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Acronyms used in the website

SABCL - Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library

CWSA - Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo

CWM - Collected Works of The Mother

Resource name: /E-Library/Disciples/Nolini Kanta Gupta/English/The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo Part - 7/Personal Effort and Will.htm
PERSONAL EFFORT AND WILL In personal effort there is a feeling of effort, of tension: the effort is felt as personal i.e. you rely upon yourself and you have the impression that if you do not do at each step what is to be done all will be lost. Will is different. It is the capacity to concentrate upon what one does so that it may be done well and to continue to do so till the thing is done. Supposing under given circumstances a work has come upon you. Take an artist, for example, a painter. He has an inspiration and has decided to do a painting. He knows very well that if he has not the inspiration he will not be able to do anything good, the painting would
Resource name: /E-Library/Disciples/Nolini Kanta Gupta/English/The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo Part - 7/Mysticism and Occultism.htm
MYSTICISM AND OCCULTISM Mysticism is more or less an emotional relation with what one feels to be a Divine Power—it is a relation very intimate, emotive and intense with something invisible which one takes for the Divine. Occultism is the knowledge of invisible forces and the power to handle them. It is a science, altogether a science. I always compare occultism with chemistry or physics; for occult knowledge is very much like scientific knowledge, only science deals with material objects and forces, while occultism deals with invisible entities and energies, their potentials of combination and association. And as by your chemical or physical knowledge you c
Resource name: /E-Library/Disciples/Nolini Kanta Gupta/English/The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo Part - 7/The Nature and Destiny of Art.htm
Section Six THE NATURE AND DESTINY OF ART True art means the expression of beauty in the material world. In a world wholly converted, that is to say, expressing integrally the divine reality, art must serve as the revealer and teacher of this divine beauty in life. In other words, the artist must be able to enter into communion with the Divine and receive the inspiration as to what should be the form or forms for the material realisation of the divine beauty. At the same time, in expressing true beauty in the physical, he also sets an example, becomes an instrument of education. Art not only creates beauty, but educates the taste of people to find true
Resource name: /E-Library/Disciples/Nolini Kanta Gupta/English/The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo Part - 7/Indian and European Music.htm
INDIAN AND EUROPEAN MUSIC The difference is both in regard to the source and the expression and in an inverse way. In European music a very high—spiritual—inspiration is a rare thing. The psychic source also is very rare. But if at all it is a very high spiritual source or otherwise it is the vital that is the source. The expression is always there, apart from some exceptions naturally; but it is almost always vital, because the source is very often purely vital. At times, as I said, it comes from high above, then it is really marvellous. At times, more rarely, it is psychic: something of it was in the religious music, but it is not frequent. Indian music, on the
Resource name: /E-Library/Disciples/Nolini Kanta Gupta/English/The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo Part - 7/The Body and the Psychic.htm
THE BODY AND THE PSYCHIC I You ask why the body has a limited receptive power. The reason is that in the physical world things must not get mixed up, they must remain somewhat stable, in shape and position. For example, if your body suddenly began to melt and flow towards another, it would be rather troublesome; you would find it disgusting if the body of your neighbour, like a fluid, were to pour into your own fluid body. It is to prevent such a mixture that a greater concentration in masses was necessary, a kind of fixity of force that separates them. Indeed it was to separate one individuality from another that this fixity was needed. And it is
Resource name: /E-Library/Disciples/Nolini Kanta Gupta/English/The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo Part - 7/And This Agile Reason.htm
AND THIS AGILE REASON Reason is an agility gymnast. It can move in all varieties of ways, make infinite twists, the most impossible contortions with equal ease and skill. It does not seek the truth, although it may pretend to do so; for it cannot find the truth. The law of uncertainty or indeterminacy seems also to be the last word of modern Science. What Reason does and can do is to justify, find arguments for whatever position it is put in or called upon to support. Its business is to supply "proofs": it can do so as the spider brings out of itself the whole warp and woof of the cobweb. There is no truth, that is to say, no conclusion which it cannot demon
Resource name: /E-Library/Disciples/Nolini Kanta Gupta/English/The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo Part - 7/The Past Lives and the Psychic Being.htm
PAST LIVES AND THE PSYCHIC BEING Most people are not at all conscious of what is happening in them. Their consciousness or being is a mixture of mental, vital and physical elements, a kind of hotchpotch. There are a few, very few indeed, who are conscious— conscious of what is beyond the three, viz. their psychic being. For it is only that element which endures, continues through successive lives. Certain people have known or learnt some rudiments of the matter—who believe in rebirth, but conceive it in the most childish manner. Their idea is as if the person changed his body like a robe. There are persons even who have written books describing s
Resource name: /E-Library/Disciples/Nolini Kanta Gupta/English/The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo Part - 7/The Psychic Being-Some Mysteries.htm
THE PSYCHIC BEING—SOME MYSTERIES Does the psychic being progress always? There are two kinds of progress in the psychic and they are very different. One consists in its formation and building and organisation; for the psychic begins by being only a little divine spark hidden in the inner person and out of this spark comes and gradually develops an independent conscious person who has his own will and activity. As I say, the psychic being is originally like a spark from the divine consciousness: it grows into a conscious individuality through the experiences of successive lives. This progress then is like the progress of the growing child. It
Resource name: /E-Library/Disciples/Nolini Kanta Gupta/English/The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo Part - 7/Images of gods and goddesses.htm
IMAGES OF GODS AND GODDESSES Are the usual images of gods and goddesses true to reality? Well, when a little child draws a picture of an object, is there any likeness? It is about the same or even worse here. For the child is simple and sincere, while the image-maker is full of prejudices and preconceived ideas, stuffed with things he has heard or read. And he is tied to his constructions. But at times, here and there, very rarely indeed, artists appear with an inner vision, with a great aspiration and a great purity of soul; they do things that are acceptable. But they are exceptions, the contrary is the rule. I have seen some of these forms in
Resource name: /E-Library/Disciples/Nolini Kanta Gupta/English/The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo Part - 7/Diseases and Accidents.htm
DISEASES AND ACCIDENTS If the body is ill, does the mind too fall ill? Not necessarily, to be sure. Illnesses are, as I have told you, generally a dislocation among the different parts of the being, a kind of disharmony. It may well be that the body has not followed the movement of progress, it might have lagged behind while the other parts have, on the contrary, made progress. In that case there is an unbalance, a breaking of harmony and that produces an illness, I mean, in the body, for the mind and the vital also might remain all right. There are many people who have been ill for years, suffering from terrible and incurable diseases, and still maint