Difficulties of the Path (21-05-08) If you leave it to God to purify, He will exhaust the evil in you subjectively; but if you insist on guiding yourself, you will fall into much outward sin and suffering. Sri Aurobindo. (Thoughts and Aphorism 245) Difficulties of the Path ….Depression is a clouded grey state in its nature and it is more difficult for light to come through clouds and greyness than through a clear atmosphere. That depression obstructs the inner light is a matter of general experience. The Gita says expressly, “Yoga should be practiced persistently with a heart free from depression” − anirviņņacetasā. Bunyan in The Pilgrim's Progress symbolis

A PRAYER (31-12-08) The strangest of the soul's experiences is this, that it finds, when it ceases to care for the image & threat of troubles, then the troubles themselves are nowhere to be found in one's neighbourhood. It is then that we hear from behind those unreal clouds God laughing at us. Sri Aurobindo (Thoughts and Aphorism 507) A PRAYER * O Lord, grant that this collective convention of the ending year be for us also the occasion to put an end to a whole lot of bonds and attachments, illusions and weaknesses which have no longer any purpose in our lives. At every moment we must shake off the past like falling dust, that it may not soil the virgin

The Perfection of Equality (03-09-08) When I hear of a righteous wrath, I wonder at man's capacity for self-deception. Sri Aurobindo (Thoughts and Aphorism 52) The Perfection of Equality …The Divine is equal to all, an impartial sustainer of his universe, who views all with equal eyes, assents to the law of developing being which he has brought out of the depths of his existence, tolerates what has to be tolerated, depresses what has to be depressed, raises what has to be raised, creates, sustains and destroys with a perfect and equal understanding of all causes and results and working out of the spiritual and pragmatic meaning of all phenomena. God does not

Opposition of the Hostile Forces (30-07-08) The individual cannot be perfect until he has surrendered all he now calls himself to the divine Being. So also, until mankind gives all it has to God, never shall there be a perfected society. Sri Aurobindo (Thoughts and Aphorism 327) Opposition of the Hostile Forces It is a fact always known to all yogis and occultists since the beginning of time, in Europe and Africa as in India, that wherever yoga or Yajna is done, there the hostile Forces gather together to stop it by any means. It is known that there is a lower nature and a higher spiritual nature—it is known that they pull different ways and the lower is st

A SPIRIT OF SURRENDER (07-05-08) He who recognises not Krishna, the God in man, knows not God entirely; he who knows Krishna only, knows not even Krishna. Yet is the opposite truth also wholly true that if thou canst see all God in a little pale unsightly and scentless flower, then hast thou hold of His supreme reality. Sri Aurobindo. (Thoughts and Aphorism 159) A SPIRIT OF SURRENDER Whatever you do, whatever the process you use, and even if you happen to have acquired in it a great skill and power, you must leave the result in the hands of the Divine. Always you may try, but it is for the Divine to give you the fruit of your effort or not to give it. Th

Can one help the world with a vibration of goodwill? (08-10-08) If you cannot make God love you, make Him fight you. If He will not give you the embrace of the lover, compel Him to give you the embrace of the wrestler. Sri Aurobindo (Thoughts and Aphorism 418)   Can one help the world with a vibration of goodwill? With good wishes one can change many things, only it must be an extremely pure and unmixed goodwill. It is quite obvious that a thought, a perfectly pure and true prayer, if it is sent forth into the world, does its work. But where is this perfectly pure and true thought when it passes into the human brain? There are degradations. If through an

Simply to be happy to love (10-12-08) Logic is the worst enemy of Truth, as self-righteousness is the worst enemy of virtue, - for the one cannot see its own errors nor the other its own imperfections. Sri Aurobindo (Thoughts and Aphorisms 46)   Simply to be happy to love … if one wants to reject love in its lower form, that is to say, human love as human beings experience it, if one makes an inner effort to reject it, one usually rejects the entire capacity of feeling love and becomes like a stone. And then sometimes one has to wait for years or centuries before there is a reawakening in oneself of the capacity to receive and manifest love.

Inconscience (05-10-08) Inconscience Fear is a phenomenon of unconsciousness. It is a kind of anguish that comes from ignorance. One does not know the nature of a certain thing, does not know its effect or what will happen, does not know the consequences of one’s acts, one does not know so many things; and this ignorance brings fear. One fears what one does not know. Take a child, if it is brought before someone it does not know (I am not speaking of a child with an awakened inner consciousness, I am speaking of an ordinary child), - you bring it before someone it does not know, its first movement will always be one of fear. Only very rare children – and they have ano

COME OUT OF WORDS (14-05-08) Even when one has climbed up into those levels of bliss where pain vanishes, it still survives disguised as intolerable ecstasy. Sri Aurobindo. (Thoughts and Aphorism 422) COME OUT OF WORDS The main trouble is that you think with words, but these words are empty of meaning; most of the time they are mere words – you talk of the Divine, you talk of the Supreme, you talk of Yoga, you say many things, but does all that correspond in your head to something concrete? to a thought, a feeling, a clear idea, an experience? Or are they simply words?... You must see the thing, the experience behind the words. Here we speak of “Yoga

DEGRADING SELF- COMPASSION (24-09-08) To the senses it is always true that the sun moves round the earth; this is false to the reason. To the reason it is always true that the earth moves round the sun; this is false to the supreme vision. Neither earth moves nor sun; there is only a change in the relation of sun-consciousness & earth-consciousness. Sri Aurobindo (Thoughts and Aphorism 102) DEGRADING SELF- COMPASSION This turning back upon oneself, a kind of degrading self-compassion, in which one tells oneself in a tone so full of pity, “Nobody understands me! No one loves me! No one cares for me as people should!” etc., and one goes on and on....And no