Difficulties in Yoga The nature of your difficulty indicates the nature of the victory you will gain, the victory you will exemplify in Yoga. Thus, if there is persistent selfishness, it points to a realisation of universality as your most prominent achievement in the future. And, when selfishness is there, you have also the power to reverse this very difficulty into its opposite, a victory of utter wideness. When you have something to realise, you will have in you just the characteristic which is the contradiction of that something. Face to face with the defect, the difficulty, you say, “Oh, I am like that! How awful it is!” But you ought to see the truth of th

Conjugate Verses But first of all it is not so easy to distinguish what is true from what is not, then to recognise, that is to say, to admit that a certain thing is true; and above all it is more difficult still perhaps to recognise that a certain thing is false. In reality, in order to discern exactly what is false requires such sincerity in the aspiration, such resolution in the will to be true that even this little phrase “to know the true to be true and the false to be false” means a very considerable realisation. And the conclusion, “they attain the supreme goal” is a great promise.     There are teachings which say that one must have no desire at all; they ar

Happiness Among those who hate, happy are we to live without hatred. Among men who hate, let us live free from hatred. Among those who suffer, happy are we to live with- out suffering. Among men who suffer, let us live free from suffering. Among those who are full of greed, happy are we to live without greed. Among the greedy, let us live free from greed. Happy indeed are we who own nothing. We shall feed upon delight like the radiant gods. Victory engenders enmity, and one who is vanquished lives in distress. The man of peace lives in gladness, disdaining both victory and defeat. There is no gre

-00_Publisher^s Note.htm Publisher's Note QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 1929 In 1929, on Sundays, the Mother met a small group of disciples at the home of one of them. After a period of meditation she answered any .questions raised by the disciples. Portions of fifteen of these weekly talks, which were given in English, were noted down in shorthand by one of those present ; the transcript was elaborated by another participant, and finally revised by Sri Aurobindo for publication. The talks, entitled Conversations of the Mother, were first published for private circulation towards the end of 1931. In 1940 they were made available to the public as the mai

The Bhikkhu To control the eye is good; to control the ear is good; to control the nose and the tongue is good. It is good to control one's actions, words, mind. Con- trol in all things is good. The Bhikkhu who controls himself entirely is delivered from all suffering. The man who is master over his hands, his feet and his tongue, who controls himself wholly, who delights in meditation, who is calm and leads a solitary life, can be called a Bhikkhu. The Bhikkhu who is master over his tongue and is moderate in speech, who is modest, who luminously interprets the Doctrine, in truth his words are as sweet as hon

28 July 1929 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. But 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 in 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

 Reincarnation – Memory of Past Lives To understand rightly the problem of what is popularly called reincarnation, you must perceive that there are two factors in it which require consideration. First, there is the line of divine consciousness which seeks to manifest from above and upholds a certain series of formations, peculiar to itself, in the universe which is its field of manifestation. Secondly, there is the psychic consciousness which climbs up from below, the seed of the Divine developing through time till it meets the Force from above and takes the impress of the supramental Truth. This psychic consciousness is the inner being of a man, the material from which

Renunciation There is in books a lot of talk about renunciation that you must renounce possessions, renounce attachments, renounce desires. But I have come to the conclusion that so long as you have to renounce anything you are not on this path; for, so long as you are not thoroughly disgusted with things as they are, and have to make an effort to reject them, you are not ready for the supramental realisation. If the constructions of the Overmind – the world which it has built and the existing order which it supports – still satisfy you, you cannot hope to partake of that realisation. Only when you find such a world disgusting, unbearable and unacceptable, are you fit for the ch

 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

Selfless Admiration People are so unwilling to recognise anything that expresses the Divine that they are ever on the alert to find fault, discover apparent defects and so reduce what is high to their own level. They are simply furious at being surpassed and when they do succeed in finding superficial “shortcomings” they are greatly pleased. But they forget that if they confront even the Divine, when its presence is on the earth, with their crude physical mind they are bound to meet only what is crude. They cannot hope to see what they are themselves incapable of seeing or unwilling to see. They are sure to misjudge the Divine if they consider the surface-aspect of it