SECTION FIVE  THE CENTRAL PROCESS AND FUNDAMENTAL REALISATIONS FOR INTEGRAL YOGA I. PSYCHIC CONVERSION The Path   YOU know the three things on which the realisation has to be based: (1) on a rising to a station above the mind and on the opening out of the cosmic consciousness; (2) on the psychic opening; and (3) on the descent of the higher consciousness with its peace, light, force, knowledge, Ananda etc. into all the planes of the being down to the most physical. All this has to be done by the working of the Mother's force aided by your aspiration, devo

SECTION FOUR   OBJECTS OF SRI AUROBINDO'S  SADHANA Opening the Way   MY sadhana is not a freak or a monstrosity or a miracle done outside the laws of Nature and the conditions of life and consciousness on earth. If I could do these things or if they could happen in my Yoga, it means that they can be done and that therefore these developments and transformations are possible in the terrestrial consciousness....   Sadhana for the Earth-Consciousness   MY point about my sadhana was that my sadhana was not done for myself but for the earth-consciousness

SECTION SEVEN POWERS AND PERSONALITIES- DIVINE AND HOSTILE Falsehood and Ignorance—Powers and Personalities—Emanations and Presence*   1. Falsehood and Ignorance   IGNORANCE means Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life. This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth,— truth of being, truth of divine consciousness

SECTION SIX   SILENCING THE MIND; VISIONS AND EXPERIENCES   I. SILENCING THE MIND II. SYMBOLS, VISIONS AND EXPERIENCES I. SILENCING THE MIND   The Silent Mind   THE silent mind is a result of Yoga; the ordinary — mind is never silent.... The thinkers and philosophers do not have the silent mind. It is the active mind they have; only, of course, they concentrate, so the common incoherent mentalising stops and the thoughts that rise or enter and shape themselves are coherently restricted to the subject or activity in hand. But

SECTION TWELVE SADHANA IN THE ASHRAM AND OUTSIDE Object of Creating the Ashram   THIS Ashram has been created with another object than that ordinarily common to such institutions, not for the renunciation of the world but as a centre and a field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life which would in the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness and embody a greater life of the spirit. There is no general rule as to the stage at which one may leave the ordinary life and enter here; in each case it depends on the personal need and impulsion

SECTION TEN MENTAL DOUBTS AND SPIRITUAL FAITH   Mental Doubts and Spiritual Experience   I HAVE started writing about doubt, but even in — doing so I am afflicted by the 'doubt' whether any amount of writing or of anything else can ever persuade the eternal doubt in man which is the penalty of his native ignorance. In the first place, to write adequately would mean anything from 60 to 600 pages, but not even 6000 convincing pages would convince doubt. For doubt exists for its own sake; its very function is to doubt always and, even when convinced, to go on doubting still; it is only to persuade its entertainer to give it board and lodging that it pretends to be an h

  Sri Aurobindo in 1908 Part One   Translation and Commentary Published by Sri Aurobindo Isha Upanishad   Isha Upanishad     1 All this is for habitation1 by the Lord, whatsoever is individual universe of movement in the universal motion By that renounced thou shouldst enjoy; lust not after any man's pos

The Upanishad in Aphorism   THE ISHA UPANISHAD   For the Lord all this is a habitation whatsoever is moving thing in her that moves.   Why dost thou say there is a world? There is no world, only One who moves. What thou callest world is the movement of Kali; as such embrace thy world-existence In thy all-embracing stillness of vision thou art Purusha and inhabitest; in thy outward motion and action thou art Prakriti and the builder of the habitation Thus envisage thy being. There are many knots of the movement and each knot thy eyes look upon as an object; many currents and each current thy mind sees as force and tendency Forces

[6]   Part II   The Field and Instruments of Vedanta   Chapter I   Intellect and Revelation   If in the progression of the ages there are always golden periods in which man recovers self-knowledge and attunes the truth of himself to the truth of his surroundings—or may it not even be, may not this be the true secret of his evolution—attunes his surroundings to his fulfilled and triumphant self, not being merely determined by his environment, but using it freely for infinite purposes & determining it, and if the Veda keeps, even fragmentarily, the practical application and the Vedanta, the theoretical statement of that

'Isha Upanishads' by Sri Aurobindo - Page 1 of 50 The Ishavasyopanishad   with a commentary in English   1   With God all this must be invested, even all that is world in this moving universe; abandon therefore desire and enjoy and covet no man's possession   THE GURU The Upanishad sets forth by pronouncing as the indispensable basis of its revelations the universal nature of God This universal nature of Brahman the Eternal is the beginning and end of the Vedanta and if it is not accepted, nothing the Vedanta says can have any value, as all its propositions either proceed from it or at least presuppose it; deprived of this central and highest truth, th