility, physical immobility. If you can remain like a wall, absolutely... behind the veil of a dress which is generally respected. There can be no question about those who have a pure heart and whose dress is simply the outer sign of their integral consecration to the spiritual life." ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1956)
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Questions and Answers (1955)  >  14 December 1955

... appear to be not only not the expression of the Divine but incapable of becoming that and essentially opposed to the spiritual life. And so there is only one solution—it was that of the old Yogas, you know—the total rejection of life as not being able to participate in the spiritual life at all, the rejection of material life. This is what he explains. He says that with this attitude, that's how one looks ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1955)
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Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  19 June 1957

... Sweet Mother, if someone falls seriously ill, is this a purely physical phenomenon or is it a difficulty in his spiritual life? That depends on the person! If it is someone who is doing yoga, it is quite obviously a difficulty in his spiritual life. If it is somebody who is not at all engaged in yoga and who lives an ordinary life in the most ordinary manner, it is an ordinary ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)
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On Thoughts and Aphorisms  >  Aphorism - 258, 259, 260, 261

... thou set thy members to war upon each other? What are the highest aims of reason, faith and instinct in ordinary life and in spiritual life? Each one has his own aims according to his nature and the goal he wants to attain in ordinary life. As for spiritual life, it has only one goal: to know the Divine and to unite with Him, by every possible means and with the help of faith, which is certainly ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   On Thoughts and Aphorisms
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Letters on Yoga - II  >  Sincerity

... the human nature anywhere to think, feel and act from one centre of true faith, belief or vision. The average Hindu considers the spiritual life the highest, reveres the Sannyasi, is moved by the Bhakta; but if one of the family circle leaves the world for spiritual life, what tears, arguments, remonstrances, lamentations! It is almost worse than if he had died a natural death. It is not conscious mental ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - II
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Letters on Yoga - III  >  The Value of Visions

... Merely seeing his image is not the same thing, any more than seeing his picture on the wall is the same thing as meeting him in person. But the picture on the wall need not be useless for the spiritual life. All one can say is that Page 91 one must not attach oneself too much to this gift and what it shows us, but neither is it necessary to belittle it. It has its value and sometimes a... which most people are unaware but which opens by the practice of Yoga. By this opening one becomes aware of subtle planes of experience and worlds of existence other than the material. For the spiritual life a still farther opening is required into an inmost consciousness by which one becomes aware of the Self and Spirit, the Eternal and the Divine. Page 94 From what he writes it is ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - III
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The Human Cycle  >  The Necessity of the Spiritual Transformation

... intellectual, ethical or aesthetic life or the sum of their motives upon the vital and physical nature, to be satisfied with a partial domination or a compromise, so it is possible to superimpose the spiritual life or some figure of strength or ascendency of spiritual ideas and motives on the mental, vital and physical nature and either to impoverish the latter, to impoverish the vital and physical existence... lower perfection of Nature in the plant and the animal comes from an instinctive, an automatic, a subconscient obedience in each to the vital truth of its own being. The higher perfection of the spiritual life will come by a spontaneous obedience of spiritualised man to the truth of his own realised being, when he has become himself, when he has found his own real nature. For this spontaneity will not ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Human Cycle
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The Human Cycle  >  Religion as the Law of Life

... spirituality religion seems often to mean something remote from earthly life, different from it, hostile to it. It seems to condemn the pursuit of earthly aims as a trend opposed to the turn to a spiritual life and the hopes of man on earth as an illusion or a vanity incompatible with the hope of man in heaven. The spirit then becomes something aloof which man can only reach by throwing away the life... 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 may indeed well find by this turn his own individual and peculiar salvation, the spiritual recompense of his r ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Human Cycle
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Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  The Divine Body

... aspirant and weighed considerably in favour of an ascetic rejection of the body. Sex and sexuality and all that springs from sex and testifies to its existence had to be banned and discarded from the spiritual life, and this, though difficult, is not at all impossible and can be made a cardinal condition for the spiritual seeker. This is natural and unescapable in all ascetic practice and the satisfaction... condition, though not easy at first to fulfil, becomes after a time quite feasible; the overcoming of the sex instinct and impulse is indeed binding on all who would attain to self-mastery and lead the spiritual life. A total mastery over it is essential for all spiritual seekers, the eradication of it for the complete ascetic. This much has to be recognised and not diminished in its obligatory importance and ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
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Letters on Yoga - I  >  Occult Powers or Siddhis

... Especially, a contact with the forces and beings of the astral (or, as we term it, the vital) plane is attended with great dangers. The beings of this plane are often hostile to the true aim of spiritual life and establish contact with the seeker and offer him powers and occult experiences only in order that they may lead him away from the spiritual path or else that they may establish their own control... inner opening, but one ought never to put oneself into the hands of these beings and forces or allow oneself to be led by their suggestions and impulsions. This is one of the chief dangers of the spiritual life and to be on one's guard against it is a necessity for the seeker if he wishes to arrive at his goal. It is true that many supraphysical or supernormal powers come with the expansion of the co ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I
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Letters on Yoga - IV  >  The Difficulties of Human Nature

... that the inner spirit will surely win in the end. There is no cause for any apprehension on that score. There are two or three things that I think it necessary to say to you about your spiritual life and your difficulties. First, I should like you to get rid of the idea that that which causes the difficulties is so much a part of your self that a true inner life is impossible to you. The... an exceptional power like this in the nature, there is found in the exterior being some contrary element which opens it to a quite opposite influence. It is this that makes the endeavour after a spiritual life so often a difficult struggle: but the existence of this kind of contradiction even in an intense form does not make that life impossible. Doubt, struggle, efforts and failures, lapses, alternations ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV
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Letters on Yoga - IV  >  Vigilance, Resolution, Will and the Divine Help

... and to forego all insistence on the satisfaction of its inferior impulses and desires. It is this adhesion of the vital being that brings the full satisfaction and joy of the whole nature in the spiritual life. When that is there, it will be impossible even to think of returning to the ordinary existence. Meanwhile the mental will and the psychic aspiration must be your support; if you insist, the vital... Buddha may have to develop it by endeavour. Those who cannot do that have to find their strength in their reliance on the Divine Mother. The Need of Will There must be a fixed will for the spiritual life—that alone can overcome all obstacles. To be conscious is the first step towards overcoming [ lower movements ]—but for the overcoming strength is necessary and also detachment and the will ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV
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Letters on Yoga - IV  >  Depression and Despondency

... [ of despondency ] shows, but it is not in the heart—your heart is all right—but in the lower vital nature. All your weaknesses are there; the rest of your being is quite strong enough for the spiritual life. But this inadequacy of the lower vital is not peculiar to you, it is present in almost every human being. This tendency to irrational sadness and despondency and these imaginations, fears and... happened.—Ed. × The correspondent suggested that pain and suffering are sometimes necessary in spiritual life and may even enrich it. After the "deep suffering" experienced in the process of mental doubt and questioning, he had felt a sense of gain. "Through deep pain," he wrote, "one often feels a sense ...

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

... which one gets into inextricable difficulties till suddenly one finds the way out. Gujerat in the dream was not Gujerat, but only a symbol of one part of the vital world which is opposed to the spiritual life and full of vital powers that come in the way either by fraud or by force. These dreams are indications of certain parts of vital nature (not one's own, but the general vital Nature) which stand... vital world—one which plays a large part in moulding this external human life as it is now. It is a world of social forms, social and domestic feelings, social intercourse; whatever appearance of spiritual life there is, is traditional and formal: this is what you felt in the blessing of your father. The last part of the dream is more obscure—there is evidently a meaning in the luggage and the lost trunk ...

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

... and getting disappointed because they are not fulfilled. If one cherishes desires, there is bound to be disappointment and suffering, especially if at the same time one does Yoga and takes up the spiritual life. For such desires, demand for vital affection and love from men and demand for physical comforts are not consistent with the spirit of Yoga in which one must turn one's heart to the Divine and... vital desires is a normal feature of the ordinary life, only it must be controlled and regulated by the mental will, so that one may not be enslaved to the desires. It is only if one turns to the spiritual life that one has to get rid of vital desires. It is not Yoga to give free play to the natural instincts and desires. Yoga demands mastery over the nature, not subjection to the nature. ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV
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Letters on Yoga - IV  >  Accidents, Possession, Madness

... it was an attempt to come across your spiritual life by creating a disability and state of disturbance in the vital-physical part of the being. Anyhow the fact that you could not go from Page 804 here and that the whole thing could be removed by us at once as soon as you opened somewhere by this feeling of sorrow at going shows that the spiritual life is stronger deep within you, even when ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV
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Isha Upanishad  >  The Eternal in His Universe

... they left the matter. But they were anxious to resolve not substances into their original atoms but matter into its original condition and so discover its ultimate relations to the psychical and spiritual life of man. They saw that perpetual motion involving perpetual change was the fundamental characteristic of matter and that each new motion was attended by a new condition which stood to the immediately... subtle matter, in hampered & half effectual fashion when the subtle self acted through the gross and sub-consciously only in gross matter. They considered therefore that man's causal faculty or spiritual life belonged properly to the Sleep State and worked indirectly and through less & less easy mediums in the Dream and Waking States; and accordingly determined that it must be the result of Consciousness ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Isha Upanishad
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Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Ourselves

... for man but the true solution of all his problems and difficulties. This then is the message we shall constantly utter and this the ideal that we shall put before the young and rising India, a spiritual life that shall take up all human activities and avail to transfigure the world for the great age that is coming. India, she that has carried in herself from of old the secret, can alone lead the way... way in this great transformation of which the present sandhyā of the old yuga is the forerunner. This must be her mission and service to humanity,—as she discovered the inner spiritual life for the individual, so now to discover for the race its integral collective expression and found for mankind its new spiritual and communal order. Our first object shall be to declare this ideal, insist on ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
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The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Ladder of Self-Transcendence

... process he turns away more and more from his full mental and physical life; he limits or discourages their possibilities as much as his material foundation in nature will allow him. In the end his spiritual life predominates, destroys his earthward tendency and breaks its ties and limitations. Spiritualised, he places his real existence beyond in other worlds, in the heavens of the vital or mental plane;... effectuality could never come anywhere near to a true and integral perfection; for the conditions of the desire-world are like those of the physical improper to the development of the complete spiritual life. The vital being too must develop spirit to the detriment of his fullness, activity and force of life Page 469 in the lower hemisphere of our existence and turn in the end away from ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga
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The Life Divine  >  The Gnostic Being

... be able to disturb or to invade these depths or bring him down from the summits, neither the world's contents nor his action nor all that is around him. This is the transcendence aspect of the spiritual life and it is necessary for the freedom of the spirit; for otherwise the identity in Nature with the world would be a binding limitation and not a free identity. But at the same time God-love and the... more or less consciously and completely, base his existence on them or, at least, try his best to frame his life in the ideative cadre of his chosen or accepted dharmas. In the passage to the spiritual life the supreme ideal held up is, on the contrary, not law, but liberty in the spirit; the spirit breaks through all formulas to find its self and, if it has still to be concerned with expression, ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine
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The Indian Spirit and the World's Future  >  Dates of Publication of the Articles in Mother India

... 1950 October 1,1949 October 14, 1950 August 15, 1950 January 9, 1951 May 5, 1951 Page 184 The Spiritual Life and World-Problems: Two Letters to a Seeker The Spiritual Life and World-Renunciation: A Letter to One Attracted by the Cloister The Mystical and the Misty: An Answer to Some Queries about Sri Aurobindo Vivekananda ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Indian Spirit and the World's Future
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Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Karmayoga

... or imposture; but even those who reverence and believe in the high things of Hinduism have the impression that one must remove oneself from a full human activity in order to live the spiritual life. Yet the spiritual life finds its most potent expression in the man who lives the ordinary life of men in the strength of the Yoga and under the law of the Vedanta. It is by such a union of the inner life ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
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Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Our Ideal

... they have encountered in each case the extreme exaggeration of their Page 142 opposites. Intellectual and materialistic Europe found India, the Asia of Asia, the heart of the world's spiritual life, in the last throes of an enormous experiment, the thought of a whole nation concentrated for centuries upon the pure spiritual existence to the exclusion of all real progress in the practical... physical life; Page 145 to develop the most profound and vital methods of psychological self-discipline and self-development so that the mental and psychical life of man may express the spiritual life through the utmost possible expansion of its own richness, power and complexity; and to seek for the means and motives by which his external life, his society and his institutions may remould ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
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Mother’s Agenda 1962  >  October 30, 1962

... are a lunar race. And they gave me the feeling of people who lack a psychic being: they are cold, ice-cold. But wonderfully intellectual! I met another Chinese a few years ago, a man with a spiritual life. He came to meet me and talked for an hour about China. It made me understand China externally as if I had been born and lived my whole life there. I saw they were people who have attained the... ... Although that must depend entirely on the individual. The Chinese don't have the same spiritual intensity you find rooted in the Indian character—it's something completely different. Here, spiritual life is real, concrete, tangible—totally real. For the Chinese it all happens at the top of the head. They're not going to come here, are they? I hope not! They are people with no feelings ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1962
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Mother’s Agenda 1963  >  June 15, 1963

... could have practiced some Tantrism in the way Woodroffe did; I can't say. There are also many people of that kind who were converted to Sufism—they are very easily converted to Sufism. But true spiritual life, there aren't many.... He has written three volumes entitled "Gnosis." Quite an ambition. But he's an intellectual, he may have received some inspiration on the intellectual level. ... "No." Those people never forgave him. Yes, he never understood why Sri Aurobindo did not resume his political life. No. And then, you see, he takes Gandhi's asceticism for spiritual Page 173 life—always the same mistake! There's no way to pull them out of it. Unfortunately, the entire world has caught the same idea. Then when there was that Cripps proposal, 5 I believe it ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1963
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Blake's Tyger  >  The Poem in the General Context of Blake's Work

... consciousness and being were lost: Albion believed that there was a physical external universe outside him and thus he broke apart his own soul, reducing himself to a small entity and emptying of spiritual life what he conceived as other than himself. Blake describes this "disease" of Albion as either the shrinking of man or the wandering away of creatures and things. Thus he speaks of Albion: ... of being organic part of it within an infinitude of Universal Divine Humanity. The Christian-Miltonic antecedents to the story of Urizen's rational-scientific lapse from the original Oneness of spiritual life are brought in almost incidentally, by summary suggestion. Their presence plays an openly symbolic and significant role only in The Tyger. So we must not look for a precise correspondence to ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Blake's Tyger
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Amal-Kiran - Poet and Critic  >  The Locus of K D Sethna's Poetry

... forces of the world's life". 3 Poetry would henceforth be an integral part of his spiritual seeking, and he would be, under the guidance of his Master, a "poet of the spiritual life". 4 The poet of the spiritual life is not just a 'literary man'. In fact, according to Juan Ramon Jimenez all true poets are to be distinguished from literary man. A literary man is conscious of his ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Amal-Kiran - Poet and Critic
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The Golden Path  >  Sunanda Poddar

... born and what was your family life like? Were your parents spiritual or religious people? I was born in Nairobi, Kenya, on February 24, 1934. I was born into a family immersed in the inner, spiritual life and my aunt performed routine Hindu religious ceremonies in her little temple. Before moving to Africa both of my parents had worked for the freedom movement with Mahatma Gandhi at the grass-roots... doctor so that I could treat the unfortunate free of charge. I was very idealistic. Were you aware of a spiritual presence in your childhood? When did you first begin to aspire deeply for the spiritual life? I loved the religious ceremonies my aunt performed and I joined her in fasting and worship of the idols in her small temple. My parents did not want me to go to the temples but explained to ...

Anie Nunnally   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Golden Path
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The Golden Path  >  Krishna Tewari

... spiritual presence in your childhood? When did you first begin to recognize and aspire for the spiritual life? I am not conscious of any special spiritual presence in my childhood but, as I have said, we were brought up in a deeply religious atmosphere. I do not know when I started aspiring for a spiritual life. Maybe it was during World War II in Burma when I saw death and senseless destruction and ...

Anie Nunnally   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Golden Path
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The Sun and The Rainbow  >  What Sri Aurobindo Means to Me

... general and this phrase in particular joined up with the memorable impression made by the statement that Sri Aurobindo was a multi-linguist. But I still did not realise the exact nature of the spiritual life which he represented. The basic meaning of his Yoga had not yet gone home to me. Then a most amazing coincidence happened. I went to Bombay's well-known Crawford Market to buy a pair of shoes... earth-accepting and life-transforming Yoga practised in the Pondicherry Ashram. All kinds of work, all activities of thought, all movements of literature and art were sought to be taken up into the spiritual life and given their fullest value. I felt nothing in me would be suppressed and discarded, everything would be fulfilled in the light of the Eternal an~ the Infinite. I wrote to the Ashram, seeking ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Sun and The Rainbow
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Sri Aurobindo came to Me  >  Dedication

... Aurobindo the intellectual, revolutionary, dreamer, yogi, philosopher, seer- poet, and lastly in his own words 'The messenger of the Incom- municable'. This edition was hailed by the seekers of spiritual life of all climes. As a result, the third, revised and enlarged edition was published by Jaico in 1969. The chapter, "Poet- maker" was added in this edition. In 1984, 'All India Books' of Pondicherry... the Guru and the understanding, uncompromising help and support of a true friend. We hope this comprehensive publication will equally inspire - all intellectuals, aspirants and truth seekers of spiritual life. We end with Sri K.R. Srinivas lyenger's comment - 'It is accordingly an indispensable book for all admirers of Sri Aurobindo and all students of yoga and lovers of poetry and all serious ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo came to Me
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Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume IV  >  Correspondence 1946

... left me for good, I could not possibly disinterest myself in you or abandon my hopes for your life and spiritual future. I do not accept your renunciation of Yoga and the effort towards the spiritual life and I still consider that your persistent orientation towards it and the beginnings you have made have been sufficient to warrant the belief that something deep in your being turned you towards... Krishna and it has been always so accepted by the religious mind of India. These questions and the speculations to which they have given rise have no indispensable connection with the spiritual life. There what matters is the contact with Krishna and the growth towards the Krishna consciousness, the presence, the spiritual relation, the union in the soul and till that is reached, the aspiration ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume IV
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Sri Aurobindo came to Me  >  The Seer Poet

... work should be done from within or, as it might appear, underground, so as to prepare the nature and undermine the resistance Read the letter of your friend professor Mohinimohan on Yoga and the spiritual life. Beautifully idealistic, but it does not make allowance for the hard struggle of the spiritual emergence and leaps to fulfilment with too radiant and ethereal a sweep." "Struggle for spiritual... to be accepted as literally true or merely as beautiful symbols of deep spiritual realities"): "These questions and the speculations to which they give rise have no indispensable connection with spiritual life. There what matters is the contact with Krishna and the growth towards the Krishna-consciousness, the presence the spiritual relation, the union in the soul and, till that is reached, the aspiration ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo came to Me
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Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects  >  Human Beliefs And Means Of Synthesis

... Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects Human Beliefs And Means Of Synthesis Religion is not spirituality or spiritual realisation. It is a mental approach to spiritual life based upon moral and ethical and even certain aesthetic principles evolved by the human mind. It consists mostly of cre dal theology, dogma and rites and rituals of various kinds. A mental belief... deep into the spiritual traditions of the past based on the Vedas and Upanishads and found that there was only one way out of the age-long impasse between the material life of the 'Vest and spiritual life of the East and that is to establish a new way of life, a new principle of consciousness .higher than the mental principle which has been operative on earth from millions and millions of years ...

Jibendra Kumar Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects
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Sri Aurobindo came to Me  >  The Ashram Some Disciplessacame

... human nature anywhere to think, I feel and act from one centre of true faith, belief or vision. The? average Hindu considers the spiritual life the highest, reveres the sannyasi, is moved by the bhakta; but if one of the family circle leaves the world for spiritual life, what tears, remonstrances, lamentations! It is almost worse than if he had died a natural death. It is not conscious mental insincerity ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo came to Me
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Some Answers from the Mother  >  Letters to a Child

... the world, not because I am afraid of my duty but because I want you." I would like to tell you something about this. To be sure that you are meant for the Ashram life, it is necessary that the spiritual life and all the discipline it entails—in short, the search for and realisation of the Divine—must be the most important thing to you, the only thing worth living for. Page 139 For this... or interviews), won't you feel once again that you are giving up all the pleasures that ordinary life can give, without getting anything much in exchange? Of course, if you want to lead the spiritual life at any cost, that is another thing. But in that case, you will have to rely on the inner help, not on an outer and superficial help. I am telling you all this so that you may not be disappointed ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Some Answers from the Mother
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Mother’s Agenda 1962  >  March 11, 1962

... which has nothing to do with that one, a world peopled by beings of the vital proper, beings of great power and even great beauty. Most people who dabble in occultism without having a deep enough spiritual life are immediately deluded by them—some even take them as the supreme God and worship them. That's generally how religions are created. They are a great success. They are the supreme God of many a... Page 116 Many religions and sects are founded on revelations and miracles, and every bit of it comes from vital beings. It's one of the greatest problems in human life; I don't mean spiritual life, but the life of people who deal with the beyond. There are skies (not heavens) in the vital world that are truly paradises. Naturally the real divine element is lacking, but only spiritual ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1962
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Words of the Mother - I  >  Coming to the Ashram

... family: do not let any influence come in between you and the Divine. You did not pay sufficient attention to this warning: you have allowed an influence to interfere strongly between you and your spiritual life; your devotion and your faith have been seriously shaken by this. As a consequence, you became afraid and you did not find the same joy in your offering to the Divine Cause; and also, quite naturally... give you back your true self. It is indeed indispensable that something should change radically in your nature before you are fit for staying here. You are far too ego-centric to lead a spiritual life; and it is also the cause of this catastrophe and of the suffering it has brought to you, which is the natural consequence of the whole affair. Indeed it is good if you go to face the ordinary ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - I
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Words of the Mother - III  >  Short Replies

... Blessings. 1 July 1969 Page 241 Since yesterday's darshan I feel something revolting in me against a spiritual life. I am afraid of this revolt. What shall I do? What revolted in you when you were in front of me is exactly what prevents you from leading a spiritual life. Now that you are conscious of the enemy you can throw him out of you if so you decide. 21 November 1969 ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - III
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Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960  >  May 28, 1959

... But in a certain way this achievement remains truncated, especially when you base spiritual life on a principle of integrality. And these three destinies in me have their own good reasons, which are true: they are not inferior, they are not incidental, they are woven from the very threads that created the spiritual life in me. My error is to open the door to revolt when I feel too poignantly one or the ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960
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Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)  >  chapter 023

... relationships on the outer plane is possible, the question becomes more pointed. The point becomes still more keen when Westerners come here and' sincerely want to be Indianised in order to make the spiritual life more concrete and quick-moving. Seeing others easily go down on their knees and marking no reluctance at all in the one to whom this gesture is made, all these people get encouraged to respond... and there will be again and again an activation of this ever-present pull in two directions with a little yet not very significant variation. After a while a stagnancy, merely surface-stirred, of spiritual life comes about - unless the pranam-receiver is able to make a great deal of inner progress by a supernormal self-purification in the intervals between the pranam-periods. Such a refreshing of one's ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)
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Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)  >  chapter 019

... need to give myself away to something higher and bigger than myself". You ask me to steady you and help you "to have a single orientation in life". I am sure that basically you are cut out for the spiritual life or rather for a self-dedication to the Divine which will yet leave room for a deeply idealistic love-relationship with a fellow-aspirant. But the push in you towards careerism is also an undeniable... wholly by the Ashram Trust. One may require to have the wherewithal for one's day-to-day sustenance.   If one does not have the necessary means, what is one to do if one longs to lead the spiritual life? First of all, one must get over the idea that while pursuing a career one gets debarred from spirituality. Essentially, if one can practise spirituality in the midst of the work all Ashramites ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)
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Mother’s Agenda 1964  >  January 22, 1964

... and it was very intense: "To be You, at every moment the supreme Spontaneity." ( silence ) Human beings always do a thing FOR something, with a goal, for a reason, from a motive; even spiritual life, even spiritual effort are FOR the progress of consciousness, FOR reaching the Truth, for... it's a vibration that always has a tail—a tail in front. And these cells have realized that if you can... the money, he would hand everything over to me, and afterwards it went on as it was), and that keeps them a little quiet. But when I say, "I don't have any money, I can't pay," then... That's "spiritual life" for you! Now, according to what I have seen and tested (with "little tests" done casually), there are certainly—oh, being EXTREMELY generous, patient and (what shall I say?) merciful—there ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1964
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Mother’s Agenda 1963  >  January 14, 1963

... me the most difficulties have always been the people who take life seriously. I've had this experience even just recently. All that comes to me from people who have dedicated their lives to "spiritual life," people who do a yoga in the traditional way, who are very solemn, who see adversaries everywhere, obstacles everywhere, taboos everywhere, prohibitions everywhere, oh, how they complicate life... THIS is what I must say." I needn't worry about it, it comes just in time. Then I only have to get up, go find the card, write, and it's all over. People will tell me (precisely those who lead a "spiritual life"), "What! You make such a trifle the object of a spiritual experience!" And it's the same with ALL small things: what object to be used, what perfume to put on, what bath salts, all manner of "futile ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1963
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Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo  >  The Process of Inner Change

... within fixed limits or subject to a decent restraint or measure, people try to control them so as to conform to the social standard of morality or rule of conduct. Here, on the contrary, as in all spiritual life, the conquest and complete mastery of these things is demanded. That is why the struggle is more felt, not because these things rise more strongly in sadhaks than in ordinary men, but because of... mental control is only partial and it controls but does not liberate; it is only the psychic and spiritual that can do that. That is the main difference in this respect between the ordinary and the spiritual life. 127 An important point to be noted is that truly effective rejection can be done only by exercising the will of the inner being (the soul or Purusha), but when one is not in touch with ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo
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Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo  >  Index

... higher, 95, 98 illumined, 96 intuition, 96 levels of, 95, 96 ordinary, 95 outer and inner, 95 overmind, 96 silencing of, instructions, 141, 142 and spiritual life, 84-91 supermind, 94, 96 vital, 155 and the witness consciousness, 91-94 Mother's viewpoints attention, 105 consciousness, state of, 16, 29, 30, 67 ... 146, 147 Sri Aurobindo's viewpoints, see also teachings; yoga the Divine, 71, 72, 78, 150 integral transformation, 23 power of Guru's grace, 27, 28 relevance in the spiritual life, 7, 8 self-realization, 21 silence, 24, 25 spiritual path, 43, 44 time, 25, 26 true self, 79 witness consciousness state, 67-76 Sri Ramakrishna, 27, 28 ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo
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Perspectives of Savitri - Part 2  >  Aswapati's Travels through the Worlds — An Overview

... the mark. Sri Aurobindo turned to yoga in earnest around 1907-8 when he first met Lele. But his brief contact with Lele lasted only from 30 December 1907 to February 1908. But he continued his spiritual life. He had by then experienced two of the most cardinal spiritual siddhis known to traditional Indian Yoga. Under Lele's direct guidance he had seen with a stupendous intensity "the world as a... period his view of life was radically changed; he had taken up Yoga with the original idea of acquiring spiritual force and energy and divine guidance for his work in life. But now the inner spiritual life and realisation which had continually been increasing in magnitude and universality and assuming a larger place took him up entirely and his work became a part and result of it and besides far ...

R. Y. Deshpande   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Perspectives of Savitri - Part 2
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Child, Teacher and Teacher Education  >  Philosophy of Spiritual Education 2

... become eventually ready for the greater existence. A speciality of religion in India attached to the last a great importance. It left out no part of life as foreign to the religious and spiritual life. Still the Indian religious tradition is not merely the form of a religio-social system. However greatly a given form of a religio-social system may count at the moment of a social life, however... heaven is within us and it is not dependent on any outer manifestation or instrumentation or formula of external being. According to Sri Aurobindo, this view is valid and there can undoubtedly be a spiritual life within, and inner life has a supreme spiritual importance and the outer has a value only in so far as it is expressive of the inner status. The Gita, too, states that the man of spiritual realization ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Child, Teacher and Teacher Education
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Landmarks of Hinduism  >  Bhagavadgita and Contemporary Crisis

... mere theological dogma. An impartial study of the Gita will show that it contains a very rich and many-sided thought, it manifests a synthetic grasp of different aspects of the ethical and Spiritual life, and that it takes us to some of the highest possible experiences of which human mind is capable. It can even be said that it contains most of the main clues of the secret of reconciliation of... out of the problem. But the Gita goes boldly beyond these conflicting positions. It justifies all life to the spirit, and asserts the compatibility of a complete human action and a complete spiritual life lived in reunion with the highest states of knowledge and consciousness. Let us state clearly Arjuna's arguments. In thee first place, Arjuna argued that he would like to reject that ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Landmarks of Hinduism
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Landmarks of Hinduism  >  Vedic tradition and contemporary crisis

... mind but even the inner mind, inner vital, and larger subliminal consciousness of people was prepared. This enabled larger sections of people to enter into the possibility of a more generalised spiritual life. This is the reason why Indian masses of people have become accustomed to respond more readily to the spiritual aim and practice. When we come to the third stage, we find that the greatest leaders... saints and bhaktas developed a larger synthesis that could facilitate both the outer and inner life, not only of individuals but even of larger collectivities, to participate in a more generalised spiritual life. Indeed, spiritual solution is the true solution, and no human crisis of a great magnitude or of the kind that we are facing today can be met without taking recourse to that solution, although ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Landmarks of Hinduism
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Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays  >  Philosophy of Indianness

... Veda and in the Upanishads like the Isha, or Kena or Katha or Taittiriya. The fullness of spiritual life is perceived in the great pronouncement of the Vedic and the Upanishadic Rishis: तेन त्यक्तेन भुञ्जीथाः (by having renounced thou shouldst enjoy) is one of the formulas of the integral spiritual life; and there are several others in the Ishopanishad itself, such as those relating to the Reality ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays
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Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body  >  Basic Programme for the Human Body

... or less veiled, unavowed and unavowable; it is an unhealthy seeking or a subconscient need for violent sensations. In reality, these things are very far from the spiritual life; for they are ugly and low, dark and diseased; spiritual life, on the contrary, is a life of light and balance, beauty and joy. They have been invented and extolled by a sort of mental and vital cruelty inflicted on the body ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body
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The Practice of the Integral Yoga  >  Sadhana through Meditation

... putting the cart before the horse, which will be not only absurd but wholly bereft of any fruitful result. It is because of this obvious folly shown by many sadhakas in pretending to lead a spiritual life backed only by a non-spiritual 'consciousness that the Mother once scolded the inmates of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in these words: "Many people who are here forget one thing. They want to... of our whole being on one status of itself, we can become whatever we choose..." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 304) Here is a representative illustration of the power of concentration in spiritual life. Through the persistent application of the "concentrated consciousness" on any object whatsoever, we can come to realise the Presence of the Divine in that object. This is how Sri Aurobindo ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Practice of the Integral Yoga
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The Practice of the Integral Yoga  >  Sadhana of the Vital

... powerful and effective in result, he should at the same time (i) develop in him a clear-sighted faculty of discrimination; (ii) grow into a mind of knowledge convinced of the necessity of attaining a spiritual life; (iii) enthrone in his heart an intense and unvarying love for the ideal and the Divine; and (iv) awake in his consciousness a constant aspiration for progress and perfection. These qualities... Eighth Step: Life as it is normally lived is a movement of obscure desire driven or led by the impulses of a vehement but im-pure life-force. For the establishment of a veritable spiritual life this turbid life-force on the surface has to be replaced by the luminous Life-Force within which is now waiting behind the veil in our secret subliminal. This true Life-Force has to be evoked from ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Practice of the Integral Yoga
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Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny  >  Nature of Human Relationships: Cherished Goal

... invaded by the imperfection of the outside world and sinks from the shining height of its aspiration to something mixed and inferior on the ordinary human level." (Ibid.) A collective spiritual life - the goal of our Ashram - is meant to express the spiritual and not merely the physical, vital, or even the mental being of man; it has, therefore, to found and maintain itself on greater values... provided by the community in which all is turned and centred towards this one all-important endeavour; and (ii) as and when things get ready, to formulate and develop a new kind of collective spiritual life in the prepared spiritual atmosphere of the Ashram. All other achievements are secondary and incidental: this alone is the real raison d' ê tre of the Ashram founded by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny
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Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth  >  Some Knotty Problems of Rebirth

... "But a time comes when it is able to prepare to come out from behind the veil, to take command and turn all the instrumental nature towards a divine fulfilment. This is the beginning of the true spiritual life." (Ibid.) "The soul is able now to make itself ready for a higher evolution of manifested consciousness than the mental human - it can pass from the mental to the spiritual and through... because the human mind is too fond of romance. As soon as it comes to know something of this truth of rebirth, it wants to build up beautiful stories around it.... All this has nothing to do with spiritual life. The true remembrance of past births... cannot be got by that way of imaginative fancies.... here there is much chance of invention, distortion and or false building." (CWM, Vol. 3, pp. 40-41) ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth
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Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny  >  Sri Aurobindo's Yoga and Group-life

... world-order." (Ibid.) The Ashram is not an agglomeration of a certain number of psychologically isolated individual sadhaks and sadhikas; for the command of the Spirit is unity. The genuine spiritual life should be, according to Sri Aurobindo, "the flower of a ... conscious and diversified oneness." (The Human Cycle, p. 243) Each individual has, no doubt, to grow into the Divine within himself;... spiritual realisation remains always the first necessity, it cannot be deemed complete unless and until it is accompanied by an outer realisation also in life; "spiritual consciousness within but also spiritual life without." (Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, Cent, ed., p. 229) And herein lay the justification, nay the necessity for the founding of a spiritual community of a different genre and thus was born the ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny
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Arjuna's Argument At Kurukshetra And Sri Krishna's Answers  >  Sri Krishna's answer

... of human agency. Page 10 Gita is not a book of Practical Ethics but of the Spiritual life But before we analyze Sri Krishna's answer in detail, it may be remarked that the upshot of this answer is that the Gita is not a book of practical ethics, but of the spiritual life which permits us to transcend the clash of all dharmas that the human mind can conceive, and to discover ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Arjuna's Argument At Kurukshetra And Sri Krishna's Answers
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A Vision of United India  >  Unfulfilled Promises

... them. I have always laid a dominant stress and I now lay an entire stress on the spiritual life, but my idea of spirituality has nothing to do with ascetic withdrawal or contempt or disgust of secular things. There is to me nothing secular, all human activity is for me a thing to be included in a complete spiritual life, and the importance of politics at the present time is very great. But my line and ...

Prof. Kittu Reddy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Vision of United India
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Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 2  >  INNER AND OUTER BEING

... being cannot be all bad, but it is mixed and ignorant and full of ignorant movements.         What has the inner being to do with Yoga or spiritual life?       It is the outer being that has nothing to do with Yoga or spiritual life unless the inner awakens it.         When my outer being is busy with physical things or mechanical movements, what does my inner being do ...

Nagin Doshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 2
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7  >  Alipore Jail

... What man has made of man! Page 373 But of course one might take this as a fine opportunity for our training and discipline: out of much evil cometh much good. They say the spiritual life is not for those who do not conquer shame and disgust and fear, and these three things we had to give up almost without a thought while we lived in jail. And in my case at least, this sharing of... in a particular room. Hitherto he had been kept quite separate from us and this was the first time he came in our midst. In his room gathered all those who were interested in the spiritual life, in sadhana and meditation. Barin joined here. To the central section of the apartments came those who looked for some kind of mental culture, they were the more "intellectual" types. Here Upen ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7
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The Mother Abides - Final Reflections  >  Ashram

... and more that we are today, there were at that time (the time I am speaking of) barely fifty. And there were no children. And of men and women, only those were allowed who had a real call for the spiritual life; those alone were chosen by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and permitted to live here. And here is the natural psychological reason: it was a select group who already had an inner life and spiritual... spiritual aspiration, so they were ready for a life of surrender and self-giving, of obedience and allegiance to the guru. They did not come ignorant and innocent of the rudimentary elements of spiritual life. The work that Mother could do then and was doing, she herself has described and explained to us. It was the creation of a world—a region at least—of the higher consciousness in which every ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother Abides - Final Reflections
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Education and the Aim of human life  >  Sri Aurobindo's Integral Education

... We devote our sole attention to giving children information, not knowing that by this emphasis we are accentuating a break between the intellectual, Page 43 physical and the spiritual life. I believe in a spiritual world - not as anything separate from this world - but as its innermost truth. With the breath we draw we must always feel this truth, that we are living in God... eternal, to throw oneself outside all creation, beyond time and space. To become fully aware of your psychic being and to live a psychic life you must abolish in you selfishness; but to live a spiritual life you must be selfless. Here also in spiritual education, the goal you set before you will assume, in the mind's formulation of it, different names according to the environment in which you ...

Pavitra   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Education and the Aim of human life
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2  >  Aldous Huxley

... this exclusion may be a painful and mortificatory process, the fact remains that it is less arduous than the process of inclusion, by which we come to know the fullness as well as the heights of spiritual life. Where there is exclusive concentration on the heights within, temptations and distractions are avoided and there is a general denial and suppression. But when the hope is to know God inclusively... himself seems to understand, that the "we" referred to in the phrase does not mean humanity in general that 'splashes about in the lower ooze' but those who have a sufficiently developed inner spiritual life. There is a quotation from Lao Tzu put under the heading "Grace and Free Will": "It was when the Great Way declined that human kindness and morality arose". Page 132 We fear Mr ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3  >  Sinceriry

... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Sincerity THE first condition of the spiritual life and the last condition as well, is sincerity. One must sincerely want the spiritual life in order to have it. The soul – the psychic being – is always sincere: it is made of the very stuff of sincerity, for it is a part, or a spark of the Divine Consciousness ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1  >  Process of Purification

... Purification THERE are three well-marked stages in the process of the purification of nature and surrender to the Divine. When one has made up one's mind finally to take to the path of spiritual life and to turn one's back on the life of ignorant nature, one enters at the outset into a phase of divided consciousness and life. It is the stage when one cries, "The spirit is willing but the flesh... Control (Antary ā mi) works, it happens that even if the desires are there, the occasions for their satisfaction are withdrawn from you. As the Mother says, some people who are destined for the spiritual life lose all earthly props whenever they wish to lean upon them, they lose their endeared objects whenever they are eager to cherish them. At a certain stage of the growth of the inner consciousness ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1
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Blessings of the Grace  >  The Mother

... is what I have prepared as the answer to what you had sent to me this morning. This is the base for everything — Unselfishness — the base for the ordinary life, for the life of yoga or for the spiritual life. Without this one can do nothing. It is the base — not to do things for one’s pleasure, to satisfy the little ego, but to learn to widen oneself, to open, to give oneself, not for the separate... someone, I see his true being and it is that which tells me all that this person is. For some, it is a bit hazy and for others, a bit more dear. By seeing that, I know if he has possibilities for a spiritual life or not and I do not take time, just like that, in a single glance I know. And I give him what is necessary for him. Whereas, when I see someone here, it is absolutely different, because it is ...

Mona Sarkar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Blessings of the Grace
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Sri Aurobindo - a biography and a history  >  Sri Aurobindo's Action

... October-November 1966 general session of UNESCO, recommending the 'Auroville' Project to all the member-nations of the world: It is an endeavour, unique in the world, to reconcile the highest spiritual life with the exigencies of our industrial civilisation.... Now this extraordinary institution [Sri Aurobindo Ashram], unique in the world by its natural progression, seeks on the occasion... Aurobindo has given us in his works a concrete illustration or a crystallisation of the new man with a new consciousness. In our world the great error of our thought has been to divide our life between spiritual life and material life. But the great dream of Auroville, based on Sri Aurobindo's life-work, is to unite the two. With this reunion or marriage between Spirit and Matter we shall have truly the possibility ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo - a biography and a history
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On The Mother  >  Sadhana of the Body

... different countries were to live together in harmony as one community and engage in cultural, educational, scientific and other pursuits, as "an endeavour, unique in the world, to reconcile the highest spiritual life with the exigencies of our industrial civilisation". Auroville would have pavilions representing the cultures of the world, not only intellectually but also artistically, finding room for the different... sketches and Huta's completed paintings, and see for oneself the closeness and the value of the collaboration. On 1 April, in her message for the annual sports competitions, the Mother said that spiritual life did not mean contempt for Matter but rather its divinisation. Physical education was one of the most directly effective means for promoting the desired transformation, and the two requisites were ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On The Mother
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A Scheme for The Education of Bengal  >  Supermind And The Life Divine

... life of the spirit. It would not lose these former veils but they would no longer be veils or imperfect expressions but true manifestations; they would be changed into states of light, powers of spiritual life, vehicles of a spiritual existence. But this again could not be if mind, life and body were not taken up and transformed by a state of being and force of being superior to them, a power of Supermind... and is fulfilled in the truth-consciousness all the possibilities of the divine life. It will take up not only the whole characteristic experience which we recognise already as constituting the spiritual life-but also all which we now exclude from that category but which is capable of divinisation, not excluding whatever of the earth-nature and the earth-life can be transformed by the touch of the Supermind ...

Pranab Bhattacharya (Dada)   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Scheme for The Education of Bengal
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On The Mother  >  Powers and Personalities

... A smile acts upon difficulties as the sun upon clouds - it disperses them. Happiness is not the aim of life. The aim of ordinary life is to carry out one's duty, the aim of spiritual life is to realise the Divine. To work for the Divine is to pray with the body. All was gold and gold and gold, a torrent of golden light pouring down in an uninterrupted flow and bringing... rather more elaborate. In the first six, which were first published in 1939 in French in Quelques Paroles, Quelques Prières, the Mother seems to have discoursed on some of the basic issues of spiritual life. The secret of secrets is that only the deep can answer the deep. At the core of everybody and everything is the Divine, and hence "when you are one with the Divinity within, you are one with ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On The Mother
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On The Mother  >  War and Peace

... trying to do, the spiritual realisation is the first necessity, but it cannot be complete without an outer realisation also in life, in men, in this world. Spiritual consciousness within but also spiritual life without. The Ashram as it is now is not that ideal.... But, all the same, the Ashram is a first form which our effort has taken, a field in which the preparatory work has to be done. The Mother... y stalled by Jinnah and his associates. The year 1946 closed for India in bitter disillusion indeed. VI Throughout 1946, the Ashram preserved a calm exterior, and the communal and spiritual life of the sadhaks as also the education and physical culture of the pupils in the School were sustained at a high level of harmony and efficiency. Page 447 But the Ashram, although it ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On The Mother
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On The Mother  >  Readings and Discourses

... shall be not till the work is done. 5 What was so wonderful about the Mother as a teacher, as a counselor, was that she had no use for cant and hypocrisy in everyday life, and especially in spiritual life, or for the kind of poses, professions and protestations that, almost as a general rule, have often passed for Yoga practice. It was easy to lose oneself in metaphors and declare that one opted... identification", till the difference between the disciple and the Divine could be finally annulled. 6 But mere metaphor-mongering or wishful-thinking was not the key to progress or success in spiritual life. Meditation, again, was a term of promiscuous misuse. On what basis was meditation to be quantified, and judged? There were different kinds of meditation, and a blanket description was hardly ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On The Mother
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Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine  >  The Human Aspiration

... thinking. He admits that a clear, pure and disciplined intellect is necessary even for spiritual life. And this is a great admission by Sri Aurobindo and he kept to it most faithfully throughout his life. How a pure and disciplined intellect, a great balance in the mind is necessary even for true spiritual life is examplified in Sri Aurobindo's own life. In 1920, when I met him for the second time ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine
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In the Mother's Light  >  Manifestation

... Manifestation Contemplation and Action THE combination of Mary and Martha, of contemplation and devoted action, has been held to be the most progressive and catholic ideal of spiritual life. Contemplation by the exclusion of action is a creed narrow in its outlook, and, more often than not, results in a disastrous neglect of the very basis and meaning of life, because it generally... of admirable spiritual perception and capacity. She was steadily advancing in Yoga when, all of a sudden, she had an attack of brain-fag, as a result of which she partially lost her reason. Her spiritual life suffered a tragic set-back, and none of her previous spiritual gains could stay the decay that had set in. Life, gone out of gear, became a purveyor not of light, but of darkness. The fact ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   In the Mother's Light
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In the Mother's Light  >  Sincerity

... by aspiration. Another basic element of the spiritual way taught by her is sincerity, which she regards not only as a basic element, but as the leaven of all basic and essential elements of spiritual life. If there is one thing that can open all closed doors and lead straight to the highest spiritual achievements, it is sincerity and if there is one thing without which no substantial progress... happen to be quite to our liking or convenience. To complain of the difficulties of life is a kind of insincerity. It implies want of faith and confidence in the Divine. It is a common experience in spiritual life that our greatest conquests and achievements are almost always wrung out of the worst difficulties and obstacles. To complain and grumble is to lapse into doubt and darkness, and become unsteady ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   In the Mother's Light
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The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo  >  The Ego-The Desire-Soul

... goal to be attained and the tangled working of his complex nature with and through which he has to advance. Lack of knowledge is lack of power, and most of the difficulties and failures in the spiritual life can be safely attributed to a lack of knowledge, and to the perfervid precipitancy and summary methods of our Page 124 aspiring ignorance. Human nature is bafflingly intricate, and... long as he cherishes a single desire in himself, for that one desire, ever so laudable or innocent in his eyes or in the eyes of men, is a pebble that can throw down the whole structure of his spiritual life. That one desire, which flatters his ethical or aesthetic personality, clouds his soul and stands in the way of its liberation. That one desire is a new lease given to the ego and a fresh link ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo
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Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo  >  Non Violence

... Disciple : X would have taken fish if it had been a vegetable. Sri Aurobindo : It is absurd to make food such an important thing in the spiritual life. It is a secondary matter whether one takes vegetarian or non-vegetarian diet, so far as the spiritual life is concerned. The real thing is equality Page 61 or Samata. If that is there then it is immaterial whether one takes fish ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo
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At the feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo  >  Part - I

... as I am painting the memory of those past days of my Ashram-life, let me first of all offer my heartfelt gratitude to one whose contact and companionship was at the root of my acceptance of the spiritual life. From him I received ever fresh inspiration, inner sympathy and encouragement to take up this life. Above all it was he who brought me to this life, and through him I got the supreme opportunity... have written should not be sent to Z; for it was not meant for her. I am not her Guru and she has a right to her ignorance. I objected only to her trying to force it on one who has taken up the spiritual life.” (9 September 1936) From all these letters and their answers one can have some idea of our mode of life; some aspects of it may also be grasped. What we usually write about are the events ...

Sahana Devi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   At the feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo
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Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine  >  Delight of Existence - the Solution

... modern Page 124 problems, knowledge of modern attitude of man toward problems, and also the difficulties of man today—all are known to him. He has in addition, the experience of spiritual life. Q : Some people understand this when put in terms so that the mind can understand and accept and it can be consistent with the mental approach. Do some people find it too intellectual... for spiritual experience, is it ? A : Not necessarily. But one who hasn't developed the intellect and is seeking, for him there is an answer. And there is a place for the intellect in the spiritual life. But intellect is not indispensable. There are plenty of people who do not have any intellectual training or aptitude, and they are progressing in Yoga quite all right. It is an instrument that ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine
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Mother's Chronicles - Book Five  >  Astrology

... words, there is no inevitability about the various fate-possibilities. "Destiny does not mean that a thing is fixed. It is just a sum of forces that can be changed." For instance "by entering the spiritual life one opens to a new force which can change one's destiny." Sri Aurobindo cited another example of accurate prediction, this time from History. "There are instances in which the exact hour and... of the horoscope fulfil themselves with great accuracy up to a Page 107 certain age, then apply no more. This often happens when the subject turns away from the ordinary to the spiritual life. If the turn is very radical, the cessation of predictability may be immediate; otherwise certain results may still last on for some time, but there is no longer the same inevitability. This would ...

Sujata Nahar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother's Chronicles - Book Five
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Early Cultural Writings  >  About Astrology

... 601 came to my knowledge in which the life had corresponded exactly with the pre-indications of the horoscope so long as the subject remained in the world but, as soon as he left it for a spiritual life, there was no longer any correspondence. Page 602 ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Early Cultural Writings
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Bande Mataram  >  One More for the Altar

... without which no spiritual emancipation is possible; for it is not among an enslaved, degraded and perishing people that the Rishis and great spirits can long continue to be born. And since the spiritual life of India is the first necessity of the world's future, we fight not only for our own political and spiritual freedom but for the spiritual emancipation of the human race. With such a glorious cause ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Bande Mataram
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Bande Mataram  >  The Gospel according to Surendranath

... court; for petitioning is certainly wasteful in its nature and would not bring us soonest,—nor, indeed, at allto our assured destination. There is more behind. " Where is the room for compromise in spiritual life ? Nobody has a right to tell us in regard to a question like this, thus far you shall go and no farther. National expansion and self-realisation is a sacred duty which we cannot lay aside at the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Bande Mataram
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Karmayogin  >  A Task Unaccomplished

... seclusion in which it was able to develop its individual temperament, knowledge and ideas;—the manner in which the streams of the world poured in upon and were absorbed by the calm ocean of Indian spiritual life, recalling the great image in the Gita,—even as the waters flow into the great tranquil and immeasurable ocean, and the ocean is not perturbed;—the persistence with which peculiar and original ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Karmayogin
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Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  >  Perfection of the Body

... Ashram School, and these are too young Page 525 for a strictly spiritual aim or practice to enter into their activities and it is not certain that any great number of them will enter the spiritual life when they are of an age to choose what shall be the direction of their future. The object must be the training of the body and the development of certain parts of mind and character so far as this ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
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Essays on the Gita  >  Kurukshetra

... being and by the light of a liberating knowledge. But what, then, is it that makes the difficulty for the man who has to take the world as it is and act in it and yet would live, within, the spiritual life? What is this aspect of existence which appals his awakened mind and brings about what the title of the first chapter of the Gita calls significantly the Yoga of the dejection of Arjuna, the dejection ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita
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Isha Upanishad  >  Chapter II

... practised their psychological methods according to a fixed tradition without the harmonising touch, the generalising light; Sankhya dispensed with Yoga, Yoga divided itself from Sankhya. Thus has the spiritual life of India, by a misplaced & intolerant action of Intellect & its servant, rash-moving, light-winged,—the chameleon-hued phantasm Opinion, been shredded, parcelled out, narrowed into many streams ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Isha Upanishad
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Isha Upanishad  >  Chapter III

... the metaphysical schools and showed us Dwaita & Adwaita inextricably yet harmoniously one in experience, even as they are shown to us in Veda & Vedanta. All that at the time still governed our spiritual life he took typically into his soul & into his mental & physical experience, swallowed up its defects & Page 589 imperfections in the infinite abyss of his personality and brought out through ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Isha Upanishad
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The Renaissance in India  >  A Rationalistic Critic on Indian Culture - 3

... always set the highest value on that in man which rises beyond the terrestrial preoccupation; it has held up the goal of a supreme and arduous self-exceeding as the summit of human endeavour. The spiritual life was to its view a nobler thing than the life of external power and enjoyment, the thinker greater than the man of action, the Page 126 spiritual man greater than the thinker. The soul ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Renaissance in India
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The Renaissance in India  >  A Rationalistic Critic on Indian Culture - 6

... law too of highest ideal intention? And how again are we to point that dharma towards its own exceeding by the fulfilment and cessation of its disciplinary purpose in the secure freedom of the spiritual life? Indian culture from an early stage seized upon a double idea for its own guidance which it threw into a basic system of the individual life in the social frame. This was the double system of the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Renaissance in India
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Essays on the Gita  >  The Message of the Gita

... your action, will be your most effective force for an utter consecration and complete perfection. An integral union of the individual's being with the Divine Being is the condition of a perfect spiritual life. Turn then altogether towards the Divine; make one with him by knowledge, love and works all your nature. Turn utterly towards him and give up ungrudgingly into his hands your mind and your heart ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita
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The Renaissance in India  >  Indian Polity - 2

... the attempt broke down earlier than in other spheres) her political rule of life, system, turn of existence, with the adumbration of a spiritual significance behind,—the full attainment of the spiritual life being left as a supreme aim to the effort of the individual—was as far as her ancient system could advance. This much endeavour, however, she did make with persistence and patience and it gave ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Renaissance in India
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The Sun and The Rainbow  >  Two Letters from the Ashram

... an outburst happens now and then, for a brief while. But for it to be constant a firm poise is to be found inside, and that poise is not always easy to come by when one has made a choice of the spiritual life. This will strike you as a paradox. But really there is a difference between short trips to God's land and a permanent stay there. The trips are enthusiastic and the very shortness of them feeds ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Sun and The Rainbow
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The Sun and The Rainbow  >  Money and the Spiritual Aspirant

... in the Ashram the feeling of unity with the Mother is not always present: the ego is in some evidence even if one has mentally given up ordinary relationships and psychically turned towards the spiritual life. So, essentially, the problem can boil down to more or less the same thing whether one is in or out of the Ashram and whether one is occupied with earning money or with doing some other work. The ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Sun and The Rainbow
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A Centenary Tribute  >  Sri Aurobindo's Vision-Hemant Kapoor

... then the intellect of man needs to know what is the nature of that original Truth and the principle of its relations to the rest of existence, to ourselves and the universe." 5   In the spiritual life, Sri Aurobindo writes in The Life Divine : "Our thinking mind is concerned mainly with the statement of general spiritual truth, the logic of its absolute and the logic of its relativities, how ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Centenary Tribute
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Images Of The Future  >  Images of the future

... order to be in yoga with God, one must have the serene manner of a yogi, or of a saint who imparts blessings, or that one must confine oneself to what our mentality ascribes to the expression of spiritual life. It is doubtful that Sri Aurobindo would have proposed such a restricted objective. The greatest interpreter of the Gita, in which Krishna assigns Arjun, his disciple and friend, the horrible task ...

Archaka   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Images Of The Future
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Problems of Early Christianity  >  Raised From The Dead Section II

... 62 The Jerusalem Bible annotates the second passage: "Through union with Christ in baptism, 2:12, his followers already live the identical life he lives in heaven, cf. Ephesians 2:6+, but this spiritual life is not manifest and glorious as it will be at the parousia. ''63   The relevant passage in Ephesians goes in full: "But God Page 257 loved us with so much ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Problems of Early Christianity
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The Secret Splendour  >  Overhead Poetry - Poems With Sri Aurobindo's Comments - Editor's Introduction

... preserve in compact significant arrangement an unusual body of verse and an expert analytic commentary on it. The purpose is, in addition, to be of service in two directions. First, poets of the spiritual life are to be helped to feel more strongly— through the systematic pursuit made by one of them—the power set working by Sri Aurobindo and to catch fire from it. Next, literary critics should be led ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Secret Splendour
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Amal Kiran's Correspondence with The Mother  >  28 August 1963

... extremely. He needs your help and inspiration. You can say to S, on my behalf, that he must look at this apparently unhappy circumstance as a proof that the Lord considers that he is ready for spiritual life and he must no more be attached to any exterior or material thing. If he takes things in that way, he will soon feel that all sorrow is gone away from him. With my blessings 28 August ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Amal Kiran's Correspondence with The Mother
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Visions of Champaklal  >  Visions - Opening, Signs, Development

... which most people are unaware but which opens by the practice of yoga. By this opening one becomes aware of subtle planes of experience and worlds of existence other than the material. For the spiritual life a still further opening is required into an inmost consciousness by which one becomes aware of the self and spirit, the Eternal and the Divine. These lights and visions are not hallucinations ...

Champaklal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Visions of Champaklal
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Perspectives of Savitri - Part 2  >  Symbolism in Savitri

... throughout aided by an interpretative glow from our experience of material objects." 10 So says K. D. Sethna. It is "a poetry which seeks to enlarge the field of poetic creation and for the inner spiritual life of man and his now occult or mystical knowledge and experience the whole hidden range of his and the world's being, not a comer and a limited expression such as it had in the past, but a wide space ...

R. Y. Deshpande   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Perspectives of Savitri - Part 2
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Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II  >  To Profit by One’s Stay Here

... everything from the viewpoint of an ignorant and presumptuous morality which could only alienate from you the sympathy so spontaneously extended to you as to all those who come here in quest of the spiritual life. But in order to profit by one's stay here, a minimum of mental humility and generosity of soul is indispensable. The Mother ...

Champaklal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II
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Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II  >  The Kind of Attraction

... in the same house. If it is a sentimental and emotional attraction, it is easier to channelize and turn it to the Divine by confining your relations to a common seeking for the Divine and the spiritual life. Then all will depend on your sincerity and reciprocal goodwill. The Mother ...

Champaklal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II
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Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II  >  “The Wizard of OZ”

... for me these things don't have much importance. I have no attachment for any religion, and when one has no attachment, one has no aversion either. For me religions are forms, much too human, of spiritual life. Each one expresses one aspect of the single and eternal Truth, but in expressing it exclusively of the other aspects it deforms and diminishes it. None has the right to call itself the only true ...

Champaklal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II
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Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo  >  Postscript: Emerging Insights

... of it, such as the routine acts and necessary chores of daily living, as belonging to one's outer or ordinary life, and meditation, consecrated work, and the like as constituting one's inner or spiritual life. Acts pertaining to the outer life are done with ordinary consciousness and are governed by physical, vital, and mental motives of ordinary consciousness. This defeats the yogic ideal, which is ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo
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Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo  >  Mind and the Witness Consciousness

... Aurobindo Mind and the Witness Consciousness Perhaps a more significant difference in the perspectives of Eckhart and Sri Aurobindo regarding the role of mind in spiritual life pertains to the witness consciousness. As stated earlier in this chapter, in Eckhart's view, to be identified with the mind is to be in a stare of unconsciousness; it is a state in which one is ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo
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Perspectives of Savitri - Part 1  >  Savitri — The Word of Sri Aurobindo

... nor the end, that creation proceeds from light to light, from consciousness to higher reaches of consciousness. From the material life through the vital and the mental life he first reaches the spiritual life and finally the Life Divine. From the animal he rises to manhood, and in the end to Godhood. But there are intermediaries. The fullness of the realisation depends on the fullness of the ...

R. Y. Deshpande   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Perspectives of Savitri - Part 1
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Champaklal Speaks  >  Significances of Colours

... of significances: Poetry — Pale Blue (Sky Blue) Painting — Rainbow Sculpture — Red Music — Green Dance — White Thought — Yellow Physico-vital life — Red Mental-vital life — Deep Blue Spiritual life — Pearl Gray Life Divine — Golden ...

Champaklal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Champaklal Speaks
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A Greater Psychology  >  The Psychic Being

... a time comes when it is able to prepare to come out from behind the veil, to take command and turn all the instrumental nature towards a divine fulfilment. This is the beginning of the true spiritual life. The soul is able now to make itself ready for a higher evolution of manifested consciousness than the mental human — it can pass from the mental to the spiritual and through degrees of the spiritual ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology
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A Greater Psychology  >  The Psychology of Faith

... ; it is something that is there before experience. When one starts the yoga, it is not usually on the strength of experience, but on the strength of faith. It is so not only in yoga and the spiritual life, but in ordinary life also. All men of action, discoverers, inventors, creators of knowledge proceed by faith and, until the proof is made or the thing done, they go on in spite of disappointment ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Greater Psychology
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Psychology, Mental Health and Yoga  >  The Healing Power of Peace

... Psychology, Mental Health and Yoga The Healing Power of Peace "For everything - to live the spiritual life, heal sickness - for everything, one must be calm," 1 The Mother There has been a growing recognition of the role of stress in producing physical illness as well as psychiatric disturbances. According to conservative estimates, about fifty ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Psychology, Mental Health and Yoga
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Psychology, Mental Health and Yoga  >  Mastery, Mental Health and Yoga

... mental control is only partial and it controls but does not liberate; it is only the psychic and spiritual that can do that. This is the main difference in this respect between the ordinary and the spiritual life." 17 "Your difficulty in getting rid of the aboriginal in your nature will remain so long as you try to change your vital part by the sole or main strength of your mind and mental will, calling ...

Dr. A. S. Dalal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Psychology, Mental Health and Yoga
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Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II  >  Change your Nature

... Change your Nature It is indeed indispensable that something should change radically in your nature before you are fit for staying here. You are far too ego-centric to lead a spiritual life; and it is also the cause of this catastrophe and of the suffering it has brought to you, which is the natural consequence of the whole affair. Indeed it is good if you go to face the ordinary ...

Champaklal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II
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Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II  >  Kanti

... difficulties in your following the path of yoga, and, as in this path of yoga it is necessary to put away sexual desire, marriage would be not only meaningless but an absolute contradiction of your spiritual life. You can expect full support and protection from us in your resolution and, if you keep a sincere will and resolution in this matter, you may be sure that the Divine Grace will not fail you. ...

Champaklal   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II
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Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume I  >  Preface

... farther. In the spiritual development of the consciousness upon earth the great past ought to be followed by a greater future." He further elaborated in a letter (December 1935) to Dadaji: "The spiritual life is not a thing that can be formulated in a rigid definition or bound by a fixed mental rule; it is a vast field of evolution, an immense kingdom potentially larger than the other kingdoms below ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume I
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Sri Aurobindo came to Me  >  Guru The Transformer

... your lower vital still regrets what it has lost, or, as a price for its adhesion or a compensation — price to be immediately paid down to it — asks for something similar and equivalent in the spiritual life. It refuses to believe that there is a greater compensation, a larger vital life waiting for it, something positive in which there shall not be the old inadequacy and unrest and final dissatisfaction ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo came to Me
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Patterns of the Present  >  6: The Supramental “Catastrophe”

... their search for authenticity, the flower children spontaneously focused on forms of thought and spiritual practice in relation to the big gap in Western philosophy, psychology and religion: the spiritual life, the soul. For this they turned towards the East, and firstly, towards India. “According to what I am being told”, said the Mother in 1964, “I mean by people who listen to the radio and read the ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Patterns of the Present
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Beyond Man  >  Chapter Ten: The Two-In-One

... sheer necessity. In Pondicherry the young Bengalis were highly rated as football players. (The three professional football teams of Calcutta are even now among the foremost in the country.) Spiritual life was the least of their concerns. ‘We had hitherto known [Sri Aurobindo] as a dear friend and a close companion, and although in our mind and heart he had the position of a Guru, in our outward ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Beyond Man
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Beyond Man  >  Chapter Eleven: All Life is Yoga

... solely a supra-cosmic achievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing in of a Power of Consciousness (the supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active. ‘3. Because a method has been recognized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Beyond Man
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Beyond Man  >  Chapter Twenty-one: The Ship from the New World

... Beyond Man Chapter Twenty-one: The Ship from the New World One must first of all fight an enormous mass of foolish prejudices which put material and spiritual life irreconcilably against each other … One must be able to take up all, to combine all, to synthesize all. 1 — The Mother The quality of the atmosphere had changed, the Mother said ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Beyond Man
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Gautam Chawalla's Correspondence with The Mother  >  20 September 1966

... You are suffering because some part of your being has a perverse attraction to suffering. In fact, the circumstances of your life would seem perfectly enviable to many people who aspire for a spiritual life. Observe this mania for suffering sincerely and you will see that it is a pose of your vital which hopes in this way to attract the sympathy of others and maybe even the divine compassion. ...

Gautam Chawalla   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Gautam Chawalla's Correspondence with The Mother
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Gautam Chawalla's Correspondence with The Mother  >  23 December 1966

... again as a saint. Thus they appear on the earth, the Paramahansas.”— Shankaracharya Isn’t this rather a sign of weakness than of a growth of consciousness? Yes, certainly. Formerly in spiritual life, one did not care about the body; one even despised it, and at the first opportunity it was rejected and its imperfections became apparent. 23 December 1966 ...

Gautam Chawalla   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Gautam Chawalla's Correspondence with The Mother
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The Mother (biography)  >  4: A Synthesis in the Making

... of Light? For Mirra was of the opinion that there should be no barrier between the spiritual and the ordinary life, everything without exception being the One. It might be less easy to lead the spiritual life in the midst of the ordinary, but the result would prove to be much richer and more complete, more integral. She met Anatole France and asked him if he knew of the Cosmic Tradition, as he had ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother (biography)
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Sri Aurobindo came to Me  >  Sri Krishnaprem Vis-A-Vis Sri Aurobindo

... all and win. The reason is that the doubting Thomas not only shuts out the light he wants to perceive to be convinced, but actually plumes himself on the void he prefers to the plentitude of the spiritual life. To each his Eden, as Sri Aurobindo was wont to say, whenever the ignorant eschewed the heights in favour of the abyss of darkness they cherished. Personally, I came to profit most from the ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo came to Me
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Chaitanya and Mira  >  Mira - Act One

... undertake to deliver you from all sin." I waved aside even this breath-taking pledge As fabricated by His unscrupulous priests. "For is not He," I asked, "the peak and plinth Of spiritual life which must be grounded in dharma's Inviolable codes? If so, how could He Thus lead us astray — sundering trustful souls From their eternal moorings: the moral codes?" ( Smiling ...

Dilip Kumar Roy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Chaitanya and Mira
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The Mother (biography)  >  17: The Passage Perilous

... albeit in an animal-human body. Where would they come from, the candidates for superconsciousness? None of them would be realized yogis; many would not even be trainee-yogis or candidates for the spiritual life. All things considered, it is strange that anybody at all came to stay in that barren place to dedicate his or her life to the ideals of the Auroville Charter. Who among them had an idea of the ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother (biography)
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The Mother (biography)  >  10: The Laboratory

... in the Integral Yoga are aspiration, surrender, sincerity, and equality or equanimity. But ‘it is always the psychic being that is the real, though often the secret cause of man’s turning to the spiritual life and his greatest help in it,’ we read in The Synthesis of Yoga. ‘It is the very nature of the soul or the psychic being to turn towards the Divine Truth as the sunflower to the sun.’ 12 The ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother (biography)
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The Mother (biography)  >  13: The Yoga of the Body Cells

... simply that anybody trying to realize his or her soul, or to advance spiritually, will be inevitably attacked by the hostile forces using visible and invisible means. If ordinary life is a battle, spiritual life is a hundred times more so, and one has to be a hero to persevere in one’s effort. Of this heroic struggle Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are the best examples; their fight with the hostile forces ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother (biography)
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The Mother (biography)  >  16: What Is to Be Done Is Done

... principle was aspiration, not any longer as a psychological condition but as a longing of the cells. Aspiration is the inner impulse which drives each and every one who sincerely turns towards the spiritual life. However, it could not be the basis from which the transformation of the cells had to start, for they were much too ignorant and enslaved by millennia of dwarfish habits. The Mother often compared ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother (biography)
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Our Light and Delight  >  The Mother's Blessings

... sank like a sun and made me your west: O Deathless who died since in no other way Could you be buried forever in my breast! Yes, Mina was struck awake to the marvel of the spiritual life, even if the final resolve had not come. And in the meanwhile another influence was brought to bear upon her by a Christian friend who was preparing to be a nun. She presented her with St. ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Our Light and Delight
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Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2)  >  chapter 025

... Divine Presence she has subtly established, a Presence most effectively radiating from the Samadhi where her body and Sri Aurobindo's have been enshrined. But I cannot say that the intensity of the spiritual life has actually increased on the whole as a result of the Mother's demise. Mind my phrase "on the whole". For some to have been thrown back upon themselves by the absence of the Mother in the flesh ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2)
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Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2)  >  chapter 003

... After discussing the matter half jocularly and half seriously Sri Aurobindo concluded: "Do you think that Buddha or Confucius or myself were born with a prevision that they or I would take to the spiritual life? So long as one is in the ordinary consciousness, one lives the ordinary life. When the awakening and the new consciousness come, one leaves it - nothing puzzling in it." Again, there was never ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2)
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Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2)  >  chapter 004

... life and smote on all the chords with might - Smote the chord of self that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.   Yes, from earliest girlhood you have felt called to the spiritual life. But you have something of an ascetic in your nature and this, coupled with the typical woman in you, has made your physical life too hard-working. All women want to keep their rooms spick and ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2)
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Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2)  >  chapter 001

... question - "Can a Psychic which is once awake ever draw back?" - I may suppose that whatever mental formulation you may have does not take into account the full state of affairs in the course of the spiritual life. Let me touch upon both your perplexities,   I would say briefly that the Psychic Being in us is that which passes from life to life through the long series of rebirths. It is the Immortal ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 2)
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Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)  >  chapter 015

... Page 168 Divine Mother in spite of the obstacles in your way which may tend to bring down the consciousness. Our Gurus are aware of your troubles and the hurdles in the way of your spiritual life: they judge not just by what is actually achieved but by the intention and aspiration behind the thing done, however small may seem the achievement. If the prayer to be a perfect child is intense ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)
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Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)  >  chapter 020

... than in the Ashram. All this does not signify that investitures of the sacred thread among non-Ashramites or even an Ashram-marriage like the one to which I have alluded can be made a rule of the spiritual life according to the Integral Yoga. The Aurobindonian spirituality, in the Ashram version, goes fundamentally beyond sacred threads and procreative marriages and indeed looks upon such things as what ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3)
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Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 1)  >  chapter 015

... experiences from life to life. The apparent movement is towards the True, the Good, the Beautiful, but inwardly the movement is towards the Divine and when this inward fact is recognised the genuine spiritual life has begun and one is aware of one's soul directly and not only of the reflection or rather emanation of it in the mental-vital-physical complex. I may add that no matter how much the psychic being ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 1)
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Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 1)  >  chapter 010

... deafening circumstances still say - Ever we hear in the heart of the peril a flute go before us? This line from Sri Aurobindo's Ahana has been a great favourite of mine both as a guide in the spiritual life and as an example of poetry fulfilling one of its basic functions. As you must know, poetry is hard to define with one single formula. We have to approach it from several viewpoints. Its intrinsic ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 1)
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A Centenary Tribute  >  Introduction

... that the distance he could have travelled could never exceed what was made possible thanks to the grace he received from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Indeed, the more he travelled in his artistic-spiritual life, the less he was concerned about worldly recognition, although admittedly there were times when he must have felt a tinge of sadness and genuine puzzlement about the insincerity of the academic ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Centenary Tribute
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The Problem Of Aryan Origins  >  Appendix 1. Harappa and the Rigveda's Hariyupiya

... Ancient India, p. 79. 13. Ibid., pp. 79, 81. Page 128 bear from Sri Aurobindo, the god's exclusive role makes it absolutely indisputable that here we have a drama of the spiritual life cast into material images and that the means of victory were not bows and arrows, spears and fire-brands and maces but solely Mantras. The Rigveda's Hariyuplya is far removed in implication ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Problem Of Aryan Origins
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The Spirit of Auroville  >  Preface

... obstinate and, to a certain extent, very effective way. The result of all that has been noted at every step in almost day-to-day experiences. First of all, it is not merely a new conception of the spiritual life and the divine reality. The old spirituality was an escape from life towards the divine Reality, leaving the world where it was, as it was. Our new vision, on the contrary, is the divinisation ...

Huta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Spirit of Auroville
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My Savitri work with the Mother  >  07 February 1957

... brushes. I was perfectly aware that it was not going to be easy, but life now beckoned me along strange paths which I must tread. There was no turning back since I had committed myself to the spiritual life and the higher artistic sphere. The Mother has stated: If you want art to be true and highest art, it must be the expression of a Divine World brought down into this material world. ...

Huta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   My Savitri work with the Mother
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White Roses  >  14 September 1963

... over there? I send nobody purposely into the vital world. But have helped several people who were in the habit of going there. What is the purpose and importance of the vital world in the Spiritual life? Does the vital world help in any way? The Vital is most important, for the transformation of the physical but its importance is rather little for those who want to escape life rather than ...

Huta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   White Roses
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The Life Divine  >  The Order of the Worlds

... products of Matter; Matter itself is a product of Energy, and mind and life must be regarded as superior products of the same Energy. If we admit the existence of a cosmic Spirit, the Energy must be spiritual; life and mind must be independent products of a spiritual energy and themselves powers of manifestation of the Spirit. It then becomes irrational to suppose that Spirit and Matter alone exist, that ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine
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The Life Divine  >  The Evolutionary Process - Ascent and Integration

... levels, but, as he develops, he puts his lower being to a severer test, begins to demand from it on pain of rejection something like a transformation: that is the mind's way of preparing for a spiritual life still beyond it. But man not only turns his gaze downward and around him, when he has reached his higher level, but upward towards what is above him and inward towards what is occult within ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine
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The Life Divine  >  The Philosophy of Rebirth

... the knowledge and the large divine life which he can compass by the unfolding of the spirit. At least the opening out of the spirit in him, the knowledge of his real self and the leading of the spiritual life must be attained before he can go definitively and for ever otherwhere. There may too be beyond this initial culmination a greater flowering of the spirit in the human life of which we have as ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Life Divine
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The Future Poetry  >  The Movement of Modern Literature - I

... . Formerly, the human mind in its generality did not go very far in these directions. Its philosophy was speculative and metaphysical, but with little actuality except for the intellectual and spiritual life of the individual, its science explorative of superficial phenomenon rather than opulent both in detail and fruitful generalisation; its view of the past was mythological, traditional and national ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Future Poetry
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Letters on Yoga - I  >  Philosophical Thought and Yoga

... only so long as experience has not made them concrete, but once experienced they become living stuff of the consciousness and, after a certain stage, even the basis of action and growth in the spiritual life. Here I am driven to a rather lengthy digression from the main theme—for I am met by X 's rather baffling appeal to Whitham's History of Science. What has Whitham or Science to do with spiritual ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I
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Letters on Yoga - I  >  The Meaning and Purpose of Avatarhood

... incarnate Krishna and it has always been so accepted by the religious mind of India. These questions and the speculations to which they have given rise have no indispensable connection with the spiritual life. There what matters is the contact with Krishna and the growth towards the Krishna consciousness, the presence, the spiritual relation, the union in the soul and, till that is reached, the aspiration ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I
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Letters on Yoga - I  >  The Psychic Being

... there is developed a psychic individuality,—that which we call usually the psychic being. It is always this psychic being that is the real, though often the secret cause of man's turning to the spiritual life and his greatest help in it. It is therefore that which we have to bring from behind to the front in the Yoga. The word "soul", as also the word "psychic", is used very vaguely and in many ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I
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Letters on Poetry and Art  >  Philosophers, Intellectuals, Novelists and Musicians

... his language which is bad. The same may be said of Balzac who is the greatest of French novelists but the worst of French writers. 13 June 1938 Romain Rolland Somnath was drawn to the spiritual life through reading novels like Jean Christophe. I have not read Jean Christophe , but Rolland is an idealist who takes interest in spiritual mysticism—not himself a man of spiritual experience ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Poetry and Art
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The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Gradations of the Supermind

... inferior nature and it corrects their deformations. It takes similarly the movements of the vital being and consciousness and relates them to the movements and imparts to them the significances of the spiritual life of the self and its power of Tapas. It takes the physical consciousness, delivers it from its darkness and tamas of inertia and makes it a responsive recipient and a sensitive instrument of the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga
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The Human Cycle  >  The Age of Individualism and Reason

... ; for there at least there were for the rebel, the innovator two important concessions. There was for the individual the freedom of an early Sannyasa, a renunciation of the social for the free spiritual life, and there was for the group the liberty to form a sub-society governed by new conceptions like the Sikh or the Vaishnava. But neither of these violent departures from the norm could be tolerated ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Human Cycle
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The Synthesis of Yoga  >  Self-Consecration

... And since Yoga is in its essence a turning away from the ordinary material and animal life led by most men or from the more mental but still limited way of living followed by the few to a greater spiritual life, to the way divine, every part of our energies that is given to the lower existence in the spirit of that existence is a contradiction of our aim and our self-dedication. On the other hand, every ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga
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The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Four Aids

... liberty in the receptive human soul. A free adaptability in the manner and the type of the individual's acceptance of the Universal and Transcendent into himself is the right condition for the full spiritual life in man. Vivekananda, pointing out that the unity of all religions must necessarily express itself by an increasing richness of variety in its forms, said once that the perfect state of that essential ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga
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The Synthesis of Yoga  >  Soul-Force and the Fourfold Personality

... desire to give our body and life as well as our soul and mind and will and capacity to God and man, and, as a result, the power of complete self-surrender, ātma-samarpaṇa , which transferred to the spiritual life becomes one of the greatest most revealing keys to freedom and perfection. In these things lies the perfection of this Dharma and the nobility of this Swabhava. Man could not be perfect and complete ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga
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The Synthesis of Yoga  >  The Release from the Ego

... something wider than the individual, but also from something higher than the collective ego. Altruism, philanthropy, the service of mankind are in themselves mental or moral ideals, not laws of the spiritual life. If into the spiritual aim there enters the impulse to deny the personal self or to serve humanity or the world at large, it comes not from the ego nor from the collective sense of the race, but ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga
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The Synthesis of Yoga  >  Renunciation

... others,—though to God nothing is impossible; for a heaven of personal joys he has no hankerings even as a hell of personal sufferings has for him no terrors. If there is an opposition between the spiritual life and that of the world, it is that gulf which he is here to bridge, that opposition which he is here to change into a harmony. If the world is ruled by the flesh and the devil, all the more reason ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Synthesis of Yoga
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The Secret of the Veda  >  A Retrospect of Vedic Theory

... of the mantra and the sacrifice to a more purely spiritual aim and intention. The balance, the synthesis preserved by the old Mystics between the external and the internal, the material and the spiritual life was displaced and disorganised. A new balance, a new synthesis was established, leaning finally towards asceticism and renunciation, and maintained itself until it was in its turn displaced and ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Secret of the Veda
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The Secret of the Veda  >  The Angiras Rishis

... placed in that capacity side by side with the gods. It is not surprising, then, that in this mystic symbolism the seven Angiras Rishis should have become divine powers and living forces of the spiritual life without losing altogether their traditional or historic human character. We will leave, however, these conjectures and speculations aside and examine instead the part played by these three elements ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Secret of the Veda
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Essays on the Gita  >  Works, Devotion and Knowledge

... those too, pāpa-yonayaḥ , on whom their past Karma has imposed even the very worst of births, the outcaste, the Pariah, the Chandala, find at once the gates of God opening before them. In the spiritual life all the external distinctions of which men make so much because they appeal with an oppressive force to the outward mind, cease before the equality of the divine Light and the wide omnipotence ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita
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Essays on the Gita  >  The Creed of the Aryan Fighter

... and defeat equal to his soul and then turn to the battle,—the real teaching of the Gita. But Indian ethics has always seen the practical necessity of graded ideals for the developing moral and spiritual life of man. The Kshatriya ideal, the ideal of the four orders is here placed in its social aspect, not as afterwards in its spiritual meaning. This, says Krishna in effect, is my answer to you if you ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita
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Essays on the Gita  >  The Divine Birth and Divine Works

... new spiritual message and a new law of divine growth and spiritual realisation. On the other hand, if we give to the word dharma only its religious sense, in which it means a law of religious and spiritual life, we shall indeed get to the kernel of the matter, but we shall be in danger of excluding a most important part of the work done by the Avatar. Always we see in the history of the divine incarnations ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita
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Essays on the Gita  >  The Field and its Knower

... status and an indispensable part of the Godward movement, that action being uplifted inwardly as a sacrifice with adoration to the Highest, how does this way practically affect the great object of spiritual life, the rising from the lower into the higher nature, from mortal into immortal being? All life, all works are a transaction between the soul and Nature. What is the original character of that transaction ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita
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The Human Cycle  >  Self-Determination

... unifying itself with the law of the divine being in all. At once the key of the problem is shifted from without to within, from the visible externalities of social and political adjustment to the spiritual life and truth which can alone provide its key. Not that the outer life has to be neglected; on the contrary the pursual of the principle in one field or on one level, provided we do not limit or ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Human Cycle
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The Human Cycle  >  The Advent and Progress of the Spiritual Age

... march, a culmination that left nothing more to be achieved on earth. For there would be still yet higher levels within the supramental realm, as the old Vedic poets knew when they spoke of the spiritual life as a constant ascent,— brahmāṇas tvā śatakrato     ud vaṁśam iva yemire; yat sānoḥ sānum āruhat,     bhūri aspaṣṭa kartvam,— The priests of the word climb thee like a ladder, O hu ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Human Cycle
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The Human Cycle  >  Foreword to the First Edition

... pressing towards change and reconstitution. The ideals of the future, especially the ideals of freedom, equality, commonalty, unity, are demanding to be brought out from their limited field in the spiritual life or the idealism of the few and to be given some beginning of a true soul of action and bodily shape in the life of the race. But banded against any such fulfilment there are powerful obstacles ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Human Cycle
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Letters on Yoga - II  >  Bhakti, Devotion, Worship

... as it was. The actual taking of the food, physically, is rare, but instances are believed to have happened where the bhakti was very strong. Prayer Prayer and aspiration are a part of the spiritual life and do not conflict with surrender, provided one is not disturbed in either way by the fulfilment or unfulfilment of the prayer and keeps one's faith and quietude all the same. In the ordinary ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - II
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Letters on Yoga - III  >  Inner Detachment and the Witness Attitude

... The first result of it is an entire quietude, but afterwards that quietude begins (without the quietude ceasing) to fill with the psychic and other inner movements which create a true inner and spiritual life behind the outer life and nature. It is then easier to govern and change the latter. At present there are fluctuations in your consciousness because this inner state is not yet fully developed ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - III
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Letters on Yoga - III  >  The Psychic and Spiritual Realisations

... individual and cosmos have come and of the individual being (Jivatma) as an eternal portion of the Divine. Foundations of the Sadhana What you are experiencing is the true foundation of the spiritual life and realisation. It has three elements—first, the love which is the heart of Bhakti; then the descent of peace and equanimity which is the first necessary basis for realisation of self and the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - III
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Letters on Yoga - IV  >  The Subconscient and the Integral Yoga

... that happens in excess, the sadhaka has sometimes even to go back to the ordinary action of the ordinary life, get the true experience of it with a new mind and will behind and then return to the spiritual life with the obstacle eliminated or else ready for elimination. But this method of purposive indulgence is always dangerous, though sometimes inevitable. It succeeds only when there is a very strong ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV
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Letters on Yoga - IV  >  Dealing with Hostile Attacks

... that. There is no need to understand—for there is only one thing that it is necessary to understand—that, reason or no reason, desire, selfishness, jealousy, demand, anger have no place in the spiritual life. If you keep to what you have resolved, then all will be right—and the right knowledge will come not from the mind and its reasonings but from the soul and its true vision of things. Page ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV
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Letters on Yoga - IV  >  The Lower Vital Being

... brought down into the external being and the change made. At present you have to go back, but this can very well be done outside. When it is done, then you will be truly ready for the complete spiritual life. There can be only one "solution" of this kind of struggle,—to recognise these feelings for what they are, unregenerated movements of the old vital nature, and to reject these vital suggestions ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - IV
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Letters on Himself and the Ashram  >  Messages Written for Special Occasions

... the strength I can command to obey you. Blessings for the new year. May all struggle cease and a quiet ascent begin. 11 February 1936 Page 844 The time for your turning to the spiritual life depends upon your own aspiration. A sincere aspiration brings always its response, and if there is continuity in the will, the result cannot fail. So the Light grows always. As for the shadow ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Himself and the Ashram
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The Mother with Letters on the Mother  >  The Mother's Love

... is not Mother who makes you cry. It is forces from the vital Nature that make you sorrowful and think of dying and of the past. What comes from Mother is love and light and peace and joy and the spiritual life of the future. Never mind about the purity of the body. The love of the Mother purifies both heart and body—if the soul's aspiration is there, the body also is pure. What happened in the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Mother with Letters on the Mother
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Autobiographical Notes  >  Beginnings of the Revolutionary Movement

... in the province. He was joined afterwards by Barin who had in the interval come to Baroda. [Among the leading lights of the day was P. Mitter who was a positivist.] P. Mitter had a spiritual life and aspiration of his own and a strong religious feeling; he was like Bepin Pal and several other prominent leaders of the new nationalist movement in Bengal, a disciple of the famous Yogi Bejoy ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes
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Autobiographical Notes  >  To and about Anna Bogenholm Sloane

... Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life (1911-1928) Autobiographical Notes To and about Anna Bogenholm Sloane [1] The ARYA Office Pondicherry French India August 3, 1926 To Anna Bogenholm Sloane Ashirvada. I have read your letter with great interest and I have no hesitation after the perusal in acceding to your request and asking ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes
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Autobiographical Notes  >  To Ramchandran

... Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life (1911-1928) Autobiographical Notes To Ramchandran [30 September 1925] Dear Ramchandran, I am answering your second letter which reached me today. And first I must say something about the very extraordinary line of conduct you propose to adopt in case of not hearing from me. I think it is because, as ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes
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Autobiographical Notes  >  To Rajani Palit

... Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life (1911-1928) Autobiographical Notes To Rajani Palit 6th April, 1923. "Arya Office" Pondicherry. My dear Rajani, I am writing today about your son Rathin and his illness if it can be called by that name. I shall state first in general terms Page 373 the nature of the malady and its usual d ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes
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Autobiographical Notes  >  Draft Letters to and about Kumud Bandhu Bagchi

... Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life (1911-1928) Autobiographical Notes Draft Letters to and about Kumud Bandhu Bagchi [1] There are certain things that it is absolutely necessary for Kumud to realise in a sincere and straight-forward spirit, without veils and self-justifications if his sadhana is not to turn about in a constant circle to ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes
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Autobiographical Notes  >  Draft of a Letter to Maharani Chimnabai II

... my way to help those who are merely in need of some kind of quietude of [the] external nature as many Yogins do—though I do not refuse to do it in certain cases. My aim is to create a centre of spiritual life which shall serve as a means of bringing down the higher consciousness and making it a power not merely for "salvation" but for a divine life upon earth. It is with this object that I have withdrawn ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes
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Autobiographical Notes  >  To Hrishikesh Kanjilal

... Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life (1911-1928) Autobiographical Notes To Hrishikesh Kanjilal [c. 1922] To Hrishikesh It appears from your present letter and attitude that you propose to give God a seat on your right hand and R—another on the left and to sit in meditation between oscillating sweetly from one to the other. If this is what ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes
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Autobiographical Notes  >  To an Unknown Person

... Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life (1911-1928) Autobiographical Notes To an Unknown Person Now you have seen practically all that needed to be seen with an entire sincerity and a true unsparing vision. The root was there in the lower vital; it was that one among your formations of personality on the vital level which brought in a persistent element ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes
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The Mother with Letters on the Mother  >  Praying to the Mother

... about prayer for outer things is not clear to me. Can you kindly explain? All depends on whether the outer things are sought for one's own convenience, pleasure, profit etc., or as part of the spiritual life, necessary for the success of the work, the development and fitness of the instruments etc. It is a question mainly of inner attitude. If for instance you pray for money for buying nice food to ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Mother with Letters on the Mother
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Letters on Himself and the Ashram  >  Remarks on His Life in Pondicherry after 1926

... that that was not to be expected. I rather suspect that Vallabhbhai spoke sarcastically and X failed to catch it. Perhaps not. Vallabhbhai is not likely to understand more than others that a spiritual life can be led by me without a view to a comeback hereafter for the greatest good of the greatest India (or world). Tagore expected the latter and is much disappointed Page 35 that I have ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Himself and the Ashram
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Autobiographical Notes  >  To N. K. Gogte

... Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life (1911-1928) Autobiographical Notes To N. K. Gogte [1] Dear Sir, I regret that I have not been able to reply as yet to your postcard. I am entirely occupied with the work for the Review which has to be given to the Press shortly. After the 17ᵗʰ I shall be more free and hope then to be able to reply ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes
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Autobiographical Notes  >  To A. B. Purani

... Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life (1911-1928) Autobiographical Notes To A. B. Purani Pondicherry Feb 21. 1920 Dear Purani, It is not easy to get a letter out of me, I hardly write more than a dozen in the year, so you must not be surprised at my long delay in answering you. On the two matters you mentioned in your first letter—what word ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes
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Autobiographical Notes  >  Draft of a Letter

... Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life (1911-1928) Autobiographical Notes Draft of a Letter He wishes me to say that he sent back the MS according to your request because he felt that it was quite impossible for him to deal with it in the near future. 1 He is now living entirely retired and engrossed in his yoga. He has put off all external ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes
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Autobiographical Notes  >  Draft of a Letter to Nolini Kanta Gupta

... Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life (1911-1928) Autobiographical Notes Draft of a Letter to Nolini Kanta Gupta Dear Nalini, Quorsum haec incerta? Do you really mean to perpetrate Page 295 the sexual union dignified by the name of marriage, or don't you? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you—to quote the language of the spider ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes
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The Psychic Being  >  What is Meant by the Psychic Being

... there is developed a psychic individuality, —that which we call usually the psychic being. It is always this psychic being that is the real, though often the secret cause of man's turning to the spiritual life and his greatest help in it. It is therefore that which we have to bring from behind to the front in the yoga. The word 'soul', as also the word 'psychic', is used very vaguely and in many different ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Psychic Being
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Letters on Yoga - II  >  Christianity and Theosophy

... rather vital character. It is that mixture and the mental character of its knowledge that prevent it from being a sound thing. Many start with it, but have to leave it if they want to get to real spiritual life and knowledge. Page 511 × Brief extracts from a book by Henri Massis , Défense de l'Occident ( Paris: ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - II
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Letters on Yoga - III  >  The Value of Experiences

... consciousness out of the limited mental into the true spiritual vision and experience in which all is one and all is the Divine. It is this constant and living experience that is the true foundation of spiritual life. There can be no doubt about its truth and value, for it is evidently something living and dynamic and goes beyond a mental realisation. It may add to itself in future different aspects, but the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - III
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The Mother with Letters on the Mother  >  Meeting Jnan Chakrabarti

... life and surroundings he had as the milieu given him and not in the least wishing to change it. It was his theory that this was the teaching of the Gita—to feel Krishna within, to have the inner spiritual life and realisation,—the rest was the Lila and could be left as it was unless or until the Divine himself in the automatic movement of his play chose to change it. This explains the double character ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Mother with Letters on the Mother
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The Mother with Letters on the Mother  >  The Guru, the Divine and the Truth

... are not only the Gurus but also the Divine, and that whatever either of you say is the law of the Truth. Why then are you using these three different words? 1 I wrote the general law of spiritual life and obedience. You have to know that as well as its special application here. Moreover many here are satisfied with saying "The Mother is divine," but they do not follow her commands. Others do ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Mother with Letters on the Mother
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The Mother with Letters on the Mother  >  Joyous Sacrifice

... Pathfinders The Mother with Letters on the Mother Joyous Sacrifice By the way, do you think that the Mother or myself or others who have taken up the spiritual life had not enjoyed life and that it is therefore that the Mother was able to speak of a joyous sacrifice to the Divine as the true spirit of spiritual sacrifice? Or do you think we spent the preliminary ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Mother with Letters on the Mother
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The Mother with Letters on the Mother  >  Wrong Ideas about the Mother's Showing Displeasure

... The only circumstance under which Mother's attitude at Pranam is likely to be influenced by the actions of the sadhak is when there is some great betrayal or a violent breach of the main rules of spiritual life such as an act of sexual intercourse or when the sadhak has become pointedly hostile to the Mother and the Yoga. But then it is not a special show of displeasure at Page 546 Pranam ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Mother with Letters on the Mother
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Letters on Himself and the Ashram  >  The Supramental Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths

... rather vital character. It is that mixture and the mental character of its knowledge that prevent it from being a sound thing. Many start with it, but have to leave it if they want to get to real spiritual life and knowledge. 4 November 1933 Page 318 × Swami Vivekananda, Raja-Yoga, in The Complete Works ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Himself and the Ashram
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Questions and Answers (1929-1931)  >  Appendix to Questions and Answers 1929

... it will proceed in the future, how and where you were born in the past and what you will be hereafter, the lives you have lived and the lives you will still live. All this has nothing to do with spiritual life." 25 Is what such people say a complete humbug? Is there a process other than the spiritual by which one can know all these things? Often it is, but even if it is correct, it has nothing ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1929-1931)
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Questions and Answers (1950-1951)  >  10 March 1951

... in a way, but all the phenomena of their consciousness were lodged within their mental construction—they could no longer get out of it. Well, this happens very strongly to people who seek for a spiritual life through the classical methods of Page 193 a renunciation of the material consciousness, a concentration on their inner being and identification with it. If I gave you the names of some ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1950-1951)
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Questions and Answers (1929-1931)  >  14 April 1929

... is taken away. Page 11 It is a thing that does not happen to all. It happens to those that are called. Whatever difference there is between the West and the East in relation to spiritual life lies not in the inner being or nature, which is an invariable and constant thing, but in the mental habits, in the modes of outer expression and presentation which are the result of education and ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1929-1931)
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Questions and Answers (1929-1931)  >  Miscellany

... one obtains then is infinitely more true, more profound, more lasting. To run away from difficulties in order to conquer them is not a solution. It is very attractive. In those who seek the spiritual life, there is something which says, "Oh! to sit down under a tree, all alone, to remain in meditation, not to have the temptation to speak or act, how fine it must be!" It is because there is a very ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1929-1931)
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Questions and Answers (1950-1951)  >  12 April 1951

... under the religious form. That is to say, if someone enters a monastery, they understand him more or less. But for the average man (I am not speaking of cultured people), if someone wants to lead a spiritual life independent of all religion, simply setting out in the personal quest of a higher truth, then surely he is ready to be put in a lunatic asylum! It would be better not to speak of it. There are ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1950-1951)
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India's Rebirth  >  1940-1950: Letters and Messages

... work demanded from us by the Divine.... The Indian scriptures and Indian tradition, in the Mahabharata and elsewhere, make room both for the spirituality of the renunciation of life and for the spiritual life of action. One cannot say that one only is Page 240 the Indian tradition and that the acceptance of life and works of all kinds, sarvakarmani, is un-Indian, European or western ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   India's Rebirth
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Questions and Answers (1955)  >  7 September 1955

... realisation Page 289 had to be terrestrial. They conceived a Golden Age very well, in which the realisation would be terrestrial. But starting from a certain decline of vitality in the spiritual life of the country, perhaps, from a different orientation which came in, you see... it is certainly starting from the teaching of the Buddha that this idea of flight came, which has undermined the ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1955)
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Questions and Answers (1956)  >  28 November 1956

... separate individual, the ego is indispensable, otherwise one remains mingled with all that lies around us. But once the individuality is formed, if one wants to rise to a higher level and live a spiritual life, if one wants even to become simply Page 367 a higher type of man, the limitations of the ego are the worst obstacles, and the ego must be surpassed in order to enter the true consciousness ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1956)
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Questions and Answers (1955)  >  30 November 1955

... You know that the dog doesn't have the elements necessary for judging your scientific problem. But here there's a still greater difference... people haven't even the slightest notion of what the spiritual life is and the divine realisation, and naturally because of their very ignorance they come and judge all this with a perfect ease, what you do or don't do and the way of doing it and how you live, ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1955)
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Questions and Answers (1956)  >  23 May 1956

... into the bad books of others. For instance, in a village it is difficult not to go to religious ceremonies, for all your neighbours will point at you. But that has absolutely nothing to do with spiritual life, nothing at all. ( Silence ) The first time I came to India I came on a Japanese boat. And on this Japanese boat there were two clergymen, that is, Protestant priests, of different sects ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1956)
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Questions and Answers (1955)  >  23 February 1955

... a great deal of energy; but otherwise you do not notice it. There are certain faculties which get intensified, and so one takes that for a spiritual effect. It has very little to do with the spiritual life except that there are people who eat much, think much about their food, are very deeply absorbed in it, and then when they have eaten well—and as I say, they must digest it, and so all their energies ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1955)
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Questions and Answers (1955)  >  3 August 1955

... invisibly; and according to the power of your thought your action is more or less wide-spread. But to use small magical formulas to obtain a result is something that has no true relation with the spiritual life. From the spiritual point of view it appears even surprising that these things can always prove effective, because for each case the need is different; and how putting together certain words and ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1955)
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Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  7 August 1957

... and is fulfilled in the truth-consciousness all the possibilities of the divine life. It will take up not only the whole characteristic experience which we recognise already as constituting the spiritual life but also all which we now exclude from that category...." The Supramental Manifestation, SABCL, Vol. 16, p. 47 So, what are you asking? What is excluded? What do we exclude!.. ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)
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Questions and Answers (1957-1958)  >  23 October 1957

... action of the mind, a beginning of independence, of independent reaction to the environment and the forces of Nature. And so, in man there is the whole range, right up to the higher being capable of spiritual life. That is what Sri Aurobindo tells us on this page. That is all. Now, if you have a question to ask?... Page 212 Sweet Mother, here he says: "This consciousness... reaches its ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1957-1958)
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Questions and Answers (1953)  >  22 July 1953

... imbalance and they are more or less a part of what you were saying just now. There is an aspiration within you (I am now speaking of people who do yoga or at any Page 174 rate know what the spiritual life is and try to walk on the path), within you there is a part of the being—either mental or vital or sometimes even physical—that has understood well, has much aspiration, its special aptitudes, ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1953)
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Questions and Answers (1954)  >  22 September 1954

... are obstinate, vehement, and some have fugitive and weak desires. There are both types. But what Sri Aurobindo speaks about here is truly an aspiration, it is about someone who aspires for the spiritual life but with a vehement passion; and naturally this upsets everything. Besides, the result he obtains—if he does obtain a result at all—is very mixed; and it is muddy, as he says, altogether impure ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1954)
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Questions and Answers (1954)  >  17 November 1954

... can tell yourself something which is very true: that in our being it is only egoism which always suffers, and that if there was no egoism there would be no suffering, and that if one wants the spiritual life, one must overcome his egoism. So the first thing to do is to look straight at this suffering, perceive to what an extent it is the expression of a very petty egoism and then sweep the place clean ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1954)
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Questions and Answers (1953)  >  4 November 1953

... they? They can be given a particular meaning. There was no black. After reading the part of the conversation of 4 August 1929 on sacrifice and self-giving, the Mother continues: "The spiritual life reveals the one essence in all, but reveals too its infinite diversity; it works for diversity in oneness and for perfection in that diversity. Morality lifts up one artificial standard contrary ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1953)
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Questions and Answers (1955)  >  8 June 1955

... overnight but still this indeed is the truth. It is just because even in this field, the spiritual field, there are far too many people (I could say even the majority of those who take to the spiritual life and do yoga), far too many of these who do it for personal reasons, all kinds of personal reasons: some because they are disgusted with life, others because they are unhappy, others still because ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1955)
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The Riddle of This World  >  Publisher's Note

... Publishers'  Note The writings of Sri Aurobindo collected in this volume were originally issued by him in answer to questions raised by disciples or others interested in Yoga and spiritual life, or as in the " Valley of the False Glimmer" were observations on letters from outside submitted for comment. As they are of general interest and touch problems often raised in relation to spiritual ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Riddle of This World
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The Hidden Forces of Life  >  Occultism - Science of Hidden Forces

... invisibly; and according to the power of your thought your action is more or less wide-spread. But to use small magical formulas to obtain a result is something that has no true relation with the spiritual life. From the spiritual point of view it appears even surprising that these things can always prove effective, because for each case the need is different; and how putting together certain words and ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Hidden Forces of Life
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The Psychic Being  >  Knowledge—Mental and Psychic

... psychically ready the more you are led to the right source, the right master. The psychic and its faith are always sincere, but if in your exterior being there is insincerity and if you are seeking not spiritual life but personal powers, that can mislead you. It is that and not your faith that misleads you. Pure in itself, faith can get mixed up in the being with low movements and it is then that you are misled ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Psychic Being
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The Riddle of This World  >  The Intermediate Zone

... Divine and the human Divine etc., etc. All these ideas are positions that can be taken by the mind and the vital and turned into principles which they try to enforce on the religious or even the spiritual life, but they are not and cannot be spiritual in their nature. There also begin to come in suggestions from the vital planes, 3 pullulation of imaginations romantic, fanciful or ingenious, hidden ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Riddle of This World
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Work - an offering  >  Introduction

... uses some part of the mental being, will, heart or intellect as a starting-point and seeks by its conversion to arrive at the liberating Truth, Beatitude and Infinity which are the nature of the spiritual life." One starts on this adventure as a sadhak, a worker for the Divine, for the Mother: "...you have to regard yourself as a soul and body created for her service, one who does all ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Work - an offering
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The Psychic Being  >  Influence and Action of the Psychic

... well developed, well built up in the consciousness or prominent in the front; in most it is veiled, often ineffective or only an influence, not conscious enough or strong enough to support the spiritual life. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Himself and the Ashram: Admission to the Ashram What you describe is the psychic fire, agni pāvaka , which burns in the deeper heart and from there is lighted ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Psychic Being
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The Psychic Being  >  Atman, Jivatman and the Psychic

... But a time comes when it is able to prepare to come out from behind the veil, to take command and turn all the instrumental nature towards a divine fulfilment. This is the beginning of the true spiritual life. The soul is able now to make itself ready for a higher evolution of manifested consciousness than the mental human—it can pass from the mental to the spiritual and through degrees of the spiritual ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Psychic Being
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On Thoughts and Aphorisms  >  Aphorism - 46

... the mental prison of narrow rules which excludes life Page 68 and within which people often confine themselves when they renounce ordinary existence in order to devote themselves to a spiritual life based on traditional dogmatic ideas. So Sri Aurobindo is here, as always, the champion of the real freedom beyond all rules and limitations, the total freedom of perfect union with the supreme ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   On Thoughts and Aphorisms
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On Education  >  Messages for Competitions

... with all your energy and all your will. 1 April 1966 Competitions 1967 On this occasion of our physical education and sportive activities: I must tell you once more that for us spiritual life does not mean contempt for Matter but its divinisation. We do not want to reject the body but to transform it. For this physical education is one of the means most directly effective. So I invite ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   On Education
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On Education  >  Psychic Education and Spiritual Education

... to be projected beyond all creation, beyond time and space. To Page 35 become conscious of your psychic being and to live a psychic life you must abolish all egoism; but to live a spiritual life you must no longer have an ego. Here also, in spiritual education, the goal you set before you will assume, in the mind's formulation of it, different names according to the environment in which ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   On Education
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On Thoughts and Aphorisms  >  Aphorism - 69

... clearly, very precisely, very definitively. Once and for all it swept away not only all the ordinary notions of morality, but everything that is considered here in India as necessary for the spiritual life. From this point of view it was very instructive. First of all this kind of so-called ascetic purity. Ascetic purity is simply the rejection of all vital movements; instead of taking up these movements ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   On Thoughts and Aphorisms
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On Education  >  Teaching

... letter for you to see. I should like to know from you if the warning given by Sri Aurobindo in this letter against enthusiastically communicating to the young people the ideas and feelings about spiritual life should be kept in mind while speaking to our students in the class? Is there a danger of "lighting an imitative and unreal fire" in them as Sri Aurobindo says here? Sri Aurobindo's letter: ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   On Education
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Words of the Mother - I  >  Sri Aurobindo Ashram

... differences, subtle but of capital importance, which arise from the presence of a true and luminous consciousness. 11 June 1967 Here we do not have religion. We replace religion by the spiritual life, which is truer, deeper and higher at the same time, that is to say, closer to the Divine. For the Divine is in everything, but we are not conscious of it. This is the immense progress that man ...

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

... Kashmir is the first step towards the unity of India and Pakistan. The Supreme Wisdom is seeing to it. 1965 India is supposed to be the Guru of the world in order to establish the spiritual life on earth. But, Mother, in order to occupy this high position she must be worthy politically, morally and physically, must she not? Without any doubt―and for the present, there is much to be ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - I
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Words of the Mother - II  >  The True Aim of Life

... Page 6 Consider the Divine Life as the most important thing to obtain. Happiness is not the aim of life. The aim of ordinary life is to carry out one's duty, the aim of spiritual life is to realise the Divine. In the world, as it is, the goal of life is not to secure personal happiness, but to awaken the individual progressively towards the truth-consciousness. ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - II
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Words of the Mother - II  >  Yoga

... me how doing Yoga brings you near to the Divine? And what is the real meaning of Yoga? Is it only contortive body-excerises or is there a yoga of the mind also? This has nothing to do with a spiritual life, not even with religion. X will explain to you in detail, but I can tell you that Yoga is not only an aspiration of the mind towards the Divine but also and chiefly a yearning of the heart. ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - II
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Words of the Mother - I  >  Leaving the Ashram

... hesitation. It is with me a greater pleasure to fulfil your wish and follow your words than satisfy a desire. With Pranam. It is better not to go; this kind of trip is not very wholesome for spiritual life. With my love and blessings. 24 December 1940 You can go see your father―but I would like you to go only when the school closes, that is to say after the second of December, and come ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - I
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Prayers and Meditations  >  April 3, 1914

... the past can no longer be of any use. It seems to me that what I thought were results is nothing more than a preparation. I feel as though I have done nothing yet, as though I have not lived the spiritual life, only entered the path that leads to it, it seems to me that I know nothing, that I am incapable of formulating anything, that all experience is yet to begin. It is as though I were stripped of ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Prayers and Meditations
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Auroville references in Mother's Agenda  >  1970

... Page 197 Yes. I'm going to explain to you, I didn't want to put "spiritual" because, first, the word "spiritual" in French has another meaning, and then the people who live a "spiritual" life reject Matter, and we don't want to reject Matter. So it would be false. I admit that "religious" isn't a good word because immediately.... I used "religious" in the sense of a "life essentially ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   Auroville references in Mother's Agenda
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Prayers and Meditations  >  August 24, 1914

... does not pass away.... Receive the offerings of our ardent gratitude and our integral surrender. Page 229 I knew that this notebook would end with the closing of one phase of my spiritual life. That is indeed what is happening. The light has come, the road has opened; with a grateful bow to the laborious past, we shall move swiftly forward on the new way opened wide by Thee before ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Prayers and Meditations
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The Signature Of Truth  >  FAITH

... psychically ready the more you are led to the right source, the right master. The psychic and its faith are always sincere, but if in your exterior being there is insincerity and if you are seeking not spiritual life but personal powers, that can mislead you. It is that and not your faith that mislead you. Pure in itself, faith can get mixed up in the being with low movements and it is then that you are misled ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   The Signature Of Truth
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India's Rebirth  >  1929-1938: Letters

... knowledge. These ideas are not mine.* The principle of life which I seek to establish is spiritual. Morality is a question of man's mind and vital, it belongs to a lower plane of consciousness. A spiritual life therefore cannot be founded on a moral basis, it must be founded on a spiritual basis. This does not mean that the spiritual man must be immoral—as if there were no other law of conduct than the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   Compilations   >   India's Rebirth
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Mother’s Agenda 1962  >  May 27, 1962

... normally what is best for inner development, whatever that may be—even if, on the surface, those conditions aren't good. So the only advice you can give such a person is, "Well, either renounce the spiritual life or else put Page 165 up with it." But that's not your case. There is a Mission, a work, and a kind of gap between a certain physical formation and that Mission. So if you ask me plainly ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1962
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Mother’s Agenda 1962  >  August 8, 1962

... possibility among innumerable others, trying to manifest in this body's existence—I won't say what it is. It was one of the very saddest things that could manifest physically in association with a spiritual life. It came and tried to descend. I said absolutely nothing, but Sri Aurobindo knew (though he never mentioned anything to me, he had seen it), and he simply... ( gesture ) did what had to be done ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1962
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Mother’s Agenda 1961  >  April 29, 1961

... not"—but such an affirmation becomes impossible for anyone who has read and understood what Sri Aurobindo has written. Religion and yoga are not situated on the same plane of the being, and the spiritual life can exist in its purity only if it is free from all mental dogma.' People must really be made to understand this. Yes, it is indispensable! They are all always ready—even in the As ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1961
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Mother’s Agenda 1961  >  April 25, 1961

... published everywhere. Do you remember it? 'I don't believe in propaganda....' 3 Look here, there's a muddle in all this. The Sri Aurobindo Society people had ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with the spiritual life when they began; they didn't at all present themselves as a 'spiritual group'—nothing of the kind; they were people of good will who volunteered to collect money to help the Ashram. So I said, ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1961
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Mother’s Agenda 1961  >  December 20, 1961

... the whole Christian spirit, the world is reprehensible. And when THAT is pointed out to them, they can't stand it. So the very normal, natural reaction against this attitude is to negate the spiritual life: let's take the world as it is, brutally, materially, 'short and sweet' (since it all comes to an end with this short life), let's do all we can to enjoy ourselves now, suffer as little as possible ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1961
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Mother’s Agenda 1962  >  January 21, 1962

... that happens in excess, the sadhak has sometimes even to go back to the ordinary action of the ordinary life, get the true experience of it with a new mind and will behind and then return to the spiritual life with the obstacle eliminated or else ready for elimination. But this method of purposive indulgence is always dangerous, though sometimes inevitable. It succeeds only when there is a very strong ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1962
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Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960  >  May 10, 1958

... solid, compact, established and concrete reality that it appears absolutely unquestionable. Well, to be able to cure that, which of all the obstacles is the greatest (I mean the habit of putting spiritual life on one side and material life on the other, of acknowledging the right of material laws to exist), one must make a resolution never to legitimize any of these movements, at any cost. To be able ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960
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Mother’s Agenda 1961  >  February 7, 1961

... use his bodily presence to act upon the universal corporeal substance—there's no end to it. No end to the difficulties, no end to the battle... BATTLE! ( silence ) Those who try to lead a spiritual life have always been compared to warriors (there are classic writings on this subject), and one must truly be a fighter —'fighter' is more exact than 'warrior' because you wage war against no one: ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1961
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Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960  >  July 6, 1958

... divination of this idea that made people speak of 'selling one's soul to the devil for money,' of money being an evil force, which produces this shrinking on the part of all those who want to lead a spiritual life—but as for that, they shrink from everything, not only from money! Perhaps it would not be necessary to have this power over all men, but in any event, it should be great enough to act upon ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960
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Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960  >  October 30, 1960

... singer or ... anyway, someone whose life was ... she was even dressed for the stage, with some kind of tights—a beautiful girl!) and she said to someone, 'Ah, it has even given me a taste for the spiritual life!' It was extremely interesting ... All kinds of things of this nature. And then once again I came out of this trance and ... In the end, I tried to do some certain thing for you and it turned out ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960
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Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960  >  December 31, 1960

... enter. I was saying a mantra or japa when X came along; he had a ... a terribly reproachful air! Then he smelled my hands: 'It's a bad habit to wear perfume. ( Mother laughs ) You cannot live a spiritual life when you wear perfume.' then I looked at him and thought, 'My God, does he have to be so backward!' But it annoyed me, so I said, 'Very well, I'm going.' When I got near the door, he started saying ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960
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Some Answers from the Mother  >  Letters to a Sadhak (1966-1969)

... and the abolition of the ego are closely interdependent? Only the Supreme Lord is perfectly sincere. And when the ego is abolished, only the Supreme Lord exists. 28 June 1968 In spiritual life, even to sit down is to fall back. This is so true that one could rightly say: even while sleeping one must move forward. But there comes a time when the ascent becomes a perfect repose ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Some Answers from the Mother
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Mother’s Agenda 1962  >  February 6, 1962

... anything, even, even going beyond the mind, and no formulation was possible, there was no possibility of understanding. It was really so absolute that helping others, making the world progress, spiritual life, seeking the Divine, all of that seemed idle talk, empty words! There was nothing in it, it was nothing, and there was nothing to understand, it was impossible to understand—it was impossible to ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1962
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Words of the Mother - II  >  Attachment to Others

... in the same house. If it is a sentimental and emotional attraction, it is easier to channelise and turn it to the Divine by confining your relations to a common seeking for the Divine and the spiritual life. Then all will depend on your sincerity and reciprocal goodwill. I very much appreciate your frankness and your sincerity. It is true that it is extremely difficult to keep free from vital ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - II
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Words of the Mother - II  >  Men and Women

... mental way which can be expressed in words, but they are conscious in their feelings and the best of them are so even in their actions. There have been many outstanding feminine figures in spiritual life. But on one side women are more interested by action than by mentalisation and intellectual expression, that is why very Page 289 few women have recorded their spiritual experience ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - II
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Words of the Mother - II  >  The Soul (the Psychic)

... 3 December 1959 Page 333 It is because an individual is not made all of one piece, but of many different entities which sometimes even contradict each other; some want the spiritual life, others are attached to the things of this world. It is a long and difficult work to reconcile all these parts and unify them. The force and light received by the most developed parts gradually ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - II
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Words of the Mother - III  >  The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth

... the work of the new birth easy or not. I shall tell you about it a little later on. For the moment it is better not to count on these things, but simply to take to the way for the birth into the spiritual life." Can You now say with certainty whether this supramental substance will help decisively to realise this new birth? EVIDENTLY. 26 March 1960 You have said that we must develop ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - III
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Words of the Mother - III  >  Transformation and the Parts of the Being

... first step towards the transformation of the physical. Psychic light in the material movements: essential condition for transformation. Psychic awakening in matter: matter open to spiritual life. Page 89 Matter under the supramental guidance: the condition required for its transformation. Supramental light in the subconscient: essential condition for transformation ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - III
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Words of the Mother - III  >  New Year Messages

... domination of the ego. 1940 A year of silence and expectation... Let us find, O Lord, our entire support in Thy Grace alone. Page 166 1941 The world is fighting for its spiritual life menaced by the rush of hostile and undivine forces. Lord, we aspire to be Thy valiant warriors so that Thy glory may manifest upon the earth. 1942 Glory to Thee, O Lord, conqueror of ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Words of the Mother - III
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Mother’s Agenda 1965  >  June 18, 1965

... from the point of view of Beauty they have made wonderful and absolutely unexpected progress. If the Americans came here, they would be converted, they would become... oh, they would understand spiritual life. Only, of course, it wouldn't be too pleasant (!) But it's the surest method—it's always the dominator that learns the lesson from the dominated. The Americans might become the most militant s ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1965
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Mother’s Agenda 1965  >  June 5, 1965

... page 3, in ink, with another slip, page 2, of a different size, in pencil, and no page 1. ) I keep them in every corner of every room! A little later, regarding another note: "In spiritual life, one is always a virgin every time... I never sent it. It was someone (a Frenchwoman) who had a rather curious experience and wrote to me she had suddenly felt that, in love, she was a virgin ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1965
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Mother’s Agenda 1964  >  November 21, 1964

... must be another one. Yes, certainly. Our imagination is very poor. As for me, I can't imagine how it Page 288 could happen! I can imagine novels, what I call the pulp novels of spiritual life, but that's nothing, it's childish. ( silence ) What I had noted was indeed this: "If my back straightens up, I will understand that there is something stronger than material habit." Now ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1964
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Mother’s Agenda 1964  >  October 21, 1964

... And the atmosphere was clarified, relieved. Page 250 Then, taking a good look, I understood that it is that mixture in people's thoughts, in people's feelings, in their approach to spiritual life, which is catastrophic—they always "want" something, they always "demand" something, they always "expect" something. In fact, it's a perpetual bargaining. It's not the need to give yourself, not ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1964
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Sri Aurobindo - The Poet  >  Some Critical Distinctions

... life elysian, Whose portal we call death. A percipient friend 1 opines: "I think the second part of the last line means some sudden shock to our ordinary career, which turns us to the spiritual life. 'Surprised' suggests the 'Hound of Heaven': Sri Aurobindo always uses 'surprised' in its original sense 'to be caught from behind'. At the stage of philosophical and spiritual development, when ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo - The Poet
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Sri Aurobindo - The Poet  >  Discussion of a Literary Point

... "bliss". Actually "heaven" stands for "Supernature" and Supernature's eagle is brought in not because of any rapture-association but because of its supposed immense size. No experience-concept of the spiritual life is here. My "eagles" are rapture turned aquiline, ecstasy mightily upborne, ample-poised, steeped in truth-light. I may have been rash in wanting a more seizable figure from Sri Aurobindo ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo - The Poet
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Mother’s Agenda 1970  >  February 7, 1970

... people were to know that too soon, A LOT OF THEM would go away.... So I'd really like to know what was in the minds of those boys who went away? Whether they knew, whether they were boys with a spiritual life or...? Because, of course, the first stage once one knows that... if one knew that death really isn't such a total difference as people think, if they knew what it really is without having ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1970
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Mother’s Agenda 1969  >  March 12, 1969

... Page 91 American—good people. They've found a very profound truth, but without knowing it! They speak of a "SPIRITUAL union of religions," which is a declaration that religions have no spiritual life! They aren't aware of that. It's very, very active; this Consciousness is very active. Yes, I get a sense of solidity. Yes, that's right! Something very solid. That's because it has ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   Agenda   >   Mother’s Agenda 1969
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Indian Poets and English Poetry  >  Chapter 001 (Page 1-Page 70)

... well as to The riven invisible atom's omnipotent force. Though this last line affects my ear as being no less inspired, both verbally and rhythmically, than any that deals with the spiritual life, I do not claim that there are no comparatively arid areas; but, by and large, I cannot help being aware of "God's plenty". However, let me press on you Sri Aurobindo's other epic more ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Indian Poets and English Poetry
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Indian Poets and English Poetry  >  Chapter 004 (Page 166-Page 220)

... his teaching strikes at the very root of the soul's movement towards the Personal Divine or His representative the enlightened Guru. Throughout India's history the Master is the fount of the spiritual life. Krishnamurti, in a paradoxical gesture, says: "Refuse to have any teacher, learn at no one's feet. Never forget this teaching of mine when I am not there for you to learn it from." Behind the ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Indian Poets and English Poetry
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The Indian Spirit and the World's Future  >  Our Ancient Wisdom and Its Genuine Revival

... religion cannot be put on a par with God-realisation. Religion at its best is a mental and emotional acceptance of the Eternal, the Infinite, the Divine. It can be a good preparation for the truly spiritual life, just as the practice of moral virtues can. But to be religious, no matter how highly, is not the same thing as to know the unitive life, the state of inner union with a more-than-human, a divine ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Indian Spirit and the World's Future
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The Indian Spirit and the World's Future  >  Introduction

... Indian nationalism, the meaning of national pride, the significance of the English language and the essential truths behind Hinduism. We are still confused about revivalism and secularism, the spiritual life and world crisis, the legacy of Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi for nation building. Indeed, if one was unaware of the date of its publication, the earlier edition might well be ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Indian Spirit and the World's Future
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The Destiny of the Body  >  Foreword

... immortality ?" Jugal Kishore Mukherjee brings the legitimacy of this utterance home to us by various interesting and illuminating routes. His exposition is a reminder to the champions of the spiritual life that the inner divinity is meant not to tear away from the outer form but to awaken that form to a natural kinship with it. It is also a reminder to the champions of the physical life that the ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Destiny of the Body
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My Savitri work with the Mother  >  31 May 1961

... (that is, the expression) of a higher artistic consciousness. With love and blessings The Mother has stated about the "New Birth": What is called 'New Birth' is the birth into the spiritual life, into the spiritual consciousness: it is to carry in oneself something of the Spirit which, through the individual soul, can begin to govern the life and be the master of one's existence. In the ...

Huta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   My Savitri work with the Mother
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The Story of a Soul  >  Undated?

... eyes he stretched out his right hand, took red powder from a nearby silver stand, and with his third finger applied it to my forehead. This seemed to signify that I was destined to lead the spiritual life. And indeed this was what I wanted. But how? I could see no way, and had almost lost all hope. My heart cried desperately, "Does the Divine exist in this world of falsehood? Is there any truth ...

Huta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Story of a Soul
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A Captive of Her Love  >  Letter of 17.4.1958 

... assurance. I shall learn to love Her in everybody and everything and then equality will come by itself. When I think that all I am going through now is only the first, tiny little beginning of spiritual life, I realise how deep the ego hypnosis is. For seventeen years I have known - and felt too - the existence of the Truth and yet the crust is still so hard. I must tell you what kinds of flowers ...

Janina Stroka   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Captive of Her Love
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Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects  >  Direct Approach To Sri Aurobindo

... called for. As one progresses on the spiritual way, his understanding also becomes more and more clear till he is ready for realisation of the truth. After all, it is realisation that counts in spiritual life. A high development of mere intellect is not the aim of yoga. All knowledge is within ourselves ; only it has to be called out from the depths. The Master's own writings are alone sufficient to ...

Jibendra Kumar Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects
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Philosophy of Value-Oriented Education  >  3 Selected papers reports presented at the seminar (Part-2)

... component of leadership quality, which emerged from this study is that an ideal leader was someone who was able to influence the members of the organization by leading at least a moral, if not a spiritual life. In this, the managerial perception of leadership in India is not entirely incongruent with the broad notion of 'influence' that characterize, the standard definition of leadership in behavioural ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Philosophy of Value-Oriented Education
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Socrates  >  Socrates

... Antisthenes who was a student of Socrates. The basic teaching of this school was the attainment of freedom from anguish and grief by having clear judgement. This would help an individual improve his spiritual life and lead him towards truth which is virtuous. Reason was an important instrument for the stoics which they said should rule over passions, since passion distorts truth. They advocated self-control ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Socrates
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Sri Krishna In Brindavan  >  Sri Aurobindo on Integral Yoga of Divine Love

... the incarnate Krishna and it has been so accepted by the religious mind of India. These questions and the speculations to which they have given rise have no indispensable connection with the spiritual life. There what matters is the contact with Krishna and the growth towards the Krishna consciousness, the presence, the spiritual relation, the union in the soul and till that is reached, Page ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Krishna In Brindavan
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The Good Teacher and The Good Pupil  >  Brahmacharina in Search Of Knowledge

... and their initiates carried on by personal verification, rediscovery and constant enlargement. One of the most important legends of the Veda is the legend of the Angirasas. Its theme is the spiritual life of man but, to make it concrete to themselves and while veiling its secrets from the unfit, the Vedic poets expressed it in poetic images drawn from outward life. The Angirasas are pilgrims of ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Good Teacher and The Good Pupil
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Talks with Sri Aurobindo  >  27 OCTOBER 1939

... in a now defunct periodical named Orient Amal wrote that because you were embittered and disillusioned you gave up poetry and politics. SRI AUROBINDO: Nonsense. I gave it up and took to the spiritual life because I wanted force for my action. People make the mistake of thinking that whatever a poet writes must be from his personal experience. I can also write of universal experience. I can feel ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Talks with Sri Aurobindo
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Talks with Sri Aurobindo  >  Pre Note

... were free to ask whatever questions came to mind. Sri Aurobindo speaks of his own life and work, of the Mother and the Ashram, of his path of Yoga and other paths, of India's social, cultural and spiritual life, of the country's struggle for political independence, of Hitler and the Second World War, of modern science, art and poetry, and of many other things that arose in the course of conversation. ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Talks with Sri Aurobindo
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Finding the Psychic Being  >  Finding the Psychic Being

... But a time comes when it is able to prepare to come out from behind the veil, to take command and turn all the instrumental nature towards a divine fulfillment. This is the beginning of the true spiritual life. The soul is able now to make itself ready for a higher evolution of manifested consciousness than the mental human — it can pass from the mental to the spiritual and through degrees of the spiritual ...

Loretta Shartsis   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Finding the Psychic Being
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Talks with Sri Aurobindo  >  7 DECEMBER 1939

... the W.P.B. SATYENDRA: Purani has asked for homeopathic treatment. I advised him to go to Dr. Ramchandra. (After some time) I want to say something more about Meher Baba. At the start of his spiritual life he lost consciousness through an embrace from a Yogini and recovered through a knock from a Yogi. SRI AUROBINDO: That is allopathic and not homeopathic treatment. SATYENDRA: While he was ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Talks with Sri Aurobindo
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Talks with Sri Aurobindo  >  PREFACE

... did not illumine, not a phenomenon that passed unnoticed, humorous or serious, superficial or profound, mundane or mystic. Reminiscences, stories, talks on art and culture, on world-problems and spiritual life poured down in abundant streams from an otherwise silent and reticent vastitude of knowledge and love and bliss. It was an unforgettable reward he accorded to us for our humble service. "The Divine ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Talks with Sri Aurobindo
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1  >  The Basis of Unity

... than a dilettante, but an ardent spiritual soul is different. To be loyal to one's line of self-fulfilment, to follow one's self-law, swadharma, wholly and absolutely – without this no spiritual life is possible – and yet not to come into clash with other lines and loyalties, nay more, to be in positive harmony with them, is a problem which has not been really solved. It was solved, perhaps ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1  >  Lone to the Lone

... mana). When one is a member of the crowd, he has no personality or individuality, he is an amorphous mass, moving helplessly in the current of life, driven by Nature-force as it pleases her: spiritual life begins by withdrawing oneself from this flow of Ignorance and building up or taking cognisance of one's true person and being. When one possesses oneself integrally, is settled in the armature ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1
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My Savitri work with the Mother  >  May 1962

... fragrance. The Mother said: You see, I feel as if Sri Aurobindo was writing the Introduction—it is His Introduction. The Mother did not teach me only painting but also the hidden truths of spiritual life. The book White Roses , for which I got the National Award in 1981 and the Tata Press, where the book had been printed, won the first prize, is only for the general reader, because it touches ...

Huta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   My Savitri work with the Mother
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Jayantilal's Correspondence with The Mother  >  15 February 1939

... (Correspondence with Jayantilal) Jayantilal's Correspondence with The Mother 15 February 1939 Such people are capable of turning towards the spiritual life; but their path is never without danger. What you seek is always there ready for you. Let the psychic turn grow complete and it will of itself bring you to that for which you aspire. My love and ...

Jayantilal Parekh   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Jayantilal's Correspondence with The Mother
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Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects  >  Evolutionary Types - Religious and Spiritual Man

... themselves. The Divine is One but His manifestations are diverse and many. If only man can reach the Divine, he can realise his unity with the whole of creation. This is the whole principle of spiritual life but it is a slow, long, difficult and and process. That is why men generally have shunned this path and chosen in spite of the vicissituales of life, its sorrows and sufferings, blows and ...

Jibendra Kumar Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects
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Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects  >  Religion And Spirituality

... such as a monastery, or math or a mashed. There is no demand on him for a radical change of consciousness or of his inner and outer life as in the case of a spiritual seeker. Spirituality or spiritual life demands utmost concentration of consciousness on the part of the seeker. His is a one-pointed orientation of life towards the Spirit, the object being the utter elimination of the narrow and ignorant ...

Jibendra Kumar Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects
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My Savitri work with the Mother  >  19 March 1965

... 19 March 1965 She revealed to me the Truth: 19.3.65 My dear little child Huta, Now it has become necessary to reveal to you an important fact concerning your spiritual life and especially your work for Savitri . For some obvious reason, there is an adverse force which is interested in preventing you to carry on your work of painting. It tried first to stop it ...

Huta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   My Savitri work with the Mother
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The Story of a Soul  >  30 June 1954

... prayers and granted them. At that period too a lady gave me the address of Sri Krishna Prem—Ronald Nixon. Although I did not know him, I wrote him a letter, expressing my aspiration to lead the spiritual life wherever the Supreme Lord willed. This was his answer: Srimati Savita Devi Jay Sri Krishna, I received your letter a day or two ago. I am glad to hear that you are a worshipper ...

Huta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Story of a Soul
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The Story of a Soul  >  17 September 1954

... Suresh standing there, with beautiful roses in his hands. I laughed at her account. My poor mother did not know that I had made up my mind to stay near the Mother in the Ashram and lead the spiritual life—yet her dream was auspiciously significant. I prayed to the Divine to materialise it—was it not a prophecy of my future? My heart kept saying yes and yes. ...

Huta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Story of a Soul
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Pictures of Sri Aurobindo's poems  >  Thought the Paraclete

... Psychic love is distinguished by an essential purity and selflessness, ... Psychic love does not exclude discrimination. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: Human Relations and the Spiritual Life In connection with the China rose the Mother has revealed: I wanted to take this little rose, for I consider it to be the manifestation nearest to divine Love. It is disinterested, ...

Huta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Pictures of Sri Aurobindo's poems
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Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects  >  Sri Aurobindo's Message for To-day

... be wrong to assume that because Sri Aurobindo retired from active public and political life, he had cut off all connection with the outside world on account of his pre-occupation with the inner spiritual life which became more and more of absorbing interest to him not only for his own but also for the life of the whole humanity for his life had by now become one with the life of the world. Page ...

Jibendra Kumar Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects
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Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny  >  Where Do We Stand Now

... in the Ashram have advanced towards the realisation of the double goal of Page 12 establishing spiritual consciousness in the constituent individuals and building up a collective spiritual life. Where does our Ashram stand in its present form and disposition with respect to that dual achievement? Surely, as it is, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram cannot be considered to conform to what ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny
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The Practice of the Integral Yoga  >  On will-power in Sadhana

... present temptation." For this avowal on the part of the sadhaka automatically prevents the action of the divine Grace. After all, this "I can' cannot stand the scrutiny. For, it is a fact of spiritual life that whenever a sadhaka sincerely decides to fight against any of his weaknesses, the Divine himself actively intervenes to help him in his enterprise. And what is there impossible for the divine ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Practice of the Integral Yoga
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The Practice of the Integral Yoga  >  Sadhana of the mind

... and unconquerable; I deem it as hard to control as the wind." (VI. 34) But what are the very common normal difficulties faced by the sadhaka in his mind so far as the building up of his spiritual life is concerned? To cite only a few of them: (i) many types of doubts and misgivings are the habitual contributions of Mind, disconcerting the sadhaka at every step; (ii) Mind is very clever in the ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Practice of the Integral Yoga
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The Practice of the Integral Yoga  >  Equality in the integral Yoga

... very closely, almost indissolubly, linked and related. For the equality Page 246 we have been speaking of and which is absolutely essential for the establishment of a genuine spiritual life is not just the harsh power of endurance of the Stoic nor the disappointed resignation of someone for whom the 'grapes are sour' and are therefore of no interest! Nor is it the apparent equality ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Practice of the Integral Yoga
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The Practice of the Integral Yoga  >  Is all that Happens in Life Always for the Best?

... path of spiritual adventure? The answer is: No, not at all. The Goal remaining the same for all, there may be a thousand and one ways to reach the destination. And therein lies a great truth of spiritual life which reconciles the two apparently opposite principles of determinism and freedom. Sri Aurobindo has explained the situation in this way: "... with each person the guidance works differently ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Practice of the Integral Yoga
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Sri Aurobindo - The Smiling Master  >  Sri Aurobindo's Humour-Miscellany

... colours, what? Sri Aurobindo: What big operation? There is no operation; I am not trying to hale in X as a big fish. I am not trying to catch him or bring him in. If he comes into the true spiritual life, it will be a big thing for him, no doubt, but to the work it means only a ripple more or less in the atmosphere. Kindly consider how many people big in their own eyes have come and gone (B ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo - The Smiling Master
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Sri Aurobindo - The Smiling Master  >  On Matters ''Logical''

... I sought for could never be for me barren and cold... It is this idea in particular that seems to have suggested the title I proposed: The Sovereign Secret — the secret being that to find in spiritual life something more pleasurable than even in that of the senses, one must turn towards the Unknown with a heart of intense love [desire] and not with 'sage calm'." Sri Aurobindo: "If I am to take ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo - The Smiling Master
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Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny  >  The Misgivings

... Aurobindo Ashram is not in its opulent eye-catching faÇade but in its inner spiritual character and we the Mother's children, the inmates of the Ashram, should see to it that it does not forfeit its spiritual life-force and turn into something stale and of alien character. But is there really any possibility that our Ashram may meet with some such adverse fate? We do not think so. We foresee for the ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny
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Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny  >  Spirit of Karmayoga Vanishing

... service of and love of human beings and not the direct service and love of the Divine, then one is following a wrong principle - for that is the principle of the mental, vital and moral not the spiritual life." (Letters on Yoga, pp. 850-51) ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny
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The Practice of the Integral Yoga  >  Sadhana through Work

... ordinary activities, both inner and outer, Page 140 indulged in by a normal worldly man from the actions to be undertaken by an aspirant when he seriously considers taking up a spiritual life, Sri Aurobindo speaks in a very simple but forthright manner: "Men usually work and carry on their affairs from the ordinary motives of the vital being, need, desire of wealth or success ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Practice of the Integral Yoga
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The Practice of the Integral Yoga  >  On Rejection

... manifesttion of these weaknesses. As a result there is at times much doubt and confusion and vacillation in the sadhaka' s consciousness. Yet, let us repeat, a reasonably sincere effort at leading a spiritual life makes the sadhaka immediately convinced of the basic undesirability of the impulses in question, and this has this agreeable result that a necessary gap is created separating the impulse to act ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Practice of the Integral Yoga
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The Practice of the Integral Yoga  >  Personal Effort and the divine Grace

... doing so, he will find to his happy surprise that the Divine Mother has started acting quite overtly in his life and no longer secretly as before. And this with the purpose of building up his spiritual life and bringing him to the fruition of his divine goal. Thus is solved the puzzling riddle of personal effort in sadhana vis-à-vis the action of the Divine Shakti, through a harmonious r ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Practice of the Integral Yoga
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The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri  >  Sight in the Waking State

... knowledge." (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 348) While dwelling in this normal waking consciousness, a man becomes externalised and gazes outward and rarely if ever inward. No true spiritual life or any higher or deeper realisation becomes possible if one remains fettered to this waking state. Now what is germane to our main theme of discussion is the interesting fact that every ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri
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Education at Crossroads  >  An Experiment in Education for Tomorrow

... infinite and the eternal to be projected beyond all creation, beyond time and space. To become conscious of psychic being and to live a psychic life, you must abolish all egoism; but to live a spiritual life, you must no longer have an ego. As far as the supramental consciousness is concerned, the Mother pointed out that: The supramental education will result no longer in a progressive form ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Education at Crossroads
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The Wonder that is K D Sethna alias Amal Kiran  >  The Wonder That is K. D. Sethna alias Amal Kiran

... glamour have closed behind; There is no return. K.D.S.'s Analysis: "Arjava is rather compact in his language and subtle in the turns of his expression.... 'Precarious boat': we come to the spiritual life, the "new country' of the title, through events and circumstances that have both a forward and a backward tension: hence the "boat' is 'precarious' - that is, dependent on chance, uncertain, insecure ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Wonder that is K D Sethna alias Amal Kiran
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Principles and Goals of Integral Education  >  SAICE: Aims and Purpose Behind

... thereby you miss what is behind: the Sadhana. A deeper consciousness would see the march towards a Page 92 realisation that surpasses all. The outside view does not see the spiritual life; it judges by its own smallness." (Ibid., p. 119) (13)"We are not here to do (only a little better) what the others do. We are here to do what the others cannot do because they ...

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Principles and Goals of Integral Education
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Varieties of Yogic Experience and Integral Realisation  >  Appendix

... strength, until I reached home, and for some time after, only gradually passing away." The writer adds that having had further experiences of a similar sort, he now knows them well. "The spiritual life," he writes, "justifies itself to those who live it; but what can we say to those who do not understand? This, at least, we can say, that it is a life whose Page 132 experiences are ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Varieties of Yogic Experience and Integral Realisation
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Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays  >  Yoga and Education

... For the wider and more comprehensive the seeing, the more it contains in itself the sense of the hidden Divine in humanity and in all things and rises beyond a superficial religiosity into the spiritual life, the more luminous, flexible, deep and powerful will the Art be that springs from the high motive. In the light of life-affirming Yoga, life is meaningful, and life itself could be so organised ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays
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A Philosophy of Evolution for the Contemporary Man  >  Man is a Transitional Being

... them. But as he develops further, he puts his lower being to a severer test, begins to demand from it on pain of rejection something like a transformation that is the mind's way of preparing for a spiritual life still beyond it. As there are several lower and higher elements-in man, the process of assimilation and sublimation becomes long and complex, and there appears to be not a straight line of ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Philosophy of Evolution for the Contemporary Man
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Integral Yoga of Transformation  >  Part Seven

... highest level, the Shudra temperament manifests the aspiration to give oneself entirely to god and man, and it has the power of Page 83 complete self-surrender, which transferred to the spiritual life becomes one of the greatest and most revealing keys to freedom and perfection. It is at the higher levels of development that one begins to enlarge oneself to include the soul-force in a larger ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Integral Yoga of Transformation
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Sri Aurobindo for All Ages  >  XII: The Integral Yoga and the Ashram (1927-1938)

... solely a supra-cosmic achievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing in of a Power of Consciousness [the supramental] not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active. Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz. the total and ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo for All Ages
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Sri Aurobindo for All Ages  >  X: Coming of the Mother - “Arya” Review - World War I (1914-1920)

... application of truth of spirit to the largest and most difficult part of the truth of life, to action, and a way by which action can lead us to birth into the Spirit and can be harmonised with the spiritual life. Truth of philosophy is of a merely theoretical value unless it can be lived, and we have therefore tried in the "Synthesis of Yoga" to arrive at a synthetical view of the principles and methods ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo for All Ages
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Sri Aurobindo for All Ages  >  II

... country.... It was the time of "country first, humanity afterwards and the rest nowhere". It was something from behind which got the idea accepted by the mind; mine was a side-door entry to the spiritual life.' It is evident, then, that there was no conflict in Sri Aurobindo between the practice of yoga and politics and one became a part of the other. At this time, that is around 1905, Sri Aurobindo ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo for All Ages
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Sri Aurobindo for All Ages  >  VI: Surat Congress and the Aftermath (1907-1908)

... this experience somewhere remote from the world's turmoil, all alone, in Himalayan solitudes. This bears a far-reaching significance, for it shows that karma or action is no bar or bondage to spiritual life. In his sonnet "Nirvana" Sri Aurobindo has given a description of this experience, bringing its reality nearer and more clearly to our vision, understanding and feeling. Here is the poem: ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo for All Ages
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Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo  >  September 1933

... for the last few days" that opened the door to this nightmare. It simply seized hold of the idea about D in order to shove itself in farther and more forcibly. Sometimes I doubt my call for spiritual life. Occasionally some peace comes down which perhaps comes from inactivity. If you allow such absurd ideas to take hold of you and make you belittle an experience, it is no wonder you can't progress ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo
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Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo  >  July 1938

... at is the praise and blame of people, not at any "it". One has to look at "it", not from the point of view of whether it is praised or blamed by the public, but from its inherent relation to the spiritual life. I know uprightness, honesty, etc. have nothing to do directly with spiritual achievement. But when a lax and loose sadhak develops the contrary qualities, won't that be a change of character ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo
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Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo  >  June 1938

... in full-fledged colours, what? What big operation? There is no operation; I am not trying to hale in X as a big fish. I am not trying to catch him or bring him in. If he comes into the true spiritual life it will be a big thing for him, no doubt, but to the work it means only a ripple more or less in the atmosphere. Kindly consider how many people big in their own eyes have come and gone (B, Q, ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo
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Mrinalini Devi  >  A Talk on the Occasion of Her Birth Centenary

... delicate subject, but it is a puzzle. Sri Aurobindo: Why delicate? and why a puzzle? Do you think that Buddha or Confucius or myself were born with a prevision that they or I would take to the spiritual life? So long as one is in the ordinary consciousness, one lives the ordinary life. When the awakening and the new consciousness come, one leaves it - nothing puzzling in it. Sri Aurobindo's argument ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mrinalini Devi
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Talks by Nirodbaran  >  14 May 1969

... done for me and He has tried to make me a yogi! He began by 11Jogai and Madhai were two Brahmin brothers of Navadwip in Bengal, who had been criminals and murderers, but were converted to a spiritual life by Sri Krishna Chaitanya. 12Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, 1972, 20: 47. 13From Sri Aurobindo's poem "Who": "In the luminous net of the stats He is caught," SABCL, 1972 ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Talks by Nirodbaran
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Memorable Contacts with The Mother  >  IX: THE MOTHER’S WAYS OF ACTION

... her, light or serious, pleasant or tedious, was recorded in her consciousness and the person gained or lost inwardly according to the attitude with which he had done the work. We know that in the spiritual life, strict obedience to the Guru is enjoined upon the disciple. I remember an instance of her clear intention in a given case. A boy running away from home had come to the Ashram and wanted to ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Memorable Contacts with The Mother
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Talks by Nirodbaran  >  11 September 1969

... Ashram to satisfy my curiosity. When I go, it will be to offer myself." Idle words! For, today, I know whose loving hand was invisibly pulling the strings the whole time, unfit though I was for a spiritual life. At this time, I was fully occupied in writing on a variety of subjects - physical sciences for the young, a biography of Shivaji for the University, a history of the national movement ...

Nirodbaran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Talks by Nirodbaran
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Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 2  >  LOVE

... means of manifestation of the soul's love.         But what then about the love in the vital itself?       The love in the vital or other parts is the true thing, good for the spiritual life, only when in the vital love is changed into a form of the psychic love and becomes an instrument Page 204 for the manifestation of the soul's love, no longer for the desires ...

Nagin Doshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 2
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A Vision of United India  >  Factors leading to unity in the subcontinent

... economic and political rule of life, system, turn of existence, with the adumbration of a spiritual significance behind, was as far as her ancient system could advance. The full attainment of the spiritual life being was left as a supreme aim to the effort of the individual. However, she did make that endeavour with persistence and patience. There was a constant reminder of the spiritual aim ...

Prof. Kittu Reddy   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Vision of United India
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Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 1  >  The Vital Being

... desires as needs.       You have to develop discrimination so that it becomes impossible for the vital to deceive you.       Why is there no place for even good desires in the spiritual life?       If there are good desires, bad desires will come also. There is a place for will and aspiration, not for Page 41 desire. If there is desire, there will be ...

Nagin Doshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 1
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Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 1  >  THE MOTHER AND HER WORKING

... and that whatever either of you says is the law of the Truth. Why then are you using (in reply to my question on discipline) these three different words?       I wrote the general law of spiritual life and obedience. You have to know that as well as its special application here. Moreover many here are satisfied with saying, "The Mother is divine", but they do not follow her commands — others ...

Nagin Doshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 1
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The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 7  >  Service Human and Divine

... liberty to do the work and continue. But do not imagine that you are doing any real or effective service to humanity; particularly do not imagine that by that you are serving God, leading a spiritual life or doing Yoga. Just an illustration of the quality of the spirit that animates humanitarianism. A charitable man will give generously for a thing that is known, recognised, appreciated; ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 7
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The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10  >  Prayers and Meditations of the Mother

... perception exacte des réalités, de la Réalité unique et éternelle, derrière les instables et fugitives appa-rences." 1 We are given all the disciplines necessary for the growth of the spiritual life: the processes, the procedures that have to be followed—object-lessons are given even for the uninitiated and for the very beginner, as well as instructions for those who aim at the highest ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10
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Evolution and the Earthly Destiny  >  The Basis of Unify

... catholic than a dilettante, but an ardent spiritual soul is different. To be loyal to one's line of self-fulfilment, to follow one's self-law, swadharma, wholly and absolutely—without this no spiritual life is possible—and yet not to come into clash with other lines and loyalties, nay more, to be in positive harmony with them, is a problem which has not been really solved. It was solved, perhaps, ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evolution and the Earthly Destiny
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The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10  >  Savitri

... nor the end, that creation proceeds from light to light, from consciousness to higher reaches of consciousness. From the material life through the vital and the mental life he first reaches the spiritual life and finally the Life Divine. From the animal he rises to manhood, and in the end to Godhood. But there are intermediaries. The fullness of the realisation depends on the fullness of the ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3  >  The New year Initiation

... without that nothing is possible. From one point of view, the divine grace is unconditioned. But it does not follow Page 64 that the precedent of Jagai-Madhai is the invariable law of spiritual life. The law is rather this that the field must be ready, the being and the consciousness must get into a certain mould, attain certain order and disposition so that the descent of the Divine Grace ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3
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The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 9  >  How can Time be a Friend

... contact with a higher consciousness in order to realise something that is far beyond all human conceptions, why should you be concerned with any human opinion ? Ordinary men have no notion of what spiritual life or divine realisation may be like. Naturally, it is precisely because of their ignorance they come and judge those things quite nonchalantly and advise you as to how you should live and move ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 9
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The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 11  >  Sri Aurobindo - 2

... in and through the higher divine Nature. Here we come perhaps to the very heart of the mystery. For till now, till Page 78 almost yesterday, we may say in a general way, the spiritual life, any kind of divine life was considered possible only through battling with Nature, through a struggle upstream against the current of Nature. Indeed Nature was despised, feared, rejected as an ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 11
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The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 3  >  The New Year Initiation

... that nothing is possible. From one point of view, the divine grace is unconditioned. But it does not follow Page 4 that the precedent of Jagai-Madhai is the invariable law of spiritual life. The law is rather this that the field must be ready, the being and the consciousness must get into a certain mould, attain certain order and disposition so that the descent of the Divine Grace ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 3
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The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 1  >  Sri Aurobindo's Gita

... serving Page 36 only as an atmosphere for the mortal activity. Sri Aurobindo has raised action completely out of the mental and moral plane and has given it an absolute spiritual life. Action has been spiritualised by being carried back to its very source and origin, for it is the expression in life of God's own Consciousness-Energy (Chit-shakti). The Supreme Spirit ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 1
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On Savitri  >  Savitri

... nor the end, that creation proceeds from light to light, from consciousness to higher reaches of consciousness. From the material life through the vital and the mental life he first reaches the spiritual life and finally the Life Divine. From the animal he rises to manhood, and in the end to Godhood. 29.Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, SABCL, Vol. 29, p. 520. 30. Ibid., p. 521. Page 17 ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On Savitri
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Evolution and the Earthly Destiny  >  The Poetry in the Making

... established order of truths and customs, against all that is normally considered as beautiful,—ideals and emotions and activities of man or aspects and scenes and movements of Nature—against God or spiritual life, the modern poet turns deliberately to the ugly and the macabre, the meaningless, the insignificant and the trifling—tins and teas, bone and dust and dustbin, hammer and sickle—he is still a prophet ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evolution and the Earthly Destiny
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  Choosing to do Yoga

... that the thing can be done forthwith, but that this is the truth of the matter. For, on this level, on the spiritual level, too many people, – in fact, the majority of those who take up the spiritual life – do Yoga for personal reasons, all kinds of personal reasons : some because they are disgusted with life, others because they are unhappy, some others because they wish to have more knowledge ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  Prayers and Meditations of the Mother

... ait la perception exacte des rêalitês, de la Rêalitê unique et êtemelle, derriêre les instables et fugitives apparences¹ We are given all the disciplines necessary for the growth of the spiritual life: the processes, the procedures that have to be followed – object-Lessons are given even for the uninitiated and for the very beginner, as well as instructions for those who aim at the highest heights ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  The Golden Life

... whole with a special significance and fulfilment. They are two life- lines, as it were, a running parallel to each other. One, as I have said, is the normal mundane life, the other a transfigured spiritual life. The Upanishad, we know, speaks of the path of the Sun and the path of the Fathers – they roughly correspond to the two lines I have just spoken of. But the Upanishadic path of the Sun is a vertical ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2  >  Upanishadic Symbolism

... this godhead that Nachiketas turned and he wanted to know of it and find it, when faith seized on his ¹ Katha, I .1.14. Page 19 pure heart and he aspired for the higher spiritual life. The very opening hymn of the Rig Veda, too, is addressed to Agni, who is invoked as the vicar seated in the front of the sacrifice, the giver of the supreme gifts. King Yama initiated Nachiketas ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  Sri Aurobindo

... fulfilment of the inferior Nature in and through the higher divine Nature. Here we come perhaps to the very heart of the mystery. For till now, till almost yesterday, we may say in a general way, the spiritual life, any kind of divine life was considered possible only through battling with Nature, through a struggle upstream against the current of Nature. Indeed Nature was despised, feared, rejected as an ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2  >  The Democracy of Tomorrow

... individual judgement and free choice in a field where authority -the collective authority of the Church -was all in all and the individual was almost a nonentity. Page 273 In India the spiritual life, it is true, was more or less the individual's free venture to the unknown. The Buddha said, Be thy own light; and the Gita too said, Raise thy self by thy own self. Yet here too, in the end, the ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4  >  How Can Time Be a Friend

... contact with a higher consciousness in order to realise something that is far beyond all human conceptions, why should you be concerned with any human opinion? Ordinary men have no notion of what spiritual life or divine realisation may be like. Naturally, it is precisely because of their ignorance that they come and judge those things quite nonchalantly and advise you as to how you should live and move ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6  >  Vision of Dante

... "That is my secret. But I keep nothing hidden from you. If you want to hear I will tell you. Intellectual knowledge I had enough, I had also a kind of mental image of the supreme realisation in spiritual life,. I had even a luminous understanding, but what I lacked in was faith, true faith, the simple trust that surpasseth all understanding. This I yearned for but I could not arrive at. Perhaps it is ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5  >  The Golden Rule

... although they may appear different, as different I's. Here I will tell you a story narrated to our children. There used to be every evening a meeting where seekers and enquirers after the spiritual life assembled and conversed or meditated on the subject. There used also to come to that meeting a remark able woman who had true realisations and was ready to help others on the path. Once the talk ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2  >  Nicholas Roerich

... earth, when racial, cultural or ideological egoism will no longer divide man and man – a thing that seems today a chimera and a hallucination – when there will be one culture, one civilisation, one spiritual life welding all humanity into a single unit of life luminous and beautiful. Roerich believes that such a consummation can arrive only or chiefly through the growth of the sense of beauty, of the aesthetic ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2  >  The Age of Sri Aurobindo

... him, even so, one can be full of the divine consciousness from the crown of the head to the tip of his toe-nail. In fact, a poor or a prosperous life is in no direct or even indirect ratio to a spiritual life. All the miseries and immediate needs of a physical life do not and cannot detain or delay one from following the path of the ideal; nor can all your riches be a burden to your soul and overwhelm ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7  >  World Literature

... literature has a popular and a classical style. The natural or the physical life is the foundation, and it supplies all necessary elements. But man's duty and .his fulfilment consist in building up the spiritual life on this basis, and to mould the natural elements into the spiritual and to impart a spiritual meaning to them. Likewise the basic popular is to be re-shaped into the classical and raised to a higher ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7
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A Pilgrims Quest for the Highest and the Best  >  Problem of Conflicting Claims of Religions and Spiritual Experiences

... to become eventually ready for the greater existence. A speciality of religion in India attached to the last a great importance. It left out no part of life as foreign to the religious and spiritual life. Still the Indian religious tradition is not merely the form of a religio-social system. However greatly a given form of a religio-social system may count at the moment of a social life, however ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Pilgrims Quest for the Highest and the Best
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A Pilgrims Quest for the Highest and the Best  >  Integral Realization of the Integral Reality

... heaven is within us and it is not dependent on any outer manifestation or instrumentation or formula of external being. According to Sri Aurobindo, this view is valid and there can undoubtedly be a spiritual life within, and inner life has a supreme spiritual importance and the outer has a value page - 107 only in so far as it is expressive of the inner status. The Gita, too, states that the man ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Pilgrims Quest for the Highest and the Best
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Landmarks of Hinduism  >  Significant Features of Hinduism

... animism, fetishism, totemism have been allowed to play a role in its complex totality, although their external forms have been discouraged and are not applicable to those who lead an inner mental and spiritual life. It is this complexity that bewilders the foreign student when he tries to define Hinduism in terms and under criteria that are not born of the great Indian historical movements. But things become ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Landmarks of Hinduism
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Ideals of Auroville  >  Ideals of Auroville

... such a false meaning. Yes. I'm going to explain to you, I didn't want to put "spiritual" because, first, the word "spiritual" in French has another meaning, and then the people who live a "spiritual" life reject Matter, and we don't want to reject Matter. So it would be false. I admit that "religious" isn't a good word because immediately.... I used "religious" in the sense of a "life essentially ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Ideals of Auroville
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8  >  An Introduction to The Veda

... sacrificial rites. He endeavoured to discover from the Veda the nature of sacrifice and a full account of the ceremonies to be performed in a sacrifice. The performance of sacrifice is a part of the spiritual life and its aim is to bring about soul ­progress and welfare here and hereafter. The gods dwell in a world known as Heaven. The forces of Nature are backed by their powers. A particular god presides ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8
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The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 6  >  EVER GREEN

... doled out. You are sincere only when the experience is new and fresh and living, it should be made so every moment, otherwise it is dead letter, letter that killeth. That is the secret of spiritual life and even of normal life. To keep it ever green you must know how to pour into it a continuous flow of new sap. Look upon yourself, look upon the world always with fresh eyes— never burdened or ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 6
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7  >  I Bow To The Mother

... Mother's capacity of making her mind a complete blank was as extraordinary as her enormous mental acquisitions. This was something unique. In the early days, when she had just taken charge of our spiritual life, she told me one day in private, perhaps seeing that I might have a pride in being an intellectual, "At one time I used to take an interest in philosophy and other intellectual pursuits. All that ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7
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The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 5  >  PUBLISHER'S NOTE

... NOTE Towards the middle of the year 1947 for months the Mother used to gather around her a few disciples to whom she gave some intimate talks on various questions relating to spiritual life, occult truths, difficulties that baffle a spiritual seeker and their solutions and other innumerable problems. Gradually the number of the disciples increased and the class turned almost into ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 5
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7  >  The Bride of Brahman

... the way. Agni means, as I have said, the light and fire of aspiration to rise up. Agni first initiated the ignorant Shakti with a mantra, it is like a normal human initiation when you enter the spiritual life. You have to go to a Guru and the Guru gives you the mantra that awakens your consciousness. Now Agni gave as mantra the Divine word "Brahma" as the image of the Divine. She was to concentrate ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7  >  The Iron Chain

... you a story in this connection. A young man who was an aspirant, a seeker of spiritual or religious life, once upon a time went to Gandhiji. He wanted to remain there. He said, "I am a seeker of spiritual life. I want to remain with you." Gandhiji saw the person and accepted him. "It is all right, you may try," he said. He remained there sometime, pretty long time, perhaps even more than a year. But ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8  >  The Story of Jabala-Satyakama

... in large measure free and self-reliant. It would rather bring external Nature under its own control than be guided by its Page 131 influence. As in our outer so in our inner spiritual life, we are becoming city-dwellers in place of the old forest recluses. Even when we repair to the forest we try to make it as far as possible akin to the city. But this need not give rise to a quarrel ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8
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Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7  >  I Tried Sannyas

... at the Math. A few inmates – Sannyasis – sat on a bench in the verandah. They asked me about the object of my visit. I blurted out straightaway, "I have come to stay here. I wish to take up the spiritual life, the life of sannyasa." "In that case," they said, "you had better consult the authority in charge." This authority was Sarat Maharaj. He received me in his room and bade me sit by him. He listened ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7
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The Mother Abides - Final Reflections  >  What Is to Be Done

... meditation, concentration—all these came much later, when one had risen much higher. Samadhi, that was still above. That is why in ancient ages it was insisted upon that if you want to take up spiritual life, even if you simply want Page 64 to study the scriptures, you must first acquire the right to do so—you must do citta- ś uddhi and accomplish the purification of your consciousness ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother Abides - Final Reflections
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The Mother Abides - Final Reflections  >  Intensity without Impatience

... the cardinal requirements for success in yoga sadhana is uts ā ha, zeal. The seeker has to give top priority to the demands of the sadhana—he cannot simply treat it as one of his interests. The spiritual life becomes the foremost concern, with all else playing subsidiary, if not contributory, roles. It is understood that the central aspiration is gradually communicated to all the parts of the being ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother Abides - Final Reflections
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The Mother Abides - Final Reflections  >  Our Yoga

... illumined by it. Anyway, the advent of this new race is inevitable. It is decreed by the Supreme. * The first requisite on the spiritual path is aspiration. One knocks at the gate of spiritual life because one aspires for it. It is the aspiration, the will in the seeker, the yearning of his soul for the Divine that pushes him forward and carries him on the difficult path of yoga. To ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Mother Abides - Final Reflections
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By The Way - Part II  >  P-66 to 95

... deep study and meditation, working like a donkey from morning till night will mean nothing. It needs something more. On the other hand, we see so much of pretence and hypocrisy in the name of a Spiritual life. Madhav-ji, you say that Superman is not needed to steer the Ashram and its people in the right direction. I am tempted to suggest that please do and show us what you say is true. You say ...

Pranab Bhattacharya (Dada)   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   By The Way - Part II
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By The Way - Part III  >  P-31 to 50

... sort of divine lila in some people's lives. Even after having everything one meets but failure in the outside life. This happens because the Divine has reserved for him success in the inner spiritual life. He on whom the Divine bestows I Grace, his outer life He devastates. There is a saying in the Bible: "He that loseth life shall find life." The Mother used to sometimes say: "Don't ask ...

Pranab Bhattacharya (Dada)   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   By The Way - Part III
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Towards A New Society  >  The Basis of Unity

... catholic than a dilettante, but an ardent spiritual soul is different. To be loyal to one's line of self-fulfilment, to follow one's self-law, swadharma, wholly and absolutely—without this no spiritual life is possible—and yet not to come into clash with other lines and loyalties, nay more, to be in positive harmony with them, is a problem which has not been really solved. It was solved, perhaps, ...

Nolini Kanta Gupta   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Towards A New Society
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A Scheme for The Education of Bengal  >  A System Of National Education

... creating thoughts, images and imitations or new combinations of existing thoughts and images, the appreciation of the soul in things, beauty, charm, greatness, hidden suggestiveness, the emotion and spiritual life that pervades the world. Page 73 This is in every way as important as the training of the faculties which observe and compare outward things. Bur that demands a separate and fuller ...

Pranab Bhattacharya (Dada)   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Scheme for The Education of Bengal
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A Scheme for The Education of Bengal  >  Perfection Of The Body

... children of the Ashram School and these are too young for a strictly spiritual aim or practice to enter into their activities and it is not certain that any great number of them will enter the spiritual life when they are of an age to choose what shall be the direction of their future. The object must be the training of the body and the development of certain parts of mind and character so far as this ...

Pranab Bhattacharya (Dada)   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   A Scheme for The Education of Bengal
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Education and the Aim of human life  >  The Drawing of the New Age

... realize spiritually, mentally, vitally, materially its greatest largest, richest and deepest possibilities in the inner life of all and their outer action and nature, Page 40 The spiritual life is the flower not of a featureless but a conscious and diversified oneness. Each man has to grow into the Divine within himself through his own individual being, therefore is a certain growing ...

Pavitra   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Education and the Aim of human life
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Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine  >  The Ego and the Dualities

... bear it. Generally one should try to create as much goodwill as possible. One should guard against the tendency to feel superior to others because one is trying to practise yoga, and live a spiritual life. Q : Our intellect and reason seem to conflict with the idea of surrender which Sri Aurobindo advocates. A : That comes when you want to practise the yoga. We are now reading The ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine
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Sri Aurobindo's Savitri - An Approach And A Study  >  Introduction

... USHA IN THE RIG VEDA (b) This is the awakening of the Light of consciousness from the mass of darkness of the Night of the Inconscient. In Man's life Usha is his awakening to the need of spiritual life from his state of normal human Ignorance. "Usha is the divine illumination. The result of the birth of divine vision is that man's path manifests itself to him and those journeyings of the ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Savitri - An Approach And A Study
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Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine  >  The Two Negations

... individual and the Transcendent consciousness is far wider than the cosmic. The cosmic consciousness which is far superior to the individual makes a great appeal to man when he awakens to it in his spiritual life. It is possible that man is overcome at the first contact of the supracosmic aspect of the Reality and he may conclude that That alone is real, the rest—the cosmic and the individual and the ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine
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Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine  >  The Supermind as Creator

... One, and the One is all existences. It is "equally present everywhere," it is single and equal, Questions and Answers Q: Should one observe the rules of society while purusing spiritual life ? A : If you study carefully the growth of societies you will Page 154 find that standards of good and bad, even ideas of morality have been constantly changing. One can ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine
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In the Mother's Light  >  Physical Transformation

... well- known to need recapitulation here. We shall only quote a few lines from the Mother's writings to show how her thought and practice have moved on identical lines since the beginning of her spiritual life. The Mother regards the daily activity of life as the anvil on which all the elements of our being must pass and repass in order to be "purified, refined, made supple and ripe for the il ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   In the Mother's Light
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In the Mother's Light  >  The Brazier of Love

... Mother's life affords a new vision of the Will of God in the material world and a new perspective to the goal of human existence. Union with the Divine, she holds, is the first objective in spiritual life, but the ultimate aim and the glorious consummation of human existence, the very meaning and purpose of human birth, is the manifestation of the Divine in man and the fulfilment of His Will ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   In the Mother's Light
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In the Mother's Light  >  The Divune Manifestation and the Divine Life

... solely a supra-cosmic achievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing in of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life but yet to be organised and made directly active.” The divine Manifestation in the Divine Life has been the constant preoccupation of the Mother also all through her life, the single aim of ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   In the Mother's Light
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Sri Aurobindo's Savitri - An Approach And A Study  >  Appendix - 1 and 2

... standard .until I got that which I felt to be absolutely right." VII "There may still be a place for a poetry which seeks to enlarge the field of poetic creation and find for inner spiritual life of man and his now occult or mystical knowledge and experience of the whole hidden range of his and the world's being, not a comer and a limited expression such as it had in the past, but a wide ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Savitri - An Approach And A Study
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Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo  >  My Meeting with The Master

... myself fit for this yoga at that time. So far as I can see, I have no mental idea left except the freedom of my country. There was a time when I would Page 41 have postponed the spiritual life for India's freedom. Sri Aurobindo : You need not do it now; it is a thing guaran­teed. But you cannot make even that a condition for enter­ing this yoga. It is a high adventure, as I told ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo
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Savitri  >  Savitri Its Symbolic Action in a Cosmic Background

... life, in comparison with this activity of the night which was for me the true life... 144   Her love had acquired vast dimensions, and this was one measure of the reality of her spiritual life. If love can thus extend from the narrow confines of a home and embrace a whole city, or all humanity, we need put no limits whatsoever to its full extension in space and time. Not the fact of ...

Dr. Prema Nandakumar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Savitri
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Savitri  >  Dante and Sri Aurobindo

... one magnitude",'"' it is when this miracle happens that we have a poem like the Commedia, the Bhagavad Gita, or Savitri.         The memory of the vision of Beatrice filled Dante's spiritual life, while the philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas filled his mental horizon; Page 410 in the fullness of time there was a fusion of these with his poetic aesthesis, and the result ...

Dr. Prema Nandakumar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Savitri
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Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo  >  On Poetry

... the summit of poetic art and it sums up his whole life-experience. In that sense it is great. Sri Aurobindo : And it is not individual life but universal life – anybody who goes through spiritual life gets that experience. The idea of greatness of poetry is difficult to standar­dise. The French poet Villon, if you take his poems one by one, is equal in greatness to any other great poet ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo
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Savitri  >  The Overhead Planes of Conciousness

... developed, spiritual knowledge is not really possible, and in proportion as it is developed, the possibilities of spiritual knowledge become richer and fuller. 8   To cultivate the spiritual life is not to turn away from everyday life; it is not an escape from life but rather a steady confrontation of life and seeing it in its cosmic context. The little stream of life is seen lost in the ...

Dr. Prema Nandakumar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Savitri
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Savitri  >  The Basis of Savitri Sri Aurobindo's Yoga

... occurred roughly at four points in his life. No doubt what he experienced suffused his whole life, the Becoming flowed from the Being and returned to It; but these four shining land-marks in his spiritual life have also their particular significances. First came the experience of utter silence and calm and void when, under Yogi Lele's guidance, Sri Aurobindo, early in January 1908, learned in a room ...

Dr. Prema Nandakumar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Savitri
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Lectures on Savitri  >  Lecture I

... with a light that is unmistakable, convincing and capable of evoking in him an aspiration which can lead him to fulfil the first vision of the dawn. Dawn is the first promise of fulfilment of the spiritual life in man. The epic opens with the beginning of the universe. It gives a picture of the night, really speaking, as a lady who is asleep. I will give you roughly the idea of the picture that ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Lectures on Savitri
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Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo  >  4th January 1941

... Theology. Life Divine is not a Theology! Further, it should be kept optional. Religious instructions should not be made compulsory. It does not necessarily develop spiritually; many people come to spiritual life through atheism. Religious instruction makes man narrow, sectarian, etc. The objection to this scheme is that it is academic. It would lose all its like and become dry. Page 302 ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo
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Savitri  >  Advocatus Diaboli and Advocatus Dei

... protagonist, which is never satisfied with single stages that have been attained but continually surpasses them, creates in their intermingling dialectic the variety and richness of spiritual life. In Existentialism, on the contrary, all this relief vanishes and we get only a process deprived of significance and value.. . 170   Savitri is presented in the poem as the central ...

Dr. Prema Nandakumar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Savitri
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What I Have Learnt From The Mother  >  The Silent Revolution

... world's highest wisdom, with the greatest tapasya, with the supernal light. People are coming there from different parts of the world, they are seeing and realising the living example of the future spiritual life of mankind. They are going back, imbibing the new life of the future. One day gradually they themselves will change the whole society. Sri Aurobindo's Relics are now going to different parts ...

Pranab Bhattacharya (Dada)   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   What I Have Learnt From The Mother
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Sudhir Kumar Sarkar: A Spirit Indomitable  >  Tributes and Reminiscences

... The Mother replied, “It is of no consequence. Sudhir is my true bhakta”. It is significant too that quite a number of people came to the Ashram from Khulna through him and had taken up the spiritual life. Khulna was the place where Sri Aurobindo’s father was loved and adored like a god. And Sudhir-da belonged to Khulna; his father was a close associate of Dr. K. D. Ghosh, Sri Aurobindo’s father ...

Sudhir Kumar Sarkar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sudhir Kumar Sarkar: A Spirit Indomitable
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Living in The Presence  >  My Education

... sea-change so suddenly! The Mother had pulled me out of that atmosphere of Calcutta, out of those bonds of deep affection, and thrown me in the midst of this intensely Page-37     Spiritual life. All of us who lived in the Ashram in those days were connected with the Mother both in our inner as well as outer life. The Mother saw everything and knew everything about us. We seemed to dwell ...

Shobha Mitra   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Living in The Presence
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On The Mother  >  Coming of the Disciples

... returned with his niece for the February Darshan and they stayed on for a few weeks, taking part in all the functions and observing the discipline of the Ashram, but he "was not at all ready for a spiritual life" and was still more or less a materialist. For three years he knocked about in search of a secure job and a very definite change came over him: "Though materially I had to face hardships, spiritually ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On The Mother
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On The Mother  >  A Choice of Games

... the all-powerful creative mantra. 5 The offering of flowers to the Mother, the receiving of a flower or flowers from her, could mean much, could prove a decisive turning point in one's, spiritual life, for these flowers from the Mother were verily the Divine's symbolic emanations of beauty and goodness and truth. Also, when sadhaks offered flowers to her, their condition - fresh or faded ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On The Mother
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On The Mother  >  Manifold Ministry

... danger of wrong-headed differentiation between what was spiritual and what was not. The Mother therefore thought it necessary to give this simple piece of advice: From the point of view of a spiritual life, it is not what you do that matters most, but the way in which it is done and the consciousness you put into it. Remember always the Divine and all you do will be an expression of the Divine Presence ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On The Mother
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On The Mother  >  Sacerdocy

... done. Only one cannot be everywhere at the same time! 33 Again, on 15 July, she announces something of a charter: My children, in five years I shall take with you a study course of spiritual life. 1 give you five years to prepare yourselves; what I am telling you now is just a little of the kind, as one would light a small candle to give you an idea of what light is. But I want you all ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On The Mother
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On The Mother  >  Attack, Defence and Counter-Attack

... gardens 22 Page 418 VI A reference has already been made to the Ashram cult of flowers. It was of course much more than a cult;. it was a part of the poetry and discipline of spiritual life. The sadhaks tended the Ashram gardens with infinite love and care, and a thousand flowers seemed to bloom in all the seasons. At time of Pranam, the sadhaks offered flowers to the Mother, and ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On The Mother
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On The Mother  >  Matrimandir

... tender shoots of the new awareness, to be open to the touch of the Shakti from above and yet, at the same time, find means of closing ourselves to the constant inrush of forces inimical to the spiritual life. 3 Page 782 Even so, in auspicious centres near and far away, the world was preparing for the big change; and wherever such centres sprang up, it was the destined role of select human ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On The Mother
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On The Mother  >  A New World is Born

... whether the Divine was manifest in one chosen individual alone or in several at the same time, she answered that it was all done on a hierarchic principle: One can understand nothing of the spiritual life if one does not understand the true hierarchy. ...each element which is truly in its place has a total and perfect relation with the Divine - in its place. And yet, on the whole, there is a ...

K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On The Mother
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The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo  >  The Higher Nature and the Lower

... is not unfamiliar to the central body of Indian spiritual thought. It is implicit also in the thought of some of the old religions and philosophies of the world. But its practical application to spiritual life, which was the core of the Vedic spiritual culture, has long been forgotten or ignored, with the result that Page 203 by Nature is meant only the lower Nature of the three guṇas ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo
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The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo  >  The Integral Liberation-2

... stamped out of existence. They have not to be repressed or throttled, but held up before the Mother's Light, and transmuted and converted into their divine counterparts. The very obstacles of the spiritual life are thus turned into so many aids by the spirit of self-consecration in the attitude of the sâdhaka. The active life of dedicated service, in which all the dynamic elements and energies of his ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo
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Sri Aurobindo's Savitri - An Approach And A Study  >  Summary of Book-1

... that "in the worm foresees the coming god". It sees the finite that is actual and knows the infinite that is potential and even' certain. It is when man accepts his higher possibilities of spiritual life that he is able to outgrow his present state of ignorance, leave behind him the limited planes of his mental, vital and physical consciousness and rise beyond them. Then, like Aswapathy, he "Arrive ...

A. B. Purani   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Sri Aurobindo's Savitri - An Approach And A Study
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On the Path  >  1968

... abolition of ego are closely interdependent? Only the Supreme Lord is perfectly sincere. And when the ego is abolished, only the Supreme Lord exists. 28.6.1968 I can see that in spiritual life, even to sit down is to fall back. But most often I sit down without knowing it! This is so true that one could rightly say: even while sleeping one must move forward. But there comes ...

Shyam Sunder Jhunjhunwala   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   On the Path
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Mother or The Divine Materialism - I  >  19: The First Round: 1926-1950

... within four walls; nothing was more unlike an ashram than that Ashram—hence the difficulty, both in people and in circumstances. Nothing is easier than to be an ascetic who all at once embraces the “spiritual life” and casts off the coat to concentrate on his virtues; you know what to expect—a bowl of rice, pure and simple, rags to wear, a straw mat on the floor (or no mat), and it is marvelous, you cut ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The Divine Materialism - I
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Mother or The New Species - II  >  16: The Body is Everywhere

... chapter suddenly opening up. 11 Only a contact—with WHAT IS THERE. Then it will be the fairy tale for the whole world. The Third Position And by the same token, a whole big chunk of spiritual life collapsed. A big chunk of material life, too. Or rather, the collapse of that material wall or partition, that web, automatically and simultaneously brought with it the collapse of the whole t ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother or The New Species - II
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The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo  >  Karmayoga and its Indispensability-2

... dancing and weeping with uncontrolled emotions is the best form of sādhanā, so there are fanatics of Karmayoga who think that to be always in a flutter and bustle is the best way of progressing in spiritual life. What they have to remember is that Karmayoga is a yoga; and that no yoga is possible without a firm basis of quietude and calm self-mastery. Whatever work is done from the inner silence and serenity ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo
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The Divine Collaborators  >  Physical Transformation

... well-known to need recapitulation here. We shall only quote a few lines from the Mother's writings to show how her thought and practice have moved on identical fines since the beginning of her spiritual life. The Mother regards the daily activity of life as the anvil on which all the elements of our being must pass and repass in order to be "purified, refined, made supple and ripe for the ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Divine Collaborators
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The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo  >  The Integral Transformation-2

... and elements of our being. It will enable us to live the Life Divine on earth—physically, vitally, mentally and spiritually. If the supramental transformation be not achieved, the goal of spiritual life would remain what it has always been—liberation of a few exceptional individuals into some land of transcendent peace or bliss; and the world would continue in its present darkness, ignorance and ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo
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The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo  >  The Integral Transformation-1

... even if complete, is not the transformation aimed at in the Integral Yoga. "One can realise the Divine everywhere"—a realisation which is almost universally regarded as the summit experience of spiritual life—and yet remain untransformed in his nature. "One can realise the Self in all and all in the Self"; "one can realise the universal śakti doing all things"; "one can feel merged in the cosmic ...

Rishabhchand   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo
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Mother's Chronicles - Book Four  >  Rishi Rajnarain Bose - Sri Aurobindo's Grandfather

... of Rajnarain, wrote, "He represented the high-water mark of the composite culture of his country — Vedantic, Islamic and European. . . . He also seems to have worked out a synthesis in his own spiritual life between the three dominant world-cultures that have come face to face in modern India." 1 He was an acknowledged leader in Bengali literature. Poems, essays, articles flowed freely from his ...

Sujata Nahar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother's Chronicles - Book Four
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Mother's Chronicles - Book Four  >  Savitri

... creation twelve times at least! Because he wished to express in the poem accurately "something seen, something felt or experienced . . . ." In it Sri Aurobindo opens for us a wide space of inner spiritual life, and shows us the boundless and innumerable riches that lie hidden and unexplored. "The door that has been shut to all but a few may open; the kingdom of the Spirit may be established not only ...

Sujata Nahar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother's Chronicles - Book Four
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Mother's Chronicles - Book Five  >  Why a Body

... perfectly mapped, macadamised, made secure and public. Our Yoga is not a retreading of old walks, but a spiritual adventure." Mother said (3 April 1967), "I must tell you once more that for us spiritual life does not mean contempt for Matter but its divinization. We do not want to reject the body but to transform it...." And Sri Aurobindo has given us a master-key : "A fully conscious body might ...

Sujata Nahar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother's Chronicles - Book Five
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Mother's Chronicles - Book Six  >  This World

... 'Not of an ascetic kind' describes it perfectly. "There is to me nothing secular," he wrote in the same letter (5 Jan. 1920), "all human activity is for me a thing to be included in a complete spiritual life...." His was a balanced approach. "My own life and my Yoga have always been since my coming to India both this-worldly and other-worldly without any exclusiveness on either side," wrote Sri Aurobindo ...

Sujata Nahar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother's Chronicles - Book Six
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Mother's Chronicles - Book Five  >  Professor Extraordinary

... I had rare glimpses of his innate spirituality which made him always keep calm and reticent. I used to sit by him and had the natural advantage of studying some of the remarkable traits of his spiritual life at close quarters." He also mentions meeting Poet Manmohan Ghose at Subodh Mullick's house. Manmohan was often accompanied by one of his students, Sailendranath Mitra. The latter was wonderstruck ...

Sujata Nahar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother's Chronicles - Book Five
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Mother's Chronicles - Book Five  >  Lele

... the time of country first, humanity afterwards and the rest nowhere," replied Sri Aurobindo. "It was something behind that got the idea accepted by the mind; mine was a side-door entry into the spiritual life." As leaving completely all political activity was not possible for Sri Aurobindo, Lele asked him to suspend it at least for several days. Sri Aurobindo consented. When Lele left after half ...

Sujata Nahar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother's Chronicles - Book Five
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Growing up with the Mother  >  Introduction

... Chapter 1: Sadhana and Life Growing up with the Mother Introduction This section contains the Mother’s replies to my questions on spiritual life and other related topics. In introducing this text, I would like to explain how this correspondence came about and share with the reader a few reminiscences which show how much interest the Mother took in us during ...

Tara Jauhar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Growing up with the Mother
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Mother's Chronicles - Book Four  >  Appendix

... Because it turns the Veda into a largely meaningless hodgepodge of superstition cobbled together by aboriginal savages. Because it makes nonsense of what has been for millennia the source of India's spiritual life and strength. And because the past is never past, never dead, and often holds the key to the future. "The recovery of the perfect truth of the Veda is not merely a desideratum for our modern ...

Sujata Nahar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother's Chronicles - Book Four
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Mother's Chronicles - Book Six  >  The Himalayas in Rue Dupleix

... meditate while walking back and forth. There was a small courtyard with a dividing wall, and shards of glass were stuck on top of the wall to keep out thieves. And I was meditating—meditating on the spiritual life—when suddenly something caught my eye: a ray of sunlight on a sharp piece of blue glass on top of the wall. And positively, spontaneously, without thinking or reflecting or anything ... I saw summits ...

Sujata Nahar   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Mother's Chronicles - Book Six
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Early Cultural Writings  >  A System of National Education

... creating thoughts, images and imitations or new combinations of existing thoughts and images, the appreciation of the soul in things, beauty, charm, greatness, hidden suggestiveness, the emotion and spiritual life that pervades the world. This is in every way as important as the training of the faculties which observe and compare outward things. But that demands a separate and fuller treatment. The mental ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Early Cultural Writings
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The Secret of the Veda  >  The Seven-Headed Thought, Swar and the Dashagwas

... all the main imagery of the Rig Veda. The symbolism of the Veda depends upon the image of the life of man as a sacrifice, a journey and a battle. The ancient Mystics took for their theme the spiritual life of man, but, in order both to make it concrete to themselves and to veil its secrets from the unfit, they expressed it in poetical images drawn from the outward life of their age. That life was ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Secret of the Veda
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Essays on the Gita  >  Swabhava and Swadharma

... nature. That too is the reason why a commercial and industrial age or a society preoccupied with the idea of work and labour creates around it an atmosphere more favourable to the material than the spiritual life, more adapted to vital efficiency than to the subtler perfection of the high-reaching mind and spirit. Nevertheless, this kind of nature too and its functions have their inner significance, their ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita
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Essays on the Gita  >  The Gist of the Karmayoga

... Gita started. The problem in itself, it may be useful again to remark, need not necessarily have led up to the whole question of the nature of existence and of the replacement of the normal by the spiritual life. It might have been dealt with on a pragmatical or an ethical Page 248 basis or from an intellectual or an ideal standpoint or by a consideration of all of these together; that in fact ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita
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Essays on the Gita  >  The Principle of Divine Works

... its activities is conquered and possessed in a divine transcendence of the world. It can become instead of a prison-house an opulent kingdom, rājyaṁ samṛddham , which we have conquered for the spiritual life by slaying the limitation of the tyrant ego and overcoming the bondage of our gaoler desires and breaking the prison of our individualistic possession and enjoyment. The liberated universalised ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita
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The Mother with Letters on the Mother  >  Receptivity and Openness to the Mother's Force

... wrote so because the action of the sadhana does not depend on the Mother alone, but also on the attitude, will and openness Page 218 of the sadhak. That is a well-known fact of the spiritual life which everybody is supposed to know. The Mother's Force can do everything only when there is a real and true and complete surrender and openness to the Mother. All these things have been written ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Mother with Letters on the Mother
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The Mother with Letters on the Mother  >  Comments on Specific Conversations

... it will proceed in the future, how and where you were born in the past and what you will be hereafter, the lives you have lived and the lives you will still live. All this has nothing to do with spiritual life" [ p. 40 ]. Is what such people say complete humbug? Is there a process other than the spiritual by which one can know all these things? Often it is, but even if it is correct, it has nothing ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Mother with Letters on the Mother
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Letters on Himself and the Ashram  >  Contact with People Outside the Ashram

... (in Bengali) that it is no use putting these matters before Sri Aurobindo, as he makes it a rule not to advise people in their mundane affairs and confines himself only to what is proper to the spiritual life and for the rest to his own path of Yoga. I hope you will help me and send your reply to the following queries: (1) How long will the business partnership last with my partner? ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Himself and the Ashram
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Questions and Answers (1929-1931)  >  Faith

... psychically ready the more you are led to the right source, the right master. The psychic and its faith are always sincere, but if in your exterior being there is insincerity and if you are seeking not spiritual life but personal powers, that can mislead you. It is that and not your faith that misleads you. Pure in itself, faith can get mixed up in the being with low movements and it is then that you are misled ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1929-1931)
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Questions and Answers (1953)  >  5 August 1953

... disequilibrium until one day that becomes strong enough to bring about a total imbalance and it can no longer regain its balance and health. We shall see that next week. It is only in the pure spiritual life—that which is outside all physical and terrestrial existence, including the mental—that there is no progress. You reach a static state and are outside all movements of progress. But at the same ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1953)
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Questions and Answers (1955)  >  20 July 1955

... Christian religion—a single God, jealous, severe, despotic and so much in the image of man that one wonders if it is not a demiurge as Anatole France said—these people when they want to lead a spiritual life no longer want the personal God, because they are too frightened lest the personal God resemble the one they have been taught about; they want an impersonal Godhead, something that doesn't at ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1955)
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Questions and Answers (1954)  >  24 February 1954

... India, the immense population—formidable—which lives in the villages, the countryside, there is no question of their making an effort for liberation, to come out of the world in order to live the spiritual life. They don't even have the time to become aware of themselves! They are just there, attached to their work like a horse to the plough. They move in a rut from which, generally, they can't get out ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1954)
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Questions and Answers (1954)  >  29 September 1954

... , you are sure to attain the aim you have put before you." × "For those who wish to lead the spiritual life, the Divine must always come first, everything else must be secondary." × The French translation ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   Questions and Answers (1954)
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Autobiographical Notes  >  To Barindra Kumar Ghose

... Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life (1911-1928) Autobiographical Notes To Barindra Kumar Ghose [1] Arya Office Pondicherry November 18. 1922. Dear Barin, I understand from your letter that you need a written authority from me for the work I have entrusted to you and a statement making your position clear to those whom you may ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes
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Autobiographical Notes  >  To the Mother and Paul Richard

... Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life (1911-1928) Autobiographical Notes To the Mother and Paul Richard [1] All is always for [the] best, but it is sometimes from the external point of view an awkward best. I had one of my etheric writings, "Build desolated Europe into a city of God". I give it [ to ] you for what it is worth. Perhaps ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Autobiographical Notes
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