Remarks on Public Figures in Europe   Kaiser Wilhelm II   The Kaiser gave up at the last moment when he could have assumed a dictatorship. Napoleon did the same after Waterloo.   In Napoleon's case they say it was the result of his disease, he was no longer quite his old self. The Kaiser was a man without any real strong stuff in him to face adversity. In the German case they simply lost hope after the American intervention and the failure of the submarine campaign —  there was no way out any longer and they felt exhausted by a hopeless struggle. But the end was inevitable. After the turning back at Co

Section Two   Messages     Messages Written for Special Occasions   Darshan Messages   The Divine gives itself to those who give themselves without reserve and in all their parts to the Divine. For them the calm, the light, the power, the bliss, the freedom, the wideness, the heights of knowledge, the seas of Ananda. 15 August 1929   *   It is not by your mind that you can hope to understand the Divine and its action, but by the growth of the true and divine consciousness within you. If the Divine were to unveil and reveal itself in all its glory, the mind might feel a Presence, but it would not understand its action or its

Sadhana in the Ashram Contd... I for my part am not prepared to bear any part of the burden of transformation of the hostile forces.   So much the better. I am not asking anybody to transform the Asuras —  I am only asking them to reject them.   I spoke of having seen and heard someone who showed me how he had organised, in the being of every sadhak here, a "dark being" veiling his "divine being".   I do not know what you mean by this someone. The existence of a double being is a preexistent fact, it has not been organised by anyone here.   I am not aware that the conditi

Sri Aurobindo's Force   Concreteness of the Force   The invisible Force producing tangible results both inward and outward is the whole meaning of the Yogic consciousness. Your question about Yoga bringing merely a feeling of Power without any result was really very strange. Who would be satisfied with such a meaningless hallucination and call it Power? If we had not had thousands of experiences showing that the Power within could alter the mind, develop its powers, add new ones, bring in new ranges of knowledge, master the vital movements, change the character, influence men and things, control the conditions and functionings of the body, work

Life and Death in the Ashram   Self-Control, Not Asceticism   What should be the true necessities of a sadhak? Should he buy things from outside? With what idea is pocket money given to us?   The idea, when the arrangement was made, was simply to see how and in what spirit the sadhaks dealt with money when they had any at their disposal. The necessities of a sadhak should be as few as possible; for there are only a very few things that are real necessities in life. The rest are either utilities or things decorative to life or luxuries. These a Yogi has a right to possess or enjoy only on one of two conditions — (1)

The Ashram and Religion   A Way, Not a Religion   I have no time to read books usually. I seldom had and none at all now. I have had no inspirations from the sadhana of Bejoy Goswami, though a good deal at one time from Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. My remarks simply meant that I regard the spiritual history of mankind and especially of India as a constant development of a divine purpose, not a book that is closed, the lines of which have to be constantly repeated. Even the Upanishads and the Gita were not final though everything may be there in seed. In this development the recent spiritual history of India is a very important stage a

Letters on Himself and the Ashram     Selected Letters on His Outer and Inner Life,     His Path of Yoga and the Practice of Yoga in His Ashram      Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry, c. 1915­1918 Part One    Remarks on His Life and Works and on His Contemporaries and Contemporary Events   Section One   Reminiscences and Remarks on Events in His Outer Life   His Life and Attempts to Write about It   Knowing about Things in His Past   For a long time I have wanted to hear something about the early days i

Work in the Ashram   Work and Sadhana   I have read in The Synthesis of Yoga and the Mother's Conversations that every act and movement, thought and word should be an offering. Even if this is a strictly mental effort without the heart's devotion, as it may be at first, it is sure to lead to devotion, provided the effort is sincere. This discipline is quite possible in acts of a more or less mechanical nature like walking or eating, but where the work involves mental concentration, as in reading or writing, it seems well nigh impossible. If the consciousness has to be busy with the remembrance, the attention will get divided and the work will not b

Part Five   Mantras and Messages     Section One   Mantras   On Mantras   Mantras in the Integral Yoga   The idea of your friend that it is necessary to receive a mantra from here and for that he must come is altogether wrong. There is no mantra given in this Yoga. It is the opening of the consciousness to the Mother from within that is the true initiation and that can only come by aspiration and rejection of restlessness in the mind and vital. To come here is not the way to get it. Many come and get nothing or get their difficulties raised or even fall away from the Yoga. It is no use coming before one

Human Relations and the Ashram   Right Relations between Sadhaks   The sadhaks of this Asram are not perfect —  they have plenty of weaknesses and wrong movements. It is blindness not to be able to see that; only it should not lead to a criticising or condemnatory attitude on persons —  it should be regarded as the play of forces which have to be overcome. 1933   *   To be turned wholly to the Mother and have nothing but friendly relations with the sadhaks, the same for all, is a counsel of perfection; but not many can carry it out, hardly one here and there. Yet to have that tendency is