Preparing the Children for the Future
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have put before man a new vision of the future.
"A new centre of thought implies a new centre of education." A school was started to prepare the children from an early age for the new world.
The Mother saw to all the developments, took a keen interest in the details of the organisation, and in the beginning, she herself taught the children of different age groups.
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Nothing but a radical change of consciousness can deliver the world from its present obscurity. Indeed, this transformation of the consciousness, this manifestation of a higher and truer consciousness, is not only possible but certain; it is the very aim of our existence, the purpose of life upon earth....
We must become concretely what we are essentially; we must live integrally the truth, the beauty, the power and the perfection that are hidden in the depths of our being, and then all life will become the expression of the sublime, eternal, divine Joy.
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One of the most recent forms under which Sri Aurobindo conceived of the development of his work was to establish at Pondicherry an International University centre open to students from all over the world.
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...Sri Aurobindo conceived the scheme of his international university, in order to prepare the human elite who will be able to work for the progressive unification of mankind and be ready at the same time to embody the new force which is descending to transform the earth.
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Sri Aurobindo is present in our midst, and with all the power of his creative genius he presides over the formation of the University Centre which for years he considered as one of the best means of preparing the future humanity to receive the Supramental light that will transform the elite of today into a new race manifesting upon earth the new light and force and life.
In his name I open today this convention meeting here with the purpose of realising one of his most cherished ideals.
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Sri Aurobindo came upon the earth to announce the manifestation of the supramental world and not merely did he announce this manifestation but embodied also in part the supramental force and showed by example what one must do to prepare oneself for manifesting it. The best thing we can do is to study all that he has told us and endeavour to follow his example and prepare ourselves for the new manifestation.
This gives life its real sense and will help us to overcome all obstacles.
Let us live for the new creation and we shall grow stronger and stronger by remaining young and progressive.
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We are here to open the way of the Future
to children who belong to the Future.
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January 6, 1952
Students' Prayer
Make of us the hero warriors we aspire to become. May we fight successfully the great battle of the future that is to be born, against the past that seeks to endure; so that the new things may manifest and we may be ready to receive them.
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The aim of education is not to prepare a man to succeed in life and society, but to increase his perfectibility to its utmost.
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The education of a human being should begin at birth and continue throughout his
life.
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Education to be complete must have five principal aspects corresponding to the five principal activities of the human being: the physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic and the spiritual.
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On the physical plane the Divine expresses himself through beauty, on the mental plane through knowledge, on the vital plane through power and on the psychic plane through love.
When we rise high enough, we discover that these four aspects unite with each other in a single consciousness, full of love, luminous, powerful, beautiful, containing all, pervading all.
The psychic will be the vehicle of true and pure love, the mind will be the vehicle of infallible knowledge, the vital will manifest an invincible power and strength and the body will be the expression of a perfect beauty and harmony.
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...the supramental education will result... in a transformation of the nature itself, a transfiguration of the being in its entirety, a new ascent of the species above and beyond man towards superman, leading in the end to the appearance of a divine race upon earth.
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Essentially, the only thing you should do assiduously is to teach them [the children] to know themselves and choose their own destiny, the path they will follow; to teach them to look at themselves, understand themselves and to will what they want to be.
That is infinitely more important than teaching them what happened on earth in former times, or even how the earth is built....
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It is an invaluable possession for every living being to have learnt to know himself and to master himself.
To know oneself means to know the motives of one's actions and reactions, the why and the how of all that happens in oneself.
To master oneself means to do what one has decided to do, to do nothing but that, not to listen to or follow impulses, desires or fancies.
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What you should do is to teach the children to take interest in what they are doing — that is not the same thing as interesting the students! You must arouse in them the desire for knowledge, for progress. One can take an interest in anything — in sweeping a room, for example — if one does it with concentration, in order to gain an experience, to make a progress, to become more conscious.
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The only thing it is our duty to tell them is this, "Now, you are of an age when your brain is in course of preparation. It is being formed. Each new thing you study makes one more little convolution in your brain. The more you study, the more you think, the more you reflect, the more you work, the more complex and complete does your brain become in its tiny convolutions. And as you are young, it is best done at this time...."
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To love to learn is the most precious gift that one can make to a child, to learn always and everywhere.
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We are on earth to progress and we have everything to learn.
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The children should be told:
There are wonderful things to be manifested, prepare yourself to receive them. Then if they want something a little more concrete and easier to understand, you can tell them:
"Sri Aurobindo came to announce these things; when you are able to read him, you will understand."
So this awakens the interest, the desire to learn.
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There is an ascending evolution in nature which goes from the stone to the plant, from the plant to the animal, from the animal to man. Because man is, for the moment, the last rung at the summit of the ascending evolution, he considers himself as the final stage in this ascension and believes there can be nothing on earth superior to him. In that he is mistaken. In his physical nature he is yet almost wholly an animal, a thinking and speaking animal, but still an animal in his material habits and instincts. Undoubtedly, nature cannot be satisfied with such an imperfect result; she endeavours to bring out a being who will be to man what man is to the animal, a being who will remain a man in its external form, and yet whose consciousness will rise far above the mental and its slavery to ignorance.
Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to teach this truth to men. He told them that man is only a transitional being living in a mental consciousness, but with the possibility of acquiring a new consciousness, the Truth-consciousness, and capable of living a life perfectly harmonious, good and beautiful, happy and fully conscious. During the whole of his life upon earth, Sri Aurobindo gave all his time to establish in himself this consciousness he called supramental, and to help those gathered around him to realise it.
You have the immense privilege of having come quite young to the Ashram, that is to say, still plastic and capable of being moulded according to this new ideal and thus become the representatives of the new race....
Now, all depends on your will and your sincerity.
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There are, in the history of the earth, moments of transition when things that have existed for thousands of years must give way to those that are about to manifest.... We are at precisely such a turning-point in the world's history....
... A great luminous consciousness broods over the earth, creating a kind of stir in its atmosphere....
Sri Aurobindo, incarnating the supramental consciousness in a human body, has not only revealed to us the nature of the path to follow and the way to follow it in order to reach the goal, but has also by his own personal realisation given us the example; he has provided us, so to say, with the proof that the thing can be done and that the time has come to do it.
Consequently, we are not here to repeat what others have done, but to prepare ourselves for the blossoming of a new consciousness and a new life.
That is why I address myself to you, the students, that is, to all who wish to learn, to learn always more and always better, so that one day you may be capable of opening yourselves to the new force and of giving it the possibility to manifest on the physical plane.
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When you — you children, here — when you are old enough and ready to become professors, then you will be entrusted with teaching the newcomers the right thing, in the right way....
What is wanted is that you prepare yourselves by learning what everybody knows... and have at the same time benefited by the influence that is here, and when you have read and understood sufficiently well to be able to see from that angle — the angle of the true life — well, when you know all that, it will be you who will teach the children from outside what you have learnt. That is part of the work.
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The psychic being is... a great discovery which requires at least as much fortitude and endurance as the discovery of new continents....
Before you go to sleep, concentrate a few seconds in the aspiration that the sleep may restore your fatigued nerves, bring calm and quietness to your brain so that on waking you may, with renewed vigour, begin again your journey on the path of the great discovery.
Before you act, concentrate in the will that your action may help or at least in no way hinder your march forward towards the great discovery.
When you speak, before the words come out of your mouth, concentrate just long enough to check your words and allow only those that are absolutely necessary to pass, only those that are not in any way harmful to your progress on the path of the great discovery.
To sum up, never forget the purpose and goal of your life.
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The psychic being is the representative of the Divine in the human being. That's it, you see — the Divine is not something remote and inaccessible. The Divine is in you but you are not fully conscious of it....
In fact, you must become conscious instruments... conscious... conscious of the Divine.
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.. .if the instruments are to be perfect, they must be cultivated, educated, trained.... A diamond reveals all its beauty only when it is artistically cut. It is the same for you. If you want your physical being to be a perfect instrument for the manifestation of the Supramental consciousness, you must cultivate it, sharpen it, refine it, give it what it lacks, perfect what it already possesses. That is why you go to school, my children, whether you are big or small, for one can learn at any age....
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If while doing what you have to do — whatever it may be, whatever work it is — if you do it and while doing it are careful not to forget the Divine, to offer to Him what you do and try so to give yourself to Him that He may change all your reactions — instead of their being selfish, petty, stupid and ignorant, making them luminous, generous — then in that way you will make progress.
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Try to do the good and never forget that God sees you everywhere.
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A good deed is sweeter to the heart than a sweet in the mouth. A day spent without doing a good deed is a day without a soul.
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Always do what you know to be the best even if it is the most difficult thing to do.
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When you have nothing to do... sit down quietly before the sky, before the sea or under trees, whatever is possible... and try to realise one of these things — to understand why you live, to learn how you must live, to ponder over what you want to do and what should be done, what is the best way of escaping from the ignorance and falsehood and pain in which you live.
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If you truly want peace and happiness, your constant preoccupation should be:
"What progress must I make to be able to know and serve the Divine?"...
"Am I what I ought to be?
"Am I doing what I ought to be doing?
"Am I progressing as much as I should?"
Then it becomes interesting.
"What should I learn in order to make my next progress? What infirmity must I cure? What shortcoming must I overcome? What weakness must I get rid of?"
And then, naturally, the next moment: "How can I become capable of understanding and serving the Divine?"
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.. .one day, you ask yourself, "But then, why is one born? Why does one die? Why does one suffer? Why does one act?"
You no longer live like a little machine, hardly half-conscious. You want to feel truly, to act truly, to know truly....
You go to the Samadhi, look at Sri Aurobindo's picture, you come to receive a flower from me, sit down to a lesson; you do everything you do but... with one question within you: Why?
And then, if you ask the question, you receive the answer. Why?
Because we don't want life as it is any longer, because we don't want falsehood and ignorance any longer,... Sri Aurobindo has come to tell us: It is not necessary to leave the earth to find the Truth,... The Divine is everywhere, in everything, and if He is hidden... it is because we do not take the trouble to discover Him.
We can, simply by a sincere aspiration, open a sealed door in us and find... that Something which will change the whole significance of life,...
The starting-point: to want it, truly want it, to need it.
The next step: to think, above all, of that. A day comes, very quickly, when one is unable to think of anything else....
And then... well, one will see what happens.
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When you have a little time... tell yourself, "At last, I have some time to concentrate, to collect myself, to relive the purpose of my life, to offer myself to the True and the Eternal." If you took care to do this each time... you would find out that you were advancing very quickly on the path.
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There are unique moments in life that pass like a dream. One must catch them on the wing, for they never return.
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Childhood is the symbol of the future and the Hope of all the victories to come.
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Sweet Mother, grant that we may simply be, now and for ever, Thy little children.
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Grant that we may henceforth see only with Thy eyes and act only by Thy will. Transform us into living torches of Thy divine love.
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Fill our hearts with the delight of Thy love.
Flood our minds with the splendour of Thy light.
Grant that we may effectuate Thy Victory!
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.. .the more you give yourself to the Divine the more He is with you, totally, constantly, at every minute,... you walk and He walks with you, you sleep and He sleeps with you, you eat and He eats with you, you think and He thinks with you, you love and He is the love you have.
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Of one thing you can be sure — your future is in your hands. You will become the man you want to be and the higher your ideal and your aspiration, the higher will be your realisation, but you must keep a firm resolution and never forget your true aim in life.
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An aimless life is always a miserable life.
Every one of you should have an aim. But do not forget that on the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life.
Your aim should be high and wide, generous and disinterested; this will make your life precious to yourself and to others.
But whatever your ideal, it cannot be perfectly realised unless you have realised perfection in yourself.
To work for your perfection, the first step is to become conscious of yourself, of the different parts of your being and their respective activities. You must learn to distinguish these different parts one from another, so that you may become clearly aware of the origin of the movements that occur in you, the many impulses, reactions and conflicting wills that drive you to action....
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...whatever you may want to do in life, one thing is absolutely indispensable and at the basis of everything, the capacity of concentrating the attention. If you are able to gather together the rays of attention and consciousness on one point and can maintain this concentration with a persistent will, nothing can resist it — whatever it may be, from the most material physical development to the highest spiritual one.
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When you work, if you are able to concentrate, you can do absolutely in ten minutes what would otherwise take you one hour. If you want to gain time, learn to concentrate....
.. .if you have much to do, you must learn how to concentrate much, all the more, and when you are doing a thing, to think of that only, and focus all your energy upon what you do. You gain at least half the time. So if you tell me: "I have too much work", I answer: "You do not concentrate enough."
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Mother, how can one strengthen one s will?
Oh, as one strengthens muscles, by a methodical exercise. You take one little thing, something you want to do or don't want to do. Begin with a small thing, not something very essential to the being, but a small detail. And then, if, for instance, it is something you are in the habit of doing, you insist on it with the same regularity, you see, either not to do it or to do it — you insist on it and compel yourself to do it as you compel yourself to lift a weight — it's the same thing. You make the same kind of effort, but it is more of an inner effort. And after having taken little things like this — things relatively easy, you know — after taking these and succeeding with them, you can unite with a greater force and try a more complicated experiment. And gradually, if you do this regularly, you will end up by acquiring an independent and very strong will.
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Every time you think of something, it is as though you had a magnet in your hand and were attracting that thing towards yourself — you understand....
People always need to make their mind run, run, run, but then make it run on the right lines, you will see that it has an effect. For instance, let it go like this: that I shall learn better and better, shall know better and better, become healthier and healthier, and all difficulties will vanish, and wicked people will become sweet and good, and ill people will be cured, and houses which should be built will be built, and those things which should disappear will disappear, but giving place to better things, and the world will move in a constant progress, and at the end of that progress there will be a total harmony, and so on,...
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Remove from us all egoism, root out all petty vanity, greed and obscurity. May we be all ablaze with Thy divine Love; make us Thy torches in the world.
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The Force is there awaiting the possibility to manifest: we must discover the new form which will make the new manifestation possible.
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O Lord, grant that we may rise above the ordinary forms of manifestation so that Thou mayst find the tools necessary for Thy new manifestation.
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By studying carefully what Sri Aurobindo has said on all subjects one can easily reach a complete knowledge of the things of this world.
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Each element of a whole potentially contains what is in the whole. It is a little difficult to explain, but you will understand with an example:... Sri Aurobindo represented a totality of comprehension and knowledge and power; and every one of his books is at once a symbol and a representation. Every one of his books contains symbolically, potentially, what is in him. Therefore, if you concentrate on the book, you can, through the book, go back to the source. And even, by passing through the book, you will be able to receive much more than what is just in the book.
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The true method is to read a little at a time, with concentration, keeping the mind as silent as possible, without actively trying to understand, but turned upwards, in silence, and aspiring for the light. Understanding will come little by little.
And later, in one or two years, you will read the same thing again and then you will know that the first contact had been vague and incomplete, and that true understanding comes later, after having tried to put it into practice.
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We are not here to lead an easy and comfortable life. We are here to find the Divine, to become divine, to manifest the Divine.
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A library should be an intellectual sanctuary where one comes to find light and progress.
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In unformed minds what they read sinks in without any regard to its value and imprints itself as truth. It is advisable therefore to be careful about what one gives them to read and to see that only what is true and useful for their formation gets a place.
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By a choice made with care and insight, you should also teach him [the child] to enjoy good reading-matter which is both instructive and attractive. Do not be afraid of anything that awakens and pleases his imagination; imagination develops the creative mental faculty and through it study becomes living and the mind develops in joy.
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It is not so much a question of subject-matter but of vulgarity of mind and narrowness and selfish common-sense in the conception of life, expressed in a form devoid of art, greatness or refinement, which must be carefully removed from the reading-matter of children both big and small. All that lowers and degrades the consciousness must be excluded.
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Sweet Mother,
May I borrow books from our library...?
You may borrow books if you take great care of them and follow the library rules.
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You must read with great attention and concentration, not novels or dramas, but books that make you think. You must meditate on what you have read, reflect on a thought until you have understood it.
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In order to learn you must read very carefully and choose with care what you read.
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I haven't read much of English literature — I have gone through only a few hundred books. But I know French literature very well — I have read a whole library of it. And I can say that it has no great value in terms of Truth. Real knowledge comes from above the mind.
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...one can take as a guiding rule that all that brings with it or creates peace, faith, joy, harmony, wideness, unity and ascending growth comes from the Truth; while all that carries with it restlessness, doubt, scepticism, sorrow, discord, selfish narrowness, inertia, discouragement and despair comes straight from the falsehood.
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Prayers given to the children of the boardings
We all want to be the true children of our Divine Mother.
But for that, Sweet Mother, give us patience and courage, obedience, goodwill, generosity and unselfishness, and all the necessary virtues.
This is our prayer and aspiration.
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Be always faithful to your Ideal and sincere in your action.
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May this day be for you the beginning of a new life in which you will strive to understand better and better why you are here and what is expected of you.
Live always in the aspiration of realising your most complete and most true perfection.
And for a beginning take care to be honest, sincere, straightforward, noble and pure in a rigorous discipline that you will impose on yourselves.
I shall always be present to help you and to guide you.
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Let yesterday's realisation be a springboard for tomorrow's achievement.
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The true wisdom is to be ready to learn from whatever source the knowledge can come.
We can learn things from a flower, an animal, a child,
if we are eager to know always more,
because there is only One Teacher in the world —
the Supreme Lord,
and He manifests through everything.
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The psychic, when it manifests in a plant, in the form of a flower, is in the form of a wordless prayer; it is the elan of the plant towards the Divine.
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In the physical world, of all things it is beauty that expresses best the Divine. The physical world is the world of form and the perfection of form is beauty. Beauty interprets, expresses, manifests the Eternal. Its role is to put all manifested nature in contact with the Eternal through the perfection of form, through harmony and a sense of the ideal which uplifts and leads towards something higher.
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Beauty is the joyous offering of Nature.
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There is nothing small in God's eyes; let there be nothing small in thine. He bestows as much labour of divine energy on the formation of a shell as on the building of an empire. For thyself it is greater to be a good shoemaker than a luxurious and incompetent king.
Sri Aurobindo
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One hears a bird sing, sees a lovely flower, looks at a little child, observes an act of generosity, reads a beautiful sentence, looks at the setting sun, no matter what, suddenly this comes upon you, this kind of emotion — indeed so deep, so intense — that the world manifests the Divine, that there is something behind the world which is the Divine.
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True art means the expression of beauty in the material world.
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On the physical plane it is in beauty that the Divine expresses Himself.
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Art is a living harmony and beauty that must be expressed in all the movements of existence. This manifestation of beauty and harmony is part of the Divine realisation upon earth, perhaps even its greatest part.
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Let beauty be your constant ideal.
The beauty of the soul
The beauty of sentiments
The beauty of thoughts
The beauty of the action
The beauty in the work
so that nothing comes out of your hands which is not an expression of pure and harmonious beauty. And the Divine Help shall always be with you.
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I have seen your paintings and certainly there has been progress over the last year.... Try to develop your consciousness, endeavour to discover your soul, and then what you will do will be truly interesting.
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The largest of the flower-paintings is the best because it is more spontaneous and free. You must feel what you paint and do it with joy.
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There is, behind all things, a divine beauty, a divine harmony: it is with this that we must come into contact; it is this that we must express.
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The consciousness must grow in light and sincerity and the eyes must learn to see artistically.
Painting is not done to copy Nature, but to express an impression, a feeling, an emotion that we experience on seeing the beauty of Nature.
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Photography is an art when the photographer is an artist.
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Modern photography has become an art and, like all other arts, it can effectively express the inner feelings and the soul, with a true sense of beauty.
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...they [the embroidered saris] are rather heavy and warm and I prefer to keep them for wearing between November and January... I shall then wear the embroidered saris with the greatest pleasure since the season is a bit cooler....
I have great admiration for your embroidery, and for you, great love.
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I don't think it would be good to dye it [the cloth] again. It would become too dark. But we can take the irregularities as movements of water and underline them with a fine gold thread; then it will look as if it were done deliberately and it will be even lovelier.
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.. .quite recently, I suddenly felt this, this sensation of something very new, something of the future pushing, pushing, trying to manifest, trying to express itself and not succeeding, but something which will be a terrific progress over all that has been felt and expressed before....
... Perhaps in ten years there will be people who have found a new expression. A great progress would be necessary, an immense progress in the technique; the old technique seems barbarous. And now with the new scientific discoveries perhaps the technique of execution will change and one could find a new technique which would then express this new beauty which wants to manifest.
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If you ask me, I believe that all those who produce something artistic are artists!... For instance, in Japan there are gardeners who spend their time correcting the forms of trees so that in the landscape they make a beautiful picture. By all kinds of trimmings, props, etc. they adjust the forms of trees. They give them special forms so that each form may be just what is needed in the landscape. A tree is planted in a garden at the spot where it is needed and besides, it is given the form that's required for it to go well with the whole set-up. And they succeed in doing wonderful things. You have but to take a photograph of the garden, it is a real picture, it is so good. Well, I certainly call the man an artist. One may call him a gardener but he is an artist.... All those who have a sure and developed sense of harmony in all its forms, and the harmony of all the forms among themselves, are necessarily artists, whatever may be the type of their production.
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The animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out man. Man himself may well be a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation she wills to work out the superman, the god. Or shall we not say, rather, to manifest God?
Sri Aurobindo
The step from man to superman is the next approaching achievement in the earth's evolution. It is inevitable because it is at once the intention of the inner Spirit and the logic of Nature's process.
Sri Aurobindo
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A kind of permanent world-exhibition should be organised in which all countries will be represented in a concrete and living way.
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It [the cinema] could have been, and I hope it will become, an instrument of education and development; but for the moment it has been an instrument of perversion,...
Yet it is something which can be used for education, progress, culture and artistic development; and from this point of view it could be a means of spreading beauty and culture much more widely and making them much more accessible to all,...
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Mother,
How should one see a film?...
...If you look mentally, the interest is no more the same; instead of being moved or troubled, you can judge quietly the value of the film, whether it is well constructed and well acted and whether the pictures have any artistic value.
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In a general way, education, culture, refinement of the senses are the means of curing movements of crude instinct and desire and passion. To obliterate them is not curing them; instead they should be cultivated, intellectualised, refined.
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He [the child] should be shown, led to appreciate, taught to love beautiful, lofty, healthy and noble things, whether in Nature or in human creation....
For one who has developed a truly refined taste will, because of this very refinement, feel incapable of acting in a crude, brutal or vulgar manner. This refinement, if it is sincere, brings to the being a nobility and generosity which will spontaneously find expression in his behaviour....
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A few lines from an early composition
A young traveller is walking briskly along, happily breathing in the pure morning air; he seems joyful, without a care for the future. The way he is following comes to a crossroads, where innumerable paths branch off in all directions.
...Without thinking, the traveller takes the path that is nearest to him, which seems, after all, quite practicable... A voice seems to tell him, "Turn back, turn back, you are not on the right road." But everything around him is charming and delightful. What should he do? He does not know. He goes on without taking any decision; he enjoys the pleasures of the moment. "In a little while," he replies to the voice, "in a little while I shall think; I have plenty of time."
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All life is only a lavish and manifold opportunity given us to discover, realise, express the Divine.
Sri Aurobindo
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The Yogin's aim in the Arts should not be a mere aesthetic, mental or vital gratification, but, seeing the Divine everywhere, worshipping it with a revelation of the meaning of its works, to express that One Divine in gods and men and creatures and objects.
Sri Aurobindo
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True art is a whole and an ensemble; it is one and of one piece with life.
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...during the period before the first and second December this year [1949] Mother had to give a great deal of time and concentration to the preparation of the events of those two days because she had decided on a big cultural programme: her own play, Vers I 'Avenir, dances, recitation from Savitri and from the Prayers and Meditations for the first December and also for a big and ambitious programme for the second of sportive items and events. This meant a good deal more time for these purposes....
Sri Aurobindo
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The development of capacities is not only permissible but right when it can be made part of Yoga; one can give not only one's soul, but all one's powers to the Divine.
Sri Aurobindo
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The real difference between a poem and a song is that a song is written with a view to be set to musical rhythm and a poem is written with a view to poetic rhythm or word-music. The two rhythms are quite different.
Sri Aurobindo
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To feel the vibration and develop from it the rhythm of the dance is the right way to create something true; the other way, to understand with the mind and work out with the mind only or mainly is the mental way; it is laborious and difficult and has not got the same spontaneous inspiration.
Sri Aurobindo
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...when one listens to music with an intense and concentrated attention, to the point of checking all other noise in the head and obtaining a complete silence, into which fall, drop by drop, the notes of the music whose sound alone remains; and with the sound all the feelings, all the movements of emotion can be perceived, experienced, felt as if they were produced in ourselves.
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To complete what I told you yesterday about Radha's dance I have noted down as an indication of the thought and feeling Radha must have within her when she stands at the end in front of Krishna —
"Every thought of my mind, each emotion of my heart, every movement of my being, every sensation, each cell of my body, each drop of my blood, all is yours, yours absolutely, yours without reserve. You can decide my life or my death, my happiness or my sorrow, my pleasure or my pain, whatever you do with me, whatever comes to me from you will lead me to Divine Rapture."
*
Art is a living harmony and beauty that must be expressed in all the movements of existence. This manifestation of beauty and harmony is part of the Divine realisation upon earth, perhaps even its greatest part.
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We want here only those who aspire for a higher and better life, who thirst for knowledge and perfection, who look forward eagerly to a future that will be more totally true.
We want to show to the world that man can become a true servitor of the Divine. Who will collaborate in all sincerity?
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It is not for our family, it is not to secure a good position, it is not to earn money, it is not to obtain a diploma, that we study.
We study to learn, to know, to understand the world, and for the sake of the joy that it gives us.
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It is obvious that for the children it is better to study in order to develop their consciousness and learn a little of all they do not know; but to give prizes to those who have been particularly studious, disciplined and attentive, is not bad.
The prizes certainly should not be based on competitive grades.
A prize of appreciation, of equivalent value, could be given to those who have exceeded a certain level of (1) capacity, plus (2) goodwill and regularity of effort.
Both should be there to warrant the prize.
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.. .the purpose of our school is to discover and encourage those in whom the need for progress has become conscious enough to orient their life.
It is not a number that we want — it is a selection; it is not brilliant students that we want, it is living souls.
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The best way to express
one's gratitude to the Divine
is to feel simply happy.
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