APPENDIX* SOME EXPLANATIONS "The difference or contrast between the Personal and Impersonal is a truth of the Overmind _ there is no separate truth of them in the Supermind, they are inseparably one." (P.5) If this refers to the Personal and Impersonal Divine, the question of the difference can hardly arise, because the Personal Divine (i.e. the Avatar) is not always there. It is only very rarely that the Divine becomes the Avatar to come on earth. I do not understand. The Personal Divine does not mean the Avatar. What I said was that the scission between the two aspects of the Divine is a creation of the Overmind which takes various aspects of the Divine and se

  LIGHTS ON YOGA   SRI AUROBINDO       LIGHTS ON YOGA         SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM PONDICHERRY First edition: 1935 Ninth edition: 1981 Fifth impression: 2000         ISBN 81-7058-057-9 © Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1981 Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department  Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry   PRINTED IN INDIA   These are extracts from letters written by Sri Aurobindo to his disciples in answer to their queries. They have been put together and arranged so as to be of some help

THE GOAL The way of Yoga followed here has a different purpose from others, - for its aim is not only to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter. This is an exceedingly difficult aim and difficult Yoga; to many or most it will seem impossible. All the established forces of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness are opposed to it and deny it and try to prevent it, and the Sadhak will find his own mind, life and body full of the most obstinate impedi

GLOSSARY ādhāra (Adhar): Vessel, receptacle - the system of mind, life and body considered as a receptacle of the spiritual consciousness and force. advaita (Adwaita): Monism, monistic. advaita vedānta (Adwaita Vedanta): The monistic school of Vedanta. ājnā cakra: Will centre - see cakra. anāhata: See cakra. ānanda (Ananda): Bliss, delight - the divine or spiritual bliss. antarātman (Antaratman): Inner self, soul. aparā prakrti (Apara Prakriti): The inferior nature, Nature in the lower manifestation of the Ignorance. atman (Atman): Self. ātmarati: The peace and joy inherent in the self. avatāra (Avatar): The descent of the Divi

LIGHTS ON YOGA SRI AUROBINDO LIGHTS ON YOGA SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM PONDICHERRY First edition: 1935 Ninth edition: 1981 Fifth impression: 2000 ISBN 81-7058-057-9 © Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1981 Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry PRINTED IN INDIA These are extracts from letters written by Sri Aurobindo to his disciples in answer to their queries. They have been put together and arranged so as to be of some help to aspirants for the understanding and practice of the Yoga.

WORK To go entirely inside in order to have experiences and to neglect the work, the external consciousness, is to be unbalanced, one-sided in the Sadhana - for our Yoga is integral; so also to throw oneself outward and live in the external being alone is to be unbalanced, one-sided in the Sadhana. One must have the same consciousness in inner experience and outward action and make both full of the Mother. * To keep up work helps to keep up the balance between the internal experience and the external development; otherwise one-sidedness and want of measure and balance may develop. Moreover, it is necessary to keep the Sadhana of work for the Divine because in the end that enab

THE DIVINE WORKER The Sign of Divine Work To attain to the divine birth, — a divinising new birth of the soul into a higher consciousness, — and to do divine works both as a means towards that before it is attained and as an expression of it after it is attained, is then all the Karmayoga of the Gita. The Gita does not try to define works by any outward signs through which it can be recognisable to an external gaze, measurable by the criticism of the world; it deliberately renounces even the ordinary ethical distinctions by which men seek to guide themselves in the light of the human reason. The signs by which it distinguishes divine works are all profoundly intimate and

MAN AND THE BATTLE OF LIFE The Faith we must have ... If we accept at all, as the Gita accepts, the existence of God, that is to say, of the omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, yet always transcendent Being who manifests the world and Himself in the world, who is not the slave but the lord of His creative Consciousness, Nature or Force (Maya, Prakriti or Shakti), who is not baffled or thwarted in His world-conception or design by His creatures, man or devil, who does not need to justify Himself by shifting the responsibility for any part of His creation or manifestation on that which is created or manifested, then the human being has to start from a great, a dif

THE SUPREME SECRET The Final Word After giving out all the laws, the Dharmas, and the deepest essence of its Yoga, after saying that beyond all the first secrets revealed to the mind of man by the transforming light of spiritual knowledge, gūhyāt, this is a still deeper more secret truth, guhyataram, the Gita, suddenly declares that there is yet a supreme word that it has to speak, paramam vaccah, and a most secret truth of all, sarvagūhyatamam. This secret of secrets the Teacher will tell to Arjuna as his highest good because he is the chosen and beloved soul, ista. For evidently, as had already been declared by the Upanishad, it is only the rare soul chosen by the Spir

AVATAR HOOD Two aspects of Divine Birth For there are two aspects of the divine birth; one is a descent, the birth of God in humanity, the Godhead manifesting itself in the human form and nature, the eternal Avatar; the other is an ascent, the birth of man into the Godhead, man rising into the divine nature and consciousness, madbhāvam āgatah; it is the being born anew in a second birth of the soul. It is that new birth which Avatar hood and the upholding of the Dharma are intended to serve. This double aspect in the Gita's doctrine of Avatar hood is apt to be missed by the cursory reader satisfied, as most are, with catching a superficial view of its profound teachings, and it