VI         SURRENDER       Q: Is it not possible to transform the being without surrender?       A: If there is no surrender, there can be no transformation of the whole being.         Q,: When does real surrender begin in a sadhak?       A: It begins when there is the true self-offering.         Q: How to bring about true self-offering?       A: By not following ego and desire. It is ego and desire that prevent surrender.         Q,: What is the sign to indicate that a sadhak's determination to surrender to the Divine is having practical effect in his life?       A: The sign is that he has full obedience without q

    II         THE FOUNDATION           Q: When can it be said that a sadhak has laid his foundation in sadhana ?       A: When he has a settled calm and equality and devotion and a continuity of spiritual experience.         Q:What is the right way to establish peace and equality in the nature ?       A: The peace and the equality are there above you, you have to call them down into the mind and vital and the body. And whenever something disturbs, you have to reject the thing that disturbs and the disturbance.         Q: Do calm and equality come down from above by the Mother's Grace?       A: When they descend, it is by the sou

  IX         EXPERIENCES AND VISIONS         Q: What is the difference between concentration and meditation in our Yoga?       A: Concentration, for our Yoga, means when the consciousness is fixed in a particular state (e.g., peace) or movement (e.g., aspiration, will, coming into contact with the Mother, taking the Mother's name); meditation is when the inner mind is looking at things to get the right knowledge.         Q: You wrote that "the Mother is always in concentrated consciousness in her inner being". What is meant by "concentrated consciousness" ?       A: The higher consciousness is a concentrated consciousness, concentrated in the Divine U

     IV         SINCERITY         Q: Is it true that it is only through the power of absolute sincerity that one can get full transformation and reach the Supramental Truth?       A: Yes.         The Mother has said: "If you are not sincere do not begin Toga." Does this imply that if after entering Toga a person finds that his sincerity is not complete, he should leave it?       A: No. It is only if he is fundamentally insincere that he should leave it.         Q: How can a sadhak know whether he is fundamentally insincere?       A: If he sees that he is full of ego and doing sadhana for the sake of the ego only and has no real turn

    X        WORK       Q: When people join the Ashram to do sadhana and live under the Mother's protection, is it not necessary for them to do some Ashram work to progress in their sadhana?       A: They should do.         Q: Should they ask the Mother for work or wait till she herself gives them work ?       A: If they have the true spirit in them, they will ask for work.         Q: Sometimes when a sadhak asks the Mother's permission to do a work of his choice and the Mother gives it, can it be said that it is the work done for the Mother?       A: The sadhak ought to be ready to do any work that is needed, not only the work he prefers.

  This book is compiled from the answers Sri Aurobindo gave in writing to some elementary questions about Yoga put to  him during the years 1933-36.      I         THE CALL AND FITNESS         Q: How can one know if he is fit for the spiritual life before taking up Toga?       A: How can anyone know before he puts his step on the path? He can only know whether he has the aspiration or not, whether he feels a call or not.         Q: You have said that to enter the path of Toga "all one needs to know is whether the soul in one has been moved to the Toga or not". But how to

 XIII         SEX—FOOD—SLEEP       Q: Is it true that sexual desire is the greatest obstacle in Toga?       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 the people take too much notice

Section Six THE DIVINE AND THE HOSTILE POWERS THE DIVINE AND THE HOSTILE POWERS I 1. Falsehood and Ignorance1 Ignorance means Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life. This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth,—truth of being, truth of divine consciousness, truth of force and action, truth of Ananda. As a result, instead of a world of integral truth and divine harmony created in the light

Section Four REASON, SCIENCE AND YOGA REASON, SCIENCE AND YOGA I European metaphysical thought—even in those thinkers who try to prove or explain the existence and nature of God or of the Absolute—does not in its method and result go beyond the intellect. But the intellect is incapable of knowing the supreme Truth; it can only range about seeking for Truth, and catching fragmentary representations of it, not the thing itself, and trying to piece them together. Mind cannot arrive at Truth; it can only make some constructed figure that tries to represent it or a combination of figures. At the end of European thought, therefore, there must always be Agnos

Section Three BASIC REQUISITES OF THE PATH BASIC REQUISITES OF THE PATH I The goal of yoga is always hard to reach, but this one is more difficult than any other, and it is only for those who have the call, the capacity, the willingness to face everything and every risk, even the risk of failure, and the will to progress towards an entire selflessness, desirelessness and surrender. *  *  * This yoga implies not only the realisation of God, but an entire consecration and change of the inner and outer life till it is fit to manifest a divine consciousness and become part of a divine work. This means an inner discipline far more exacting an