On Yoga
THEME/S
ART
If Art's service is but to imitate Nature, then burn all the picture galleries and let us have instead photographic studios. It is because Art reveals what Nature hides that a small picture is worth more than all the jewels of the millionaires and the treasures of the princes.
If you only imitate visible Nature, you will perpetrate either a corpse, a dead sketch or a monstrosity; Truth lives in that which goes behind and beyond the visible and sensible.
It is wrong to measure the greatness of any art like that. Each of the great arts has its own appeal and its own way of appeal and each in its own way is supreme above all others.
But great art is not satisfied with representing the intellectual truth of things, which is always their superficial or exterior truth; it seeks for a deeper and original truth which escapes the eye of the mere sense or the mere reason, the soul in them, the unseen reality which is not that of their form and process but of their spirit.......Always the truth it seeks is first and foremost the truth of beauty,—not, again, the formal beauty alone or the
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beauty of proportion and right process which is what the sense and the reason seek, but the soul of beauty which is hidden from the ordinary eye and the ordinary mind and revealed in its fullness only to the unsealed vision of the poet and artist in man who can seize the secret significances of the universal poet and artist, the divine creator who dwells as their soul and spirit in the forms lie has created.
The Mother :
Art is a means, not an end; it is a means of expression. The personality of an artist counts no longer; he is an agent, a channel, his art a means of expressing his relations with the Divine. If you consider it in this light, art is not very different from Yoga.
In India all her architecture, her sculpture, her painting have proceeded from this source and were inspired by this ideal. If they are true artists and try to see beyond and use their art for the expression of the inner world, they grow in consciousness by their concentration on the subject. But most of those who call themselves artists draw their inspiration from the vital world only; and it carries in it no high or great significance.
ASHRAM LIFE
This Ashram has been created with another object than that ordinarily common to such institutions, not for
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the renunciation of the world but as a centre and a field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life which would in the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness and embody a greater life of the spirit.
This is not an Ashram like others—the members are not Sannyasis; it is not Moksha that is the sole aim of the Yoga here. What is being done here is a preparation for a work—a work which will be founded on Yogic consciousness and Yoga-Shakti, and can have no other foundation.
A sadhaka in the Ashram is expected to observe the following conditions :
All physical sexual relations or connection between a, sadhak and sadhika are absolutely forbidden and inadmissible in the Ashram.
All vital relations of a sexual character are contrary to the sadhana and must also be given up by those who wish to stay in the Ashram and progress in the Yoga.
Even husband and wife must stop all conjugal relations and regard each other as fellow-sadhaks only and not as husband and wife. It is not as man and woman that the sadhaks are here; they have not come here to continue or to form vital or physical sexual relations between themselves under any pretext but to practise Yoga.
Any sadhak forming vital relations with others under the pretext of a psychic or spiritual relation is deceiving.
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himself and violating the Truth and breaking the rule of the Yoga.
No sadhak should worship another sadhak or look on him as the embodied Divine; such movements are contrary to the sadhana and to the discipline of the Ashram and create false movements in the atmosphere.
You are not yet ready or fit as yet for life in the Ashram. There are certain weaknesses of the adhara (especially of the vital nature and the physical mind) which must be got rid of before you should think of joining the Ashram. To practise Yoga, as a member of the Ashram is to push yourself into the centre of a pressure for transformation of the whole being and, especially just now, of the physical mind and the lower vital nature, which that mind in you and your nervous parts in their present impurity and weakness might not be able to bear. It is our repeated experience that those who have this weakness are better outside the Ashram where they can slowly prepare and purify themselves without any premature pressure.
The Mother and I are equal. Also she is supreme here and has the right to arrange the work as she thinks best for the work, no one has any right or claim or proprietorship over any work that may be given to him. The Ashram is the Mother's creation and would not have existed but for her, the work she does is her creation and has not been given to her and cannot be taken from
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her. Try to understand this elementary truth, if you want to have any right relation or attitude towards the Mother.
Don't judge on appearances and do not listen to what people say, because these two things are misleading.
There is in the Ashram no exterior discipline and no visible test. But the inner test is severe and constant, one must be very sincere in the aspiration to surmount all egoism and to conquer all vanity in order to be able to stay here. A complete surrender is not outwardly exacted but it is indispensable for those who wish to stick on, and many things come to test the sincerity of this surrender. However, the Grace and the help are always there for those who aspire for them and their power is limitless when received with faith and confidence.
BEAUTY
Beauty is as much an expression of the Divine as Knowledge, Power or Ananda. Does any one ask why does the Mother want to manifest the divine consciousness by knowledge or by power and not by ignorance and weakness ? It would not be a more absurd or meaningless question than the one put by the vital against her wearing artistic and beautiful dress. Is it your notion
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that the Divine should be represented on earth by poverty and ugliness ?
Outer things are the expression of something in the inner reality. A fine sari or a palace are expressions of the principle of beauty in things and that is their main value. The Divine Consciousness is not bound by these things and has no attachment, but it is also not bound to abstain from them if beauty in things is part of its intended action. The Mother, when the Ashram was still unformed, was wearing patched cotton saris. When she took up the work, it was necessary to change her habits, so she did so.
To find highest beauty is to find God; to reveal, to embody, to create as we say, highest beauty is to bring out of our souls the living image and power of God.
It is one of the greatest weapons of the Asura at work when you are taught to shun beauty. It has been the ruin of India. The Divine manifests in the psychic as love, in the mind as knowledge, in the vital as power and in the physical as beauty. If you discard beauty it means that you are depriving the Divine of his manifestation in the material and you hand over that part to the Asura.
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In the physical world, of all things it is beauty that expresses best the Divine. The physical world is the world of forms and the perfection of forms is beauty. Beauty interprets, expresses, manifests the Eternal. Its role is to put all manifested nature in contact with the Eternal through the perfection of form, through harmony and a sense of the ideal which uplifts and leads towards something higher.
CONSCIOUSNESS
The higher consciousness is a concentrated consciousness, concentrated in the Divine Unity and in the working out of the Divine Will, not dispersed and rushing about after this or that mental idea or vital desire or physical need as in the ordinary human consciousness—also not invaded by a hundred haphazard thoughts, feelings and impulses, but master of itself, centred and harmonious.
In the externalised consciousness obscurity and suffering can always be there; the more the internalised consciousness reigns, the more these things are pushed back and out, and with the full internalised consciousness they cannot remain.
There are always two different consciousnesses in the human being, one outward in which he ordinarily lives, the other inward and concealed of which he knows
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nothing. When one does sadhana, the inner conscious ness begins to open and one is able to go inside and have all kinds of experiences there. As the sadhana progresses, one begins to live more and more in this inner being and the outer becomes more and more superficial. At first the inner consciousness seems to be the dream and the outer the waking reality. Afterwards the inner consciousness becomes the reality and the outer is felt by many as a dream or delusion, or else something superficial and external. The inner consciousness begins to be a place of deep peace, light, happiness, love, closeness to the Divine or the presence of the Divine, the Mother. One is then aware of two consciousnesses, the inner one and the outer which has to be changed into its counterpart and instrument —that also must become full of peace, light, union with the Divine.
To be too much occupied in mind with the outer difficulties keeps the consciousness externalised. Living inwardly you will find the Mother close to you and realise her will and her action.
All that exists or can exist in this or any other universe can be rendered into terms of consciousness; there is nothing that cannot be known. This knowing need not be always a mental knowledge. For the greater part of existence is either above or below mind, and mind can
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know only indirectly what is above or what is below it. But the one true and complete way of knowing is by direct knowledge.
The Unmanifested Supreme is beyond all definition and description by mind or speech; no definition the mind can make, affirmative or negative, which can be at all expressive of it or adequate.
DARSHANS, BLESSINGS
There is the utility of the physical approach to the Mother—the approach of the embodied mind and vital to her embodied Power. In her universal action the Mother acts according to the law of things—in her embodied physical action is the opportunity of a constant Grace—it is for that the embodiment takes place.
The Divine Mother is the Consciousness and Force of the Divine—which is the Mother of all things.
It is certainly quite true that the psychic contact 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 in the Ashram or physically near the Mother in order to lead the spiritual fife or to practise the Yoga, especially in its early stages. But it is only one side of the truth; there is another, otherwise the logical conclusion might be that there was no necessity for the Mother
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to be here at all, or for the existence of the Ashram, or for anyone to come here.
The psychic being is there in all, but in very few it. is 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 being—that is for them the beginning of the effective psychic contact.
When the touch has been given or the development 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 may easily be lost after a time or get covered over and the development may become retarded, stationary or even diminished by adverse movements or influences*. It is for that the necessity exists and is often felt of a return to the place of the central influence in order to fortify or recover the contact or to restore or give a fresh forward impulse to the development.
The physical nearness to the Mother is indispensable for the fullness of the sadhana on the physical plane.
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Transformation of the physical and external being is not possible otherwise.
The right attitude to approach the Mother when she sees one is to keep the being perfectly quiet and open to receive, without any activity of the mind or desire in the vital, with only the surrender and the psychic readiness to accept whatever is given.
The physical contact of the Mother means for her an interchange, a pouring out of her forces and a receiving of things good, bad and mixed from them which often involves a great labour of adjustment and elimination, and in many cases, a severe strain on the body.
The best way for Darshan is to keep oneself very collected and quiet and open to receive whatever the Mother gives.
During Darshans and Blessings, the time has nothing to do with it. One hour's touch or a moment's touch —as much can be given by the one as by the other. The Mother gives in both ways. Through the eyes it is to the psychic, through the hand to the material.
It is when the Mother puts her force into the flower that it becomes more than a symbol. It then can become very effective if there is receptivity in the one who receives.
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DEATH AND REBIRTH
The soul takes birth each time, and each time a mind, life and body are formed out of the materials of universal Nature, according to the soul's past evolution and its need for the future. When the body is dissolved after death, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains there for a time, but after a time the vital sheath disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally the soul or psychic being retires into the psychic world to rest there till a new birth is close.
The soul gathers the essential elements of its experiences in life and makes that its basis of growth in the evolution; when it returns to birth it takes up with its mental, vital, physical sheaths so much of its Karma as is useful to it in the new life for farther experience.
It is really for the vital part of the being that Sraddha and rites are done—to help the being to get rid of the vital vibrations which still attach it to the earth or to the vital worlds, so that it may pass quickly to its rest in the psychic peace.
The soul comes into birth for experience, for growth, for evolution till it can bring the Divine into matter. It is the central being that incarnates, not the outer personality—the personality is simply a mould that it creates for its figures of experience in that one life. In another birth it will create for itself a different personality,
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different capacities, a different life and careen It is not the personality, the character that is of the first importance in rebirth—it is the psychic being who stands behind the evolution of the nature and evolves with it. The psychic when it departs from the body, shedding even the mental and vital on its way to its resting place, carries with it the heart of its experiences. That is the permanent addition, it is that that helps in the growth towards the Divine.
Death is there because the being in the body is not yet developed enough to go on growing in the same body without the need of change and the body itself is not sufficiently conscious. If the mind and vital and the body itself were more conscious and plastic, death would not be necessary.
At the time of death the being goes out of the body through the head; it goes out in the subtle body and goes to different planes of existence for a short time until it has gone through certain experiences which are the result of its earthly existence. Afterwards it reaches the psychic world where it rests in a kind of sleep, until it is time for it to start a new life on earth. That is what happens usually—but there are some beings who are more developed and do not follow this course.
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The soul does not go back to animal condition; but a part of the vital personality may disjoin itself and join an animal birth to work out its animal propensities there.
There is after death a period in which one passes through the vital world and lives there for a time. It is only the first part of this transit that can be dangerous or painful One can help departed souls by one's good will or by occult means, if one has the knowledge. The one thing that one should not do is to hold them back by sorrow for them or longing or by anything else that would pull them nearer to earth or delay their journey to their place of rest.
Usually, a soul follows continuously the same line of sex. If there are shifting of sex, it is, as a rule, a matter of parts of the personality which are not central.
No rule can be laid with regard to what time the psychic being joins the new body, for these circumstances vary with the individual. Some psychic beings get into relation with the birth-environment and the parents from the time of inception and determine the preparation of the personality and future in the embryo, others join only at the time of delivery, others even later on in the life and in these cases it is some emanation of the psychic being which upholds the life. It should be noted that the conditions of the future birth are determined fundamentally not during the stay in the psychic world but
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at the time, of death—the psychic being then chooses what it should work out in the next terrestrial appearance and the conditions arrange themselves accordingly.
Note that the idea of rebirth and the circumstances of the new life as a reward or punishment for punya or papa is a crude human idea of "justice" which is quite un philosophical and unspiritual and distorts the true intention of life. Life here is an evolution and the soul grows by experience, working out by it this or that in the nature, and if there is suffering, it is for the purpose of that working out, not as a judgment inflicted by God or Cosmic Law on the errors or stumblings which are inevitable in the Ignorance.
But the soul, the psychic being, once having reached the human consciousness cannot go back to the inferior animal consciousness any more than it can go back into a tree or an ephemeral insect. What is true is that some part of the vital energy or the formed instrumental consciousness or nature can and very frequently does so, if it is strongly attached to anything in the earth life. This may account for some cases of immediate rebirth with full memory in human forms also. Ordinarily, it is only by Yogic development or by clairvoyance that the exact memory of past lives can be brought back.
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The psychic does not give up the mental and other sheaths immediately at death. It is said that it takes three years on the whole to get clear away from the zone of communicability with the earth—though there may be cases of slower or quicker passage.
All kinds of work are equal before the Divine and all men have the same Brahman within them is one truth, but that development is not equal in all is another. The idea that it needs a special punya to be born as a Bhangi is, of course, one of those forceful exaggerations of an idea which are common with the Mahatma and impress greatly the mind of his hearers. But obviously the cultural development is more valuable than the service of the physical needs for the progress of humanity as opposed to its first static condition, and that development can even lead to the minimising and perhaps the entire disappearance by scientific inventions of the need of the functions of the scavenger. In any case, it is not true that the Bhangi life is superior to the Brahmin life and the reward of a special righteousness. On the other hand, the traditional conception that a man is superior to others because he is born a Brahmin is not rational or justifiable.
In rebirth it is only the psychic being that passes from body to body. Logically, then, neither the mental
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nor the vital being can remember past lives or recognise itself in the character or mode of life of this or that person. The psychic being alone can remember; and it is by becoming conscious of our psychic being that we can have at the same time exact impressions about our past lives.
DISCIPLINE
This constant disobedience and indiscipline is a radical obstacle to the sadhana and the worst possible example to others.
It is a deficiency of psychic perception and spiritual discrimination that makes people to ignore the importance of obedience. It is the mind wanting to follow its own way of thinking and the vital seeking freedom for its desires. The obedience is necessary so as to get away from one's own mind and vital and learn to follow the Truth.
The discipline has been laid down (in the Ashram) by the Mother—to break it is disobedience to the Divine.
It is when you are free from the lower Nature that Mother's will is the Law. When subject to lower Nature, the lower Nature is constantly disobeying the Divine Will.
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DOCTORS AND DISEASES
The Mother and I have no preference for allopathy. The Mother thinks doctors very usually make things worse instead of better by spoiling Nature's resistance to illness by excessive and ill-directed use of their medicines.
Medical Science has been more a curse to mankind than a blessing. It has weakened the natural health of man and multiplied individual diseases; it has implanted fear and dependence in the mind and body; it has taught our health to repose not on natural soundness but a rickety and distasteful witch compact from the mineral and vegetable kingdom.
It is not the medicine that cures so much as the patient's faith in the doctor and the medicine. Both are a clumsy substitute for the natural faith in one's own self-power which they have themselves destroyed.
The healthiest ages of mankind were those in which there were the fewest material remedies. We ought to use the divine health in us to cure and prevent diseases.
Health protected by twenty-thousand precautions is the gospel of the doctors; but it is not God's evangel for the body, nor Nature's.
Man was once naturally healthy and could revert to that primal condition if he were suffered; but Medical Science pursues our body with an innumerable pack of drugs and assails the imagination with ravening hordes of microbes.
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It should take long for self-cure to replace medicine; because of the fear, self-distrust and unnatural physical reliance on drugs which Medical Science has taught to our minds and bodies and made our second nature.
Distrust of the curative power within us was our physical fall from Paradise. Medical Science and a bad heredity are the two angels of God who stand at the gates to forbid our return and re-entry.
EDUCATION
It is true of every soul on earth that it is a portion of the Divine Mother passing through the experiences of the Ignorance in order to arrive at the truth of its being and be the instrument of a Divine Manifestation and work here. The body is meant for keeping the Divine consciousness linked to the physical world.
I think I made it clear...that sport was not sadhana, that it belonged to what I called the lower end of things, but that it might be used not merely for amusement or recreation or the maintenance of health, but for a greater efficiency of the body and for the development of certain qualities and capacities, not of the body only but of morale and discipline and the stimulation of mental energies : but I pointed out also that these could be and were developed by other means and that there were limitations to this utility. In fact, it is only by
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sadhana that one could go beyond the limits natural to the lower end means.......
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 that could be called a divine body could be only an ulterior aim undertaken as part of this transformation.
We do not want only sportsmen in the Ashram : that would make it not an Ashram but a playground. The sports and physical exercises are primarily for the children of the school. The younger sadhaks are allowed, not enjoined or even recommended, to join in these sports, but certainly they are not supposed to be sportsmen only : they have other and more important things to do......In the old Ashrams the boys and young men who were brought up in them were trained in many things belonging to life.....To concentrate most on one's own spiritual growth and experience is the first necessity of the sadhak.
The first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught. The teacher is not an instructor or task-master, he is a helper and a guide. His business is to suggest and not to impose. He does not actually train the pupil's mind, he only shows him how to perfect his instruments of knowledge and helps and encourages him in the
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process. He does not impart knowledge to him, he shows him how to acquire knowledge for himself. The idea of hammering the child into the shape desired by the parent or teacher is a barbarous and ignorant superstition. It is a selfish tyranny over a human soul and a wound to a nation, which loses the benefit of the best that a man could have given it. The chief aim of education should be to help the growing soul to draw out that in itself which is best and make it perfect for a noble use. A free and natural growth is the condition of genuine development.
The only way for him to train himself morally is to habituate himself to the right emotions, the noblest associations, the best mental, emotional and physical habits and the following out in right action of the fundamental impulses of his essential nature. You can impose a certain discipline on children, dress them into a certain mould, lash them into a desired path, but unless you can get their hearts and natures on your side, the conformity to this imposed rule becomes a hypocritical and heartless, a conventional, often a cowardly compliance.
The first rule of moral training is to suggest and invite, not command or impose.
The thirst of knowledge, the self-devotion, the purity, the renunciation of the Brahmin,—the courage, the ardour, honour, nobility, chivalry, patriotism of the Kshatriya,—the beneficence, skill, industry, generous
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enterprise and large open-handedness of the Vaishya,. —the self-effacement and loving service of the Sudra, —these are the qualities of the Aryan. They constitute the moral temper we desire in our young men in the whole nation. But how can we get them if we do not give opportunities to the young to train themselves in the Aryan tradition ?
Wildness and recklessness of many young natures are only the over flowing of an excessive strength, greatness and nobility. They should be purified, not discouraged.
Religion has to be lived, not learned as a creed. No religious teaching is of any value unless it is lived, and the use of various kinds of Sadhana, spiritual self-training and exercise is the only effective preparation for religious living.
Every child is an inquirer, an investigator, an analyser, a merciless anatomist. Appeal to those qualities in him and let him acquire without knowing it the right temper and the necessary fundamental knowledge of the scientist. Every child has an insatiable intellectual curiosity and turn for metaphysical enquiry. Use it to draw him on slowly to an understanding of the world and himself.
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It is by allowing Nature to work that we get the benefit of the gifts she has bestowed on us. Humanity in its education of children has chosen .to thwart and hamper her processes and, by so doing, has done much to thwart and hamper the rapidity of its onward march.
An aimless life is always a miserable life. Everyone should have an aim. But do not forget that on the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life. Your aim should be high and wide, generous and disinterested ; this will make your life precious to yourself and to all.
But whatever your ideal, it cannot be perfectly realised unless you have realised perfection in yourself; and to work for your perfection the first step is to become conscious of yourself, of the different parts of your being and their respective activities.
In its natural state the human mind is always limited in its vision, narrow in its understanding, rigid in its conceptions, and a certain effort is needed to enlarge it.
Knowledge belongs to a region much higher than that of the human mind. The mind has to be made silent and attentive in order to receive knowledge from above and manifest it.
The education of a human being should begin at his very birth and continue throughout the whole length
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of his life; and the education to be complete must have five principal aspects : the physical, the vital, the mental, the" psychic and the "spiritual.
The first thing to do in order to be able to educate the child, is to educate oneself, to become conscious and master of oneself so that one does not set a bad example to one's child. For it is through example that education becomes effective. To say good words, give wise advice to a child has very little effect, if one does not show by one's living example the truth of what one teaches.
If you wish to be respected by your child, have respect for yourself and be at every moment worthy of respect. Never be arbitrary, despotic, impatient, ill-tempered. When your child asks you a question, do not answer him by a stupidity or a foolishness, under the pretext that he cannot understand you.
Do not scold your child except with a definite purpose and only when quite indispensable. A child too often scolded gets hardened to rebuke and comes to attach little importance to words or severity of tone. Particularly, take care not to rebuke him for a fault which you yourself commit.
...When a child has made a mistake, see that he confesses
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it to you spontaneously and frankly; and when he has confessed, make him understand with kindness and affection what was wrong in his movement and that he should not repeat it. In any case, never scold him; a fault confessed must be forgiven. You should not allow any fear to slip in between you and your child; fear is a disastrous way to education.
...If the child, from the very beginning of his existence, takes to good habits, that will save him a good deal of trouble and inconvenience during the whole of his life. Bad habits are formed too early and too quickly that may have disastrous consequences for the whole life.
...He must avoid, in his daily food, all that merely stuffs and causes heaviness; particularly, he must be taught to eat according to his hunger, neither more nor less, and not to make food an occasion to satisfy his greed and gluttony. From one's very childhood, one should know that one eats in order to give to the body strength and health, and not to enjoy the pleasures of the palate.
...It is not fair to demand services from a child, as if it is his duty to serve his parents. The contrary would be more true : certainly it is natural that parents should serve their children, at least take great care of them. It is only if the child chooses freely to work for the family and does the work as a play that the thing is admissible.
...The child must be shown, made to appreciate, taught to love beautiful, lofty, healthy and noble things, whether in nature or in human creation. The sovereign
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means is to rouse in the child interest in the thing that one wishes to teach, the taste for work, the will to progress. To love to learn is the most precious gift that one can make to a child; to love to learn always and everywhere.
... Studies strengthen the mind and turn the attention from concentrating on the impulses and desires of the vital. Concentrating on studies is one of the most powerful means of controlling the mind and the vital; that is why it is so important to study.
...If the power of concentration and attention is continuously cultivated, the active external consciousness will allow only those thoughts that are needed and then they become all the more dynamic and effective. And if, in the intensity of concentration, it is necessary not to think at all, all mental vibration can be stopped and an almost total silence secured. In this silence one can open gradually to the higher mental regions and learn to record the inspirations that come from there.
The art of giving rest to one's mind is a thing to be acquired. Changing mental activity is a way of rest; but the greatest possible rest lies in silence.
Every human being carries hidden within him the possibility of a greater consciousness beyond the frame of his normal life through which he can participate in a higher and vaster life. What the human mind does
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not know and cannot do, this consciousness knows and does.
The first and most important point which must never be forgotten is that with the mind it is impossible to judge of spiritual things. All who have written on yogic discipline have said so, but very few are those who put it into practice and yet, in order to proceed on the path, it is absolutely indispensable to abstain from all mental judgment, mental opinion and reaction.
Give up all personal seeking for comfort, satisfaction, enjoyment or happiness. Be only a burning fire for progress, take whatever comes to you as a help for progress and make at once the progress required.
Try to take pleasure in all you do, but never do anything for the sake of pleasure. Never get excited, nervous or agitated. Remain perfectly quiet in the face of anything and everything. And yet be always awake to find out the progress you have still to make and lose no time in making it.
The Vital in man's nature, is a despotic and exacting tyrant. It is a master that is satisfied by nothing and its demands have no limit. The conviction that makes one believe that one has the right to be happy leads, as a matter of course, towards the will to five one's life
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at any cost. This attitude in its obscure and aggressive egoism brings about every conflict and misery, deception and discouragement, ending often in a catastrophe.
In the world, as it actually is, the goal of life is not to secure personal happiness, but to awaken the individual progressively towards the truth-consciousness.
The spiritual consciousness means to live the infinite and eternal, to throw oneself outside all creation, beyond time and space. To become fully aware of your psychic being and to five a psychic life you must abolish in you all selfishness; but to live a spiritual life you must be selfless.
EVOLUTION
A progressive evolution of the visible and invisible instruments of the Spirit is the whole law of the earth nature. Spirit has concealed itself in inconscient matter. It evolves into forms of matter by the working of matter forces. It is only when this has been sufficiently done, that it thinks of life. A subconscient life and its imprisoned forces were there all the time in matter and its forces. Afterwards came an evolution of mind in many forms by the working of liberated mind-forces. In those life-forces in matter and even in the very substrate of matter mind was latent. An evolution of mind in the living form by a working of liberated mind-force was
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the third chapter of the story. The third chapter is not completed, neither will it be the end of the narrative.
The evolution of the earth-nature is not finished because it has manifested only three powers out of the seven-fold scale of consciousness that is involved in manifested Nature. It has brought out from its apparent inconscience only the three powers of Mind and Life and Matter.
The supramental change is a thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness; for its upward ascent is not ended and mind is not its last summit.
The earth is a material field of evolution. Mind and Life, Supermind, Sachchidananda are in principle involved there in the earth consciousness; but only matter is at first organised; then life descends from the life plane and gives shape and organisation and activity to the life principle in matter, creates the plant and animal; then mind descends from the mind plane, creating man. Now Supermind is to descend so as to create a supramental race.
The Prakriti itself is divided into the lower and higher, —the lower is the Prakriti of the Ignorance, the Prakriti of mind, life and matter separated in consciousness from
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the Divine; the higher is the Divine Prakriti of Sachchidananda with its manifesting power of Supermind, always aware of the Divine and free from Ignorance and its consequences. Man so long as he is in the ignorance is subject to the lower Prakriti, but by spiritual evolution he becomes aware of the higher Nature and seeks to come into contact with it.
The material world has evolved life in obedience to a pressure from the vital plane, mind in obedience to a pressure from the mental plane. It is now trying to evolve supermind in obedience to a pressure from the supramental plane.
It is something new that has manifested here and it is that that makes the creation worth while. What for instance would be the utility of a supramental creation on earth if it were just the same thing as a supramental creation on the supramental plane ? It is that, in principle, but yet something else, a triumphant new self-discovery of the Divine in conditions that are not elsewhere.
Out of this apparent Inconscience each potentiality is revealed in its turn, first organised Matter concealing the indwelling Spirit, the Life emerging in the plant and associated in the animal with a growing Mind, the Mind
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itself evolved and organised in Man. This evolution, this spiritual progression—does it stop short here in the imperfect mental being called Man ? In this vision each stage of evolution appears as due to the descent of a higher and higher Power of consciousness, raising the terrestrial level, creating a new stratum, but the highest yet remain to descend and it is by their descent that the riddle of terrestrial existence will receive its solution and not only the soul but Nature herself find her deliverance....
Division, ego, the imperfect consciousness and groping and struggle of a separate self-affirmation are the efficient causes of the suffering and ignorance of this world. Once consciousnesses separated from the one consciousness,-they fell inevitably into Ignorance and the last result of Ignorance was Inconscience; from a dark immense Inconscient this material world arises and out of it a soul that by evolution is struggling into consciousness, attracted towards the hidden Light, ascending but still blindly towards the lost Divinity from which it came......
It is by entering into that greater consciousness alone that one can grasp the inevitability of its self-creation and its purpose. To rise to that height of liberation is the true way out and the only means of the indubitable knowledge......
But that liberation and transcendence need not necessarily impose a disappearance, a sheer dissolving cut from the manifestation; it can prepare a liberation into action of the highest Knowledge and an intensity of
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Power that can transform the world and fulfil the evolutionary urge. It is an ascent from which there is no longer a fall but a winged or self-sustained descent of light, force and Ananda.......
As long as the outward personality we call ourselves is centred in the lower powers of consciousness, the riddle of its own existence, its purpose, its necessity is to it an insoluble enigma.......
It is only by rising towards a higher consciousness beyond the line and therefore superconscient now to him that he can emerge from his inability and his ignorance. His full liberation and enlightenment will come when he crosses the line into the light of a new superconscient existence....
But this crossing of the line if turned not only to an ascending but to a descending purpose would mean the transformation of the line from what it now is, a lid, a barrier, into a passage for the higher powers of consciousness of the Being now above it. It would mean a new creation on earth, a bringing in of the ultimate powers which would reverse the conditions here in as much as that would produce a creation raised into the full flood of spiritual and supramental light in place of one emerging into a half-light of mind out of a darkness of material inconscience......
If the redemption of the soul from the physical vesture be the object, then there is no need of supramentalisation.
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Spiritual Mukti and Nirvana are sufficient. If the object is to rise to supraphysical planes, then also there is no need of supramentalisation. One can enter into some heaven above by devotion to the Lord of that heaven. But that is no progression. The other worlds are typal worlds, each fixed in its own kind and type and law. Evolution takes place on the earth and therefore the earth is the proper field for progression. The beings of the other worlds do not progress from one world to another. They remain fixed to their own type.
In a general way, a life is only one brief episode in a long history of spiritual evolution in which the soul follows the curve of the fine set for the earth, passing through many lives to complete it. It is an evolution out of material inconscience to consciousness and towards the Divine Consciousness, from ignorance to Divine Knowledge, from darkness through half-light to Light, from death to Immortality, from suffering to the Divine Bliss. Suffering is due first to the Ignorance, secondly to the separation of the individual consciousness from the Divine Consciousness and Being, a separation created by the Ignorance—when that ceases, when one fives in the Divine and no more in one's separated smaller self, then only suffering can altogether cease.
With regards Supramental, what is more likely to happen is that the principle will be established in the evolution
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by the descent just as the mental principle was established by the appearance of thinking Mind and Man in earthly life. There will be a race of supramental beings on the earth just as now there is a race of mental beings. Man himself will find a greater possibility of rising to the planes intermediary between his mind and Supermind and making their powers effective in his life, which will mean a great change in humanity on earth.
One should not attach too much importance to the life of the body. The body is only an incident in the progress of the soul. Evolution of the soul is the objective of Karmic existence. When one has realised the soul, knowledge and enlightenment come and all the problems are solved. But before that, one should try to get peace, calm and light.
The human being on earth is God playing at humanity in a world of matter under the conditions of a hampered density with the ulterior intention of imposing law of spirit on matter and nature of deity upon human nature. Evolution is nothing but the progressive unfolding of Spirit out of the density of material consciousness and the gradual self-revelation of God out of this apparent animal being. Yoga is the application, for this process of divine self-revelation.
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As Nature has already created upon earth a mental being, even so, there is now a concentrated activity to bring forth in this mentality a supramental consciousness and individuality. We have here the peerless privilege of being at the very centre of the radiating light, at the source of the force of transformation.
Sri Aurobindo incarnated in a human body the supramental consciousness and has not only revealed to us the nature of the path to follow and the method of following it so as to arrive at the goal, but has also by his own personal realisation given us the example; he has provided us, so to say, the proof that the thing can be done and the time is now to do it.
EXPERIENCES—VISIONS
The more intense the experiences that come, the higher the forces that descend, the greater become the possibilities of deviation and error. For the very intensity and the very height of the force excites and aggrandise the movements of the lower nature and raises up in it all opposing elements in their full force, but often in the disguise of truth, wearing a mask of plausible justification. There is needed a great patience, calm, sobriety, balance,.
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an impersonal detachment and sincerity free from all taint of ego or personal human desire. There must be no attachment to any idea of one's own, to any experience, to any kind of imagination, mental building or vital demand; the light of discrimination must always play to detect those things, however fair or plausible they may seem. Otherwise, the Truth will have no chance of establishing itself in its purity in the nature.
It would be a great mistake to interfere with the images rising in you. It does not matter whether they are mental or psychic. One must have experience not only of the true psychic, but of the inner mental, inner vital and subtle physical worlds or planes of consciousness. The occurrences of the images is a sign that these are opening and to inhibit them would mean to inhibit the expansion of consciousness and experience without which this Yoga cannot be done.
Inner vision is vivid like actual sight, always precise and contains a truth in it. The inner vision can see objects, but it can see instead the vibration of the forces which act through the object. The mental visions are meant to bring in the mind the influence of the things they represent. The cosmic vision is the seeing of the universal movements—it has nothing to do with the psychic necessarily.
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The human mind's activities come very much in the way of receiving the higher knowledge. During the experience the mind should be quiet. After the experience is over it can be active. If it is active while it is there, the experience may stop altogether. The attempt of the mind and vital to seize on the experience is always one of the chief obstacles.
One of the first needs in our Yoga is a discrimination and a psychic tact distinguishing the false from the true, putting each thing in its place and giving it its true value or absence of value, not carried away by the excitement of the mind or the vital being.
It is not usually good to tell the experiences to others. It weakens the experience and tends to bring down the consciousness.
Telling of one's own experiences to others is very much discouraged by most Yogis—they say it is harmful to the sadhana. I have certainly seen and heard of any number of instances in which people were having a flow of experiences and, when they told, the flow was lost. I suppose however it ceases to apply after one has reached a certain long-established stability in the experience, that is to say when the experience amounts
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to a definite and permanent realisation, something finally and irrevocably added to the consciousness.
The consciousness from which these experiences come is always there pressing to bring them in. The reason why they don't come in freely or stay is the activity of the mind and vital always rushing about thinking this, wanting that, trying to perform mountaineering feats on all the hillocks of the lower nature instead of nourishing a strong and simple aspiration and opening to the higher consciousness that it may come in and do its own work.
Experiences come first in this isolated way, afterwards more frequently and for longer periods, then they settle. In some they settle at once, but that is rare. In some they persist recurring till they are settled, that is less rare. In others the occurrence is at first at long intervals and waits for the consciousness to be ready.
It is quite right and part of the right consciousness in sadhana that you should feel drawn in your heart towards the Mother and aspire for the vision and realisation of her presence. But there should not be any kind of restlessness joined to this feeling. The feeling should be quietly intense. It will then be easier for the sense of the presence to come and grow in you.
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Aspire to realisation, but do not be over eager. Keep yourself quietly open and allow the Mother's force to work in you, that will bring the necessary realisation.
Things inside can be seen as distinctly as outward things whether in an image by the subtle vision or in their essence by a still more subde and powerful way of seeing; but all these things have to develop in order to get their full power and intensity.
The sounds or voices you hear are like the sights (persons, objects) you see. As there is an inner sight other than the physical, so there is an inner hearing other than that of the external ear, and it can listen to voices and sounds and words of other worlds, other times and places, or those which come from supraphysical beings. But here you must be careful. If conflicting voices try to tell you what to do or not to do, you should not listen to them or reply. It is only myself and the Mother who can tell you what you should or should not do or guide or advise you.
GENERAL TEACHINGS
All attachment is a hindrance to sadhana. Goodwill you should have for all, psychic kindness for all, but no vital attachment.
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The love of the sadhak should be for the Divine. It is only when he has that fully that he can love others in the right way.
EIGHT CHAKRAS IN THE BODY:
The Mūlādhāra governs the physical down to the subconscient.
The abdominal centre—Svādhisthāna—governs the lower vital.
The navel centre—Nābhipadma or Manipur—governs the larger vital.
The heart centre—Hrdpadma or Anāhata—governs the emotional being.
The throat centre—Viśuddha—governs the expressive and externalising mind.
The centre between the eye-brows—Ājñācakra— governs the dynamic mind, will, vision, mental formation.
The thousand-petalled lotus—Sahasradala—above, commands the higher thinking mind.
In our Yoga we mean by the subconscient that quite submerged part of our being in which there is no wakingly conscious and coherent thought, will or feeling or organised reaction, but which yet receives obscurely the impressions of all things and stores them up in itself and from it too all sort of stimuli, of persistent habitual movements, crudely repeated or disguised in strange forms can surge up into dream or into the waking nature.
Triple Universe : There is a vital plane above the material
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universe which we see; there is a mental plane above the vital and material. These three together—mental, vital, physical—are called the triple universe of the lower hemisphere.
Mind : The mind is a part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental vision and will etc. that are part of his intelligence.
Vital : The vital has to be carefully distinguished from mind, even though it has a mind element transfused into it; the vital is the Life nature made up of desires, sensations, feelings, passions, energies of action, will of desire, reactions of the desire soul in man and of all that play of possessive and other related instincts, anger, fear, greed, lust etc. that belong to this field of the nature.
Composition of man : The being of man is composed of these elements—the psychic being behind supporting all—the inner mental, vital and physical, and the outer, quite external nature of mind, life and body which is their instrument of expression. But above all is the central being (Jivatma) which uses them all for its manifestation : it is a portion of the Divine " Self.
Central Being : The phrase 'central being' in our Yoga is usually applied to the portion of the Divine in us which supports all the rest and survives through death and birth. This central being has two forms—above, it is
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fivātmā, our true being, of which we become aware when the higher self-knowledge comes,—below, it is the psychic being which stands behind mind, body and life. The Jivatma is above the manifestation in life and presides over it; the psychic being stands behind the manifestation in life and supports it.
Radha is the personification of the absolute love for the Divine, total and integral in all parts of the being from the highest spiritual to the physical, bringing the absolute self-giving and total consecration of all the being and calling down into the body and the most material nature the supreme Ananda.
Purity means to accept no other influence but only the influence of the Divine.
Faithfulness means to admit and to manifest no other movements but only the movements prompted and guided by the Divine.
Sincerity means to lift all the movements of the being to the level of the highest consciousness and realisation already attained.
Sincerity exacts the unification and harmonisation of the whole being in all its parts and movements around the central Divine Will.
Gods are the powers that stand above the world and transmit the divine workings.
Devi is the Divine Shakti—the consciousness and Power of the Divine, the Mother and Energy of the worlds.
Brahma is the Power of the Divine that stands behind formation and creation.
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Ganesh is the Power that removes obstacles by the force of Knowledge.
Kartikeya represents victory over the hostile powers. Shiva is the Lord of Tapas. The Power is the power of Tapas.
Krishna as a godhead is the Lord of Ananda, Love and Bhakti.
To deny in ignorance is no better than to affirm in ignorance.
In teaching Yoga to another one becomes to some extent a master with disciples. The Yogis have always said that one who takes disciples, takes upon himself the difficulties of his disciples as well as one's own—that is why it is recommended not to take disciples unless and until one is siddha and even then only if one receives the Divine authority to do it. Secondly, there is the danger of egoism—when one is free from that, then the objection no longer holds.
If you want to be an instrument of the Truth, you must always speak the truth and not falsehood. But this does not mean that you must tell everything to everybody. To conceal the truth by silence or refusal to speak is permissible, because the truth may be misunderstood or misused by those who are not prepared
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for it or who are opposed to it—it may even be made a starting point for distortion or sheer falsehood. But to speak falsehood is another matter. Even in jest it should be avoided, because it tends to lower the consciousness.
One who fears monotony and wants something new would not be able to do Yoga or at least this Yoga which needs an inexhaustible perseverance and patience.
The world will trouble you so long as any part of you belongs to the world. It is only if you belong entirely to the Divine that you can become free.
If you are not constant in aspiration, the nature will then sink back into the old lower ways.
This sadhana is not helped by fasting.
There is a future possibility of turning towards God for everyone, even for the atheist or the one who never thinks of God. The future possibility may only realise after ten thousand years and even then it can only come by practising Yoga.
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The special Grace of the Divine is for the seekers of the Divine—for the others it is a Cosmic Will acting through their Karma.
That kind of Yogic Shakti is not the same as the Divine Shakti, Even the Asura and the Rakshasa have powers. The real Yoga Shakti is that which comes from contact or union with the Divine consciousness and its workings.
Spiritual aims and methods are not easy or natural (e.g., as quarrellings, sex-indulgence, greed, indolence, acquiescence in all imperfections are easy and natural) and if people become disciples, they are supposed to follow spiritual aims and endeavours, however hard and above ordinary nature and not the things that are easy and natural.
Allow a quiet and steady will to progress to be settled in you ; learn the habit of a silent, persistent and thorough assimilation of what the Mother puts into you. This is the sound way to advance.
It is dangerous to think of giving up "all barriers of discrimination and defence against what is trying to descend" upon you. Have you thought what this would
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mean if what is descending is something not in consonance with the divine Truth, perhaps even adverse ? An Adverse Power would ask no better condition for getting control over the seeker. It is only the Mother's force and the Divine Truth that one should admit without barriers. And even there one must keep the power of discernment in order to detect anything false that comes masquerading as the Mother's force and the divine Truth, and keep too the power of rejection that will throwaway all mixture.
If the central will is sincere, each recognition of a mistake can become a stepping stone to a truer movement and a
Remember the Mother and, though physically far from her, try to feel her with you and act according to what your inner being tells you would be her Will. Then you will be best able to feel her presence and mine and carry our atmosphere around you as a protection and a zone of quietude and light accompanying you everywhere.
The spiritual union must begin from within and spread out from there; it cannot be based on anything exterior—for, if so based, the union cannot be spiritual or real. That is the great mistake which so many make here : they put the whole emphasis on the external vital or physical relation with the Mother, insist on a
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vital interchange or else physical contact and when they do not get it to their satisfaction, enter into all kinds of disturbances, revolt, doubt, depression.
Even the physical must be able to feel invisibly the Mother's closeness, her concrete presence—then alone can the union be truly based and completed and then alone can any physical closeness or contact find its true value and fulfil its spiritual purpose. Till then any physical contact is of value only so far as it helps the inner sadhana, but how much can be given and what will help or hinder, the Mother only can judge, the sadhak cannot be the judge.
The sadhaks always imagine in their ignorance that when the Mother sees more of one person than of another, it is because of personal preference and that she is giving more love and help to that person. That is altogether a mistake.
The only safe thing is to concentrate on the inner union foremost and altogether, to make that the one thing to be achieved and to leave aside all claims and demands for anything external, remaining satisfied with what the Mother gives and relying wholly on her wisdom and solicitude.
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Those are the Mother's children closest to her who are open to her, close to her in her inner being, one with her will—not those who come bodily nearest to her.
To know the outer Mother truly one must know what is within her and not look at "the outer appearances only. That is only possible if one meets her with the inner being and grows into her consciousness—those who seek an outer relation only cannot do that.
If you keep the wideness and calm and also the love for the Mother in the heart, then all is safe—for it means the double foundation of the Yoga.
If they insist on seeing the Mother or on remaining when she wants them to go or are in a bad mood and throw it on her, it is very harmful for them to see her. Each should be contented with what the Mother gives them. The one thing important is to keep the inner attitude and establish the inner connection with the Mother independent of all outward circumstances.
Let the inner contact with the Mother increase— unless that is there, the outer contacts if too much multiplied easily degenerate into a routine.
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But the coming near to the Mother should be in the inner rooms, not the outer. For in the inner rooms one can always enter and even arrange to stay there permanently.
Mistakes come from people bringing their ego, their personal feeling (likes and dislikes), their sense of prestige or their convenience, pride, sense of possession, etc. into the work. Harmony cannot be brought about by external organisation only; inner harmony there must be or else there will always be clash and disorder.
A contempt for others is out of place, especially since the Divine is in all. Evidently, the activities and aspirations of men are not trivial and worthless, for all life is a growth of the soul out of the darkness towards the Light. But our attitude is that humanity cannot grow out of its limitations by the ordinary means adopted by the human mind, politics, social reforms, philanthropy, etc. —these can only be temporary or local palliatives. The only true escape is a change of consciousness, a change into a greater, wider and purer way of being, and a life and action based upon that change.
The eye of the Yogin sees not only the outward events and persons and causes, but the enormous forces which precipitate them into action. When one is habituated
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to see the things behind, one is no longer prone to be touched by the outward aspects—or to expect any remedy from political, institutional or social changes; the only way out is through the descent of a consciousness which is not the puppet of these forces but is greater than they are and can force them either to change or disappear.
One must know that one is ignorant before one can begin to know.
When one feels the Divine and feels others in the Divine, then the real harmony comes. Meanwhile what there can be is the goodwill and unity founded on the feeling of a common divine goal and the sense of being all children of the Mother.
Each person has his own freedom of choice up to a certain point—unless he makes the full surrender. The Divine can lead, he does not drive. The help can only be offered, not imposed.
The Divine Grace is there ready to act at every moment, but it manifests as one grows out of the Law of Ignorance into the Law of Light.
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One man who earnestly pursues the Yoga is of more value than a thousand well-known men.
The Yogi is one who is already established in realisation—the sadhak is one who is getting or still trying to get realisation.
Remember that no personality and no power is to be allowed to possess you. The Divine Force will not act in this way ; it will work first to purify, to widen and enlighten the consciousness, to open it to Light and Truth, to awake the heart and the psychic being. Only afterwards will it take gradual and quiet control through a pure and conscious surrender.
Few are those from whom the Grace withdraws, but many are those who withdraw from the Grace.
It is not what others think of you that matters, but what you are yourself.
One rule for you I can lay down, "Do not do, say or think anything which you would want to conceal. from the Mother".
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Those who are able to open to the Divine receive Him—but also to those who can wait for the Divine, the Divine comes.
Cruelty and falsehood are the two things that separate most from the Divine.
He who would win high spiritual degrees, must pass endless tests and examinations. But most are anxious -only to bribe the examiner.
Selfishness is the only sin, meanness the only vice, hatred the only criminality. All else can easily be turned into good, but these are obstinate resisters of deity.
The sign of dawning Knowledge is to feel that as yet I know little or nothing ; and yet, if I could only know my knowledge, I already possess everything.
Nothing in the world can be understood by itself, but only by that which is beyond it. If we would know all, we must turn our gaze to that which is beyond all.
Be cheerful and confident. Doubt and desire and Co. are there, no doubt, but the Divine is there also inside
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you. Open your eyes and look and look till the veil is rent and you see Him or Her.
When knowledge is fresh in us, then it is invincible ; when it is old, it loses its virtue. This is because God moves always forward.
When people think of leaving the Ashram, it is not due to the pressure of Yoga, but to the pressure of something in them that negates the Yoga. If one follows one's psychic being and higher mental call, no amount of pressure of Yoga can produce such results. People talk as if the Yoga had some maleficent force in it which produces these results. It is on the contrary the resistance to Yoga that does it.
Beautiful is the face of the Divine Mother, but she too can be hard and terrible. Nay, then, is Immortahty a plaything to be given lightly to a child, or the divine life a prize without effort or the crown for a weakling ? Strive rightly and thou shalt have; trust and thy trust shall in the end be justified; but the dread Law of the
Those who are poor, ill-born and ill-bred are not
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the common herd; the common herd are all who are satisfied with pettiness and average humanity.
Rasa (taste) of poetry, painting or physical work is not the thing to go after. What gives the interest in Yoga is the rasa of the Divine and of the divine consciousness which means the rasa of Peace, of Silence, of inner Light and Bliss, of growing inner Knowledge, of increasing inner Power, of the Divine Love, of all the infinite fields of experience that open to one with the opening of the inner consciousness. The true rasa of poetry, painting or any other activity is only found when these things are part of the working of the Divine Force in you, and you feel it is that and it exists in the joy of that working.
Tobacco taken in any form spoils the spiritual atmosphere.
There is a sovereign royalty in taking no thought for oneself. To have needs is to assert a weakness; to claim something proves that we lack what we claim. To desire is to be impotent; it is to recognise our limitations and confess our incapacity to overcome them...
For all is within our reach, only the egoistic limits of our being prevents us from enjoying the whole universe
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as completely and concretely as we possess our own body and its immediate surroundings.
As soon as you go deep enough, you meet something that is one in all. All meet in the Divine. But if you cannot feel one with somebody, it means you have not gone deep enough in your feeling.
As long as you remain in your corner and follow the course of the ordinary life, you are not touched or hurt; but once you come in contact with the Divine, there are only two ways open to you. You surrender and merge in it, and your surrender enlarges and glorifies you; or you revolt and all your possibilities are destroyed and your powers ebb away and are drawn from you into That which you oppose.
We find in others what is in us. If we always find mud around us, it proves that there is mud somewhere in us.
Our best friend is he who loves us in the best of ourselves and yet does not ask us to be otherwise than we are.
Before deciding that something is wrong in others or in circumstances, you must be quite sure of the correct-
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ness of your judgment,—and which judgment is correct so long as one lives in the ordinary consciousness that is based on ignorance and filled with falsehood ? Only the Truth-consciousness can judge. So it is better, in all circumstances, to leave the judgment to the Divine.
Titles give no value to a man unless he has acquired them in the service of the Divine.
Without the Divine life is a painful illusion, with the Divine all is bliss.....It is in a sincere consecration to the Divine that we can find relief from our too human sufferings.
The peace must be immense, the quietness deep and still, the calm unshakable, and the trust in the Divine ever-increasing.
The body should reject illness as energetically as in the mind we reject falsehood.
There are two methods of uniting oneself with the Divine. The one is to concentrate in the heart and go deep to find there His Presence; the other is to throw oneself into His arms, to nestle there, as a child nestles
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in the arms of its mother, with a complete surrender; and of these two the former seems to me to be easier.
From everybody is demanded only what he has, what he is, nothing more, but nothing less also.
If you are physically away from me and if you think of me all the time, you will be surely nearer to me than if you were seated near me but thinking about other things.
The best thing is to consider oneself neither great nor small, neither very important nor insignificant, because we are nothing by ourselves. We must want to be only what the Divine Will wants us to be.
The more one advances on the road the more modest one becomes and the more one sees that one has done nothing in comparison to what remains to be done. It is when one feels like a blind man that one begins to be ready for the illumination.
All fear must be overcome and replaced by a total confidence in the Divine Grace.
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One cannot help others to overcome their griefs and sufferings unless one overcomes them in oneself and becomes master of one's sentiments and reactions.
It is not one person or the other that attracts you. It is the eternal feminine in the lower nature that attracts the eternal masculine in the lower nature and creates an illusion in the mind; it is the great play, obscure and half-conscious, of the forces of the unillumined Nature; and as soon as one succeeds in escaping from its blind and violent whirlpool, one perceives very soon that all desires and all attractions evaporate; there remains only the ardent aspiration towards the Divine.
Intellectual culture is indispensable for creating a good, wide, supple and rich mental instrument, but its action stops there.
For climbing above the mind it is more often a hindrance than a help, because, in general, a refined and educated mind finds its satisfaction in itself and rarely wants to remain silent for being surpassed.
I have always thought that something in the character of the teacher was responsible for the indiscipline of his students. It is not with severity but with self-control that one can govern the children.
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To will what God wills—that is the supreme secret.
To the Divine you are worth no more than what you have given Him.
Let us be always very careful to avoid all that might encourage in us the spirit of display.
A noblest courage is to recognise one's faults.
To be above offence or insult makes one truly great.
To speak always the truth is the highest tide of nobility.
It is through Beauty that the Divine manifests in the physical, in the mental through Knowledge, in the vital through Power, and in the psychic through Love.
An impulsive person who cannot control himself has a disordered life. Do not act under an impulse.
The nobility of a being is measured by its capacity of gratitude.
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Concentration upon oneself means decay and death— concentration on the Divine alone brings life and growth and realisation.
Closeness to the Divine will always grow with the growth of consciousness, equanimity and love.
Jealousy comes from a narrowness of the mind and a weakness of the heart. It is a great pity that so many are attacked by it.
A very very quiet head is indispensable for a clear understanding and vision and a right action.
Do not mind the stupidity of others, mind yours.
All the lower movements have to be conquered if ever anything divine is to be established upon earth.
Each one is given what he truly needs, in fact what he is capable of receiving and utilising. If he asks for more I rarely refuse to give—but often it is more than what he can receive and then it creates a disorder and sometimes even a catastrophe.
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It is the Divine Presence that gives value to life. This Presence is the source of all peace, all joy, all security. Find this Presence in yourself and all your difficulties will disappear.
When you give yourself to the accomplishment of an unselfish aim, never expect the ordinary people to praise and support you. On the contrary they will always fight against you, hate and curse you. But the Divine will be with you.
It is a dangerous illness : laziness.
I am always seated in your heart, consciously living in you.
In order to progress, Nature destroys while the Divine Consciousness stimulates growth and finally transforms.
To recognise the presence of a "disharmonious atmosphere" is useful only so far as it makes in each one the will to change it into a harmonious atmosphere and to do that the first important step is for each one to get out of his own limited point of view in order to understand the point of view of others. It is more important
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for each one to find the mistake in himself rather than insist on the mistake of others.
Do not forget even for a moment that all this has been created by Him out of Himself. Not only He is present in everything, but also He is everything. The differences are only in expression and manifestation. If you forget this you lose everything.
If you refuse to become a docile and surrendered servant of the Divine and of the Master who manifests Him, it means that you will remain a slave of your egoism, your vanity, your presumptuous ambition, and a toy in the hands of the Rakshasas who allure you with brilliant images in their attempt—not always unsuccessful—to possess you.
One must be able to control oneself before one can hope to govern others.
Always circumstances come to reveal the hidden weaknesses that have to be overcome.
When temptation comes, resist it—do not yield to it.
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By yogic discipline one can not only foresee destiny but can alter it, change it almost wholly.
If you obey all your fancies, you will never get control over yourself, it is your fancies that will control you. Most people when they feel bored, instead of making an endeavour to rise one step higher in their consciousness, come down one step lower; they come down even below the level where they were and they do most stupid things. They make themselves vulgar in the hope of amusing themselves. That is how men take to drink, spoil their health, deaden their brain. If they had risen instead of falling they would have profited by the occasion in making a progress.
In calamities, when it is very painful, they seek what they call "diversion", they do stupid things, drag their consciousness down, instead of raising it. If there is anything extremely painful happening to you, never try to deaden yourself, to forget, to descend into unconsciousness. Rather to go forward, get into the heart of your grief: you will find there the fight, the truth, the force and the joy which the pain hides. But for that you must be firm and refuse to slip down.
Honesty is indispensable for Yoga. To try to cheat the Divine is worse than to try to cheat a human being and much more foolish.
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The true power is always quiet. Restlessness, agitation, impatience are the sure signs of weakness and imperfection.
The closer you come to the Divine, the more you live under a shower of overwhelming evidence of His immeasurable Grace.
Do not think yourself big or small, very important or very unimportant; for we are nothing in ourselves. We must only will to become what the Divine wills of us.
The true consciousness is incapable of feeling superior. It is only the small consciousness that seeks to show superiority. Even a child is more developed than such a being; for it is spontaneous in its movements. Rise above all smallness. Do not be interested in any other thing than your relation with the Divine, what you wish to do for Him.
GODS
The Gods, as has already been said, are in origin and essence permanent Emanations of the Divine put forth from the Supreme by the Transcendent Mother, the Adya Shakti.
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The Adya Shakti is the Supreme Consciousness and Power above the universe and it is by her that all the Gods are manifested, and even the Supramental Ishwara comes into manifestation through her.
The Gods cannot be transformed, for they are typal and not evolutionary beings, they can come for conversion, that is to say, to give up their own ideas and outlook on things and conform themselves to the higher Will and Supramental Truth of the Divine.
There is and can be no psychic being in a non-evolutionary creature like the Asura; there can be none in a god who does not need one for his existence. But what the god has is a Purusha and a Prakriti or Energy of nature of that Purusha. If any being of the typal worlds wants to evolve, he has to come down to earth and take a human body and accept to share in the evolution.
There is only one psychic being for each human being, but the beings of the higher planes e.g., the Gods of the Overmind can manifest in more than one human body at a time by sending different emanations into different bodies.
The Overmind is the world of the gods and the-gods are not merely powers but have forms also. It is the physical mind which believes only what is physical that denies them.
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Whatever name is called the Power that answers is the Mother. Each name indicates a certain aspect of the Divine and is limited by that aspect; the Mother's Power is universal.
Sri Aurobindo...speaks of the gods of the Overmind who are very much like human beings; they are infinitely greater and more powerful, but with characteristics and reactions very similar to those of men. Beyond them one experiences the impersonal Divine. But beyond this experience is the Divine who is the Person himself. To reach this transcendent supreme Person (Puru-shot tama) one has to pass through the impersonal.
GREAT MEN
People have begun to try to prove that great men were not great, which is a very big mistake. If greatness is not appreciated by men, the world will become mean, small, dull, narrow and tamasic.
Outer greatness is not the aim of Yoga. But that is no reason why one should not recognise the part played by greatness in the order of the universe or the place of great men of action, great poets and artists, etc. It is
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the power in them that is great and that power comes from the Divine—by their actions and greatness they help the world and aid the cosmic purpose.
Vices are simply an overflow of energy in regulated channels. Great men have more energy and the energy comes out in what men call vices as well as in what men call virtues. Why should the Divine care for the vices of great men ? Is he a policeman ? So long as one is in the ordinary nature, one has capacities and defects, virtues and vices. When one goes beyond, there are no virtues and vices,—for these things do not belong to the Divine Nature.
There are some men who are self-evidently superhuman, great spirits who are only using the human body. Europe calls them supermen, we call them Vibhutis. They are manifestations of Nature, of divine power presided over by a spirit commissioned for the purpose, and that spirit is an emanation from the Almighty, who accepts human strength and weakness but is not bound by them. They are above morality and ordinarily without a conscience, acting according to their own nature. For they are not men developing upwards from the animal to the divine and struggling against their lower natures, but beings already fulfilled and satisfied with themselves. Even the holiest of them
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have a contempt for the ordinary law and custom and break them easily and without remorse.
The Rakshasa is the supreme and thoroughgoing individualist, who believes life to be meant for his own untrammelled self-fulfilment and self-assertion. A necessary element in humanity, he is particularly useful in revolutions. The Rakshasa is not an altruist. If by satisfying himself he can satisfy others, he is pleased; but he does not make that his motive. If he has to trample on others to satisfy himself, he does so without compunction. The Rakshasa has Kama, he has no Prema. But the Vibhuti, though he takes self-gratification and enjoyment on his way, never comes for self-gratification and enjoyment. He comes, for work, to help man on his way, the world in its evolution.
HUMAN PROGRESS
Inferior mankind gravitates downward from mind towards life and body; average mankind dwells constantly in mind limited by and looking towards life and body; superior mankind levitates upward either to idealised mentality or to pure idea, direct truth of knowledge and spontaneous truth of existence; supreme mankind rises to divine beatitude and from that level either goes upward to pure Sat and Parabrahman or remains to beatify
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