CHAPTER XXIV KNOWLEDGE—THE LIGHT THAT FULFILS CATEGORIES OF KNOWLEDGE PART III ACCORDING to ancient Indian tradition there are three principal grades or categories of spiritual knowledge: ātmajñāna or knowledge of one's individual soul or self; brahmajñāna or knowledge of the universal and transcendent Self or Spirit, and bhagavatjñāna or knowledge of the Divine, the sole and supreme Being. It is essential to keep this distinction well in mind lest we confound the ultimate values of the spiritual life and fail to appreciate the comprehensive greatness of the aim of the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. Ordinarily—and this is a fairly

CHAPTER VIII THE EGO—THE DESIRE-SOUL PART I WE have seen that the integral surrender of the human being is an essential pre-requisite of his complete union with the Divine and the total transformation of his nature. We have also seen that, paradoxical as it may appear, it is the ego that at once initiates and impedes this surrender. In order that our surrender may be sincere and integral, we must now try to understand what this ego is,—its origin, purpose, characteristic function, growth and end—and how we can proceed to deal with it in the light of a true knowledge, instead of rushing to grapple with it in the dimness of our half- baked ethical or

CHAPTER I WHAT IS YOGA? "GREATER than the doers of askesis (tapasya), greater even than the men of knowledge and greater than the men of works is the Yogi. Therefore, O Aujuna, become a Yogi." (The Gita, Chap. 6.46). Such being the view of the Gita, which is itself a massive teaching of a synthetic Yoga, and a part of the highest canonical triad of ancient Hinduism, it would not be unjustifiable to conclude that Yoga was regarded in ancient India as the very heart of spirituality. The other spiritual ways and methods are but approaches, preparations, subsidiary aids to purification and progress, but the way of Yoga is the royal way, the most rapidly eff

CHAPTER XXXI "THE HOUR OF GOD" THE modem age is an age of singular paradoxes and unprecedented promises. On the one hand, man is ardently yearning for unity and harmony, and, on the other, he is frantically tearing himself and his society with divisions and discords. He is athirst for peace and the cessation of all that threatens the progressive tenor of his life, and yet he is driven to create and multiply a myriad causes of conflict, within him and without. He longs so much for a harmonious advance of the collectivity and a general well-being of his species, and yet he is so helplessly dominated by aggressive, individualistic tendencies and an exclusive self-assertion.

CHAPTER XXVI THE INTEGRAL LIBERATION PART II "A DIVINE unity of supreme Spirit and its supreme nature is the integral liberation."¹ In these words Sri Aurobindo indicates the essence of the liberation we aim at in the Integral Yoga. It is not only liberation from the lower nature of the three gunas into the peace and silence of the immutable Self that we seek, but liberation in the Divine, the supreme Spirit, and it cannot be rally achieved so long as our nature is not also liberated from its inferior modes into the luminous Consciousness-Force of the Supemature, para prakrti. For, in the Divine there is an eternal harmony between Light and Force, sile

CHAPTER XIX KARMAYOGA AND ITS INDISPENSABILITY PART III THE PERFECTION OF KARMAYOGA We have seen that man being essentially a composite organism and not a mere sum-total of heterogeneous parts and powers,—which is only a superficial aspect of him —neither Karmayoga, nor Bhaktiyoga, nor Jnânayoga can become perfect in itself without the others also becoming perfect and complete at the same time. A certain insular perfection can be attained, as we have already conceded, by Bhaktiyoga, without much direct help from Jnânayoga and Karmayoga, or by Jnânayoga without bringing in much of the elements of karma and bhakti; but the perfection, th

CHAPTER XXVIII THE INTEGRAL TRANSFORMATION PART II THE RATIONALE OF TRANSFORMATION WE have already learnt that an integral and dynamic union with the Divine is the goal of the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. What does this integral union mean? It means that we have to be united with the Divine in all the states, poises and modes of His being and our being. The Divine is not only the Transcendent Absolute; He is not only the infinite, impassive Impersonal; He is all that exists, here as well as there above. He is both Spirit and Nature, Time and the Timeless, Space and the Spaceless, all these names and forms that we see and those that

CHAPTER XVIII KARMA YOGA AND ITS INDISPENSABILITY PART II THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF KARMAYOGA KARMAYOGA consists in offering all the movements of our physical being, particularly the works done by our body, to the omnipresent Master of our being. Its primary rule, as the Gitâ insists, is the renunciation of all desire for the fruit of our action, and all preference even. in the choice of action. Action has to be done in the beginning as a sacrifice to the Lord of the universal sacrifice, yajñeśwara, as an individual contribution to the sum total of the collective evolutionary effort. "The essential of the sacrifice of work

At The Feet of The Mother PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION A substantial demand for this book from America has made it necessary to bring out a second edition. But as the demand is urgent, there is no time to prepare an index and make certain additions and alterations, which I should have very much liked to do. I have, however, revised the whole book, made some slight changes and corrections, and elaborated the contents. Translations of some Sanskrit words and phrases have been appended in the footnotes. The demand for this book is one of the minor indications of the growing interest the elite of the West are taking in Sri Aurobindo and the Moth

CHAPTER XXI LOVE—ITS PLACE AND POWER PART II THE love we ordinarily offer to the Divine when we turn towards Him is not always of the purest kind in the beginning. Its nature depends upon the part of our being from which it proceeds. It may be our physical being turning unintelligently, mechanically, inertly, under the dull drive of a secret impulsion, towards the Divine. Our love then takes a physical form—merely external, ritualistic or ceremonial—and partakes somewhat of the nature of our outer human relations. Or it may be our vital-emotional being turning towards the Divine. Our love is then characterised by some strength and intensity of t