THOUSANDS   [1]   Better than a thousand phrases built with meaningless words is one single meaningful word which brings tranquillity to the hearer.   [2]   Better than a thousand verses built with meaningless words is one single verse that brings tranquillity to the hearer.   [3]   Better than a hundred verses built with meaningless words on the lips is one single word of the Law that tranquilises you when you hear it.   [4]   One may conquer thousands and thousands of men in a battle, but he is the best among conquerors who has conquered himself.   [5 & 6]   Better to have conquered one's own self than to have conqu

Bengali  Padavali     (1)   Even like a drop of water into burning sands.        Am I in the midst of sons and friends and women. I have turned my mind from you and bestowed it upon them.        Of what earthly use shall I be now?   Oh Lord of Love, hopelessness is my doom! But you are the Saviour of the worlds­ – ever kind to the destitute. Now my whole trust lies in you alone.   Half of my life I spent in sleep, The rest in infancy and old age And with women in pleasure-groves; I had no time to give to you.   Countless are the Gods who die and pass! But you have no beginning, nor end: All are b

MISCELLANY   [1]   If to give up a small pleasure is to find a vast pleasure, then it is wiser to give up the small in view of the vast.   [2]   If one seeks one's pleasure by inflicting pain upon others, then one is entangled in the meshes of enmity and is not freed from it.   [3]   To reject what should be done, to do what should not be done is just how the depraved and the deluded increase their sins.   [4]   They who keep a perfect vigilance over their body, who do not indulge a thing that should not be done, ever doing faithfully what should be done, they are the good souls who have knowledge; sins disappear from them.  

Mater Gloriosa   I   J'adore la femme. . . . C'était ma faiblesse, c'est mon salut. Dans mon ignorance, lorsque je n'étais qu'un adolescent – en  âme et en esprit – je suivais la forme humaine du féminin et je désirais les délices terrestres qu'elle verse. C'est l'Eternel Féminin qui m'avait tenté, qui m'avait capturé. L'Eternel Féminin, c'est la Nescience, Ie bras sinistre du Divin. Maintenant que je suis devenu homme, et que mon âme et mon espirit ont atteint l'âge mur, c'est encore la femme qui me tente irrésistiblement,­– mais c'est la femme dans sa vérité plenière, dans sa réalité souveraine, et je la poursuis d'une ardeur plus vive encore qu'

FRENCH    AVE MATER   Amor  mi mosse che mi fa parlare . . .                                      -Dante   Et je devins poète en étant amoureux . . .                                                -Corneille   Page – 114 Mater Dolorosa   I Je songe aux belles nuits, aux rêves diaphanes Où j'ai vécu jadis; je vois encore leg traits Fugitifs d'un pays aux horizon discrets, Les regrets d'une gloire ultime qui se fane!   Loin des noirs tourbillons de ce monde profane, Mon âme reposait aux calmes diaprés Des azurs infinis, et tranquille, s'ouvrait Aux baisers innocents qu'en d'autres cieu

X MYSTIQUE OF AN EVOLVING UNIVERSE Creation implies the perpetual transformation of the potential into the actual, which means that it is a continuous process of the self-unfoldment of a secret Truth in accordance with an innate rhythm. Devānām yuge prathame'sataḥ sad ajayata tad āṣā anv ajāyanta tad uttanapadas pari.1 In the beginning, the manifest comes out of the Unmanifest; thence are born all the regions and after that follow the further evolved creation. The universe is a progressive becoming of Being embracing many yugas or cycles of Truth-action. Suryd candramdsau dhdta yathdpi

III THE VISION OF REALITY The Veda is a timeless revelation. The great spiritual tradition of India looks to its origin as apauruṣeya, non-human. And the mantras are encompassed as the sound-formulations of the seer-visions of the Supreme as also profound expressions of the revelations granted to the Rishis. They are assumed to be the many manifestations of the Word that embody the supreme vision of Oneness and incarnate the secret interconnectedness of gods and men and incorporate in a harmonious manner their mutuality and integral solidarity. The Transcendent One, tad ekam, is the supreme source and support of all Multiplicity. Suparnaṁ viprāḥ

IV THE INTEGRAL THEOPHANY An integral vision of the integral Divine and an integral Yoga to realise it is the most self-fulfilling and self-effectuating gift of Sri Aurobindo to the human race. All spiritual visions have a significance and a power of their own, and the vision of the Divine has a cosmic and supracosmic significance as well as an unrestricted power of its own. It is an experience, mi generis, of the Divine Himself, an experience of the Self everywhere, in everything and as everything. It helps the seeker to cater a larger, freer Self as well as the worlds behind and beyond the physical universe. It opens the 'third eye' as it were

XV OM ŚĀNTIḤ ŚĀNTḤ ŚĀNTIḤ 'Om Śāntiḥ Śāntiḥ is the hymn of infinite gratitude to the Divine for manifesting himself in the seeker in the measure of the latter's receptivity as well as the mantra of invocation to secure and establish a luminous ambience upon earth for the increasing descent of Peace. The Rishi offers his salutations to the bounties of Nature, the leaders and regulators of the cosmic order that they may make him pure and competent of cosmic worship. Creation itself is the result of sacrifice; it is sustained and supported by increasing sacrifice. And the gods too were created by the sacrifice of Aditi. It is by sacrif

VIII THE ASCENT TO THE TRUTH An involution of the Supreme in the apparent inconscient Matter is the cause and the starting-point of evolution. But that supreme Reality is infinite Existence, Consciousness and Bliss; evolution must as such be an emergence of this embodied Existence, Consciousness, Bliss. It is therefore the prerogative and mission of man not only to predicate and profess himself in the universe but also to evolve and to perpetually transcend himself. He has not only to realise his individuality but also to expand it into a cosmic self. This implies self-evolution and self-exceeding from his present actual limited nature t