SECTION NINETEEN   GREAT MEN AND AVATARS   Greatness   BY greatness is meant an exceptional capacity of one kind or another.   24-4-1936 Mistake of Depreciating Great Men   PEOPLE have begun to try to prove that great men were not great, which is a very big mistake. If greatness is not appreciated by men, the world will become mean, small, dull, narrow and tamasic.   Greatness in Yoga and in the Universal Order   OBVIOUSLY, outer greatness is not the aim of Yoga. But that is no reason why one should not recognise the part played by greatness in the order of the universe or the place of great men of action, great poets and artists, etc.

SECTION SIXTEEN   TRANSFORMATION OF THE PHYSICAL BEING                                                                                I.   OPENING THE PHYSICAL TO THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS                                                                              II.  ILLNESS IN YOGA                                                                              III. REGULATION OF FOOD                                                                              IV. SLEEP AND DREAM IN SADHANA                                                                              V.  REJECTION OF SEX                                                                         

FOREWORD   THE letters of Sri Aurobindo are a vast literature of very great value. Written mostly to his disciples in answer to their specific inquiries they have also a wider bearing and are likely to prove of great benefit not only to those who are interested in the things of the Spirit but also to all those who, not satisfied with the usual and the ordinary, strive for higher and greater values in life. For, the most significant and central idea of Sri Aurobindo's spiritual metaphysics as well as of his Yoga is that he does not consider human and spiritual values as totally distinct and basically incompatible, but, in their true significance, as related parts of an all-comprehending

VIII   Science, Reasoning and Yogic Experience, Avatar and Symbols, Yoga Force, Beauty and Art, etc.   Reply to Leonard Woolf's Criticism of Mysticism   I HAVE read Leonard Woolf's article, but I do not propose to deal with it in my comments on Professor Sorley's letter—for apart from the ignorant denunciation and cheap satire in which it deals, there is nothing much in its statement of the case against spiritual thought or experience;  its reasoning  is superficial and springs from an entire misunderstanding  of the case for the mystic. There are four main arguments he sets against it and none of them has any value. Argument number one. Mysticism and mystic

III Yoga; Its Principle and Process   The Central Aim and Discipline of Yoga   TO find the Divine is indeed the first reason for seeking the spiritual Truth and the spiritual life; it is the one thing indispensable and all the rest is nothing without it. The Divine once found, to manifest Him,—that is, first of all to transform one's own limited consciousness into the Divine Consciousness, to live in the infinite Peace, Light, Love, Strength, Bliss, to become that in one's essential nature and, as a consequence, to be its vessel, channel, instrument in one's active nature. To bring into activity the principle of oneness on the material plane or to work for humanity is

IV   Parts of Total Consciousness   Consciousness   I   CONSCIOUSNESS is not, to my experience, a phenomenon dependent on the reactions of personality to the forces of Nature and amounting to no more than a seeing or interpretation of these reactions. If that were so, then when the personality becomes silent and immoblie and gives no reactions, as there would be no seeing or interpretative action, there would therefore be no consciousness. That contradicts some of the fundamental experiences of Yoga, e.g., a silent and immoblie consciousness infinitely spread out, not dependent on the personality but impersonal and universal, not seeing and interpreting contacts but m

       

VI   Love: Human to Divine   The True Foundation of Love   TO bring the Divine Love and Beauty and Ananda into the world is, indeed, the whole crown and essence of our Yoga. But it has always seemed to me impossible unless there comes as its support and foundation and guard the Divine Truth—what I call the Supramental—and its Divine Power. Otherwise  Love itself blinded by the confusions of this present consciousness may stumble in its human receptacles and, even otherwise, may find itself unrecognised,  rejected or rapidly degenerating and lost in the frailty of man's inferior nature. But when it comes in the divine truth and power. Divine Love descends first as

I   Evolution : Material - Spiritual - Supramental   Spiritual Evolution   THERE have been times when the seeking for spiritual attainment was, at least in certain civilisations, more intense and widespread than now or rather than it has been in the world in general during the past few centuries. For now the curve seems to be the beginning of a new turn of seeking which takes its start from what was achieved in the past and projects itself towards a greater future. But always, even in the age of the Vedas or in Egypt, the spiritual achievement or the occult knowledge was confined to a few, it was not spread in the whole mass of humanity. The mass of humanity evolves slow

SECTION ONE SYNTHETIC METHOD AND INTEGRAL YOGA The Central Aim   I DO not agree with the view that the world is an illusion, mithya. The Brahman is here as well as in the supracosmic Absolute. The thing to be overcome is the Ignorance which makes us blind and prevents us from realising Brahman in the world as well as beyond it and the true nature of existences. 12-4-1936   The Object of Integral Yoga   THE object of the Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine's sake alone, to b