SECTION ONE SYNTHETIC METHOD AND INTEGRAL YOGA The Central Aim   I DO not agree with the view that the world is an illusion, mithya. The Brahman is here as well as in the supracosmic Absolute. The thing to be overcome is the Ignorance which makes us blind and prevents us from realising Brahman in the world as well as beyond it and the true nature of existences. 12-4-1936   The Object of Integral Yoga   THE object of the Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine's sake alone, to b

SECTION FIFTEEN   PURPOSE AND PROCESS OF DEATH & REBIRTH Necessity of Death   DEATH is there because the being in the body is not yet developed enough to go on growing in the same body without the need of change and the body itself is not sufficiently conscious. If the mind and vital and the body itself were more conscious and plastic, death would not be necessary. 3-12-1933   Immortality of the Body   THERE can be no immortality of the body without supramentalisation; the potentiality is there in the Yogic force and Yogis can live for 200 or

SECTION FOURTEEN   AVATARHOOD AND EVOLUTION Connection of Avatarhood with Evolution (1)   AVATARHOOD would have little meaning if it were not connected with the evolution. The Hindu procession of the ten Avatars is itself, as it were, a parable of evolution. First the Fish Avatar, then the amphibious animal between land and water, then the land animal, then the Man-Lion Avatar, bridging man and animal, then man as dwarf, small and undeveloped and physical but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence, then the rajasic, sattwic, n

SECTION EIGHT   LOVE AND BHAKTI ˗ RELATIONSHIPS IN YOGA   1. LOVE AND BHAKTI IN YOGA II. THE TRUE MOVEMENT OF DEVOTION III. HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS IN YOGA I. LOVE AND BHAKTI IN YOGA   Importance of Bhakti in Yoga   IT is a misunderstanding to suppose that I am against Bhakti or against emotional Bhakti —which comes to the same thing, since without emotion there can be no Bhakti. It is rather the fact that in my writings on Yoga I have given Bhakti the highest place. All that I have said at any time which could account for this misunderstanding was

SECTION ELEVEN   DIFFICULTIES OF TRANSFORMATION   I. NECESSITY OF TRANSFORMATION II. THE TRUE WAY OUT OF DIFFICULTIES III. TRANSFORMATION OF THE VITAL  NATURE IV. VAIRAGYA V. REMOVAL OF EGO VI. CONVERSION OF SEX, FOOD AND SLEEP VII. MADNESS IN YOGA I. NECESSITY OF TRANSFORMATION   Insufficiency of Human Life and Need of Transformation—Yogic Tradit

FOREWORD   This second series of Sri Aurobindo's letters is intended to be complementary to the volume published on his 75th birthday —the 15th August, 1947. It is a farther instalment from the vast store of his letters which yet remain to be published. Some idea of their immense quantity can be had from the fact that regularly for six to eight hours every day over a period of about ten years he gave replies to the innumerable inquiries addressed to him by the spiritual aspirants in his Ashram and elsewhere. The letters included in the first volume were selected with a view to giving a broad outline of the basic principles of his spiritual metaphysics and psychology an

SECTION TWO INTEGRAL YOGA AND OTHER SPIRITUAL PATHS Vedanta, Tantra and Integral Yoga   VEDA and Vedanta are one side of the One Truth; Tantra with its emphasis on Shakti is another; in this Yoga all sides of the Truth are taken up, not in the systematic forms given them formerly but in their essence, and carried to the fullest and highest significance. But Vedanta deals more with the principles and essentials of the divine knowledge and therefore much of its spiritual knowledge and experience has been taken bodily into the Arya*. Tantra deals more with forms and processes and organis

SECTION NINE DIVINE GRACE PERSONAL EFFORT AND GURU'S HELP   Three Possibilities in Sadhana   THERE are three main possibilities for the — sadhak—(1) To wait on the Grace and rely on the Divine, (2) To do everything himself like the Adwaitin and the Buddhist, (3) To take the middle path, go forward by aspiration and rejection etc. helped by the Force.   Divine Grace, Divine Compassion and Cosmic Law   I SHOULD like to say something about the Divine Grace—for you seem to think it should be something like a Divine Reason acting upon lines not very different from those of human intelligence. But it is not that. Also it is not a universal Divine Compassi

SECTION THREE Religion, Morality, Idealism & Yoga Spiritual Evolution—Positivist Scepticism and Faith   ALL that you say only amounts, on the general issue, to the fact that this is a world of slow evolution in which man has emerged out of the beast and is still not out of it, light out of darkness, and a higher consciousness out of first a dead and then a struggling and troubled unconsciousness. A spiritual consciousness is emerging and it is through this spiritual consciousness that one can meet the Divine. Religions, full of vital and mental, mixed, troubled and ignor

SECTION TWELVE TRANSFORMATION OF THE INCONSCIENT THE PRESENT WORLD SITUATION Opening the Inconscient to Light   THERE is another cause of the general inability to change which at present afflicts the sadhak.; It is because the sadhana, as a general fact, has now and for a long time past come down to the Inconscient;  the pressure, the call is to change in that part of the nature which depends directly on the Inconscient, the fixed habits, the automatic movements, the mechanical repetitions of the nature, the involuntary reactions to life, all that seems to belong to th