Discipline in the Ashram   Discipline Defined   What is discipline?   To act according to a standard of Truth or a rule or law of action (dharma) or in obedience to a superior authority or to the highest principles discovered by the reason and intelligent will and not according to one's own fancy, vital impulses and desires. In Yoga obedience to the Guru or to the Divine and the law of the Truth as declared by the Guru is the foundation of discipline. 12 June 1933   *   What is discipline and how does it apply here, in our Yoga?   It is not the discipline of Yoga,

Political Career, 1906 - 1910   Mother India     When you wrote that you looked upon India not as an inert, dead mass of matter, but as the very Mother, the living Mother, I believe that you saw that Truth.   My dear sir, I am not a materialist. If I had seen India as only a geographical area with a number of more or less interesting or uninteresting people in it, I would hardly have gone out of my way to do all that for the said area.   Is there something in what you wrote? Or was it just poetic or patriotic sentiment?   Merely a poetic or patriotic sentiment just as in yourself only your flesh, skin, bone

The Supramental Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths   Indian Systems and the Cabbala   I do not think exact correlations can always be traced between one system of spiritual and occult knowledge and another. All deal with the same material, but there are differences of stand point, differences of view-range, a divergence in the mental idea of what is seen and experienced, disparate pragmatic purposes and therefore a difference in the paths surveyed, cut out or followed; the systems vary, each constructs its own schema and technique. I have looked at the diagrams you sent me; I do not know whether I have grasped them rightly an

Part Two   Translations and Commentaries from Manuscripts   These texts written between c. 1900 and 1914 were found among Sri Aurobindo's manuscripts and typescripts. He did not revise them for publication.     Section One   Introduction     On Translating the Upanishads   OM TAT SAT   This translation of a few of the simpler & more exoteric Upanishads to be followed by other sacred and philosophical writings of the Hindus not included in the Revealed Scriptures, all under the one title of t

The Means of Realisation   Vedanta is merely an intellectual assent, without Yoga. The verbal revelation of the true relations between the One and the Many, the intellectual acceptance of the revelation and the dogmatic acknowledgement of the relations do not lead us beyond metaphysics, and there is no human pursuit more barren and frivolous than metaphysics practised merely as an intellectual pastime, a play with words & thoughts, when there is no intention of fulfilling thought in life or of moulding our inner state and outer activity by the knowledge which we have intellectually accepted. It is only by Yoga that the fulfilment and moulding of our

Section Four   Incomplete Commentaries on the Kena Upanishad   Circa 1912 ­ 1914     Kena Upanishad   An Incomplete Commentary   Foreword   As the Isha Upanishad is concerned with the problem of God & the world and consequently with the harmonising of spirituality & ordinary human action, so the Kena is occupied with the problem of God & the Soul and the harmonising of our personal activity with the movement of infinite energy & the supremacy of the universal Will. We are not here in this universe as independent existences. It is evident

The Brihad Aranyak Upanishad   Chapter One: Section I     1. Dawn is the head1 of the horse sacrificial.2 The sun is his eye,3 his breath is the wind, his wide open mouth is Fire, the master might universal, Time is the self of the horse sacrificial.4 Heaven is his back & the midworld his belly, earth is his footing,—the regions are his flanks & the lesser regions their ribs, the seasons his members, the months & the half months are their joints, the days & nights are his standing place, the stars his bones & the sky is the flesh of his body. The strands are the food in his belly, the rivers are his veins, his l

Three Fragments of Commentary   The first two words of the Kena, like the first two words of the Isha, concentrate into a single phrase the subject of the Upanishad and settle its bounds & its spirit. By whom is our separate mental existence governed? Who is its Lord & ruler? Who sends forth the mind—kena preshitam, who guides it so that it falls in its ranging on a particular object and not another (kena patati)? The mind is our centre; in the mind our personal existence is enthroned. Manomayah pranasariraneta pratisthito 'nne, a mental guide and leader of the life & body has been established in matter, and we suppose & feel ourselves to be

A Fragmentary Chapter for a Work on Vedanta   [.....] Each of the great authoritative Upanishads has its own peculiar character and determined province as well as the common starting point of thought and supreme truth in the light of which all their knowledge has to be understood. The unity of universal existence in the transcendental Being who alone is manifested here or elsewhere forms their common possession & standpoint. All thought & experience here rest upon this great enigma of a multiplicity that when questioned resolves itself to a unity of sum, of nature & of being, of a unity that when observed seems to be a mere sum

Sadananda's Essence of Vedanta   INVOCATION   To the Absolute     1. I take refuge with Him who is sheer Existence, Intelligence and Bliss, impartible, beyond the purview of speech and mind, the Self in whom the whole Universe exists—may my desire & purpose attain fulfilment.   To the Masters     2. After homage to the Masters who in deed as well as word delight in the One without second and from whom the seemings of duality have passed away, I will declare the Essence of Vedanta according to my intellectual capacity.   PRELIMINARY STATEMENT