SECTION TWO Transformation of the Mind THERE is no reason why one should not receive through the āhinking mind, as one receives through the vital, the emotional and the body. The thinking mind is as capable of receiving as these are, and, since it has to be transformed as well as the rest, it must be trained to receive, otherwise no transformation of it could take place. It is the ordinary unenlightened activity of the intellect that is an obstacle to spiritual experience, just as the ordinary unregenerated activity of the vital or the obscure stupidly obstructive consciousness of the body is an obstacle. What the sadhak has to be specially warned ag

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Letters of Sri Aurobindo was first compiled and published in four series from 1947 to 1951. Series First, Second and Fourth contained letters on yoga and the Third Series contained letters on Poetry and Literature. Prior to that small selections of leisters were published in The Riddle of This World (1933), Lights on Yoga (1935), Bases of Yoga (1936) and More Lights on Yoga (1948). Some letters were also published periodically in the Ashram Journals: Sri Aurobindo Circle, Sri Aurobindo Mandir, The Advent and Mother India. Series First and Second of Letters of Sri Aurobindo were reissued in 1950 and 1954 respectively. In 1958

PART – IV SECTION ONE The Triple Transformation Psychic ─ Spiritual ─ Supramental THE fundamental realisations of this yoga are: 1. The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. 2. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light, etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. 3. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness. You know the three things on which the rea

SECTION SEVEN Opposition of the Hostile Forces   IT IS a fact always known to all yogis and occultists since the beginning of time, in Europe and Africa as in India, that wherever yoga or Yajna is done, there the hostile Forces gather together to stop it by any means. It is known that there is a lower nature and a higher spiritual nature − it is known that they pull different ways and the lower is strongest at first and the higher afterwards. It is known that the hostile Forces take advantage of the movements of the lower nature and try to spoil through them, smash or retard the siddhi. It has been said as long ago as the Upanishads (hard is the path t

SECTION SIX Difficulties of the Path ALL who enter the spiritual path have to face the difficulties and ordeals of the path, those which rise from their own nature and those which come in from outside. The difficulties in the nature always rise again and again till you overcome them; they must be faced with both strength and patience. But the vital part is prone to depression when ordeals and difficulties rise. This is not peculiar to you, but comes to all sadhaks − it does not imply an unfitness for the sadhana or justify a sense of helplessness. But you must train yourself to overcome this reaction of depression, calling in the Mother's Force to aid you.

CHAPTER VI Man in the Universe The Soul of man, a traveller, 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. Swetaswatara Upanishad.¹ 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 nor a fortuitous accident. For th

CHAPTER XIII Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness - Force and the Ignorance From the kindled fire of Energy of Consciousness, Truth was born and the Law of Truth; from that the Night, from the Night the flowing ocean of being. Rig Veda.1 SINCE Brahman is in the essentiality of its universal being a unity and a multiplicity aware of each other and in each other and since in its reality it is something beyond the One and the Many, containing both, aware of both, Ignorance can only come about as a subordinate phenomenon by some concentration of consciousness absorbed in a part knowledge or a part

CHAPTER XI The Boundaries of the Ignorance One who thinks there is this world and no other... Katha Upanishad.1 Extended within the Infinite... headless and footless, concealing his two ends.2 Rig Veda.3 He who has the knowledge “I am Brahman” becomes all this that is; but whoever worships another divinity than the One Self and thinks, “Other is he and I am other”, he knows not. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.4 This Self is fourfold,—the Self of Waking who has the outer intelligence and enjoys external things, is its first part; the Self of Dream who has the inner intelligence and enjoys things subtle, is its second part;

CHAPTER III The Two Negations II. THE REFUSAL OF THE ASCETIC All this is the Brahman; this Self is the Brahman and the Self is fourfold. Beyond relation, featureless, unthinkable, in which all is still. Mandukya Upanishad.¹ AND still there is a beyond. For on the other side of the cosmic consciousness there is, attainable to us, a consciousness yet more transcendent,—transcendent not only of the ego, but of the Cosmos itself,—against which the universe seems to stand out like a petty picture against an immeasurable background. That supports the universal activity,—or perhaps only tolerates it; It embraces Li

BOOK ONE OMNIPRESENT REALITY AND THE UNIVERSE CHAPTER I The Human Aspiration She follows to the goal of those that are passing on beyond, she is the first in the eternal succession of the dawns that are coming, —Usha widens bringing out that which lives, awakening someone who was dead.... What is her scope when she harmonises with the dawns that shone out before and those that now must shine? She desires the ancient mornings and fulfils their light; projecting forwards her illumination she enters into communion with the rest that are to come. Kutsa Angirasa—Rig Veda.¹ Threefold are those supreme births of this divine force that is in