Thoughts and Glimpses   Some think it presumption to believe in a special Providence or to look upon oneself as an instrument in the hands of God, but I find that every man has a special.   Providence and I see that God uses the mattock of the labourer and babbles in the mouth of a little child Providence is not only that which saves me from the shipwreck in which everybody else has foundered Providence is also that which while all others are saved snatches away my last plank of safety and drowns me in the solitary ocean.   The delight of victory is sometimes less than the attraction of struggle and suffering; nevertheless the laurel

'Essays in Philosophy and Yoga' by Sri Aurobindo - Page1 of 50 Part Two   The Yoga and Its Objects   Circa 1912         The Yoga and Its Objects   THE YOGA we practise is not for ourselves alone, but for the Divine; its aim is to work out the will of the Divine in the world, to effect a spiritual transformation and to bring down a divine nature and a divine life into the mental, vital and physical nature and life of humanity Its object is not personal Mukti, although Mukti is a necessary condition of the yoga, but the liberation and transformation of the human being It is not personal A

Supermind in the Evolution   A NEW humanity would then be a race of mental beings on the earth and in the earthly body, but delivered from its present conditions in the reign of the cosmic Ignorance so far as to be possessed of a perfected mind, a mind of light which could even be a subordinate action of the supermind or Truth-consciousness, and in any case capable of the full possibilities of mind acting as a recipient of that truth and at least a secondary action of it in thought and life It could even be a part of what could be described as a divine life upon earth and at least the beginnings of an evolution in the Knowledge and no longer e

The Ascending Unity   THE HUMAN mind loves a clear simplicity of view; the more trenchant a statement, the more violently it is caught by it and inclined to acceptance This is not only natural to our first crudity of thinking, and the more attractive because it makes things delightfully easy to handle and saves an immense amount of worry of enquiry and labour of reflection, but, modified, it accompanies us to the higher levels of a more watchful mentality Alexander's method with the fateful knot is our natural and favourite dealing with the tangled web of things, the easy cut, the royal way, the facile phil

The Problem of Rebirth   Section I   Rebirth and Karma   Rebirth   THE THEORY of rebirth is almost as ancient as thought itself and its origin is unknown We may according to our prepossessions accept it as the fruit of ancient psychological experience always renewable and verifiable and therefore true or dismiss it as a philosophical dogma and ingenious speculation; but in either case the doctrine, even as it is in all appearance well-nigh as old as human thought itself, is likely also to endure as long as human beings continue to think. In former times the doctrine used to pas

'Essays in Philosophy and Yoga' by Sri Aurobindo - Page1 of 50 Supermind and Mind of Light   THE ESSENTIAL character of Supermind is a Truth-consciousness which knows by its own inherent right of nature, by its own light: it has not to arrive at knowledge but possesses it . It may indeed, especially in its evolutionary action, keep knowledge behind its apparent consciousness and bring it forward as if from behind the veil; but even then this veil is only an appearance and does not really exist: the knowledge was always there, the consciousness its possessor and present revealer This too is only in the evolutionary play and on the supramental plane itself the cons

Occult Knowledge and the Hindu Scriptures   Are any of the following queries touched in Sanatan Dharma books of philosophy? 1) The nature and formation of animal souls 2) The shape, size, formations, nature and colour of subtle bodies 3) The difference between the subtle bodies of saints and ordinary people and the process of developing one into the other 4) The rationale of the reincarnation theory 5) The nature, constituents and situation of invisible worlds.   The first three questions are of a curious interest, the last two cover a very

The Universal Consciousness   I have encountered in my life several examples of people living or trying to live in the universal consciousness and it seemed to me that it rendered them less compassionate, less humane, less tender to the sufferings of others It seems to me that if it is necessary not to remain in the individual consciousness when it is a question of our own sufferings, it is otherwise when it is a question of sympathising with the sufferings of others In my opinion we feel more keenly the troubles of our brothers in humanity if we remain in the individual consciousness But I may be mistaken and ask only to be enlightened by you on

Man -Slave or Free?   THE EXCLUSIVE pursuit of Yoga by men who seclude themselves either physically or mentally from the contact of the world has led to an erroneous view of this science as something mystic, far-off and unreal The secrecy which has been observed with regard to Yogic practices, -a necessary secrecy in the former stages of human evolution, -has stereotyped this error Practices followed by men who form secret circles and confine the instruction in the mysteries strictly to those who have a certain preparatory fitness, inevitably bear the stamp to the outside world of occultism In reality there is nothing intrinsically hidden, occult or mystic about Yog

Part One   Essays from the Karmayogin   1909 – 1910     Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry The Ideal of the Karmayogin   A NATION The Ideal of the Karmayogin is building in India today before the eyes of the world so swiftly, so palpably that all can watch the process and those who have sympathy and intuition distinguish the forces at work, the materials in use, the lines of the divine architecture This