THE HOUR OF GOD SRI AUROBINDO THE HOUR OF GOD         1964 SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM P

  Section Four Words of the Master WORDS OF THE MASTER To do works in a close union and deep communion with the Divine in us, the Universal around us and the Transcendent above us, not to be shut up any longer in the imprisoned and separative human mind, the slave of its ignorant dictates and narrow suggestions, this is Karma yoga. * * * To work in obedience to a divine command, an eternal Will, a universal impulse initiated by a transcendent compulsion, not to run under the whips of ego and need and passion and desire, and not to be guided by the pricks of mental and vital and physical preference, but to be moved by God only, by the highes

  Section Three Evolution—Psychology Notes MAN A TRANSITIONAL BEING Man is a transitional being; he is not final. For in man and high beyond him ascend the radiant degrees that climb to a divine superman hood. There lies our destiny and the liberating key to our aspiring but troubled and limited mundane existence. We mean by man mind imprisoned in a living body. But mind is not the highest possible power of consciousness; for mind is not in possession of Truth, but only its ignorant seeker. Beyond mind is a supramental or gnostic power of consciousness that is in eternal possession of Truth. This supermind is at its source the dynamic consciousnes

FOREWORD   This second series of Sri Aurobindo's letters is intended to be complementary to the volume published on his 75th birthday —the 15th August, 1947. It is a farther instalment from the vast store of his letters which yet remain to be published. Some idea of their immense quantity can be had from the fact that regularly for six to eight hours every day over a period of about ten years he gave replies to the innumerable inquiries addressed to him by the spiritual aspirants in his Ashram and elsewhere. The letters included in the first volume were selected with a view to giving a broad outline of the basic principles of his spiritual metaphysics and psychology an

SECTION TWO INTEGRAL YOGA AND OTHER SPIRITUAL PATHS Vedanta, Tantra and Integral Yoga   VEDA and Vedanta are one side of the One Truth; Tantra with its emphasis on Shakti is another; in this Yoga all sides of the Truth are taken up, not in the systematic forms given them formerly but in their essence, and carried to the fullest and highest significance. But Vedanta deals more with the principles and essentials of the divine knowledge and therefore much of its spiritual knowledge and experience has been taken bodily into the Arya*. Tantra deals more with forms and processes and organis

SECTION NINE DIVINE GRACE PERSONAL EFFORT AND GURU'S HELP   Three Possibilities in Sadhana   THERE are three main possibilities for the — sadhak—(1) To wait on the Grace and rely on the Divine, (2) To do everything himself like the Adwaitin and the Buddhist, (3) To take the middle path, go forward by aspiration and rejection etc. helped by the Force.   Divine Grace, Divine Compassion and Cosmic Law   I SHOULD like to say something about the Divine Grace—for you seem to think it should be something like a Divine Reason acting upon lines not very different from those of human intelligence. But it is not that. Also it is not a universal Divine Compassi

SECTION THREE Religion, Morality, Idealism & Yoga Spiritual Evolution—Positivist Scepticism and Faith   ALL that you say only amounts, on the general issue, to the fact that this is a world of slow evolution in which man has emerged out of the beast and is still not out of it, light out of darkness, and a higher consciousness out of first a dead and then a struggling and troubled unconsciousness. A spiritual consciousness is emerging and it is through this spiritual consciousness that one can meet the Divine. Religions, full of vital and mental, mixed, troubled and ignor

SECTION TWELVE TRANSFORMATION OF THE INCONSCIENT THE PRESENT WORLD SITUATION Opening the Inconscient to Light   THERE is another cause of the general inability to change which at present afflicts the sadhak.; It is because the sadhana, as a general fact, has now and for a long time past come down to the Inconscient;  the pressure, the call is to change in that part of the nature which depends directly on the Inconscient, the fixed habits, the automatic movements, the mechanical repetitions of the nature, the involuntary reactions to life, all that seems to belong to th

SECTION SIXTEEN   ASTROLOGY AND PROPHECY, SCIENCE & SPIRITUALITY, ACTION OF SUBTLE FORCES, VIOLENCE & NON - VIOLENCE, ETC. Observations on Cheiro's Predictions— Astrology and Prophecy ; Fate and Free-Will (1)   YOUR extracts taken by themselves are very — impressive, but when one reads the book, the impression made diminishes and fades away. You have quoted Cheiro's successes, but what about his failures? I have looked at the book and was rather staggered by the number of prophecies that have failed to come off. You can't deduce from a small number, of predictions, however accurate, that all is predestined down