Mind of Light A NEW humanity means for us the appearance, the development of a type or race of mental beings whose principle of mentality would be no longer a mind in the Ignorance seeking for knowledge but even in its knowledge bound to the ignorance, a seeker after Light but not its natural possessor, open to the Light but not an inhabitant of the Light, not yet a perfected instrument, truth-conscious and delivered out of the Ignorance. Instead, it would be possessed already of what could be called a mind of Light, a mind capable of living in the truth, capable of being truth-conscious and manifesting in its life a direct in place of an indirect knowledge. Its mentality w

The Ascending Unity THE human mind loves a clear simplicity of view; the more trenchant a statement, the more violently it is caught by it and inclined to acceptance. This is not only natural to our first crudity of thinking, and the more attractive because it makes things delightfully easy to handle and saves an immense amount of worry of enquiry and labour of reflection, but, modified, it accompanies us to the higher levels of a more watchful mentality. Alexander’s method with the fateful knot is our natural and favourite dealing with the tangled web of things, the easy cut, the royal way, the facile philosophy of this and not this, that and not that, a strong yes an

The Divine Body A DIVINE life in a divine body is the formula of the ideal that we envisage. But what will be the divine body? What will be the nature of this body, its structure, the principle of its activity, the perfection that distinguishes it from the limited and imperfect physicality within which we are now bound? What will be the conditions and operations of its life still physical in its base upon the earth by which it can be known as divine? If it is to be the product of an evolution, and it is so that we must envisage it, an evolution out of our human imperfection and ignorance into a greater truth of spirit and nature, by what process or stages can it gro

The Needed Synthesis What is the Synthesis needed at the present time? UNDOUBTEDLY, that of man himself. The harmony of his faculties is the condition of his peace, their mutual understanding and helpfulness the means of his perfection. At war, they distract the kingdom of his being; the victory of one at the expense of another maims his self-fulfilment. The peculiar character of our age is the divorce that has been pronounced between reason and faith, the logical mind and the intuitive heart. At first, the declaration of war between them was attended by painful struggles, a faith disturbed or a scepticism dissatisfied. But now their divorce has create

The Goal WHEN we have passed beyond knowings, then we shall have Knowledge. Reason was the helper; Reason is the bar. When we have passed beyond willings, then we shall have Power. Effort was the helper; Effort is the bar. When we have passed beyond enjoyings, then we shall have Bliss. Desire was the helper; Desire is the bar. When we have passed beyond individualising, then we shall be real Persons. Ego was the helper; Ego is the bar. When we have passed beyond humanity, then we shall be the Man. The Animal was the helper; the Animal is the bar. Transform reason into ordered intuition; let all thyself be light. This is thy goal. Transform effort into a

The Yoga and Its Objects "...the book represents an early stage of Sri Aurobindo's sadhana and only a part of it is applicable to the Yoga as it has at present taken form after a lapse of more than twenty years." 28-10-1934 A note from Sri Aurobindo Page-409 The Yoga and Its Objects THE yoga we practise is not for ourselves alone, but for the Divine; its aim is to work out the will of the Divine in the world, to effect a spiritual transformation and to bring down a divine nature and a divine life into the mental, vital and physical nature and life of humanity. Its object is not personal Mukti, although Mukti is a necessary condition of the

APPENDIX (In December 1935, a sadhak had asked Sri Aurobindo a question regarding a passage in Ch. II of Rebirth and Karma — the title under which the series of articles in Section One of this book were first published in the Arya. This question along with Sri Aurobindo’s answer to it is shown below.) Q: In Chapter II, “The Reincarnating Soul”, of Rebirth and Karma it is stated: “We have, in fact, an immutable Self, a real Person, lord of this ever-changing personality which, again, assumes ever-changing bodies, but the real Self knows itself always as above the mutation, watches and enjoys it, but is not involved in it. Through what does it enjoy the chan

The Higher Lines of Karma THE third movement of mind labours to bring the soul of man out of the tangle of the vital and mental forces and opens to him a field in which the mind raises itself, raises at least the head of its thought and will, above the vital demands and standards and there at that top of its activities, whatever its other concessions to the lower Karma, lives for the sake of the true values, the true demands of a mental being, even though one imprisoned in a body and set to wrestle with the conditions of life in a material universe. The innate demand of the mental being is for mental experience, for the mind's manifold strengths, its capacities,

The Chain THE whole world yearns after freedom, yet each creature is in love with his chains; this is the first paradox and inextricable knot of our nature. Man is in love with the bonds of birth; therefore he is caught in the companion bonds of death. In these chains he aspires after freedom of his being and mastery of his self-fulfilment. Man is in love with power; therefore he is subjected to weakness. For the world is a sea of waves of force that meet and continually fling themselves on each other; he who would ride on the crest of one wave, must faint under the shock of hundreds. Man is in love with pleasure; therefore he must undergo the yoke of grief

ASPECTS AND POWERS OF THE MOTHER EXPLANATION OF SOME TERMS IN "THE MOTHER" 1. FALSEHOOD AND IGNORANCE 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 of the d