Section Six SADHANA THROUGH MEDITATION SADHANA THROUGH MEDITATION I Your questions cover the whole of a very wide field. It is therefore necessary to reply to them with some brevity, touching only on some principal points.     1. What meditation exactly means.     There are two words used in English to express the Indian idea of dhyana, "meditation" and "contemplation". Meditation means properly the concentration of the mind on a single train of ideas which work out a single subject. Contemplation means regarding mentally a single object, image, idea so that the knowledge about the object, image or idea may arise naturally in the mind b

  Section Seven SADHANA THROUGH LOVE AND DEVOTION SADHANA THROUGH LOVE AND DEVOTION I To bring the Divine Love and Beauty and Ananda into the world is, indeed, the whole crown and essence of our yoga. But it has always seemed to me impossible unless there comes as its support and foundation and guard the Divine Truth—what I call the supramental—and its Divine Power. Otherwise Love itself blinded by the confusions of this present consciousness may stumble in its human receptacles and, even otherwise, may find itself unrecognised, rejected or rapidly degenerating and lost in the frailty of man's inferior nature. But when it comes in the divi

Section Eight REBIRTH REBIRTH The soul takes birth each time, and each time a mind, life and body are formed out of the materials of universal nature according to the soul's past evolution and its need for the future.      When the body is dissolved, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains there for a time, but after a time the vital sheath disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally the soul or psychic being retires into the psychic world to rest there till a new birth is close.      This is the general course for ordinarily developed human beings. There are variations according to the nature of the individual and his development. For e

Section Five PLANES AND PARTS OF THE BEING PLANES AND PARTS OF THE BEING I Men do not know themselves and have not learned to distinguish the different parts of their being; for these are usually lumped together by them as mind, because it is through a mentalised perception and understanding that they know or feel them; therefore they do not understand their own states and actions, or, if at all, then only on the surface. It is part of the foundation of yoga to become conscious of the great complexity of our nature, see the different forces that move it and get over it a control of directing knowledge. We are composed of many parts each of which

  Section Eight HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS IN YOGA   HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS IN YOGA I You seem not to have understood the principle of this yoga. The old yoga demanded a complete renunciation extending to the giving up of the worldly life itself. This yoga aims instead at a new and transformed life. But it insists as inexorably on a complete throwing away of desire and attachment in the mind, life and body. Its aim is to refound life in the truth of the spirit and for that purpose to transfer the roots of all we are and do from the mind, life and body to a greater consciousness above the mind. That means that in the new life all the connections must be f

  Section Nine SADHANA IN THE ASHRAM AND OUTSIDE SADHANA IN THE ASHRAM AND OUTSIDE I This Ashram has been created with another object than that ordinarily common to such institutions, not for the renunciation of the world but as a centre and a field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life which would in the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness and embody a greater life of the spirit. There is no general rule as to the stage at which one may leave the ordinary life and enter here; in each case it depends on the personal need and impulsion and the possibility or the advisability for one to ta

  SRI AUROBINDO INTERNATIONAL CENTRE OF EDUCATION COLLECTION VOL. VI ON YOGA II Letters on Yoga-Tome One Sri Aurobindo   SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM PONDICHERRY First Edition: 1958 Revised and Enlarged Edition: 1969           August 1969       © Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1969 Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry PRINTED IN INDIA PUBLISHERS' NOTE        The Sixth and Seventh Volumes of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education Collection series include almost all the

Section Seven THE PURPOSE OF AVATARHOOD THE PURPOSE OF AVATARHOOD I Surely for the earth-consciousness the very fact that the Divine manifests himself is the greatest of all splendours. Consider the obscurity here and what it would be if the Divine did not directly intervene and the Light of Lights did not break out of the obscurity—for that is the meaning of the manifestation. *  *  * An incarnation is the Divine Consciousness and Being manifesting through the body. It is possible from any plane. *  *  * It is the omnipresent cosmic Divine who supports the action of the universe; if there is an Incarnation, it does not in the leas

Part One Section One THE SUPRAMENTAL EVOLUTION THE SUPRAMENTAL EVOLUTION There have been times when the seeking for spiritual attainment was, at least in certain civilisations, more intense and widespread than now or rather than it has been in the world in general during the past few centuries. For now the curve seems to be the beginning of a new turn of seeking which takes its start from what was achieved in the past and projects itself towards a greater future. But always, even in the age of the Vedas or in Egypt, the spiritual achievement or the occult knowledge was confined to a few, it was not spread in the whole mass of humanity. The ma

Section Two SYNTHETIC METHOD AND INTEGRAL YOGA SYNTHETIC METHOD AND INTEGRAL YOGA As regards X's question—this is not a yoga of bhakti alone; it is or at least it claims to be an integral yoga, that is, a turning of all the being in all its parts to the Divine. It follows that there must be knowledge and works as well as bhakti, and in addition, it includes a total change of the nature, a seeking for perfection, so that the nature also may become one with the nature of the Divine. It is not only the heart that has to turn to the Divine and change, but the mind also—so knowledge is necessary, and the will and power of action and creation also—so wo