BODY, THE OCCULT AGENT The body has an individuality of its own. It is an organised formation and acts as a whole in each and all its parts. The human body is, par excellence, such a formation; for it is moved and controlled by the consciousness which overshadows or informs it, which is its master whose will it executes scrupulously. The body is an epitome of the world. It encases within its frame the whole world, particularly the earth—earth itself being an epitome of the world— on a miniature scale, the mikros reproducing all the features and characters of the makros. Such being the case, a wholly conscious body governed and inspired by the

SWEET HOLY TEARS1 The tears that the soul sheds are holy, are sweet; they come bidden by the Divine and are blessed by His Presence. They are like the dew from heaven. For they are pure, they are spontaneous, welling out of a heart of innocent freedom. The feeling is infinitely impersonal, completely egoless: there is only an intense movement of self-giving, total simple self-giving. Tears are the natural expression in one who needs help, who has the complete surrender and simplicity of a child, the abdication of all vanity. Such tears are beautiful in their nature and beneficent in character. They are therefore like dewdrops that belong to heaven as it were and come from t

-002_Publisher^s Note.htm Publishers' Note The writings included in this volume, like those in the preceding volume of the series, are based on talks given by the Mother to the young children of Sri Aurobindo Ashram. They were originally published as Editorials in The advent (1951 & 1952).

WHEN IMPERFECTION IS GREATER THAN PERFECTION A perfected consciousness is attained in the highest status of being, when it is full of light and delight, peace and purity, one with the Divine Consciousness. Such a Consciousness, when it comes down upon earth in its original unmixed clarity, lives as a foreign element and has no real contact with the world; it can have only a very indirect influence upon men and things. If the perfect, the Divine Consciousness has to be truly effective, has to change human and world nature, it must put on partially at least that nature; it must share in the imperfection of ignorance so that it can show how

THE STORY OF CREATION Consciousness is the source and basis of creation. Even the most material object, apparently unconscious, the stone, for example, has inherent in it a vibration of consciousness. Where there is absolutely no consciousness, it is the Inconscient. If you ever descend into the Inconscient, that is to say, further down the scale from the inanimate stone, you will know the difference. The gulf between the stone and the Inconscient is very much, very much indeed, greater than that between the stone and man. For it is a secret consciousness that links man to the stone, but beyond there is a hiatus, something unbridgeable. The Inconscient is the

MENTAL SILENCE Normally the mind is in a turmoil; it is eagerly active. First of all it is preoccupied with its problems and wants their solution. It knows only to think, to see pros and cons, weigh, reason, deduce; it arrives at some kind of conclusion which brings success or failure almost at random. Apart from this conscious or voluntary activity there is in the mind a whole region of involuntary activity; that is to say, it is assailed on all sides by a hundred thoughts, ideas and notions that come from outside and fill your brain cavity and over which you have no control. Each one tries to push forward, secure a place for itself, claim satisfaction and fulfilmen

TOTAL TRANSFORMATION DEMANDS TOTAL REJECTION To a positive side in the sadhana, there must also be a negative one. Realisation or experience, on one side, must be accompanied by rejection of things that oppose it, on the other. People wonder why a beautiful experience fades away too soon or does not repeat easily, why a happy condition does not continue long but is followed almost inevitably by a condition of despond. The reason is very simple. The experience or realisation is not a total one, that is to say, it belongs to a part only of the nature and is not shared by other parts. The sadhak is not of one piece: the whole of hi

TOWARDS REDEMPTION As I have often said, creation is the self-objectivisation of the Supreme Divine; it is the supreme consciousness putting itself out of itself so that it may look at itself. In so doing—in self-objectifying and self-dividing— it scattered itself abroad: the one infinite multiplied itself into infinite atoms. Not only so, in detaching itself from itself the consciousness became the very opposite of itself: consciousness became unconsciousness, spirit became matter, delight became pain, knowledge became ignorance, and light became darkness. Boundless universality was the essential nature of the Divine, now it got clotted into the knots of egoism

THE CENTRAL CONSCIOUSNESS Very often this was the experience: union with the Supreme is established, but as soon as the consciousness was about to settle and merge in the bliss of the union, it was called back and had to turn to the outside world to the ordinary affairs of ordinary consciousness. As if I was given to understand that it was not for me to forget and reject the life of the physical world and pass into the Beyond, but to maintain the contact, the closest contact, between this world and the Beyond and hold both together in one consciousness. The process is somewhat like this: you withdraw the consciousness from the world outside and turn inwar

THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO Part Six NOLINI KANTA GUPTA Sri aurobindo ashram pondicherry Publishers: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Pondicherry All Rights Reserved First Edition .. 1953 Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press Pondicherry Printed in India