CHAPTER 6 Quieting the Vital The Limitations of Morality There is an area of our being which is a source of both great difficulty and great power. A source of difficulty, because it blurs all the communications from outside or above by frantically opposing our efforts to silence the mind and bogging down the consciousness at its own level of petty occupations and interests, thus hindering its free movement toward other regions. A source of power, because it is the outcropping of the great force of life in us. This is the region located between the heart and the sex center, which Sri Aurobindo calls the vital. It is a place full of every possible mixture: pleasure is inex

CHAPTER 12 The Superconscient A triple change of consciousness, then, charts our journey on earth: the discovery of the psychic being or immanent Spirit, the discovery of Nirvana or transcendent Spirit, and the discovery of the central being of cosmic Spirit. This is probably the real meaning of the Father-Son-Holy Ghost trinity of the Christian tradition. Our purpose is not to decide which experience is better than the other, but to verify them for ourselves. Philosophies and religions dispute about the priority of different aspects of God and different Yogins, Rishis and Saints have preferred this or that philosophy or religion. Our business is not to dispute any of th

CHAPTER 11 Oneness Sri Aurobindo was to spend a whole year in the Alipore jail awaiting the verdict. He had had no hand in the unsuccessful assassination attempt; organizing the rebellion had nothing to do with isolated acts of terrorism. When I was arrested and hurried to the Lal Bazar police station I was shaken in faith for a while, for I could not look into the heart of His intention. Therefore I faltered for a moment and cried out in my heart to him, "What is this that has happened to me? I believed that I had a mission to work for the people of my country and until that work was done, I should have Thy protection. Why then am I here and on such a charge?" A day passed and

CHAPTER 9 Sleep and Death Not everyone is capable of consciously leaving his body, or consciously widening his mind and vital, but many of us do so unconsciously, in sleep, just when the little I's of the frontal being are less noisome and less engrossed in their superficial preoccupations. These sundry I's express a fraction of reality, the reality seen by the naked eye, but immense realms stretch beyond them. We have already mentioned a universal Mind, a universal Vital, and a subtle Physical behind this physical shell; now we must try to recover our entire universal reality. There are three methods or stages for achieving this. The first, available to everyone, is sleep

CHAPTER 3 The End of the Intellect Sri Aurobindo had spent fourteen years traveling the Western path; it would take him almost as much time to travel India's path and to reach the "peak" of traditional yogic realizations, the starting-point of his own work. What is most interesting for us, however, is that Sri Aurobindo traveled this traditional path, which we may therefore consider as a preparation, outside all customary rules, as a freelancer, as it were, or rather as an explorer who does not care about precautions and maps, and hence avoids many unnecessary detours simply because he has the courage to forge straight ahead. Thus, it was not in seclusion or in the

PREFACE The age of adventures is over. Even if we reach the seventh galaxy, we will go there helmeted and mechanized, and it will not change a thing for us; we will find ourselves exactly as we are now: helpless children in the face of death, living beings who are not too sure how they live, why they are alive, or where they are going. On the earth, as we know, the times of Cortez and Pizarro are over; one and the same pervasive Mechanism stifles us: the trap is closing inexorably. But, as always, it turns out that our bleakest adversities are also our most promising opportunities, and that the dark passage is only a passage leading to a greater light. Hence, with our backs ag

CHAPTER 10 The Revolutionary Yogi Such are the mental, vital, physical and psychic discoveries that Sri Aurobindo pursued alone, step by step, between the ages of twenty and thirty, simply by following the thread of consciousness. The remarkable thing is that he practiced yoga in circumstances and places where one would usually not do yoga: while giving his lectures in French or English at the State College of Baroda, during his work at the court of the Maharaja, and more and more in the midst of his secret revolutionary activities. The hours of the night that were not devoted to studying his mother tongue or Sanskrit or to political work were spent writing poetry. "

Satprem Sri Aurobindo or The Adventure of Consciousness to The Mother

CHAPTER 13 Under the Auspices of the Gods When he came out of the Alipore jail, Sri Aurobindo found the political scene purged by the executions and mass deportations of the British government. He resumed his work, however, starting a Benagli weekly and another in English, the Karmayogin, with the Gita's very symbolic motto: "Yoga is skill in works." At the risk of a new imprisonment, Sri Aurobindo affirmed once again the ideal of complete independence from and noncooperation with the British--except that now it was not only India's destiny that preoccupied him, but the world's. He had attained that overmental consciousness from which one sees, in a single gla

CHAPTER 2 The Eternal Law The proletariat among us is sunk in ignorance and overwhelmed with distress!1 exclaimed Sri Aurobindo soon after disembarking in India. It was not metaphysical questions that preoccupied him, but questions of action. To act: we are in the world to act. But what action? And above all, what method of action would be the most effective? This very practical concern would remain with Sri Aurobindo from his very first days in India right up to his highest yogic realizations. I personally recall (if you will excuse the digression) traveling to the Himalayas and enjoying a few wonderful days there in the company of a holy man, lost among the pines and the