You need not appear good (02-10-13) There are four stages in the pain God gives to us; when it is only pain; when it is pain that causes pleasure; when it is pain that is pleasure; and when it is purely a fiercer form of delight. Sri Aurobindo (Thoughts and Aphorisms - 421)   You need not appear good When you are absolutely sincere, you make a constant effort to live in harmony with the highest ideal of your being, the truth of your being. At every moment, in all that you think, all that you feel and all that you do, you try as perfectly as possible, as completely as possible, to put yourself in harmony with the highest ideal or, if you are conscious of it, with the truth of your

It is not what one does (11.12.2013) Fear and anxiety are perverse forms of will. What thou fearest & ponderest over, striking that note repeatedly in thy mind, thou helpest to bring about; for, if thy will above the surface of waking repels it, it is yet what thy mind underneath is all along willing, & the subconscious mind is mightier, wider, better equipped to fulfil than thy waking force & intellect. But the spirit is stronger than both together; from fear and hope take refuge in the grandiose calm and careless mastery of the spirit.   Sri Aurobindo   (T

Peace, Calm, Quiet, Silence(10-11-13) Peace, Calm, Quiet, Silence   The words "peace, calm, quiet, silence" have each their own shade of meaning, but it is not easy to define them. Peace – śānti. Calm – sthiratā.http://www.aurobindo.ru/workings/sa/23/e.gif Quiet – acañcalatā. Silence – niścala-nīravatā Quiet is a condition in which there is no restlessness or disturbance. Calm is a still unmoved condition which no disturbance can affect – it is a less negative condition than quiet. Peace is a still more positive condition; it carries with it a sense of settled and harmonious rest and deliverance. Silence is a state in which either there is no movement of the mind

Why are we here in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram?(06-04-11)  Most of all things on earth I hated pain till God hurt and tortured me; then it was revealed to me that pain is only a perverse and recalcitrant shape of excessive delight. Sri Aurobindo (Thoughts and Aphorisms 420) Why are we here in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram? * (Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education – 50th Anniversary 2.12, 92-93 Message) There is an ascending evolution in nature which goes from the stone to the plant, from the plant to the animal, from the animal to man. Because man is, for the moment, the last rung at the summit of the ascending evolution, he considers himself as the final stage in this ascension

Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga (07-09-11) Our Evil is to God not evil, but ignorance and imperfection, our good a lesser imperfection. Sri Aurobindo (Thoughts and Ahorisms 544) Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga To do Sri Aurobindo’s yoga is to want to transform oneself integrally, it is to have a single aim in life, such that nothing else exists any longer, that alone exists. And so one feels it clearly in oneself whether one wants it or not; but if one doesn’t, one can still have a life of goodwill, a life of service, of understanding; one can labour for the Work to be accomplished more easily- all that- one can do many things. But between this and doing yoga there is a great difference, And to d

Give Everything (11-05-11) Who is the superman? He who can rise above this matter-regarding broken mental human unit and possess himself universalised and deified in a divine force, a divine love & joy and a divine knowledge. Sri Aurobindo (Thoughts and Aphorisms 139) Give Everything The more you give yourself to the Divine the more He is with you, totally, constantly, at every minute, in all your thoughts, in all your needs, and that there’s no aspiration which does not receive an immediate answer; and you have the sense of a complete, constant intimacy, of a total nearness. It is as though you carried… as though the Divine were all the time with you; you walk and He walks with you, y

Jivatman, Spark-Soul and Psychic Being (18-12-11) Jivatman, Spark-Soul and Psychic Being   The Jivatman, spark-soul and psychic being are three different forms of the same reality and they must not be mixed up together as that confuses the clearness of the inner experience. The Jivatman or spirit, as it is usually called in English, is self-existent above the manifested or instrumental being—it is superior to birth and death, always the same, the individual Self or ¯atman. It is the eternal true being of the individual. The soul is a spark of the Divine which is not seated above the manifested being, but comes down into the manifestation to support its evolution in the material world. I

Plunge into the Divine (03-08-11) If a woman has tempted thee, is it her fault or thine? Be not a fool and a self-deceiver. Sri Aurobindo (Thoughts and Aphorisms-303) Plunge into the Divine There are disciplines such as Hatha Yoga and Raja Yoga that one can practise and yet have nothing to do with the spiritual life; the former arrives mostly at body control, the latter at mind control. But to enter the spiritual life means to take a plunge into the Divine, as you would jump into the sea. And that is not the end but the very beginning; for after you have taken the plunge, you must learn to live in the Divine. How are you to do it? You have simply to jump straight in and not to think, “Wh

The Need for the Grace (04-05-11) The idealist errs; it is not Mind which created the worlds, but that which created mind has created them. Mind only mis-sees, because it sees partially & by details, what is created. Sri Aurobindo (Thoughts and Aphorisms 156)   The Need for the Grace Most people, as soon as the difficulty has gone, say, “After all, I pulled myself out of the difficulty quite well.” There you are. And then you lock and bolt the door, you see, and you cannot receive anything any more. You need once again some acute anguish, some terrible difficulty for this kind of inner stupidity to give way, and for you to realise once more that you can do nothing. Because it

LET THE ALL-CONSCIOUSNESS DECIDE (16-11-11) With the present morality of the human race a sound and durable human unity is not yet possible; but there is no reason why a temporary approximation to it should not be the reward of strenuous aspiration and untiring effort. By constant approximations and by partial realisations and temporary successes Nature advances. Sri Aurobindo (Thoughts and Aphorisms 336)   LET THE ALL-CONSCIOUSNESS DECIDE I am fully convinced that the confusion [ in the world] is there to teach us how to live from day to day, that is to say, not to be preoccupied with what may happen, what will happen, just to occupy oneself day by day with doing what one has to d