Section Nine SADHANA IN THE ASHRAM AND OUTSIDE SADHANA IN THE ASHRAM AND OUTSIDE I This Ashram has been created with another object than that ordinarily common to such institutions, not for the renunciation of the world but as a centre and a field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life which would in the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness and embody a greater life of the spirit. There is no general rule as to the stage at which one may leave the ordinary life and enter here; in each case it depends on the personal need and impulsion and the possibility or the advisability for one to ta

  SRI AUROBINDO INTERNATIONAL CENTRE OF EDUCATION COLLECTION VOL. VI ON YOGA II Letters on Yoga-Tome One Sri Aurobindo   SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM PONDICHERRY First Edition: 1958 Revised and Enlarged Edition: 1969           August 1969       © Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1969 Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry PRINTED IN INDIA PUBLISHERS' NOTE        The Sixth and Seventh Volumes of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education Collection series include almost all the

Section Seven THE PURPOSE OF AVATARHOOD THE PURPOSE OF AVATARHOOD I Surely for the earth-consciousness the very fact that the Divine manifests himself is the greatest of all splendours. Consider the obscurity here and what it would be if the Divine did not directly intervene and the Light of Lights did not break out of the obscurity—for that is the meaning of the manifestation. *  *  * An incarnation is the Divine Consciousness and Being manifesting through the body. It is possible from any plane. *  *  * It is the omnipresent cosmic Divine who supports the action of the universe; if there is an Incarnation, it does not in the leas

Part One Section One THE SUPRAMENTAL EVOLUTION THE SUPRAMENTAL EVOLUTION There have been times when the seeking for spiritual attainment was, at least in certain civilisations, more intense and widespread than now or rather than it has been in the world in general during the past few centuries. For now the curve seems to be the beginning of a new turn of seeking which takes its start from what was achieved in the past and projects itself towards a greater future. But always, even in the age of the Vedas or in Egypt, the spiritual achievement or the occult knowledge was confined to a few, it was not spread in the whole mass of humanity. The ma

Section Two SYNTHETIC METHOD AND INTEGRAL YOGA SYNTHETIC METHOD AND INTEGRAL YOGA As regards X's question—this is not a yoga of bhakti alone; it is or at least it claims to be an integral yoga, that is, a turning of all the being in all its parts to the Divine. It follows that there must be knowledge and works as well as bhakti, and in addition, it includes a total change of the nature, a seeking for perfection, so that the nature also may become one with the nature of the Divine. It is not only the heart that has to turn to the Divine and change, but the mind also—so knowledge is necessary, and the will and power of action and creation also—so wo

Section Three RELIGION, MORALITY, IDEALISM AND YOGA   RELIGION, MORALITY, IDEALISM AND YOGA The spiritual life (adhyatma jivari), the religious life (dharma jwan) and the ordinary human life of which morality is a part are three quite different things and one must know which one desires and not confuse the three together. The ordinary life is that of the average human consciousness separated from its own true self and from the Divine and led by the common habits of the mind, life and body which are the laws of the Ignorance. The religious life is a movement of the same ignorant human consciousness, turning or trying to turn away from the earth towar

Part Two Section One THE OBJECT OF INTEGRAL YOGA THE OBJECT OF INTEGRAL YOGA The object of the yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine's sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine. Its object is not to be a great yogi or a Superman (although that may come) or to grab at the Divine for the sake of the ego's power, pride or pleasure. It is not for Moksha though liberation comes by it and all else may come, but these must not be our objects. The Divine alone is our object.

No. 7 THE LIFE DIVINE CHAPTER VII THE EGO AND THE DUALITIES.     The soul seated on the same tree of Nature is absorbed and deluded and has sorrow because it is not the Lord, but when it sees and is in union with that other self and greatness of it which is the Lord, then sorrow passes away from it. Swetacwatarea Upanishad If all is in truth Sachchidananda, death, suffering, evil, limitation can only be the creations, positive in practical effect, negative in essence, of a distorting consciousness which has fallen from the total and unifying knowledge of itself into some error of division and partial experience. This is the fall of man ty

NO.6 THE LIFE DIVINE CHAPTER VI MAN IN THE UNIVERSE     The Soul of man, a traveler, wanders in this cycle of Brahman, huge, a totality of lives, a totality of states , thinking itself different from the Impeller of the journey. Accepted by Him, it attains its goal of Immortality. Swetacwatarea Upanishad.     The progressive revelation of a great, a transcendent, a luminous Reality with the multitudinous relativities of this world that we see and those other worlds that we do not see as means and material, condition and field, this would seem then to be the meaning of the universe,—since meaning and aim it has and is neither a purposeless illusion no

No. 4 THE LIFE DIVINE CHAPTER IV REALITY OMNIPRESENT       If one know Him as Brahman the Non-Being, he becomes merely the non-existent. H one knows that Brahman Is, then is he known as the real in existence.       Taittiriya Upanishad.      Since, then, we admit both the claim of the pure Spirit to manifest in us its absolute freedom and the claim of universal Matter to be the mould and condition of our manifestation, we have to find a truth that can entirely reconcile these antagonists and can give to both their due portion in Life and their due justification in Thought, amercing neither of its rights, denying in neither the sovereign truth from