Sri Aurobindo's Force   Concreteness of the Force   The invisible Force producing tangible results both inward and outward is the whole meaning of the Yogic consciousness. Your question about Yoga bringing merely a feeling of Power without any result was really very strange. Who would be satisfied with such a meaningless hallucination and call it Power? If we had not had thousands of experiences showing that the Power within could alter the mind, develop its powers, add new ones, bring in new ranges of knowledge, master the vital movements, change the character, influence men and things, control the conditions and functionings of the body, work

Life and Death in the Ashram   Self-Control, Not Asceticism   What should be the true necessities of a sadhak? Should he buy things from outside? With what idea is pocket money given to us?   The idea, when the arrangement was made, was simply to see how and in what spirit the sadhaks dealt with money when they had any at their disposal. The necessities of a sadhak should be as few as possible; for there are only a very few things that are real necessities in life. The rest are either utilities or things decorative to life or luxuries. These a Yogi has a right to possess or enjoy only on one of two conditions — (1)

The Ashram and Religion   A Way, Not a Religion   I have no time to read books usually. I seldom had and none at all now. I have had no inspirations from the sadhana of Bejoy Goswami, though a good deal at one time from Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. My remarks simply meant that I regard the spiritual history of mankind and especially of India as a constant development of a divine purpose, not a book that is closed, the lines of which have to be constantly repeated. Even the Upanishads and the Gita were not final though everything may be there in seed. In this development the recent spiritual history of India is a very important stage a

Letters on Himself and the Ashram     Selected Letters on His Outer and Inner Life,     His Path of Yoga and the Practice of Yoga in His Ashram      Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry, c. 1915­1918 Part One    Remarks on His Life and Works and on His Contemporaries and Contemporary Events   Section One   Reminiscences and Remarks on Events in His Outer Life   His Life and Attempts to Write about It   Knowing about Things in His Past   For a long time I have wanted to hear something about the early days i

Work in the Ashram   Work and Sadhana   I have read in The Synthesis of Yoga and the Mother's Conversations that every act and movement, thought and word should be an offering. Even if this is a strictly mental effort without the heart's devotion, as it may be at first, it is sure to lead to devotion, provided the effort is sincere. This discipline is quite possible in acts of a more or less mechanical nature like walking or eating, but where the work involves mental concentration, as in reading or writing, it seems well nigh impossible. If the consciousness has to be busy with the remembrance, the attention will get divided and the work will not b

Part Five   Mantras and Messages     Section One   Mantras   On Mantras   Mantras in the Integral Yoga   The idea of your friend that it is necessary to receive a mantra from here and for that he must come is altogether wrong. There is no mantra given in this Yoga. It is the opening of the consciousness to the Mother from within that is the true initiation and that can only come by aspiration and rejection of restlessness in the mind and vital. To come here is not the way to get it. Many come and get nothing or get their difficulties raised or even fall away from the Yoga. It is no use coming before one

Human Relations and the Ashram   Right Relations between Sadhaks   The sadhaks of this Asram are not perfect —  they have plenty of weaknesses and wrong movements. It is blindness not to be able to see that; only it should not lead to a criticising or condemnatory attitude on persons —  it should be regarded as the play of forces which have to be overcome. 1933   *   To be turned wholly to the Mother and have nothing but friendly relations with the sadhaks, the same for all, is a counsel of perfection; but not many can carry it out, hardly one here and there. Yet to have that tendency is

His Temperament and Character   The Battle of Life   But what strange ideas again —  that I was born with a supramental temperament and had never any brain or mind or any acquaintance with human mentality —  and that I know nothing of hard realities. Good God! my whole life has been a struggle with hard realities, from hardship and semi-starvation in England through the fierce difficulties and perils of revolutionary leadership and organisation and activity in India to the far greater difficulties continually cropping up here in Pondicherry, internal and external. My life has been a battle from its early years and is still a battle, —  the fact that

Part Two   His Sadhana or Practice of Yoga     Section One   Sadhana before Coming to Pondicherry in 1910   Ordinary Life and Yoga   Faith and Knowledge   Is it true that only those who have obtained a clear knowledge of their spiritual possibility through a definite glimpse, received by the Grace of the Divine, are able to stick to the path till the end?   At least I had no such glimpse before I started Yoga. I can't say about others —  perhaps some had —  but the glimpse could only bring faith, it could not possibly bring knowledge; knowledge comes by Yoga, not be