V SINCERITY The first condition of the spiritual life, and the last condition as well, is sincerity. One must sincerely want the spiritual life in order to have it. The soul—the psychic being—is always sincere: it is made of the very stuff of sincerity, for it is a part, or a spark of the Divine Consciousness itself. When one feels the call, turns one's back to the worldly life, moves towards the life spiritual, one follows then the urge of one's true being, the psychic being: one is then naturally sincere, firmly and spontaneously devoted to the Divine, unequivocally loyal and faithful to the Beloved and the Master. This central sincerity, however, has to be wo

-001_Publisher^s Note.htm PUBLISHERS' NOTE The essay entitiled "The Body Human" was first published in the Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, Calcutta (1945). The other essays appeared all in the Quarterly, The Advent, Madras. The Notes and Comments were editorials written for The Advent (1944-46).

X ORIGIN AND NATURE OF SUFFERING Suffering there is, some say, because the soul takes delight in it: if there was not the soul's delight behind, there would not be any suffering at all. There are still two other positions with regard to suffering which we do not deal with in the present context, namely, (1)that it does not exist at all, the absolute Ananda of the Brahman being the sole reality, suffering, along with the manifested world of which it is a part, is illusion pure and simple, (2)that suffering exists, but it comes not from soul or God but from the Antidivine: it is at the most tolerated by God and He uses it as best as He can for His purp

VII DYNAMIC FATALISM "The supramental change is a thing decreed and inevitable." If it is so, then what is the necessity at all of work and labour and travail— this difficult process of sadhana? The question is rather naive, but it is very often asked. The answer also could be very simple. The change decreed is precisely worked out through the travail: one is the end, the other is the means; the goal and the process, both are decreed and inevitable. If it is argued, supposing none made the effort, even then would the change come about, in spite of man's inaction? Well, first of all, this is an impossible supposition. Man cannot remain idle even for a moment: not on

THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO Part Three NOLINI KANTA GUPTA SRI AUROBINDO LIBRARY MADRAS Publishers: Sri Aurobindo Library 369, Esplanade, George Town. Madras All Rights Reserved First Edition ... 1946 Second Edition ... 1951 Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press Pondicherry printed in India

-018_The Soul^s Odyssey.htm XII THE SOUL'S ODYSSEY Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The Soul that rises with us, our Life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home... Rarely has a poet-a secular poet, I meangiven utterance to a deep spiritual and occult truth with such clarity and felicity. It is, however, quite open to doubt whether Wordsworth himself was fully cognisant of the truth he expressed; the words that were put into his mouth carry a significance and a symbolism considerabl

IV SECTARIANISM OR LOYALTY Modern culture demands that one should not be bound to one creed or dogma, swear by one principle or rule of life or be led blindly by one man. Truth, it is said, has many facets and the human being is also not a Cyclops, a one-eyed creature. To fix oneself to one mode of seeing and believing and even behaving is to be narrow, restricted, sectarian. One must be able to see many standpoints, appreciate views of variance with one's own, appraise the relativity of all standards. Not to be able to do so leads to obscurantism and fanaticism. The Inquisitors were monomaniacs, obsessed by an idée fixe. On the other hand, the wisest coun

IX MATER DOLOROSA Suffering, Distress and Death today hold the earth in thrall. And yet can there be any other issue in temporal life? That seems to be the ineluctable fate for mankind. Ages ago it was declared, the wages of sin is death. Doubters ask, however, if sinners alone suffered, one would not perhaps mind; but along with sinners why should innocents, nay even the virtuous, pass under the axe? What sins indeed babes commit? Are the sins of the fathers truly visited upon coming generations? A queer arrangement, to say the least, if there is a wise and just and benevolent God! Yes, how many honest people, people who strive to live piously, honestly an

THE NEW YEAR INITIATION "O Lord, the world implores Thee to prevent it from falling back always into the same stupidities. "Grant that the mistakes recognised may never be renewed. "Grant, lastly, that its actions may be the exact and sincere expression of its proclaimed ideals-."—1944 (I) This is the New Year Prayer the Mother has formulated for our sake. This is the turn She would have us give to our sadhana for the year. What is the special import of this new orientation? It is, one may say, to direct our efforts towards an objective expression, towards an application to life on the material plane. Page-1 One starts on the

SOME CONCEPTIONS AND MISCONCEPTIONS (1) A question is asked, where, in what stage or level of Involution does the principle of exculsive concentration (the principle of Ignorance) come in? If, as Sri Aurobindo says, it comes subsequently at a later stage, where was it then before? was it not in the Absolute Reality itself ? There can be nothing that is not inherent in the Absolute Reality. We all know, nothing comes out of nothing. Then, if it is in the original Reality already, why should it come out at a later stage and not be active from the very beginning? This standpoint seems to have been anticipated by some schools (Visishtadwaita Vedanta