21 November 1956 Mother distributes the booklet Thoughts and Glimpses, then glances through one of the  copies: Five paragraphs dealing with five modes of being or five states of being, and the same thing recurs in all the different domains:  “When we have passed beyond knowings, then we shall have Knowledge. Reason was the helper; Reason is the bar.”   Sri Aurobindo, Thoughts and Glimpses, Cent. Vol. 16,p. 377 * This is about the mental being in man, that is, his mental activities; and Sri Aurobindo contrasts knowings with Knowledge. Actually I should be the one to ask you if you know what Sri Aurobindo means by “knowings”, and

1 February 1956 Sri Aurobindo writes here, “It is possible, indeed, to begin with knowledge or Godward emotion solely or with both together and to leave works for the final movement of the Yoga.” The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 86 * What is this knowledge? There are three principal paths of yoga: the path of knowledge, the path of love and the path of works. So Sri Aurobindo says that it depends on each case and person. Some people follow more easily the path of knowledge, others follow more easily the path of love, of devotion, and others follow the path of works. He says that for the integral yoga the three must be combined and with them s

"Wednesday Class"

APPENDIX 15 August 1947¹ August 15th, 1947 is the birthday of free India. It marks for her the end of an old era, the beginning of a new age. But we can also make it by our life and acts as a free nation an important date in a new age opening for the whole world, for the political, social, cultural and spiritual future of humanity. August 15th is my own birthday and it is naturally gratifying to me that it should have assumed this vast significance. I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous accident, but as the sanction and seal of the Divine Force that guides my steps on the work with which I began life, the beginning of its full fruition. Indeed, on this da

6 June 1956  Once or twice, as a game, you took one of your books or Sri Aurobindo’s and opened a page at random, and read out a sentence. Can these sentences give one a sign or an indication? What should we do to get a true answer? Everybody can do it. It is done in this way: you concentrate. Now, it depends on what you want. If you have an inner problem and want the solution, you concentrate on this problem; if you want to know the condition you are in, which you are not aware of ― if you want to get some light on the state you are in, you just come forward with simplicity and ask for the light. Or else, quite simply, if you are curious to know what the inv

8 August 1956 Sweet Mother, Sri Aurobindo writes: “A psychic fire within must be lit into which all is thrown with the Divine Name upon it.” The Synthesis of Yoga, p.155 * Isn’t the psychic fire always lit? It is not always lit. Then how to light it? By aspiration. By the will for progress, by the urge towards perfection. Above all, it is the will for progress and self-purification which lights the fire. The will for progress. Those who have a strong will, when they turn it towards spiritual progress and purification, automatically light the fire within themselves. And each defect one wants to cure or each progress one want

16 May 1956 “In sum, it may be safely affirmed that no solution offered can be anything but provisional until a supra- mental Truth-Consciousness is reached by which the appearances of things are put in their place and their essence revealed and that in them which derives straight from the spiritual essence. In the meanwhile our only safety is to find a guiding law of spiritual experience or else to liberate a light within that can lead us on the way until that greater direct Truth- Consciousness is reached above us or born within us. For all else in us that is only outward, all that is not a spiritual sense or seeing, the construction

29 August 1956 I suppose most of you come on Fridays to listen to the reading of Wu Wei. If you have listened, you will remember that something's said there about being “spontaneous”, and that the true way of living the true life is to live spontaneously. What Lao Tse calls spontaneous is this: instead of being moved by a personal will — mental, vital or physical — one ought to stop all outer effort and let oneself be guided and moved by what the Chinese call Tao which they identify with the Godhead — or God or the Supreme Principle or the Origin of all things or the creative Truth, indeed all possible human notions of the Divine and the goal to be attained. To be

5 December 1956 Now we are going to read what should be done to realise what was expressed in the five preceding paragraphs: “Transform reason into ordered intuition; let all thyself be light. This is thy goal. ”Transform effort into an even and sovereign over- flowing of the soul-strength; let all thyself be conscious force. This is thy goal. “Transform enjoying into an even and objectless ecstasy; let all thyself be bliss. This is thy goal. “Transform the divided individual into the world- personality; let all thyself be the divine. This is thy goal. “Transform the animal into the Driver of the herds; let all thyself be Krishn

31 October 1956 Mother, someone has asked me to request you to explain one of your sentences. You have said some- where that one must bee divine before one can bear the pressure of Divine Love. It is in the “Diary”. Oh! you are repeating it a little freely! Well, what does he want to know? He is asking whether man must first become divine before Love can spread over the earth. I don't think this is what is meant. Surely what you mean is that Divine Love cannot manifest until man becomes divine. Is that what you mean? That is what we understand. Oh! that's how you understand it!... But I don't think this is what is meant. First