SECTION TWO   SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY AND YOGA   The Gulf between the Methods of Physical Science and Yoga   WHEN the scientist says that "scientifically speaking,  God is a hypothesis which is no longer necessary" he is talking arrant nonsense—for the existence of God is not and cannot be and never was a scientific hypothesis or problem at all, it is and always has been a spiritual or a metaphysical problem. You cannot speak scientifically about it at all either pro or con. The metaphysician or the spiritual seeker has a right to point out that it is nonsense; but if you lay down the law to the scientist in the field of science you run the risk of having the same objection t

FOREWORD   THIS new volume in the series of "Letters of Sri Aurobindo" contains letters on spiritual philosophy and the practice of Yoga compiled after the publication of the first two volumes which also include letters dealing with the same subjects. The classification of letters under different headings and their arrangement in separate sections in this volume is made on the same plan as that of the earlier volumes. Those who have made a careful study of the earlier volumes will find in these letters further clarification of several issues connected with Sri Aurobindo's spiritual philosophy and psychology, fuller understanding of the aim, the conditions and the process

SECTION NINETEEN   GREAT MEN AND AVATARS   Greatness   BY greatness is meant an exceptional capacity of one kind or another.   24-4-1936 Mistake of Depreciating Great Men   PEOPLE have begun to try to prove that great men were not great, which is a very big mistake. If greatness is not appreciated by men, the world will become mean, small, dull, narrow and tamasic.   Greatness in Yoga and in the Universal Order   OBVIOUSLY, outer greatness is not the aim of Yoga. But that is no reason why one should not recognise the part played by greatness in the order of the universe or the place of great men of action, great poets and artists, etc.

SECTION SIXTEEN   TRANSFORMATION OF THE PHYSICAL BEING                                                                                I.   OPENING THE PHYSICAL TO THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS                                                                              II.  ILLNESS IN YOGA                                                                              III. REGULATION OF FOOD                                                                              IV. SLEEP AND DREAM IN SADHANA                                                                              V.  REJECTION OF SEX                                                                         

FOREWORD   THE letters of Sri Aurobindo are a vast literature of very great value. Written mostly to his disciples in answer to their specific inquiries they have also a wider bearing and are likely to prove of great benefit not only to those who are interested in the things of the Spirit but also to all those who, not satisfied with the usual and the ordinary, strive for higher and greater values in life. For, the most significant and central idea of Sri Aurobindo's spiritual metaphysics as well as of his Yoga is that he does not consider human and spiritual values as totally distinct and basically incompatible, but, in their true significance, as related parts of an all-comprehending

VIII   Science, Reasoning and Yogic Experience, Avatar and Symbols, Yoga Force, Beauty and Art, etc.   Reply to Leonard Woolf's Criticism of Mysticism   I HAVE read Leonard Woolf's article, but I do not propose to deal with it in my comments on Professor Sorley's letter—for apart from the ignorant denunciation and cheap satire in which it deals, there is nothing much in its statement of the case against spiritual thought or experience;  its reasoning  is superficial and springs from an entire misunderstanding  of the case for the mystic. There are four main arguments he sets against it and none of them has any value. Argument number one. Mysticism and mystic

III Yoga; Its Principle and Process   The Central Aim and Discipline of Yoga   TO find the Divine is indeed the first reason for seeking the spiritual Truth and the spiritual life; it is the one thing indispensable and all the rest is nothing without it. The Divine once found, to manifest Him,—that is, first of all to transform one's own limited consciousness into the Divine Consciousness, to live in the infinite Peace, Light, Love, Strength, Bliss, to become that in one's essential nature and, as a consequence, to be its vessel, channel, instrument in one's active nature. To bring into activity the principle of oneness on the material plane or to work for humanity is

IV   Parts of Total Consciousness   Consciousness   I   CONSCIOUSNESS is not, to my experience, a phenomenon dependent on the reactions of personality to the forces of Nature and amounting to no more than a seeing or interpretation of these reactions. If that were so, then when the personality becomes silent and immoblie and gives no reactions, as there would be no seeing or interpretative action, there would therefore be no consciousness. That contradicts some of the fundamental experiences of Yoga, e.g., a silent and immoblie consciousness infinitely spread out, not dependent on the personality but impersonal and universal, not seeing and interpreting contacts but m

       

VI   Love: Human to Divine   The True Foundation of Love   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 divine truth and power. Divine Love descends first as