Activity and Passivity in Sadhna (04-08-10) The next greatest rapture to the love of God, is the love of God in men; there, too, one has the joy of multiplicity. Sri Aurobindo. (Thoughts and Aphorism 424) Activity and Passivity in Sadhna An active movement is one in which you throw your force out, that is, when something comes out from you – in a movement, a thought, a feeling – something which goes out from you to others or into the world. Passivity is when you remain just yourself like this, open, and receive what comes from outside. It does not at all depend on whether one moves or sits still. It is not that at all. To be active is to throw out the consciousness or force or movement f

Man A Transitional Being (14-07-10) We laugh at the savage for his faith in the medicine man; but how are the civilised less superstitious who have faith in the doctors? The savage finds that when a certain incantation is repeated, he often recovers from a certain disease; he believes. The civilised patient finds that when he doses himself according to a certain prescription, he often recovers from a certain disease; he believes. Where is the difference? Sri Aurobindo (Thoughts and Aphorisms 388) Man A Transitional Being Man is a mental being whose mentality works here involved, obscure and degraded in a physical brain. Even in the highest of his kind it is baulked of its luminous poss

THE GITA AND SRI AUROBINDO'S MESSAGE (10-03-10) The Mayavadin talks of my Personal God as a dream and prefers to dream of Impersonal Being; the Buddhist puts that aside too as a fiction and prefers to dream of Nirvana and the bliss of nothingness. Thus all the dreamers are busy reviling each other's visions and parading their own as the panacea. What the soul utterly rejoices in, is for thought the ultimate reality. Sri Aurobindo (Thoughts and Aphorisms 432) THE GITA AND SRI AUROBINDO'S MESSAGE It is not a fact that the Gita gives the whole base of Sri Aurobindo's message; for the Gita seems to admit the cessation of birth in the world as the ultimate aim or at least the ultimate culm

Man and the Evolution (11-08-10) When Asiatics massacre, it is an atrocity; when Europeans, it is a military exigency. Appreciate the distinction and ponder over this world's virtues. Sri Aurobindo (Thoughts and Aphorism 291)   Man and the Evolution A spiritual evolution, an evolution of consciousness in Matter in a constant developing self-formation till the form can reveal the indwelling Spirit, is then the keynote, the central significant motive of the terrestrial existence. This significance is concealed at the outset by the involution of the Spirit, the Divine Reality, in a dense material Inconscience; a veil of Inconscience, a veil of insensibility of Matter hides the uni

SIN,EVIL AND UGLINESS (06-01-10) Let not thy virtues be such as men praise or reward, but such as make for thy perfection and God in thy nature demands of thee. Sri Aurobindo (Thoughts and Aphorisms 233) SIN,EVIL AND UGLINESS Judging …. Unless your vision is constantly the vision of the Divine in all things, you have not only no right but no capacity to judge the state which others are in. And to pronounce a judgment on someone without having this vision spontaneously, effortlessly, is precisely an example of the mental presumptuousness of which Sri Aurobindo always spoke.…And it so happens that one who has the vision, the consciousness, who is capable of seeing the truth in all things

Sadhana through Work (24-11-10) The Theosophists are wrong in their circumstances but right in the essential. If the French Revolution took place, it was because a soul on the Indian snows dreamed of God as freedom, brotherhood and equality. Sri Aurobindo (Thoughts and Aphorisms275) Sadhana through Work …..The Gita is constantly justifying works as a means of spiritual salvation and enjoining a Yoga of Works as well as of Bhakti and Knowledge. Krishna, however, superimposes a higher law also that work must be done without desire, without attachment to any fruit or reward, without any egoistic attitude or motive, as an offering or sacrifice to the Divine. This is the traditional Indian att

What is Spirituality? (28-02-10) What is Spirituality? All Yoga starts from the perception that what we are now or rather what we perceive as ourselves and so call is only an ignorant partial and superficial formulation of our nature. It is not our whole self, it is not even our real self; it is a little representative personality put forward by the true and persistent being in us for the experience of this brief life; we not only have been in the past and can be in the future but we are much more than that in the present secret totality of our being and nature. Especially, there is a secret soul in us that is our true person; there is a secret self that is our true person; there is a sec

Transformation of the Vital (03-01-10) Transformation of the Vital There are four parts of the vital being – first, the mental vital which gives a mental expression by thought, speech or otherwise to the emotions, desires, passions, sensations and other movements of the vital being; the emotional vital which is the seat of various feelings, such as love, joy, sorrow, hatred, and the rest; the central vital which is the seat of the stronger vital longings and reactions, e.g. ambition, pride, fear, love of fame, attractions and repulsions, desires and passions of various kinds and the field of many vital energies; last, the lower vital which is occupied with small desires and feelings, such as

The real achievement of Yoga (06-10-10) Selfishness kills the soul ; destroy it. But take care that your altruism does not kill the souls of others. Sri Aurobindo. (Thoughts and Aphorisms 225) The real achievement of Yoga …… The condition to be aimed at, the real achievement of Yoga, the final perfection and attainment, for which all else is only a preparation, is a consciousness in which it is impossible to do anything without the Divine; for then, if you are without the Divine, the very source of your action disappears; knowledge, power, all are gone. But so long as you feel that the powers you use are your own , you will not miss the Divine support. In the beginning of the Yoga you

The Fear of Death (04-07-10) The Fear of Death Generally speaking, perhaps the greatest obstacle in the way of man's progress is fear, a fear that is many-sided, multiform, self-contradictory, illogical, unreasoning and often unreasonable. Of all fears the most subtle and the most tenacious is the fear of death. It is deeply rooted in the subconscient and it is not easy to dislodge. …. How can one overcome this fear? Several methods can be used for this purpose. But first of all, a few fundamental notions are needed to help us in our endeavour. The first and most important point is to know that life is one and immortal.The forms are countless, fleeting and brittle. This knowledge must be