Surrender, Self-offering and Consecration Surrender is the decision taken to hand over the responsibility of your life to the Divine. Without this decision nothing is at all possible; if you do not surrender, the Yoga is entirely out of the question. Everything else comes naturally after it, for the whole process starts with surrender. You can surrender either through knowledge or through devotion. You may have a strong intuition that the Divine alone is the truth and a luminous conviction that without the Divine you cannot manage. Or you may have a spontaneous feeling that this line is the only way of being happy, a strong psychic desire to belong exclusively to the Div

Miscellany                   If renouncing the slightest happiness enables him to realise a greater one, the intelligent man should re- nounce the lesser for the sake of the greater. If he seeks his own happiness by harming others, bound by hate, he remains the slave of hatred. To neglect what should be done and to do what should be neglected is to increase in arrogance and negli- gence. To be constantly mindful of the true nature of the body, not to seek what is evil, to pursue with perse- verance what is good, is to have right understanding; thus, all one's impurity disappears. Having killed his father

26 May 1929 If our will is only an expression or echo of the uni versal will, where is the place of individual initiative? Is the individual only an instrument to register uni versal movements? Has he no power of creation or origination? All depends upon the plane of consciousness from which you are looking at things and speaking of them or on the part of the being from which you act. If you look from one plane of consciousness, the individual will appear to you as if he were not only an instrument and recorder, but a creator. But look from another and higher plane of consciousness with a wider view of things and you will see that this is only an

The Mind Just as the arrow-maker straightens his arrows, so also the intelligent man straightens his thoughts, wavering and fickle, difficult to keep straight, difficult to master. Just as a fish cast out of the water, our mind quivers and gasps when it leaves behind the kingdom of Mara. Difficult to master and unstable is the mind, forever in search of pleasure. It is good to govern it. A mind that is controlled brings happiness. The sage should remain master of his thoughts, for they are subtle and difficult to seize and always in search of pleasure. A mind that is well guided brings happiness. Wandering

Craving The craving of a heedless man grows like the Maluva creeper. Like a monkey seeking fruits in the forest, he leaps from life to life. For one who in the world is overcome by the craving that clings, his miseries increase like Birana grass after the rains. For one who in this world can overcome this craving that clings and is so difficult to master, his sorrows fall away like water from a lotus leaf. To all who are gathered here, I say for your welfare: pull out the roots of your craving, as you uproot Birana grass. Do not let Mara crush you again and again as a flood crushes a reed. As a tree, tho

* THE MOTHER - Tokyo 1917

The Supramental Realisation                    In order to know what the Supramental Realisation will be like, the first step, the first condition is to know what the supramental consciousness is. All those who have been, in one way or another, in contact with it have had some glimpse of the realisation to be. But those who have not, can yet aspire for that realisation, just as they can aspire to get the supramental knowledge. True knowledge means awareness by identity: once you get in touch with the supramental world, you can say something about its descent, but not before. What you can say before is that there will be a new creation upon earth; this you say thro

The Supramental Descent                    Do you know what the flower which we have called “Successful Future” signifies when given to you? It signifies the hope  nay, even the promise  that you will participate in the descent of the supramental world. For that descent will be the successful consummation of our work, a descent of which the full glory has not yet been or else the whole face of life would have been different. By slow degrees the Supramental is exerting its influence; now one part of the being and now another feels the embrace or the touch of its divinity; but when it comes down in all its self-existent power, a supreme radical change will seize the who

 Union with the Divine Consciousness and Will The force which, when absorbed in the Ignorance, takes the form of vital desires is the same which, in its pure form, constitutes the push, the dynamis towards transformation. Consequently, you must beware at the same time of indulging freely in desires, thinking them to be needs which must be satisfied, and of rejecting the vital force as positively evil. What you should do is to throw the doors of your being wide open to the Divine. The moment you conceal something, you step straight into Falsehood. The least suppression on your part pulls you immediately down into unconsciousness. If you want to be fully conscio

Appendix To Questions and Answers 1929 Sri Aurobindo's explanations of certain phrases and passages in Questions and Answers 1929 Appendix to Questions and Answers 1929 The Mother asks: “What do you want the Yoga for? To get power?”¹ Does “power” here mean the power to communicate one's own experience to others? What does it precisely mean? Power is a general term – it is not confined to a power to communicate. The most usual form of power is control over things, persons, events, forces. The Mother says: “What is required is concentration  concentration upon the Divine with a view to an integral and absolu