7 – What men call knowledge is the reasoned acceptance of false appearances. Wisdom looks behind the veil and sees. Reason divides, fixes details and contrasts them; Wisdom unifies, marries contrasts in a single harmony. All that Sri Aurobindo writes about knowledge, reason, Wisdom is said in order to bring us out of the rut of conventional thinking, and, if possible, make us perceive the reality behind the appearances. As a general rule, with a few very rare exceptions, men are content to observe more or less accurately everything that happens around them, and sometimes within themselves, and to classify all these observations according to one superficial

As a rule, they did it only partially, through an emanation, not a total descent. For example, Vivekananda is said to have been an incarnation — a Vibhūti – of Shiva; but Shiva himself has clearly expressed his will to come down on earth only with the supramental world. When the earth is ready for the supramental life, he will come. And almost all these beings will manifest – they are waiting for that moment, they do not want any of the present struggle and the obscurity. Certainly Narada was one of those who came here… In fact, it was for fun! He liked to play with circumstances. But he had no knowledge of the psychic being and that must have prevented him from recognising the p

Jnana (Knowledge) Third Period of Commentaries (1962 - 1966)  69 – Sin and virtue are a game of resistance we play with God in His efforts to draw us towards perfection. The sense of virtue helps us to cherish our sins in secret. These Aphorisms clearly express the futility of our ideas of sin and virtue. You had also said, following your experience of 3 February 1958,¹ “I saw that what helps people to become supramental or prevents them from doing so, is very different from what our usual moral notions imagine.” You said besides, “What is very clear is that our appraisal of what is divine or undivine is not correct… At

118 – The love of solitude is a sign of the disposition towards knowledge; but knowledge itself is only achieved when we have a settled perception of solitude in the crowd, in the battle and in the mart. 119 – If when thou art doing great actions and moving giant results, thou canst perceive that thou art doing nothing, then know that God has removed His seal from thy eyelids. 120 – If when thou sittest alone, still and voiceless on the mountain-top, thou canst perceive the revolu- tions thou art conducting, then hast thou the divine vision and art freed from appearances. 121 –The love of inaction i

Jnana (Knowledge) Second Period of Commentaries (1960 - 1961) 13 – They told me, “These things are hallucinations.” I inquired what was a hallucination and found that it meant a subjective or psychical experience which corresponds to no objective or no physical reality. Then I sat and wondered at the miracles of the human reason. What does Sri Aurobindo mean by “the miracles of the human reason”? In this aphorism, by they Sri Aurobindo means the materialists, the scientists and, in a general way, all those who only believe in physical reality and consider human reason to be the one infallible judge. Furthermore, the t

495 − I used to hate and avoid pain and resent its infliction; but now I find that had I not so suffered, I would not now possess, trained and perfected, this infi- nitely and multitudinously sensible capacity of delight in my mind, heart and body. God justifies Himself in the end even when He has masked Himself as a bully and a tyrant. 496 − I swore that I would not suffer from the world's grief and the world's stupidity and cruelty and injustice and I made my heart as hard in endurance as the nether millstone and my mind as a polished surface of steel. I no longer suffered, but enjoyment had passed away from me. Then God broke my

As far as moral things are concerned, this is absolutely obvious, it is indisputable – all moral suffering moulds your character and leads you straight to ecstasy, when you know how to take it. But when it comes to the body… It is true that doctors have said that if one can teach the body to bear pain, it becomes more and more resilient and less easily disrupted – this is a concrete result. In the case of people who know how to avoid getting completely upset as soon as they have a pain somewhere, who are able to bear it quietly, to keep their balance, it seems that the body's capacity to bear the disorder without going to pieces increases. This is a great achievement. I hav

175 – Because a good man dies or fails and the evil live and triumph, is God therefore evil? I do not see the logic of the consequence. I must first be convinced that death and failure are evil; I sometimes think that when they come, they are our supreme momentary good. But we are the fools of our hearts and nerves and argue that what they do not like or desire, must of course be an evil! But what about those who are unlucky and always fail in everything they do? First, once and for all, you should know that luck, good or bad, does not exist. What to our ignorance looks like luck is simply the result of causes we know n

If everything is God's will, what is the use of personal will? In the universe and more particularly upon earth everything is part of the divine plan executed by Nature and everything is necessary for its fulfilment. Personal will is one of Nature's means of action and indispensable for her working. So personal will is in a way part of God's will.  However, to understand properly, we must first agree on the meaning that is given to the word will. Will, as it is usually conceived, is the elaboration of a thought, to which is added a force, a power of fulfilment accompanied by an impulse to carry it out. That is the description of human will. Divine will is quit

327 – India had three fortresses of a communal life, the village community, the larger joint family and the orders of the Sannyasins; all these are broken or breaking with the stride of egoistic conceptions of social life; but is not this after all only the breaking of these imperfect moulds on the way to a larger and diviner communism? 328 – The individual cannot be perfect until he has sur- rendered all he now calls himself to the divine Being. So also, until mankind gives all it has to God, never shall there be a perfected society. Sri Aurobindo writes here in a clear and definite way what I tried to express before: no perfection