Dealing with a Wrong Movement THERE is a great difference between pushing a thing away simply because you do not want it and changing the state of the consciousness so that the thing you do not want becomes completely foreign to your nature. Usually when you have a movement in you which you do not like, you drive it back and repel it, but you do not take the trouble of finding in yourself that which served and serves still as a support to the movement, the particular tendency, the turn of consciousness which enables the thing to enter into the consciousness. If, however, instead of a gesture of mere condemnation and suppression, you enter deep into your vi

PARTS EIGHT AND NINE Choosing To Do Yoga To DO Sri Aurobindo's Yoga means to seek to transform oneself integrally, to have this single aim in one's life: that alone exists, nothing else. You feel it in yourself whether you want it or not. If you do not, you can live a life of goodwill, service, understanding; you can work in many other ways. But between that and doing Yoga there is a great difference. To do Yoga you must want it consciously, you must know first of all what it is, – know what it is and then take the resolution. And once the resolution is taken you must waver no more. When you go to it, you must take it up fully conscious of what you are

THE MYSTERY OF THE FIVE SENSES THE senses are the doors opening out on the external world for the consciousness to act and range abroad. That is the usual outward movement which is generally so much condemned by spiritual seekers. The doors and windows of the senses, whatever they are, all openings should be closed, shut up, hermetically scaled. One should then return within away from them, if one is to come into contact with the true consciousness, the true reality. Even the Gita says, the conscious being is seated in tranquillity within, closing all the nine gates of the city, himself doing nothing nor causing anything to be

Education of Girls THE question is about our physical education and, in a general way, the psychological basis of our activities here. These things have, of course, been written about and spoken of by me and by Sri Aurobindo very often, but evidently the idea does not seem to have entered your consciousness. I do not wish to wage a war against what you feel and do, but I would like you at least to understand why things are done here in the way they are being done instead of letting yourself go thoughtlessly in a retrograde movement towards all that is done elsewhere, under the plea that that is how your fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers and all the ancest

The World is One THE world is one, in fact and in potentia. There is already a realised unity; that unity runs as the fundamental chord in and through differing and discordant notes. These different and discordant and even denying notes have to be re-conditioned, blended, harmonised; that is the effective and patent unity that lies in potentia and has to be brought forth in front. The world is one at bottom; it is to be made one upto the brim. The material world is a factual unity. For it is one matter that exists everywhere; the same fundamental elements constitute, although in different degrees, the earth, the sun, the stars, the distant galaxies and the extragalacti

Love and Love THE Mother says: there is only one Love, there are not two. And it is Divine Love. The difference arises only in its expression, in its application. In its essential quality and substance it is always the same. Take for example human love; stripped of the mere human element, love remains the same original thing. Because the old ascetic orders of spiritual discipline, in the main, considered love essentially and wholly earthy and human; they rejected this limb altogether, cut it out as undivine. But that is an error. We do not regard love, even human love, as an error but a power, a force and energy. Love, even human love, is not to be amputated or rooted out b

Divine Living WE always give the name "Divine" to all that we are not and want to become, all that seems infinitely higher than not only everything we have done but everything we can possibly do, all that is beyond our present capacity and conception. I am perfectly sure that if we went back into the past a few thousands of years, we would find that when one spoke of the Divine it was of a being somewhat like one of the "overmental" gods. But now, the way of living proper to these overmental divinities who governed the earth and created many things upon earth for a very long time, seems to us very inferior to what we conceive as the Supramental. This Supramental again

Education is Organisation EDUCATION is organisation. Mind's education means organisation of mental faculties. Organisation naturally involves development. The faculties in the normal and natural state are an undeveloped disorganised lot, a confused mass, – unformed, ill-formed ideas, notions, thoughts, form a jumble. They have no purpose, no direction, no common impulse or end, each runs in its own way. The mind's faculties such for example as attention, memory, discrimination, reasoning, cogent thinking have to be clear and efficient and learn how to work harmoniously for a common objective. In the process and for that purpose they have to be developed, that is to

The Evolution of Language HUMAN language was born out of the necessity of inter-communication among human beings living together. The necessity naturally related to the physical life and its demands and requirements. Man being a mental being sought intercommunication through his mind. So mind yoked to the physical demands gave the first form and pattern to human speech. Language in the beginning must have been an echo or a graphic expression of man's sense-bound mind. But as the mind developed, became more and more rational and intellectual, language also tended to become more and more abstract and. intellectualised. Even so at its best, language could be the veh

The Value of Money THE more money one has, the more one falls into a calamity. It is indeed a calamity, my children. It is a catastrophe to have money. It makes you stupid, it makes you avaricious, it makes you wicked. It is one of the biggest calamities in the world. Money is a thing which one should not possess unless and until he is without desire, without attachment. When one has a consciousness as wide as the earth, then only one can have all the money there is upon earth and that would be good for everybody. But until then as much money as you have, so much the curse there is upon you. I will tell this to the face of everybody, even to the face of the man wh