X "The meeting of man and God must always mean a penetration and entry of the Divine into the human and a self-immergence of man in the Divinity. "But that immergence is not in the nature of an annihilation. Extinction is not the fulfilment of all this search and passion, suffering and rapture. The game would never have been begun if that were to be its ending. "Delight is the secret. Learn of pure delight and thou shall learn of God. "What then was the commencement of the whole matter ? Existence that multiplied itself for sheer delight of being and plunged into numberless trillions of forms so that it might find itself innumerably. "And what is

XVI "The delight of victory is sometimes less than the attraction of struggle and suffering: nevertheless the laurel and not the cross should be the aim of the conquering human soul. "Souls that do not aspire are God's failures; but Nature is pleased and loves to multiply them because they assure her of stability and prolong her empire. "Those who are poor, ignorant, ill-born or ill-bred are not the common herd; the common herd are all who are satisfied with pettiness and an average humanity. "Help men, but do not pauperise them of their energy; lead and instruct men, but see that their initiative and originality remain intact; take others

THOUGHTS AND GLIMPSES THE MOTHERS TALKS SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM PONDICHERRY First Edition 1989 Editor: Shyam Sundar ©Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1989 Published by Madanlal Himatsingka on behalf of All India Books, Pondicherry-605002. Printed at All India Press, Pondicherry-605001 PRINTED IN INDIA .htm?IsHostedInContentPage=1

  THOUGHTS AND GLIMPSES Contents Pre-Content Editors Note   The Goal   Delight of Being   Man, the Purusha   The End   The Chain   Thoughts and Glimpses

  THOUGHTS AND GLIMPSES Contents Pre-Content Editors Note   The Goal   Delight of Being   Man, the Purusha   The End   The Chain   Thoughts and Glimpses

I Mother distributes the booklet Thoughts and Glimpses, then glances through one of the copies: Five paragraphs dealing with five modes of being or five states of being, and the same thing recurs in all the different domains: "When we have passed beyond knowings, then we shall have Knowledge. Reason was the helper; Reason is the bar." Sri Aurobindo, Thoughts and Glimpses, Cent. Vol. 16, p. 377 This is about the mental being in man, that is, his mental activities; and Sri Aurobindo contrasts knowings with Knowledge. Actually I should be the one to ask you if you know what Sri Aurobindo means by "knowings", and why he contrasts them with Knowledge. For

VIII "God cannot cease from leaning down towards Nature, nor man from aspiring towards the Godhead. It is the eternal relation of the finite to the infinite. When they seem to turn from each other, it is to recoil for a more intimate meeting. "In man nature of the world becomes again self-conscious so that it may take the greater leap towards its Enjoyer. This is the Enjoyer whom unknowingly it possesses, whom life and sensation possessing deny and denying seek. Nature of the world knows not God, only because it knows not itself; when it knows itself, it shall know unalloyed delight of being. "Possession in oneness and not loss in oneness is the secret.

      THOUGHTS AND GLIMPSES THE MOTHERS TALKS SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM PONDICHERRY First Edition 1989 Editor: Shyam Sundar   ©Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1989 Published by Madanlal Himatsingka on behalf of All India Books, Pondicherry-605002.   Printed at All India Press, Pondicherry-605001 PRINTED IN INDIA HOME

VII "If Brahman were only an impersonal abstraction eternally contradicting the apparent fact of our concrete existence, cessation would be the right end of the matter; but love and delight and self-awareness have also to be reckoned. "The universe is not merely a mathematical formula for working out the relation of certain mental abstractions called numbers and principles to arrive in the end at a zero or a void unit, neither is it merely a physical operation embodying a certain equation of forces. It is the delight of a Self-lover, the play of a Child, the endless self-multiplication of a Poet intoxicated with the rapture of His own power of endless creat

Editor's Note In her "Wednesday Classes" attended by the students, teachers and sadhaks of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, the Mother generally began by reading from one of her French translations of Sri Aurobindo's works. After the reading, the Mother commented on the text or answered questions. On November 21, 1956 she began the reading of Sri Aurobindo's Thoughts and Glimpses. The reading ended on April 3, 1957. This volume is a compilation of the talks on Thoughts and Glimpses. The material has been taken from vols. 8 and 9 of the Collected Works of the Mother (Centenary Edition). For quoted passages from Thoughts and Glimpses references are to the Sri Aurobindo Bir