1485 Note on the Texts   RECORD OF YOGA is a diary of Sri Aurobindo's sādhana or practice of yoga. He wrote entries with some regularity between 1912 and 1920, as well as scattered entries during the years 1909, 1911 and 1927. Some sections of entries have titles, such as "Journal of Yoga", "Record of the Yoga", "", "Notebook of the Sadhana", "Yoga Diary" and "Yoga Record". The title he used most often is "" In the text itself he generally referred to the work as "the record" and used the verb "to record" for the act of writing in it. For these reasons the editors have chosen  as the general title of the work. In the entry of 1 July 1912, Sri Aurobindo noted that he had been doin

1467 SAPTA CHATUSTHAYA SCRIBAL VERSION   I. Samata Chatusthaya Samata, Shanti, Sukha, Hasya (Atmaprasada)   Negative Samata Positive Samata Titiksha Sama Rasa—mind and intellect Udasinata Sama Bhoga—prana Nati Sama Ananda—spirit Samata is accepting everything in the same way without any disturbance in any part of the being. Disturbance is caused [by]1 the want of harmony between the Chit-shakti in myself and the contacts of Chit-shakti outside. Pain, grief, dislike etc. are merely the system's way of saying that it objects to a particular contact because of w

Chapter V   The Synthesis of the Systems   BY THE very nature of the principal Yogic schools, each covering in its operations a part of the complex human integer and attempting to bring out its highest possibilities, it will appear that a synthesis of all of them largely conceived and applied might well result in an integral Yoga. But they are so disparate in their tendencies, so highly specialised and elaborated in their forms, so long confirmed in the mutual opposition of their ideas and methods that we do not easily find how we can arrive at their right union. An undiscriminating combination in block would not be a synthesis, but a

Chapter II   The Integral Perfection   A DIVINE perfection of the human being is our aim. We must know then first what are the essential elements that constitute man's total perfection; secondly, what we mean by a divine as distinguished from a human perfection of our being. That man as a being is capable of self-development and of some approach at least to an ideal standard of perfection which his mind is able to conceive, fix before it and pursue, is common ground to all thinking humanity, though it may be only the minority who concern themselves with this possibility as providing the one most important aim of life. But by some the ideal is concei

Chapter VI   The Synthesis of the Disciplines   of Knowledge   IN THE last chapter we have spoken of renunciation in its most general scope, even as we spoke of concentration in all its possibilities; what has been said, applies therefore equally to the path of Works and the path of Devotion as to the path of Knowledge; for on all three concentration and renunciation are needed, though the way and spirit in which they are applied may vary. But we must now turn more particularly to the actual steps of the Path of Knowledge on which the double force of concentration and renunciation must aid us to