The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo         THE FORCE OF BODY-CONSCIOUSNESS         THERE is a state of consciousness in which you perceive that the effect of things, circumstances, movements, all the activities of life upon yourself depends almost exclusively upon your attitude towards them. You become then conscious, conscious to the extent of realising that things in themselves are neither good nor bad, they are so only in relation to ourselves: their effect, I say, depends entirely upon the way in which we regard these things.         If we take, for example, a circumstance as a gift from God, as a divine Grace, as an outcome of the total harmony, it will hel

 In 1970, in the first days of Auroville's pioneering community experiment of Aspiration, a group of its members went to The Mother once a week for guidance on their myriad communal difficulties. In this first talk, The Mother was asked about the right attitude in work.   THE MOTHER         Talks With Aspiration         Each man has his own solution and that is the great difficulty, yet we must find a way for all the solutions to work together.         (silence)         The framework must be vast, very supple and we must have a lot of good will. This is the first condition, an individual condition: a good will to be supple enoug

   AN INTERVIEW WITH THE MOTHER         The Mother through her grace and love granted me an interview with her on the 29th May, 1954, and I passed some of my most precious moments of life with her.         I went to her with a number of questions in my mind, all of which I did not feel like putting before her, I wanted to ask her about the political, spiritual and cultural life in Africa, and how we, the Indians, should try to contribute to the growth of Africa, I had a mind to ask her, whether by the teaching of Sri Aurobindo not only Africa but the whole world can save itself, (from the great troubles that are looming large before them)         I narrat

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS         If you were asked to sum up, just in one sentence, your vision of India, what would be your answer?         India's true destiny is to be the Guru of the world.         Similarly, if you were asked to comment on the reality as you see it, how would you do so in one sentence?         The present reality is a big falsehood hiding an eternal truth.         What, according to you, are the three main barriers that stand between the vision and the reality?       Ignorance; (b) Fear; (c) Falsehood.         Are you satisfied with the overall progress India has made since Independence?         No.       

 YOGA, SEX, FOOD, AND SLEEP         Sri Aurobindo         Q: Is it true that sexual desire is the greatest obstacle in Yoga ?         A: One of the greatest, at least.         Q: Does sexual desire increase by taking more food and decrease by taking less ?         A: It is rather certain kinds of food that are supposed to increase it - e.g., meat, onions, chillies, etc.         Q: Are greed, anger, jealousy etc., the companions of the sexual desire ?         A: They usually go with sexual desire, though not always.         Q: The Mother has said: "the strength of such impulses as those of the sex lies usually in the fact that people take too much

    A Conversation with the Mother         Mother: Is it January?         Yes, Mother — it is January.         Read what is written here .       (Every month I used to take to Mother a large calendar on which flowers were         painted and on which She used to write a prayer)         "In this year of Sri Aurobindo's centenary, let us strive to be worthy of Him... " And then?         "...by following His teaching faithfully in order to prepare the advent of the       superman. Happy New Year.           " What flower is this? (pointing to the painted flower)         " Superhumanity ".           Eh?  

* SCIENCE*       Science, like most mental and external knowledge, gives you only truth of process. I would add that it cannot give you even the whole truth of process; for you seize some of the ponderables, but miss the all-important imponderables; you get, hardly even the how, but the conditions under which things happen in Nature, After all the triumphs and marvel of Science the explaining principle, the rationale, the significance of the whole is left as dark, as mysterious and even more mysterious than ever. The scheme it has built up of the evolution not only of this rich and vast and variegated material world, but of life and consciousness and mind and their workings out of a bru

 POSTSCRIPT TO SRI AUROBINDO'S REVISED EDITION OF THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY   At the time when this book was being brought to its close, the first attempt at the foundation of some initial hesitating beginning of the new world-order, which both governments and people had begun to envisage as a permanent necessity if there was to be any order in the world at all, was under debate and consideration but had not yet been given a concrete and practical form: but this had to come and eventually a momentous begining was made. It took the name and appearance of what was called a League of Nations. It was not happy in its conception, well-inspired in its formation or destined t

 POSTSCRIPT TO SRI AUROBINDO'S REVISED EDITION OF THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY   At the time when this book was being brought to its close, the first attempt at the foundation of some initial hesitating beginning of the new world-order, which both governments and people had begun to envisage as a permanent necessity if there was to be any order in the world at all, was under debate and consideration but had not yet been given a concrete and practical form: but this had to come and eventually a momentous begining was made. It took the name and appearance of what was called a League of Nations. It was not happy in its conception, well-inspired in its formation or destined t

APPENDIX A MESSAGE TO AMERICA         I have been asked to send on this occasion of the fifteenth August a message to the West, but I have to say might be delivered equally as a message to the East. It has been customary to dwell on the division and difference between these two sections of the human family and even oppose them to each other; but, or myself I would rather be disposed to dwell on oneness and unity than on division and difference. East and West have the same human nature, a common human destiny, the same aspiration after a greater perfection, the same seeking after something higher than itself, something towards which inwardly and even outwardly we move. There h