This book is compiled from the answers Sri Aurobindo gave in writing to some elementary questions about Yoga put to  him during the years 1933-36.      I         THE CALL AND FITNESS         Q: How can one know if he is fit for the spiritual life before taking up Toga?       A: How can anyone know before he puts his step on the path? He can only know whether he has the aspiration or not, whether he feels a call or not.         Q: You have said that to enter the path of Toga "all one needs to know is whether the soul in one has been moved to the Toga or not". But how to

 XIII         SEX—FOOD—SLEEP       Q: Is it true that sexual desire is the greatest obstacle in Toga?       A: One of the greatest, at least.         Q,: Does sexual desire increase by taking more food and decrease by taking less?       A: It is rather certain kinds of food that are supposed to increase it—e.g., meat, onions, chillies, etc.         Q: Are greed, anger, jealousy etc., the companions of the sexual desire?       A: They usually go with sexual desire, though, not always.         Q: The Mother has said "the strength of such impulses as those of the sex lies usually in the fact that the people take too much notice

Section Six THE DIVINE AND THE HOSTILE POWERS THE DIVINE AND THE HOSTILE POWERS I 1. Falsehood and Ignorance1 Ignorance means Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life. This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth,—truth of being, truth of divine consciousness, truth of force and action, truth of Ananda. As a result, instead of a world of integral truth and divine harmony created in the light

Section Four REASON, SCIENCE AND YOGA REASON, SCIENCE AND YOGA I European metaphysical thought—even in those thinkers who try to prove or explain the existence and nature of God or of the Absolute—does not in its method and result go beyond the intellect. But the intellect is incapable of knowing the supreme Truth; it can only range about seeking for Truth, and catching fragmentary representations of it, not the thing itself, and trying to piece them together. Mind cannot arrive at Truth; it can only make some constructed figure that tries to represent it or a combination of figures. At the end of European thought, therefore, there must always be Agnos

Section Three BASIC REQUISITES OF THE PATH BASIC REQUISITES OF THE PATH I The goal of yoga is always hard to reach, but this one is more difficult than any other, and it is only for those who have the call, the capacity, the willingness to face everything and every risk, even the risk of failure, and the will to progress towards an entire selflessness, desirelessness and surrender. *  *  * This yoga implies not only the realisation of God, but an entire consecration and change of the inner and outer life till it is fit to manifest a divine consciousness and become part of a divine work. This means an inner discipline far more exacting an

Section Six SADHANA THROUGH MEDITATION SADHANA THROUGH MEDITATION I Your questions cover the whole of a very wide field. It is therefore necessary to reply to them with some brevity, touching only on some principal points.     1. What meditation exactly means.     There are two words used in English to express the Indian idea of dhyana, "meditation" and "contemplation". Meditation means properly the concentration of the mind on a single train of ideas which work out a single subject. Contemplation means regarding mentally a single object, image, idea so that the knowledge about the object, image or idea may arise naturally in the mind b

  Section Seven SADHANA THROUGH LOVE AND DEVOTION SADHANA THROUGH LOVE AND DEVOTION I To bring the Divine Love and Beauty and Ananda into the world is, indeed, the whole crown and essence of our yoga. But it has always seemed to me impossible unless there comes as its support and foundation and guard the Divine Truth—what I call the supramental—and its Divine Power. Otherwise Love itself blinded by the confusions of this present consciousness may stumble in its human receptacles and, even otherwise, may find itself unrecognised, rejected or rapidly degenerating and lost in the frailty of man's inferior nature. But when it comes in the divi

Section Eight REBIRTH REBIRTH The soul takes birth each time, and each time a mind, life and body are formed out of the materials of universal nature according to the soul's past evolution and its need for the future.      When the body is dissolved, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains there for a time, but after a time the vital sheath disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally the soul or psychic being retires into the psychic world to rest there till a new birth is close.      This is the general course for ordinarily developed human beings. There are variations according to the nature of the individual and his development. For e

Section Five PLANES AND PARTS OF THE BEING PLANES AND PARTS OF THE BEING I Men do not know themselves and have not learned to distinguish the different parts of their being; for these are usually lumped together by them as mind, because it is through a mentalised perception and understanding that they know or feel them; therefore they do not understand their own states and actions, or, if at all, then only on the surface. It is part of the foundation of yoga to become conscious of the great complexity of our nature, see the different forces that move it and get over it a control of directing knowledge. We are composed of many parts each of which

  Section Eight HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS IN YOGA   HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS IN YOGA I You seem not to have understood the principle of this yoga. The old yoga demanded a complete renunciation extending to the giving up of the worldly life itself. This yoga aims instead at a new and transformed life. But it insists as inexorably on a complete throwing away of desire and attachment in the mind, life and body. Its aim is to refound life in the truth of the spirit and for that purpose to transfer the roots of all we are and do from the mind, life and body to a greater consciousness above the mind. That means that in the new life all the connections must be f