HOW CAN TIME BE A FRIEND? It depends on the way you look at it. It depends on the relation you have with it. If you take it as a friend, it becomes a friend, if you consider it as an enemy, it becomes an enemy. But, perhaps, what you wanted to ask is how to feel when it is an enemy and when it is a friend. Well, when you are impatient and say, "Oh, I cannot get to the end of the thing, oh, when shall I finish it ?" and when you are not able to do the thing immediately and get desperate, then time is your enemy. But when you say, "Well and good, I have not done this time, I shall do it next time, and I am sure, one day or another, I shall do it", the

THE DIVINE GRACE (2) There is a time when one becomes conscious enough to see that things in themselves are neither good nor bad. What they are and what their effects are upon us depends entirely upon the attitude that we have towards them. The same thing, the same circumstance, identically the same, if taken as a gift from God, as a Divine Grace, as the effect of a total harmony, helps us to become more conscious, more strong and more true. On the other hand, taken as a blow given by Fate, as a bad force that seeks to hurt us it will serve only to diminish us, make us dull and heavy; it will take away our consciousness, our force and the harmony. I wish yo

HOW TO BECOME INDIFFERENT TO CRITICISM ? In one's own consciousness one must look at things from a wider, more general standpoint. If at any moment something holds you, holds you tight and you have to face it, if you are compelled to wrestle with a formidable obstacle and at that time you begin to feel that before this moment thousands and thousands of years passed and after the moment yet more thousands and thousands of years will pass, you immediately see the inconsequence of this little point of time; you need not enter into a high spiritual condition, you have simply to contact Time and Space, with all that is before and all that is after

THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO Part Nine NOLINI KANTA GUPTA sri aurobindo ashram pondicherry Publishers: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Pondicherry All Rights Reserved First Edition ... July, 1958 Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press Pondicherry printed in India

ON TEACHERS AND TEACHING Mastery means to know how to deal with certain vibrations. If you have the knowledge and can deal with the vibrations, you have the mastery. The best field for such an experience and experiment is yourself. First, you must have mastery over yourself and when you have it, you can transmit its vibrations to others in so far as you are capable of identifying yourself with them. But if you cannot deal with the vibrations in yourself, how can you deal with them in others ? You can, by word or by influence, encourage people so that they do what is necessary to master themselves, but you cannot yourself have direct mastery over them. To ma

THE STORY OF LOVE (I) Love, in its essence, is the joy of identity. It finds its final expression in the felicity of union. Between the two there are all the phases that make up the universal manifestation. Love comes from the very origin of the universe. Love in its essence, I say, that is, before the manifestation, is the delight of identity. Something there was which became conscious of the identity. And that is precisely Love. Afterwards comes the manifestation of Love. In its highest form, when it comes back to its origin across all its history of manifestation, it becomes the felicity of union. The sense of union comes as a consequence of the

Series One Section One I CYCLES OF CREATION The present cycle of creation has for its goal the advent of the Supermind, the coming of a supramental race of beings. The world, it seems, moves in cycles. There are periods of creation with a hiatus or a gap in between of dissolution. Present day science too speaks of the universe proceeding in pulsations, that is to say, alternate expansion and contraction. Indian mythology speaks of alternate 'Pralaya' and 'Srishti'. The Indian system speaks also of 'Maha-pralaya', utter dissolution or 'Yoga-nidra' of the Supreme. In other words, there are periods when the universe retires altogether

III LIFE IN AND THROUGH DEATH The soul carries the body even like a corpse, says a scripture. It is a dead inert mass of inconscience weighing upon the conscious being that is behind. Such is the burden of life that the soul bears through its earthly existence. The image is beautifully delineated in the Indian legend of Shiva and Sati. Sati is dead, the bereaved Shiva goes about in anguish with the dead body of Sati flung upon his shoulder. Shiva is to be relieved of this burden, otherwise the creation will go to rack and ruin. The prayer went to Vishnu and Vishnu hurled his discus that cut to pieces the corpse of Sati—the pieces were fifty-two in

XIII THE GOLDEN BRIDGE The Truth, the Supreme Truth cannot be expressed here below, neither in words, nor in mental ideas: It is inexpressible, indeterminable—anirvacyam, anirdeśyath. For, it exists, it is found only where the creation ceases to exist—prapañcopaśamām. If it is asked how does then the world itself exist? has it not come out of the Truth? is it not an expression of the Divine? well, an easy answer is: Look at the world and see what kind of expression it is. Is it a divine creation? What truth is there? In truth, it is an expression of falsehood, it is all an error. So it has been declared by the great sages of the past that this is a false c

VI BEYOND THE DUALITIES It is true that mind in its natural state seeks the truth, seeks to know the fact, know what is what. But the difficulty is, it has its own criterion of truth, it has a mould and whatever does not fit into that mould is brushed aside or doubted as untruth. The most simple and the most categorical of its canons is that a thing is always itself and cannot be anything else (it is the famous logical law of identity and law of contradiction). One is always one and cannot be two. So by extension the mind affirms if the reality is one it cannot be also many. I£ the Brahman is there, the world cannot be, and if the world is there, Brah