THE ORDINARY LIFE AND THE TRUE SOUL The ordinary life is a round of various desires and greeds. As long as one is preoccupied with them, there can he no lasting progress. A way out of the round must be discovered. Take, as an instance, that commonest preoccupation of ordinary life—the constant thinking by people of what they will eat and whether they are eating enough. To conquer the greed for food an equanimity in the being must be developed such that you arc perfectly indifferent towards food. If food is given you, you eat it; if not, it does not worn you in the least; above all, you do not keep thinking about food. And the thinking must not be negati

RESURRECTION Resurrection means, for us, the falling off of the old consciousness; but it is not only a rebirth, a sudden change which completely breaks with the past. There is a certain continuity in it between dying to your old self, your low exterior nature and starting quite anew. In the experience of resurrection the movement of discarding the old being is closely connected with that of the rising up from it of the new" consciousness and the new strength, so that from what is thrown off the best can unite in a new creation with what has succeeded. The true significance of resurrection is that the Divine Consciousness awakes from the unconsciousness into which it has gone

INTRODUCTION The Mother's writings elicit (in one who is not familiar with them) both fear and fascination. Fear, a sort of existential dread, that one's habitual world, the accepted norms and standards of living, thinking and being, however high and noble they may seem, arc about to be shattered. Fascination, at the first glimpse of a new world, a luminous bubble, which had encased so far unseen, unfelt, the charade and masquerade of the familiar and mundane. The selection in this anthology has been made in the hope that though the Mother is not a philosopher, moralist or psychologist in the orthodox sense, a transmuted world and world-view, a Truth-Vision, will emerg

The Signature of Truth An Anthology THE MOTHER SRINVANTU CALCUTTA Compiled and edited by Manik Mitra ©Sri Aurobindo Ashram 24 April 1978 Published by Srinvantu, Sri Aurobindo Bhavan, 8 Shakespeare Sarani, Calcutta-71 and Printed at Eastend Printers, 3 Dr Suresh Sarkar Road, Calcutta-14

FOUNDATIONS OF YOGA It has been said that in order to progress in Yoga one must offer up everything to the Divine, even every little thing that one has or does in life. What is precisely the meaning of that? Yoga means union with the Divine, and the union is effected through offering—it is founded on the offering of yourself to the Divine. In the beginning you start by making this offering in a general way, as though once for all; you say, "I am the servant of the Divine; my life is given absolutely to the Divine; all my efforts are for the realisation of the Divine Life". But that is only the first step; for this is not sufficient. When the resolution has been

The Signature of Truth An Anthology   CONTENTS   Pre-Content   Introduction Foundations of Yoga Towards Union Surrender The Ordinary Life and the True Soul Knowledge by Unity Faith The Psychic Presence Renunciation The Capricious Vital True Humility The Scientist and the Yogi Space and Time Chance Selfless Admiration  Vital Conversion, Rebirth and  Personal Survival Reincarnation—.Memory of Past Lives Resurrection Stepping Back Power of Right Attitude Difficulties Victory over Falsehood Aspiration in the Psychic Aspiration in Plants Pow

ART AND YOGA Is it possible for a Yogi to become an artist or can an artist be a Yogi? What is the relation of Art to Yoga? The two are not so antagonistic as you seem to think. There is nothing to prevent a Yogi from being an artist or an artist from being a Yogi. Rut when you are in Yoga, there is a profound change in the values of things, of Art as of everything else; you begin to look at Art from a very different standpoint. It is no longer the one supreme all-engrossing thing for you, no longer an end it itself. Art is a means, not an end; it is a means of expression. And the artist then ceases too to believe that the whole world turns round what he is doing or th

SPACE AND TIME Space and time do not begin and end with the mental consciousness: even the Ovcrmind has them. They are the forms of all cosmic-existence: only, they vary on each level. Each world has its own space and time. Thus the mental space and time do not tally with what we observe here in the material universe. In the mind-world we can move forward and backward at our own will and pleasure. The moment you think of a person you are with him; and no matter how near you may be to somebody, you can still be far away if your thoughts are occupied with someone else. The movement is immediate, so very free are the spatio-temporal conditions there. In the vital world,

THE SUPRAMENTAL DESCENT Do you know what the flower which we have called "Successful Future" signifies when given to you? It signifies the hope—nay, even the promise—that you will participate in the descent of the supramental world. For that descent will be the successful consummation of our Work, a descent of which the full glory has not yet been or else the whole face of life would have been different. By slow degrees the Supramental is exerting its influence; now one part of the being and now another feels the embrace or the touch of its divinity; but when it comes down in all its self-existent power, a supreme radical change will seize the whole nature.

ASPIRATION IN PLANTS Have you never watched a forest with all its countless trees and plants simply struggling to catch the light—twisting and trying in a hundred possible ways just to be in the sun? That is precisely the feeling of aspiration in the physical—the urge, the movement, the push towards the light. Plants have more of it in their physical being than men. Their whole life is a worship of light. Light is of course the material symbol of the Divine, and the sun represents, under material conditions, the Supreme Consciousness. The plants have felt it quite distinctly in their own simple, blind way. Their aspiration is intense, if you know how to become aware o