Appendix (Extract from a talk of Sri Aurobindo with a French scientist-disciple) 8 May 1926 In the West the highest minds are turned not towards spiritual truth but towards material science. The scope of science is very narrow, it touches only the most exterior part of the physical plane. And even there, what does science know really? It studies the functioning of the laws, builds theories ever renewed and each time held up as the last word of truth! We had recently the atomic theory, now comes the electronic. There are, for instance, two statements of modern science that would stir up deeper ranges for an occultist:        1. Atoms are whirling systems

25 November 1953 You have said: “It is in proportion to our trust in the Divine that the Divine Grace can act for us and help.”¹ If someone has no trust in the Divine, but calls very sincerely when he is in difficulty, in danger, what will happen to him? How can he call? The two things are contradictory. If he has no trust, he won’t even think of the Divine! He won’t think of calling. It is contradictory. He thinks of calling exactly in proportion to his trust… So? You have said here: “To smile at an enemy is to dis- arm him.”² “Smile” means what? One ought not to smile at an enemy! One ought not to!.. What I have state

1 April 1953 “Ambition has been the undoing of many Yogis. That canker can hide long. Many people start on the Path without any sense of it. But when they get powers, their ambition rises up, all the more violently because it had not been thrown out in the beginning.” Questions and Answers 1929 (14 April) * What do you call a “canker”? It is an image, as of a fine mango, very beautiful to look at, and when one opens it, there is a worm inside. That is because the fly laid an egg before the fruit was formed; outside there is no trace. Everything seems candid, disinterested. But within, right at the bottom, there is a great ambition, the

10 June 1953 “Attacks from adverse forces are inevitable: you have to take them as tests on your way and go courageous- ly through the ordeal. The struggle may be hard, but when you come out of it, you have gained something, you have advanced a step. There is even a necessity for the existence of the hostile forces. They make your determination stronger, your aspiration clearer. “It is true, however, that they exist because you gave them reason to exist. So long as there is some- thing in you which answers to them, their intervention is perfectly legitimate. If nothing in you responded, if they had no hold upon any part of

22 July 1953 “There are two factors that have to be considered in the matter [the causes of illness]. There is what comes from outside and there is what comes from your in- ner condition. Your inner condition becomes a cause of illness when there is a resistance or revolt in it or when there is some part in you that does not respond to the protection; or even there may be something there that almost willingly and wilfully calls in the ad- verse forces. It is enough if there is a slight movement of this kind in you; the hostile forces are at once upon you and their attack takes often the form of illness.” Questions and An

16 September 1953 “The force that comes down into one who is doing Yoga and helps him in his transformation, acts along many different lines and its results vary according to the nature that receives it and the work to be done. First of all, it hastens the transformation of all in the being that is ready to be transformed. If he is open and receptive in his mind, the mind, touched by the power of Yoga, begins to change and progress swiftly. There may be the same rapidity of change in the vital consciousness if that is ready, or even in the body. But in the body the transforming power of Yoga is oper- ative only to

26 August 1953 “Love is a supreme force which the Eternal Conscious- ness sent down from itself into an obscure and dark- ened world that it might bring back that world and its beings to the Divine. The material world in its darkness and ignorance had forgotten the Divine. Love came into the darkness; it awakened all that lay there asleep; it whispered, opening the ears that were sealed: ‘There is something worth waking to, worth living for, and it is love!’ And with the awakening to love there entered into the world the possibility of coming back to the Divine. The creation moves upward through love towards the Di

23 December 1953 If the mind “is incapable of finding knowledge”¹ what part of the being finds knowledge? One must enter the knowledge which belongs to the supramental region. But in order to bring it down? Every time something attracts this knowledge (something which is evidently ready to receive it), it comes. It does not come down into the mind, Sweet Mother? Yes, it descends into the mind. Into a higher part of the mind or rather into the psychic. One may have knowledge from the psychic – though it is of another kind and is not formulated as in the mind. It is a sort of inner certitude which makes you do the right thing at the right momen

20 May 1953 You have said: “And as for those who have the will of running away, even they, when they go over to the other side, may find that the flight was not of much use after all.” Questions and Answers 1929 (28 April) * What do you call “the other side”? We speak of the other side of the veil, the other side of existence. It is being no longer in the physical: being in the vital, for example, or in the conscious part of the vital. One becomes conscious of two sides and so knows what is happening. There are people who go out of their body methodically to have the experience of the separation between the two. But as for that, one mus

21 October 1953 When a true artist concentrates and sees the Divine in himself, can he use art to express the Divine? And why not? Whom do you call an artist, first of all? A painter, a sculptor – Is that all? What else? What meaning do you give to the word “artist”? Of whom do you think when you speak of an artist? Of a painter or a sculptor? Someone who can draw. Yes, a painter, someone who can draw, it is the same thing. Of a painter, a sculptor, that’s all? Painter and sculptor? Not of a musician or a writer or.. I am asking you because the answer would be different according to the instances I had thought of someone who can draw. For ins