Book The Mother by Sri Aurobindo: These inspirational essays by Sri Aurobindo form a powerful statement of the true attitude to be taken by a sadhak of the integral Yoga: one of a complete and dynamic surrender to the Mother. They describe the triple movement of aspiration, rejection, and surrender, the conditions for a true faith and sincerity, the irresistible power of the Divine Mothers grace, the need to reconquer the money-force for the Mothers work, and the joy of a perfect instrumentality through selfless work, surmounting the demands of the ego. The final piece describes the four great powers and personalities of the Divine Mother.

Author: Sri Aurobindo

Print Length: 32 pages

Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Contributor: Krishna

Book format:PDF,ePub,Kindle

Language:English

There are two powers that alone can effect in their conjunction the great and difficult thing which is the aim of our endeavour, a fixed and unfailing aspiration that calls from below and a supreme Grace from above that answers.

But the supreme Grace will act only in the conditions of the Light and the Truth; it will not act in conditions laid upon it by the Falsehood and the Ignorance. For if it were to yield to the demands of the Falsehood, it would defeat its own purpose.

These are the conditions of the Light and Truth, the sole conditions under which the highest Force will descend; and it is only the very highest supramental Force descending from above and opening from below that can victoriously handle the physical Nature and annihilate its difficulties . . . There must be a total and sincere surrender; there must be an exclusive self-opening to the divine Power; there must be a constant and integral choice of the Truth that is descending, a constant and integral rejection of the falsehood of the mental, vital and physical Powers and Appearances that still rule the earth-Nature.

The surrender must be total and seize all the parts of the being. It is not enough that the psychic should respond and the higher mental accept or even the inner vital submit and the inner physical consciousness feel the influence. There must be in no part of the being, even the most external, anything that makes a reserve, anything that hides behind doubts, confusions and subterfuges, anything that revolts or refuses.

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The Mother by Sri Aurobindo (free ebook) - Auro e-Books

Advancing under an arch of glory and peace,Traveller on plateau and on musing ridge,As one who sees in the World-Magician's glassA miracled imagery of soul-scapes fleeHe traversed scenes of an immortal joyAnd gazed into abysms of beauty and bliss.Around him was a light of conscious sunsAnd a brooding gladness of great symbol things;To meet him crowded plains of brilliant calm,Mountains and violet valleys of the Blest,Deep glens of joy and crooning waterfallsAnd woods of quivering purple solitude;Below him lay like gleaming jewelled thoughtsRapt dreaming cities of Gandharva kings.Across the vibrant secrecies of SpaceA dim and happy music sweetly stole,Smitten by unseen hands he heard heart-closeThe harps' cry of the heavenly minstrels pass,And voices of unearthly melodyChanted the glory of eternal loveIn the white-blue-moonbeam air of Paradise.A summit and core of all that marvellous world,Apart stood high Elysian nameless hills,Burning like sunsets in a trance of eve.As if to some new unsearched profundity,Into a joyful stillness plunged their base;Their slopes through a hurry of laughter and voices sank,Crossed by a throng of singing rivulets,Adoring blue heaven with their happy hymn,Down into woods of shadowy secrecy:Lifted into wide voiceless mysteryTheir peaks climbed towards a greatness beyond life.The shining Edens of the vital godsReceived him in their deathless harmonies.All things were perfect there that flower in Time;Beauty was there creation's native mould,Peace was a thrilled voluptuous purity.There Love fulfilled her gold and roseate dreamsAnd Strength her crowned and mighty reveries;Desire climbed up,a swift omnipotent flame,And Pleasure had the stature of the gods;Dream walked along the highways of the stars;Sweet common things turned into miracles:Overtaken by the spirit's sudden spell,Smitten by a divine passion's alchemy,Pain's self compelled transformed to potent joyCuring the antithesis twixt heaven and hell.All life's high visions are embodied there,Her wandering hopes achieved,her aureate combsCaught by the honey-eater's darting tongue,Her burning guesses changed to ecstasied truths,Her mighty pantings stilled in deathless calmAnd liberated her immense desires.In that paradise of perfect heart and senseNo lower note could break the endless charmOf her sweetness ardent and immaculate;Her steps are sure of their intuitive fall.After the anguish of the soul's long strifeAt length were found calm and celestial restAnd,lapped in a magic flood of sorrowless hours,Healed were his warrior nature's wounded limbsIn the encircling arms of EnergiesThat brooked no stain and feared not their own bliss.In scenes forbidden to our pallid senseAmid miraculous scents and wonder-huesHe met the forms that divinise the sight,To music that can immortalise the mindAnd make the heart wide as infinityListened,and captured the inaudibleCadences that awake the occult ear:Out of the ineffable hush it hears them comeTrembling with the beauty of a wordless speech,And thoughts too great and deep to find a voice,Thoughts whose desire new-makes the universe.A scale of sense that climbed with fiery feetTo heights of unimagined happiness,Recast his being's aura in joy-glow,His body glimmered like a skiey shell;His gates to the world were swept with seas of light.His earth, dowered with celestial competence,Harboured a power that needed now no moreTo cross the closed customs-line of mind and fleshAnd smuggle godhead into humanity.It shrank no more from the supreme demandOf an untired capacity for bliss,A might that could explore its own infiniteAnd beauty and passion and the depths' replyNor feared the swoon of glad identityWhere spirit and flesh in inner ecstasy joinAnnulling the quarrel between self and shape.It drew from sight and sound spiritual power,Made sense a road to reach the intangible:It thrilled with the supernal influencesThat build the substance of life's deeper soul.Earth-nature stood reborn,comrade of heaven.A fit companion of the timeless Kings,Equalled with the godheads of the living Suns,He mixed in the radiant pastimes of the Unborn,Heard whispers of the Player never seenAnd listened to his voice that steals the heartAnd draws it to the breast of God's desire,And felt its honey of felicityFlow through his veins like the rivers of Paradise,Made body a nectar-cup of the Absolute.In sudden moments of revealing flame,In passionate responses half-unveiledHe reached the rim of ecstasies unknown;A touch supreme surprised his hurrying heart,The clasp was remembered of the Wonderful,And hints leaped down of white beatitudes.Eternity drew close disguised as LoveAnd laid its hand upon the body of Time.A little gift comes from the Immensitudes,But measureless to life its gain of joy;All the untold Beyond is mirrored there.A giant drop of the Bliss unknowableOverwhelmed his limbs and round his soul

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SRI AUROBINDO'S SAVITRI BY SHRADDHAVAN SSC 2018-10-28 BOOK 02 C 09 L 34-158 & C 10 L 1-192 P 234-243

A LIFE SKETCH

Information quoted from website of Sri Aurobindo Ashram

fromVolume 30,SABCL, p.1-6.

Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on 15 August, 1872. In 1879, at the age of seven, he was taken with his two elder brothers to England for education and lived there for fourteen years. Brought up at first in an English family at Manchester, he joined St. Pauls School in London in 1884 and in 1890 went from it with a senior classical scholarship to Kings College, Cambridge, where he studied for two years. In 1890 he passed also the open competition for the Indian Civil Service, but at the end of two years of probation failed to present himself at the riding examination and was disqualified for the Service. At this time the Gaekwar of Baroda was in London. Sri Aurobindo saw him, obtained an appointment in the Baroda Service and left England for India, arriving there in February, 1893.

Sri Aurobindo passed thirteen years, from 1893 to 1906, in the Baroda Service, first in the Revenue Department and in secretariate work for the Maharaja, afterwards as Professor of English and, finally, Vice-Principal in the Baroda College. These were years of self-culture, of literary activity for much of the poetry afterwards published from Pondicherry was written at this time and of preparation for his future work. In England he had received, according to his fathers express instructions, an entirely occidental education without any contact with the culture of India and the East. At Baroda he made up the deficiency, learned Sanskrit and several modern Indian languages, assimilated the spirit of Indian civilisation and its forms past and present. A great part of the last years of this period was spent on leave in silent political activity, for he was debarred from public action by his position at Baroda. The outbreak of the agitation against the partition of Bengal in 1905 gave him the opportunity to give up the Baroda Service and join openly in the political movement. He left Baroda in 1906 and went to Calcutta as Principal of the newly-founded Bengal National College.

The political action of Sri Aurobindo covered eight years, from 1902 to 1910. During the first half of this period he worked behind the scenes, preparing with other co-workers the beginnings of the Swadeshi (Indian Sinn Fein) movement, till the agitation in Bengal furnished an opening for the public initiation of a more forward and direct political action than the moderate reformism which had till then been the creed of the Indian National Congress. In 1906 Sri Aurobindo came to Bengal with this purpose and joined the New Party, an advanced section small in numbers and not yet strong in influence, which had been recently formed in the Congress. The political theory of this party was a rather vague gospel of Non-cooperation; in action it had not yet gone farther than some ineffective clashes with the Moderate leaders at the annual Congress assembly behind the veil of secrecy of the Subjects Committee. Sri Aurobindo persuaded its chiefs in Bengal to come forward publicly as an All-India party with a definite and challenging programme, putting forward Tilak, the popular Maratha leader at its head, and to attack the then dominant Moderate (Reformist or Liberal) oligarchy of veteran politicians and capture from them the Congress and the country. This was the origin of the historic struggle between the Moderates and the Nationalists (called by their opponents Extremists) which in two years changed altogether the face of Indian politics.

The new-born Nationalist party put forward Swaraj (independence) as its goal as against the far-off Moderate hope of colonial self-government to be realised at a distant date of a century or two by a slow progress of reform; it proposed as its means of execution a programme which resembled in spirit, though not in its details, the policy of Sinn Fein developed some years later and carried to a successful issue in Ireland. The principle of this new policy was self-help; it aimed on one side at an effective organisation of the forces of the nation and on the other professed a complete non-cooperation with the Government. Boycott of British and foreign goods and the fostering of Swadeshi industries to replace them, boycott of British law courts, and the foundation of a system of Arbitration courts in their stead, boycott of Government universities and colleges and the creation of a network of National colleges and schools, the formation of societies of young men which would do the work of police and defence and, wherever necessary, a policy of passive resistance were among the immediate items of the programme. Sri Aurobindo hoped to capture the Congress and make it the directing centre of an organised national action, an informal State within the State, which would carry on the struggle for freedom till it was won. He persuaded the party to take up and finance as its recognised organ the newly-founded daily paper, Bande Mataram, of which he was at the time acting editor. The Bande Mataram, whose policy from the beginning of 1907 till its abrupt winding up in 1908 when Sri Aurobindo was in prison was wholly directed by him, circulated almost immediately all over India. During its brief but momentous existence it changed the political thought of India which has ever since preserved fundamentally, even amidst its later developments, the stamp then imparted to it. But the struggle initiated on these lines, though vehement and eventful and full of importance for the future, did not last long at the time; for the country was still unripe for so bold a programme.

Sri Aurobindo was prosecuted for sedition in 1907 and acquitted. Up till now an organiser and writer, he was obliged by this event and by the imprisonment or disappearance of other leaders to come forward as the acknowledged head of the party in Bengal and to appear on the platform for the first time as a speaker. He presided over the Nationalist Conference at Surat in 1907 where in the forceful clash of two equal parties the Congress was broken to pieces. In May, 1908, he was arrested in the Alipore Conspiracy Case as implicated in the doings of the revolutionary group led by his brother Barindra; but no evidence of any value could be established against him and in this case too he was acquitted. After a detention of one year as undertrial prisoner in the Alipore Jail, he came out in May, 1909, to find the party organisation broken, its leaders scattered by imprisonment, deportation or self-imposed exile and the party itself still existent but dumb and dispirited and incapable of any strenuous action. For almost a year he strove single-handed as the sole remaining leader of the Nationalists in India to revive the movement. He published at this time to aid his effort a weekly English paper, the Karmayogin, and a Bengali weekly, the Dharma. But at last he was compelled to recognise that the nation was not yet sufficiently trained to carry out his policy and programme. For a time he thought that the necessary training must first be given through a less advanced Home Rule movement or an agitation of passive resistance of the kind created by Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa. But he saw that the hour of these movements had not come and that he himself was not their destined leader. Moreover, since his twelve months detention in the Alipore Jail, which had been spent entirely in practice of Yoga, his inner spiritual life was pressing upon him for an exclusve concentration. He resolved therefore to withdraw from the political field, at least for a time.

In February, 1910, he withdrew to a secret retirement at Chandernagore and in the beginning of April sailed for Pondicherry in French lndia. A third prosecution was launched against him at this moment for a signed article in the Karmayogin; in his absence it was pressed against the printer of the paper who was convicted, but the conviction was quashed on appeal in the High Court of Calcutta. For the third time a prosecution against him had failed. Sri Aurobindo had left Bengal with some intention of returning to the political field under more favourable circumstances; but very soon the magnitude of the spiritual work he had taken up appeared to him and he saw that it would need the exclusive concentration of all his energies. Eventually he cut off connection with politics, refused repeatedly to accept the Presidentship of the National Congress and went into a complete retirement. During all his stay at Pondicherry from 1910 onward he remained more and more exclusively devoted to his spiritual work and his sadhana.

In 1914 after four years of silent Yoga he began the publication of a philosophical monthly, the Arya. Most of his more important works, The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, Essays on the Gita, The Isha Upanishad, appeared serially in the Arya. These works embodied much of the inner knowledge that had come to him in his practice of Yoga. Others were concerned with the spirit and significance of Indian civilisation and culture (The Foundations of Indian Culture), the true meaning of the Vedas (The Secret of the Veda), the progress of human society (The Human Cycle), the nature and evolution of poetry (The Future Poetry), the possibility of the unification of the human race (The Ideal of Human Unity). At this time also he began to publish his poems, both those written in England and at Baroda and those, fewer in number, added during his period of political activity and in the first years of his residence at Pondicherry. The Arya ceased publication in 1921 after six years and a half of uninterrupted appearance. Sri Aurobindo lived at first in retirement at Pondicherry with four or five disciples. Afterwards more and yet more began to come to him to follow his spiritual path and the number became so large that a community of sadhaks had to be formed for the maintenance and collective guidance of those who had left everything behind for the sake of a higher life. This was the foundation of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram which has less been created than grown around him as its centre.

Sri Aurobindo began his practice of Yoga in 1904. At first gathering into it the essential elements of spiritual experience that are gained by the paths of divine communion and spiritual realisation followed till now in India, he passed on in search of a more complete experience uniting and harmonising the two ends of existence, Spirit and Matter. Most ways of Yoga are paths to the Beyond leading to the Spirit and, in the end, away from life; Sri Aurobindos rises to the Spirit to redescend with its gains bringing the light and power and bliss of the Spirit into life to transform it. Mans present existence in the material world is in this view or vision of things a life in the Ignorance with the Inconscient at its base, but even in its darkness and nescience there are involved the presence and possibilities of the Divine. The created world is not a mistake or a vanity and illusion to be cast aside by the soul returning to heaven or Nirvana, but the scene of a spiritual evolution by which out of this material inconscience is to be manifested progressively the Divine Consciousness in things. Mind is the highest term yet reached in the evolution, but it is not the highest of which it is capable. There is above it a Supermind or eternal Truth-Consciousness which is in its nature the self-aware and self-determining light and power of a Divine Knowledge. Mind is an ignorance seeking after Truth, but this is a self-existent Knowledge harmoniously manifesting the play of its forms and forces. It is only by the descent of this supermind that the perfection dreamed of by all that is highest in humanity can come. It is possible by opening to a greater divine consciousness to rise to this power of light and bliss, discover ones true self, remain in constant union with the Divine and bring down the supramental Force for the transformation of mind and life and body. To realise this possibility has been the dynamic aim of Sri Aurobindos Yoga.

Sri Aurobindo left his body on December 5, 1950. The Mother carried on his work until November 17, 1973. Their work continues.

The following quotes are fromVolume 26,SABCL,On Himself

I see that you have persisted in giving a biography is it really necessary or useful? The attempt is bound to be a failure, because neither you nor anyone else knows anything at all of my life; it has not been on the surface for men to see.

p.378

* * *

I had no urge toward spirituality in me, I developed spirituality. I was incapable of understanding metaphysics, I developed into a philosopher. I had no eye for painting I developed it by Yoga. I transformed my nature from what it was to what it was not. I did it by a special manner, not by a miracle and I did it to show what could be done and how it could be done. I did not do it out of any personal necessity of my own or by a miracle without any process. I say that if it is not so, then my Yoga is useless and my life was a mistake a mere absurd freak of Nature without meaning or consequence. You all seem to think it a great compliment to me to say that what I have done has no meaning for anybody except myself it is the most damaging criticism on my work that could be made. I also did not do it by myself, if you mean by myself the Aurobindo that was. He did it by the help of Krishna and the Divine Shakti. I had help from human sources also.

p.148-9 (13-2-1935)

* * *

Q: How did your intellect become so powerful even before you started Yoga?

A: It was not any such thing before I started the Yoga. I started the Yoga in 1904 and all my work except some poetry was done afterwards. Moreover, my intelligence was inborn and so far as it grew before the Yoga, it was not by training but by a wide haphazard activity developing ideas from all things read, seen or experienced. That is not training, it is natural growth.

p.222 (13-11-1936)

* * *

But what strange ideas again! that I was born with a supramental temperament and that I know nothing of hard realities! Good God! My whole life has been a struggle with hard realities, from hardships, starvation in England and constant and fierce difficulties to the far greater difficulties continually cropping up here in Pondicherry, external and internal. My life has been a battle from its early years and is still a battle: the fact that I wage it now from a room upstairs and by spiritual means as well as others that are external makes no difference to its character. But, of course, as we have not been shouting about these things, it is natural, I suppose, for others to think that I am living in an august, glamorous, lotus-eating dreamland where no hard facts of life or Nature present themselves. But what an illusion all the same!

p.153-4

* * *

You think then that in me (I dont bring in the Mother) there was never any doubt or despair, no attacks of that kind. I have borne every attack which human beings have borne, otherwise I would be unable to assure anybody This too can be conquered. At least I would have no right to say so. Your psychology is terribly rigid. I repeat, the Divine when he takes on the burden of terrestrial nature, takes it fully, sincerely and without any conjuring tricks or pretence. If he has something behind him which emerges always out of the coverings, it is the same thing in essence even if greater in degree, that there is behind others and it is to awaken that that he is here.

The psychic being does the same for all who are intended for the spiritual way men need not be extraordinary beings to follow it. That is the mistake you are making to harp on greatness as if only the great can be spiritual.

p.154 (8-3-1935)

* * *

Q: We have been wondering why you should have to write and rewrite your poetry for instance, Savitri ten or twelve times when you have all the inspiration at your command and do not have to receive it with the difficulty that faces budding Yogis like us.

A: That is very simple. I used Savitri as a means of ascension. I began with it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote from that level. Moreover I was particular if part seemed to me to come from any lower levels I was not satisfied to leave it because it was good poetry. All had to be as far as possible of the same mint. In fact Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from ones own Yogic consciousness and how that could be made creative. I did not rewrite Rose of God or the sonnets except for two or three verbal alterations made at the moment.

p.239

* * *

Q: The Overmind seems so distant from us, and your Himalayan austerity and grandeur takes my breath away, making my heart palpitate!

A: O rubbish! I am austere and grand, grim and stern! every blasted thing I never was! I groan in an un-Aurobindian despair when I hear such things. What has happened to the common sense of all you people? In order to reach the Overmind it is not at all necessary to take leave of this simple but useful quality. Common sense by the way is not logic (which is the least commonsense-like thing in the world), it is simply looking at things as they are without inflation or deflation not imagining wild imaginations or for that matter despairing I know not why despairs.

p.354-5 (23-2-1935)

* * *

You say that this way is too difficult for you or the likes of you and it is only Avatars like myself or the Mother that can do it. That is a strange misconception; for it is, on the contrary, the easiest and simplest and most direct way and anyone can do it, if he makes his mind and vital quiet, even those who have a tenth of your capacity can do it. It is the other way of tension and strain and hard endeavour that is difficult and needs a great force of Tapasya. As for the Mother and myself, we have had to try all ways, follow all methods, to surmount mountains of difficulties, a far heavier burden to bear than you or anybody else in the Ashram or outside, far more difficult conditions, battles to fight, wounds to endure, ways to cleave through impenetrable morass and desert and forest, hostile masses to conquer a work such as, I am certain, none else had to do before us. For the Leader of the Way in a work like ours has not only to bring down and represent and embody the Divine, but to represent too the ascending element in humanity and to bear the burden of humanity to the full and experience, not in a mere play or Lila but in grim earnest, all the obstruction, difficulty, opposition, baffled and hampered and only slowly victorious labour which are possible on the Path. But it is not necessary nor tolerable that all that should be repeated over again to the full in the experience of others. It is because we have the complete experience that we can show a straighter and easier road to others if they will only consent to take it. It is because of our experience won at a tremendous price that we can urge upon you and others, Take the psychic attitude; follow the straight sunlit path, with the Divine openly or secretly upbearing you if secretly, he will yet show himself in good time, do not insist on the hard, hampered, roundabout and difficult journey.

p.463 (5-5-1932)

* * *

The Mothers consciousness is the divine Consciousness and the Light that comes from it is the light of the divine Truth, the Force that she brings down is the force of the divine Truth. One who receives and accepts and lives in the Mothers light, will begin to see the truth on all the planes, the mental, the vital, the physical. He will reject all that is undivine, the undivine is the falsehood, the ignorance, the error of the dark forces; the undivine is all that is obscure and unwilling to accept the divine Truth and its light and force. The undivine, therefore, is all that is unwilling to accept the light and force of the Mother. That is why I am always telling you to keep yourself in contact with the Mother and with her light and Force, because it is only so that you can come out of this confusion and obscurity and receive the Truth that comes from above.

When we speak of the Mothers Light or my Light in a special sense, we are speaking of a special occult action we are speaking of certain lights that come from the Supermind. In this action the Mothers is the White Light that purifies, illumines, brings down the whole essence and power of the Truth and makes the transformation possible. But in fact all light that comes from above, from the highest divine Truth is the Mothers.

There is no difference between the Mothers path and mine; we have and have always had the same path, the path that leads to the supramental change and the divine realisation; not only at the end, but from the beginning they have been the same.

The attempt to set up a division and opposition, putting the Mother on one side and myself on another and opposite or quite different side, has always been a trick of the forces of the Falsehood when they want to prevent a Sadhak from reaching the Truth. Dismiss all such falsehoods from your mind.

Know that the Mothers light and force are the light and force of the Truth; remain always in contact with the Mothers light and force, then only can you grow into the divine Truth.

p.455 (10-9-1931)

All quotes are from theCollected Works of the Mother.

What Sri Aurobindo represents in the worlds history is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a decisive action direct from the Supreme.

fromVolume13, Words of the Mother, pp.1-3514 February 1961

* * *

Sri Aurobindo has come on earth not to bring a teaching or a creed in competition with previous creeds or teachings, but to show the way to overpass the past and to open concretely the route towards an imminent and inevitable future.

fromVolume13, Words of the Mother, pp.1-3522 February 1967

* * *

Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to teach this truth to men. He told them that man is only a transitional being living in a mental consciousness, but with the possibility of acquiring a new consciousness, the Truth-consciousness, and capable of living a life perfectly harmonious, good and beautiful, happy and fully conscious. During the whole of his life upon earth, Sri Aurobindo gave all his time to establish in himself this consciousness he called supramental, and to help those gathered around him to realise it.

fromVolume12, On Education, p.116(24 July 1951)

* * *

But to have this precise perceptionlisten, as I had when I came from Japan: I was on the boat, at sea, not expecting anything (I was of course busy with the inner life, but I was living physically on the boat), when all of a sudden, abruptly, about two nautical miles from Pondicherry, the quality, I may even say the physical quality of the atmosphere, of the air, changed so much that I knew we were entering the aura of Sri Aurobindo. It was a physical experience and I guarantee that whoever has a sufficiently awakened consciousness can feel the same thing.

fromVolume4, Questions and Answers 1950-51, p. 223(17 March 1951)

* * *

I incidentally could tell you that in all kinds of so-called spiritual literature I had always read marvellous things about this state of trance or samadhi, and it so happened that I had never experienced it. So I did not know whether this was a sign of inferiority. And when I came here, one of my first questions to Sri Aurobindo was: What do you think of samadhi, that state of trance one does not remember? One enters into a condition which seems blissful, but when one comes out of it, one does not know at all what has happened. Then he looked at me, saw what I meant and told me, It is unconsciousness. I asked him for an explanation, I said, What? He told me, Yes, you enter into what is called samadhi when you go out of your conscious being and enter a part of your being which is completely unconscious, or rather a domain where you have no corresponding consciousness you go beyond the field of your consciousness and enter a region where you are no longer conscious. You are in the impersonal state, that is to say, a state in which you are unconscious; and that is why, naturally, you remember nothing, because you were not conscious of anything. So he reassured me and I said, Well, this has never happened to me. He replied, Nor to me!

fromVolume8, Questions and Answers 1956, p.275-6(22 August 1956)

* * *

I am going to give you two examples to make you understand what true spontaneity is. One you all know about it undoubtedly is of the time Sri Aurobindo began writing the Arya, in 1914. It was neither a mental knowledge nor even a mental creation which he transcribed: he silenced his mind and sat at the typewriter, and from above, from the higher planes, all that had to be written came down, all ready, and he had only to move his fingers on the typewriter and it was transcribed. It was in this state of mental silence which allows the knowledge and even the expression from above to pass through that he wrote the whole Arya, with its sixty-four printed pages a month. This is why, besides, he could do it, for if it had been a mental work of construction it would have been quite impossible.

fromVolume8, Questions and Answers 1956, p.282(29 August 1956)

* * *

You remember the night of the great cyclone, when there was a tremendous noise and splash of rain all about the place. I thought I would go to Sri Aurobindos room and help him shut the windows. I just opened his door and found him sitting quietly at his desk, writing. There was such a solid peace in the room that nobody would have dreamed that a cyclone was raging outside. All the windows were wide open, not a drop of rain was coming inside.

fromVolume3, Questions and Answers, p.155(1930-31)

* * *

On the other hand, there was someone (I shall tell you who afterwards) who had in his room hundreds of books, countless sheets of paper, notebooks and all sorts of things, and so you entered the room and saw books and papers everywhere a whole pile, it was quite full. But if you were unfortunate enough to shift a single little bit of paper from its place, he knew it immediately and asked you, Who has touched my things? You, when you come in, see so many things that you feel quite lost. And yet each thing had its place. And it was so consciously done, I tell you, that if one paper was displaced for instance, a paper with notes on it or a letter or something else which was taken away from one place and placed in another with the idea of putting things in order he used to say You have touched my things; you have displaced them and created a disorder in my things. That of course was Sri Aurobindo!

fromVolume6, Questions and Answers 1954, p. 14(3 February 1954)

* * *

The other story is of the days Sri Aurobindo had the habit of walking up and down in his rooms. He used to walk for several hours like that, it was his way of meditating. Only, he wanted to know the time, so a clock had been put in each room to enable him to see the time at any moment. There were three such clocks. One was in the room where I worked; it was, so to say, his starting-point. One day he came and asked, What time is it? He looked and the clock had stopped. He went into the next room, saying, I shall see the time there the clock had stopped. And it had stopped at the same minute as the other, you understand, with the difference of a few seconds. He went to the third roomthe clock had stopped. He continued walking three times like that all the clocks had stopped! Then he returned to my room and said, But this is impossible! This is surely a bad joke! and all the clocks, one after the other, started working again. I saw it myself, you know, it was a charming incident.

fromVolume4, Questions and Answers 1950-51, p.275-6

* * *

I have seen Sri Aurobindo doing this in somebodys head, somebody who used to complain of being troubled by thoughts. It was as if his hand reached out and took hold of the little black dancing point and then did this (gesture with the finger-tips), as when one picks up an insect, and he threw it far away. And that was all. All still, quiet, luminous

fromVolume9, Questions and Answers 1957-58, p.254(8 January 1958)

* * *

I had asked myself a question about Sri Aurobindo. I wanted to know at what point he had arrived when he passed away at what point of transformation. What difference in the work, for example, is there between what you are doing now and what he was doing at that time?

He had gathered in his body a great amount of supramental force and as soon as he left You see, he was lying on his bed, I stood by his side, and in a way altogether concrete concrete with such a strong sensation as to make one think that it could be seen all this supramental force which was in him passed from his body into mine. And I felt the friction of the passage. It was extraordinary extraordinary.

fromVolume11, Notes on the Way, p. 328(20 December 1972)

* * *

Today is the first day of Sri Aurobindos centenary year. Though he has left his body his is still with us, alive and active.

Sri Aurobindo belongs to the future; he is the messenger of the future. He still shows us the way to follow in order to hasten the realisation of a glorious future fashioned by the Divine Will.

All those who want to collaborate for the progress of humanity and for Indias luminous destiny must unite in a clairvoyant aspiration and in an illumined work.

fromVolume13, Words of the Mother, pp.1-3515 August 1971

* * *

Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to announce the manifestation of the supramental world and not merely did he announce this manifestation but embodied also in part the supramental force and showed by example what one must do to prepare oneself for manifesting it. The best thing we can do is to study all that he has told us and endeavour to follow his example and prepare ourselves for the new manifestation.

This gives life its real sense and will help us to overcome all obstacles.

Let us live for the new creation and we shall grow stronger and stronger by remaining young and progressive.

fromVolume13, Words of the Mother, pp.1-3530 January 1972

* * *

When in your heart and thought you make no difference between Sri Aurobindo and me, when to think of Sri Aurobindo will be to think of me and to think of me will mean to think of Sri Aurobindo inevitably, when to see one will mean inevitably to see the other, like one and the same Person, then you will know that you begin to be open to the supramental force and consciousness.

fromVolume13, Words of the Mother, pp.1-354 March 1958

* * *

Sri Aurobindo is constantly in the subtle physical, very active there. I see him almost daily, and last night I spent many hours with him.

If you become conscious in the subtle physical you will surely meet him

fromVolume13, Words of the Mother, pp.1-3521 December 1969

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Sri Aurobindo has been variously described as the greatest philosopher of modern times, a towering spiritual personality, an outstanding leader of Indias freedom movement, an inspired poet, an astute political thinker and strategist, and a selfless humanist. For the purposes of this site, he can most appropriately be thought of as an Integral Scientist. His entire thought, work and life were an endeavour to integrate all aspects of human existence based on integral truths of existence. The idea of establishing the Human Science wiki is inspired by Sri Aurobindos integral conception of individuality, society, life and spiritual reality.

Born in Bengal in 1872, raised and educated in the perspectives of European civilization, rather than traditional Indian wisdom, Sri Aurobindo was sent to England at the age of seven to live and study with a clergyman. He was educated at Cambridge University, where he excelled academically, but acquired a deep aspiration for Indias independence from colonial rule. Returning to India in 1893, he became a college lecturer, then secretary to the Maharaja of Baroda, before assuming a leading role in Indias nascent freedom movement. As editor of several journals calling for the end of colonial rule and a renaissance of Indian culture, he was the first Indian leader to call for complete and total independence from British rule. He argued so persuasively about the injustice and unacceptability of the British Raj that he came to be regarded by the British government as the most dangerous revolutionary in India.

Having been denied exposure to his own cultural heritage during childhood, Sri Aurobindo plunged into a deep investigation of ancient and modern Indian spiritual knowledge and experience. From 1905 he experimented with a variety of yogic methods and began to have profound spiritual experiences. In 1908, he was falsely accused of master-minding a bomb blast, placed in solitary confinement for one year, and then acquitted by an English judge and released after a long and widely publicized trial. When he received word the British again planned to arrest him, he traveled to Pondicherry, a small the French enclave on the Bay of Bengal in South India, and remained there from 1910 until his passing in 1950.

During this later period Sri Aurobindo dedicated his entire life and energy to the pursuit of spiritual knowledge and spiritual power to transform life on earth. In 1914, Mira Alfassa, who subsequently became known as The Mother, and her husband, a French diplomat, visited him in Pondicherry and at their urging helped found a monthly journal, Arya. From 1914 to 1920, Sri Aurobindo simultaneously authored all but one of his most important works and published them chapter-wise as monthly installments in Arya. The Mother left Pondicherry at the outbreak of World War I and then returned in 1920 and remained there to work with Sri Aurobindo and head the spiritual community which she founded in his name.

Sri Aurobindos collected written works consist of 30 full volumes on philosophy, yoga, politics, international affairs, social evolution, Indian culture, art, literature and life, including a volume of poems and two volumes of plays, in addition to voluminous records of his spiritual practices and experiences which were published posthumously. His major works include:

Even a minimal summary of his thought is too daunting a task for this brief biographical sketch. That thought is the source of inspiration and insight for all the thus far presented and discussed on this site. A few concepts of most direct relevance to human science are listed below and discussed in detail in other articles.

See also

External Links

You are invited to create new articles, add new sections to this article, raise questions or comments on the discussion page or project/portal Forum page, or send feedback by email to humansciencewiki@gmail.com

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The year was 1907. The freedom movement in India was gathering momentum. Its leader was detained by the police. The poet Rabindranath Tagore paid him a visit after his acquittal, and wrote the now famous lines:Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee! O friend, my countrys friend, O Voice incarnate, free, Of Indias soul! The fiery messenger that with the lamp of God. Hath comeRabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee.

In the year 1928, the leader had now left politics and had gone to Pondicherry, where he plunged himself into the practice of Yoga.

The poet Tagore once again paid him a visit and declared: You have the Word and we are waiting to accept it from you. India will speak through your voice to the world, Hearken to me!

Years ago I saw Aurobindo in the atmosphere of his earlier heroic youth and I sang to him: Aurobindo, accept the salutations from Rabindranath. Today I saw him in a deeper atmosphere of a reticent richness of wisdom and again sang to him in silence: Aurobindo, accept the salutations from Rabindranath!

How does one describe or speak about such a personality? Sri Aurobindo has been called a scholar, a literary critic, a philosopher, a revolutionary, a poet, a yogi and a rishi. He was all these and much more. To have even a glimpse of the true Sri Aurobindo, we have to turn to the Mother: What Sri Aurobindo represents in the world's history is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a decisive action direct from the Supreme.

In fact, Sri Aurobindo declared, in no uncertain terms that nobody could write his biography and added: Neither you nor anyone else knows anything at all of my life; it has not been on the surface for men to see.

But he was not altogether averse to this effort and even made corrections when some biographers made the attempt. In the process the veil that hid the divine mystery was lifted a little.

The Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo are available for download on Sri Aurobindo Ashram's website.Each volume can be viewed and downloaded in PDF format.

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Sri Aurobindo - aurosociety.org

All students and scholars of Sri Aurobindo will find this extraordinary book most rewarding... Essential. (CHOICE)

A great biography... a doorway into [Sri Aurobindo's] extraordinary spiritual philosophy and vision. (EnlightenNext)

It is engagingly written and supported by a bounty of historical materials. Students of India with little familiarity of Aurobindo will discover that Heehs offers a multisided portrait of a brilliant and enigmatic man whose lifetime spanned a momentous period in modern Indian history... (Hanna H. Kim H-Asia)

The book's strength is Heehs' deep understanding of modern India, which gives him an edge in perceptively situating Aurobindo within the context of Indian national movement. (Vijendra Singh Contemporary South Asia)

...meticulously reported and scrupulously footnoted... (Yoga Journal)

Heehs has succeeded magnificently; The Lives of Sri Aurobindo is quickly becoming the biography for academics. (AntiMatter)

Heehs' work is an epic effort to encompass the outer and inner life of a personality, who seems to defy all definitions and boundaries, written with the intention of making him comprehensible to the scholarly mind of our times. I believe this book to be eminently successful (Debashish Banerji Sophia)

A formidable piece of scholarship. (Antony Copley Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society)

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The Lives of Sri Aurobindo: Peter Heehs: 9780231140980 ...

Integral yoga, also called supramental yoga, is the yoga-based philosophy and practice of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother (Mirra Alfassa). Integral yoga finds all life conscious or subconscious a yoga, defines the term yoga as a methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the secret potentialities latent in the being and highest condition of victory in that effort - a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent existence which is seen partially as expressions in humans and in the cosmos. As a yoga idea, that Spirit manifests itself in a process of involution. The reverse process of evolution is driven toward a complete manifestation of spirit.

According to Sri Aurobindo, the current status of human evolution is an intermediate stage in the evolution of being, which is on its way to the unfolding of the spirit, and the self-revelation of divinity in all things. Yoga is a rapid and concentrated evolution of being, which can take effect in one life-time, while unassisted natural evolution would take many centuries or many births. Aurobindo suggests a grand program called sapta chatushtaya (seven quadrates) to aid this evolution.

Contents

Sri Aurobindo finds that there are two extreme views of life, The materialists & The Ascetics

The Materialists: He finds materialists would only accept the existance of matter or force and deny anything else, & would in their argument find anything which is not knowable (that which would escape once thought and speech) as inert or a passive, silent Atman, an illusion or a hallucination, this affirmation by the materialists is based on the association of the real with the materially perceptible, and becomes the basis of his assumption on all his arguments. Which Sri Aurobindo finds cannot give a impartial reasoning. Due to the above notion the materialists would refuse any further inquiry, thus never having a satisfied understanding. He recommends that the only way to reconcile the materialistic mind with the other truth would be to cross over the layers of inner consciouness either by objective analysis of life & mind as to matter or by subjective synthesis and illumination, arrive at a state of the ultimate unity without denying the energy of the expressing multiplicity of the universe.He finds that the current World is in a state of rationalistic materialism, & finds that this rationalistic movement has served human kind in a positive way, by purifying intellect from the dogmas, superstitions clearing path to a better advancement of Humanity.. Sri Aurobindo finds that root of this Scientific movement to be a search for knowledge, due to this root the movement would not come to an halt & it's progress is a sure sign that it would carry forward in reaching the other part of knowledge which vedantins had found in a different way..

The Ascetics: would only accept spirit/Atman and terming the remaining as mechanical unintelligent substance or energy, leading to believing the reality to be an illusion of senses. Sri Aurobindo finds when the mind retracts from external activities and has experience of silence, a powerfull convincing experience that only the pure self or non-being is real leads them to disregard the outer world. he finds this as an revolt of spirit on matter which was made famous by Buddhism affirming that it is impossible to find a solution in the world which is termed to be dual in nature, but to escape into Nirvana, Brahmaloka or Goloka as beyond. He finds that this apporach is slowly comming to an end and had it's importance as the part of evolution, but is quite different than what was present in vedic period.

Sri Aurobindo terms the Integral yoga to hava a commprehensive approach not rejecting both the ways and towards what vedantins had affirmed. and affirms that not only the eternal spirit which inhibits a body as the divinde but also matter to be divine.

Spirit or satchitananda is the Absolute, the source of all that exists.[web 1] It is the One, having three aspects: Sat (truth), Citta (consciousness, awareness), and ananda (bliss, happiness).

Involution is the extension of Spirit, the Absolute, to create a universe of separate forms. Being manifests itself as a multiplicity of forms, meanwhile becoming lost in the inconscience of matter.[10] The first manifestation of Spirit in the process of involution is as Satchitananda, and then as Supermind, the intermediate link between the higher (Spirit) and lower (matter, life, and mind) nature.[11]

According to Aurobindo the world is a differentiated unity. It is a manifold oneness, that generates an infinite variety of lifeforms and substances. The lifeforms and substances are stretched out on a wide range, from physical matter to a pure form of spiritual being, where the subject becomes fully aware of itself as spirit:

Above Mind proper lie various higher levels of Mind, which ascend toward Spirit.

Through evolution Spirit rediscoveres itself as Spirit. Evolution follows a developmental trajectory from the original inconscience of matter into life, to mind, and then to spiritualized mind, culminating in The Supermind or Truth Consciousness.[14] Evolution is teleological, since the developing entity contains within itself already the totality toward which it develops. It is not a mechanistic or deterministic teleology, but a "manifestation of all the possibilities inherent in the total movement."

The goal of Integral yoga is to become aware of the Divine, to integrate the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of ourselves, and to manifest the Divine at earth. According to Sri Aurobindo, all life is Yoga, while Yoga as a sadhana is a methodised effort towards self-perfection, which brings to expression the latent, hidden potentialities of being. Success in this effort unifies the human individual with the universal and transcendental Existence. Integral yoga reunites "the infinite in the finite, the timeless in the temporal and the transcendent with the immanent.

Sri Aurobindo discerns three types of being, namely the Outer being, the Inner being, and the Psychic Being.

The Outer Being includes the physical, vital and mental levels of Being, which characterises our everyday consciousness and experience. It includes several levels of the subconscient: a mental subconscient, a vital subconscient, and a physical subconscient, down to the material Inconscient.[web 2] Integral Yoga involves going beyond this surface consciousness to the larger life of the Inner Being, which is more open to spiritual realisation.

The Inner Being, or Subliminal, includes the inner realms or aspects of the physical, vital and mental being. They have a larger, subtler, freer consciousness than that of the everyday consciousness. Its realisation is essential for any higher spiritual realisation.

The Inner Being is also transitional between the surface or Outer Being and the Psychic or Inmost Being. By doing yoga practice (sadhana), the inner consciousness is being opened, and life turns away from the outward to the inward. The inner consciousness becomes more real than the outer consciousness, and becomes a peace, happiness and closeness to the Divine.[21]

The Psychic Being is Sri Aurobindo's term for the Personal Evolving Soul, the principle of Divine spirit in every individual.[note 1] The Psychic is the "Innermost Being",[note 2] the permanent being in us that stands behind and supports the physical, vital and mental principles. It "uses mind, life and body as its instruments," undergoing their fate yet also transcending them.[24]

In Integral Yoga the goal is to move inward and discover the Psychic Being, which then can bring about a transformation of the outer nature. This transformation of the outer being or ego by the Psychic is called Psychicisation; it is one of the three necessary stages in the realisation of the Supramental consciousness. This Psychic transformation is the decisive movement that enables a never-ending progress in life, through the power of connecting to one's inner spirit or Divine Essence. The Psychic begins its evolution completely veiled and hidden, but grows through successive lifetimes, and gradually exerts a greater influence, taking on the role of spiritual Guide.[25]

Central Being refers to the transcendent and eternal spirit, as opposed to the incarnate and evolving Soul, which he calls the Psychic Being. Sometimes it refers to both of them together as the essential spiritual core of the being.[26] The Central Being "presides over the different births one after the other but is itself unborn" (ibid p.269). This transcendent Central Being or Spirit is also designated as the Jiva or Jivatman, although the meaning of these terms in Sri Aurobindo's philosophy differs greatly from that of much of conventional Vedanta (especially Advaita Vedanta)

The levels of being ascend from the inconscient to the Supermind.

Inconscient Matter is the lowest level of involution. Spirit is still present in the inconscient: "The Inconscient is the Superconscient's sleep."[web 2] The Inconscient is also the instrument of the Superconsciousness which has created the Universe. According to Satprem, the Inconscient lies at the bottom of the physical subconscient,[web 2] and "life emerged [...] at the border between the material inconscient and the physical consciousness [...] in our body.[web 2]

The physical, vital and mental levels of being contain both a subconscient and a subtle or subliminal part.

The subconscient parts are the submerged parts. It contains "obstinate samskaras, impressions, associations, fixed notions, habitual reactions formed by the past." According to Satprem, there are several levels of the subconscient, corresponding with the different levels of our being: a mental subconscient, a vital subconscient, and a physical subconscient, down to the material Inconscient.[web 2]

According to Aurobindo, the body is partly a creation of the inconscient or subconscient. According to The Mother, the ordinary, false consciousness, which is common to material body-consciousness, is derived from the subconscient and the inconscient. According to Aurobindo, the outer being depends on the subconscient, which hinders the spiritual progress. Only by living in the inner being can this obstacle be overcome.

According to Sharma, the subconscient is "the inconscient in the proces of becoming conscient." It is a submerged part of the personality without waking consciousness, but which does receive impressions, and influences the conscious mind. According to Sharma, it includes the unconscious mind which is described by psychologists like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, though it includes much more than the unconscious of (Freudian) psychology.[note 3]

The subtle or subliminal is the subtle, higher counterpart of the subconscient. According to Sharma, "it has an inner mind, an inner vital being, and an inner subtle physical being, wider than man's consciousness." It can directly experience the Universal, and "it is the source of inspirations, intuitions, ideas, will [...] as well as [...] telepathy [and] clearvoyance."

The gross body commonly referred to in yoga constitutes mainly of two parts the material physical body (annakosha) and the nervous system normally refer to as vital vehicle (Prana kosha) in Integral yoga.

The Physical level refers to both the physical body and the body's consciousness. The body is just as conscious as the vital and mental parts of the being, only it is a different type of consciousness. The Physical not only shades upwards to higher ontological levels, but also downwards into the Subconscient.[note 4]

The Subtle physical is Sri Aurobindo's term for a subtler aspect of the physical nature. This has many qualities not found in the gross physical nature. In The Agenda, The Mother often refers to it. It might be compared to the etheric body and plane, or even the astral body and plane. The term "subtle physical" is used to distinguish it from gross (sthula) or outer material physical.[note 5]

The Vital level of the being refers to the life force, but also to the various passions, desires, feelings, emotions, affects, compulsions, and likes and dislikes. These strongly determine human motivation and action through desire and enthusiasm.

Unlike Western psychology, in which mind, emotions, instincts, and consciousness are all lumped together, Sri Aurobindo strongly distinguishes between the "Vital" and the "Mental" faculties.

In addition to the individual Vital faculty, Sri Aurobindo refers to a Vital Plane or Vital world, which would seem to be partly equivalent to the Astral Plane of popular occultism and New Age thought.

Mind proper is the conceptual and cognitive mind. Mind is a subordinate process of the Supermind. It is the intermediary stage between the Divine and the mundane life. It works by measuring and dividing reality, and has lost sight of the Divine. It is the seat of ignorance, yet it is still capable of an upward ascent toward the Divine.

Unlike Western psychology, in which mind and consciousness are considered the same, Sri Aurobindo strongly distinguishes between the "Mental" and the "Vital" (emotional) faculties, as well as between Mind and pure Consciousness. Sri Aurobindo in part bases his concept of the Mental on his reading of the Taittiriya Upanishad, the mental being (or perhaps just the Mental Purusha) is the mano-maya-atma - the self made of mind (manas).

For Sri Aurobindo, Mind or the Mental being is not simple and uniform, but consists itself of various strata and subdivisions, which act at different levels of being. These various faculties are described or variously referred to, usually in obliquely or in passing, in some of his books, including Savitri, which has poetic references to many types of Mind.[45] In his letters answering questions from disciples, Sri Aurobindo summarises the characteristics of the various levels of Mind.[46][note 6]

Above mind proper lie various higher individual levels of mind, namely the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind and Overmind, which ascend toward the Spirit, and provide a higher and more inclusive vision of reality:

Supermind is the infinite unitary Truth Consciousness or Truth-Idea beyond the three lower planes of Matter, Life, and Mind. Supermind is the dynamic form of Sachchidananda (Being-Consciousness-Bliss), and the necessary mediator or link between the transcendent Sacchidananda and the creation.[52]

Humans are stuck between matter and Spirit, due to the habits of personality and partial awareness, which arise from Ignorance.

Humans are accustomed to respond to certain vibrations more than other. These customs develop into one's desire, pain, feelings, which are all a set of habits. This crystallised set of habits becomes one's personality. This is normally believed to be "self". The appearance of stable personality is given by constant repetition and recurrence of the same vibrations and formations.

According to Aurobindo, humans face three basic problems:

The fundamental cause of falsehood, error and evil is Ignorance. Ignorance is a self-limiting knowledge, which arises with exclusive concentration in a single field. According to Aurobindo, human notion of good, bad & evil are uncertain and relative.

Unlike other Yoga practices Integral yoga does not propose any kind of physical asanas, breathing techniques or external movements. It is more psychological in nature, with internal reflection and self analysis & correction as main tools of development .

The main practices or approaches are divided into

The limitations of the present being can be overcome by the Triple transformation, the process in which the lower nature is transformed into the divine nature. It consists of the inward psychicisation by which the sadhak gets in contact with the inner divine principle or Psychic Being; the spiritual transformation or spiritualisation; and the Supramentalisation of the entire being.[note 9]

Psychicisation is a turn inward, so that one realises the psychic being, the psychic personality or Divine Soul, in the core of one's being. The Divine Soul serves as a spiritual Guide in the yoga, and enables one to transform the outer being.[59] It may also help avoid the dangers of the spiritual path. There is an intermediate zone, a dangerous and misleading transitional spiritual and pseudospiritual region between the ordinary consciousness and true spiritual realisation.[60]

Psychisiation consists of three methods. In "consecration" one opens oneself to the Force before engaging in an activity. "Moving to the Depths" (or "concentration") is a movement away from the surface existence to a deeper existence within. "Surrender" means offering all one's work, one's life to the Divine Force and Intent.[61][62] Guided by the evolving divine soul within, the sadhak moves away from ego, ignorance, finiteness, and the limitations of the outer being. It is thanks to this guidance by the Divine Soul that the sadhak can avoid the pitfalls of the spiritual path.

As a result of the Psychicisation, light, peace, and power descend into the body, transforming all of its parts, physical, vital, and mental. This is the Spiritual transformation, or Spiritualisation, the concretisation of the larger spiritual consciousness. It is equivalent to "enlightenment", as found in Vedanta and Buddhism.

Aurobindo asserted that spiritual aspirants may pass through an intermediate zone where experiences of force, inspiration, illumination, light, joy, expansion, power, and freedom from normal limits are possible. These can become associated with personal aspirations, ambitions, notions of spiritual fulfilment and yogic siddhi, and even be falsely interpreted as full spiritual realisation. One can pass through this zone, and the associated spiritual dangers, without harm by perceiving its real nature, and seeing through the misleading experiences. Those who go astray in it may end in a spiritual disaster, or may remain stuck there and adopt some half-truth as the whole truth, or become an instrument of lesser powers of these transitional planes. According to Aurobindo, this happens to many sadhaks and yogis.[63][64]

Supramentalisation is the realisation of the Supermind, or Supramental consciousness, and the resulting transformation of the entire being. Psychicisation and spirtualisation serve as necessary prerequisites for the Supramentalisation of the entire being.[65]

The supramental transformation is the final stage in the integral yoga, enabling the birth of a new individual, fully formed by the supramental power. Such individuals would be the forerunners of a new supra-humanity, grounded in truth-consciousness. All aspects of division and ignorance of consciousness, at the vital and mental levels, would be overcome, and replaced with a unity of consciousness at every plane. And even the physical body transformed and divinised. A new supramental species would then emerge, living a supramental, gnostic, divine life on earth.[66]

Aurobindo describes several results and different stages depicting the stages of development in integral yoga, called together the sapta chatushtaya, "seven quadrates."[web 3][web 4][note 10] It consists of:.[web 3]

Aurobindo had a strong influence on Ken Wilber's integral theory of spiritual development. Wilber's Causal and Ultimate stages closely resemble Aurobindo's higher mental stages, but Wilber lumps together levels of Being, types of Being and developmental stages.

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Integral yoga - Wikipedia

The book is based on the Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo.Here is a short write-up on this great Indian Yogi. Sri Arobindo) (15 August 1872 5 December 1950) was an Indian nationalist and freedom fighter, major Indian English poet, philosopher, and yogi.He joined the movement for India's freedom from British rule and for a duration (1905 10), became one of its most important leaders,before turning to developing his own vision and philosophy of human progress and spiritual evolution. The central theme of Sri Aurobindo's vision is the evolution of life into a "life divine". In his own words: "Man is a transitional being. He is not final. The step from man to superman is the next approaching achievement in the earth evolution. It is inevitable because it is at once the intention of the inner spirit and the logic of Nature's process". The principal writings of Sri Aurobindo include, in prose, The Life Divine, considered his single great work of metaphysics,The Synthesis of Yoga, Secrets of the Vedas, Essays on the Gita, The Human Cycle, The Ideal of Human Unity, Renaissance in India and other essays, Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, The Future Poetry, Thoughts and Aphorisms and several volumes of letters. In poetry, his principal work is "Savitri - a Legend and a Symbol" in blank verse.Most of these books are best sellers on amazon. --Wikipedia

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The Mother, to Women

When the Mother was in Japan, she once addressed the women there, and said something that should be of tremendous interest not only to women anywhere in the world, but to mankind as a whole. She spoke on the mundane subject of maternity, but gave it a twist that makes women potentially the agents of a radical change in human nature. The process of creating a new life through maternity can be a conscious process. The mother's thoughts and feelings during pregnancy can shape the consciousness of the baby taking shape in her womb. The Mother had once seen two beautiful little girls, twins, whose beauty had the perfection of a child in a painting by Reynolds. The girls resembled neither parent, but it so transpired that the girls' mother had looked at consciously, throughout pregnancy, especially just before going to bed, and on getting up in the morning, a painting by Reynolds, and had prayed that she give birth to a child as beautiful as the child in the painting. The physical features offer much more resistance to any modifying influence than do thoughts and feelings. Therefore, if even the body of her child can be affected by a pregnant mother, it should be easier to influence the child's mind during pregnancy. Hence, the Mother urged women to use the power of their minds to "conceive and create a character capable of manifesting an ideal". This, the Mother said, is more important now than ever before in history because we are on the verge of a new step in evolution. The first among the supermen will naturally be born to women, and therefore women can contribute to the process by treating maternity as a process of conscious creation. The superman the Mother had in mind was not the same as visualized by Nietzsche. Nietzsche's superman is "a man aggrandized, magnified, in whom Force has become super-dominant, crushing under its weight all the other attributes of man". Instead, the superman that the Mother visualized is the man who lives by a principle higher than reason. The superman's guiding Light would be the Spirit within, the highest Truth of which man is capable. This faculty would change human nature itself in such a way that evil and injustice, and the consequent misery associated with human life would be wiped out. The Mother also said something extremely interesting about the superman: his mental ability might be less than that of man. But this foresight should not be so surprising, because evolution has not been accompanied by a linear and progressive increase in all abilities. Man's predecessors like the lion have far more physical ability; man cannot even jump from tree to tree like a monkey. Similarly, the superman might lose some of man's mental abilities. What the Mother said further is even more significant. By losing some of man's mental abilities, the superman will lose the "ability to deceive himself and others". It is such a superman, who will change the very character of terrestrial life, that women should concentrate on creating consciously through maternity. For this, they, and their partners, need to be on the spiritual path all along, not just during the woman's pregnancy. We must change if we want to see the change in the next generation.

(Based on: Words of Long Ago by The Mother. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, fourth edition, 1994, pp. 115-126.)

The Mother spent about four years in Japan from May 1916 - March 1920. It was from Japan that she sailed for Pondicherry, where she arrived, for the second time, on 24 April 1920. After that, She never left Pondicherry for even a single day. 24 April is, therefore, an important date in the calendar of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, and is one of the four Darshan Days celebrated every year.

Not all great men are famous; this is the story of one such great man. He was born in 1903 in a village called Vahalee in the Punjab, and named Sikandar Lal. When he was 16, Mahatma Gandhi gave a call to the youth of India to interrupt for a few years whatever they were doing to join the struggle for the freedom of the nation. Seems simple, but it is not easy. Therefore, not many responded to the call, but Sikandar Lal was one of those who did. How is it that a few make choices that the majority consider rash, if not foolish. We have three basic tools for making choices: feelings, reason, and an intangible inner voice. In this case, the part of us that is guided by feelings would see in responding positively to Gandhiji's call a life in prisons, certainly not a very pleasant prospect. Reason may see the significance of freedom, and hence the nobility of responding to the call positively, but would also argue against the wisdom of a rash decision that crushes the career and neglects the family for the sake of an uncertain outcome in an unpredictably distant future. Even if the reckless idealism of youth motivates a young man to take the plunge, his parents and other well-wishers may foist on him their discouraging 'mature advice'. However, there is an inner voice, emanating from our deepest Self, which is illumined by our divine essence, the soul. This voice whispers to us what the right choice is. But this voice, although very clear, is a voice that does not insist; it is quite content to be ignored. Therefore, when pitted against the clamour of feelings and reason, this voice does often get ignored. It is only a few rare souls, who are in conscious contact with their deepest Self, who can ignore, oppose and conquer or ignore all opposition in order to act on the dictates of the soul. Sikandar Lal Jauhar was one such person. He responded to Gandhiji's call positively, in spite of opposition from his own family. He joined the freedom struggle, stayed with it till the goal of independence was realized, and during the intervening almost 30 years faced the lathis and bullets of the British police while participating in several demonstrations, and went to jail several times where he was tortured with fetters and beatings, the scars of which he carried on his ankles and the back all his life. He changed his name to Surendra Nath, which he said was a minor phonetic variation on his true nature, which was to 'surrender not'. During the 30 years that he was with the freedom struggle, starting almost penniless, he also initiated a business. God helps those who help themselves. The business flourished, and that is how he acquired in the 1930s a plot of land near Mehrauli. The land was also used for serving the cause of the freedom struggle, but to cut a long story short, when the country became free, Surendra Nath ji faced another dilemma, whether or not to continue with politics. He responded to the faint whisper of his deepest Self once again, and decided not to. This time the choice was easier, because in 1939 he had discovered his true calling. In 1939, an 'unplanned' visit to Pondicherry led to his discovery of The Mother, a discovery that he calls in his memoirs, "the Supreme Discovery of my life, the miracle of Pondicherry where I lost my heart and won the soul and the real life". His dedication to The Mother after 1939 was total, as it had been to the freedom struggle since 1919. The commitment that he made in 1939 finally culminated, with the permission and blessings of The Mother, in the establishment of an Ashram on the land that he had bought in the 1930s on 12 February 1956, the date chosen by The Mother, with its name 'Sri Aurobindo Ashram Delhi Branch' also given by The Mother. In keeping with the spiritual philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, which is a life-affirming philosophy, the Ashram started a school in the same year, the school that is now known as The Mother's International School and has on its rolls more than 2000 students. Besides education, health care is another major activity of the Ashram today. This is the story of a man who started with the resolve that he would 'surrender not, but ended with total surrender to The Mother. This is the story of a man who started with the ambition of seeing his country free, and ended with the aspiration of liberating the world from the ignorance of a dividing ego-dominated consciousness towards a consciousness dominated by love and oneness.

(Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Delhi Branch, established on 12 February 1956, is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary this year)

The Mother had once called the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry a veritable laboratory to work out the future society. Its counterpart in the capital of India, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Delhi Branch, can best be understood as an extension of the centre of sadhana at Pondicherry. What is being done in this spiritual endeavour is the overcoming of the ascetic phase of the Indian tradition, which in a lopsided way equated spirituality with outer renunciation. In the Vedic times, integral life, prosperity, equality of sexes and a life-affirming attitude were cultivated by spiritual seekers. This integral approach was lost in later epochs when Mayavada (Illusionism) prevailed.

According to Sri Aurobindo "all life is Yoga." In the Integral Yoga, the integral life down to the smallest detail has to be divinised : an inner illumination that does not change the outer life leaves the world as it is. The object of our Yoga is self-perfection and world-perfec-tion.

From an early age The Mother had dreamed of a place where seek-ers of the Divine could completely dedicate themselves to spiritual life. "Earth needs a place where men can live away from social conventions, self-contradictory moralities and contending religions, a place where human beings, freed from all slavery to the past, can devote themselves wholly to the discovery and practice of the divine consciousness that is seeking to manifest itself." By providing a congenial environment and field of activities the Ashram seeks to be such a place. With the needs of the body provided, each one takes his work in the spirit of service and unselfishness, in the spirit of Karma Yoga - as an offering to the Divine.

The Delhi Branch was officially inaugurated on 12 February, 1956, with the Blessings of the Mother. To the great joy and gratitude of spiritual seekers in Northern India, the Mother graciously granted the very first Sacred Relics of Sri Aurobindo to be enshrined here on 5 December, 1957. Since then the Ashram has been growing at a steady pace. The shrine and the Meditation Hall continue to be the centre of life and the teaching of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother the guiding light. The Love and Blessings of the Master and the Mother and their Grace are always available to their disciples living here.

All live and work here as equals. No distinctions of sex, creed, religion, race, caste or national origin are observed: all are looked upon as souls and children of the Mother. There is no hierarchy of officials and subordinates. All work in association and as a unit un-der the general supervision of one or more sadhaks.

The doors of the Ashram are open for those who aspire for a higher life, with the trust that their aspiration will not stop merely at having a pious wish for a higher and nobler aim, but will manifest increasingly in the thoughts, the life movements and the physical expressionswhich will all be progressively and integrally conse-crated to the Divine.

See original here:
Sri Aurobindo Ashram

from Volume 30, SABCL, p.1-6.

Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on 15 August, 1872. In 1879, at the age of seven, he was taken with his two elder brothers to England for education and lived there for fourteen years. Brought up at first in an English family at Manchester, he joined St. Paul's School in London in 1884 and in 1890 went from it with a senior classical scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, where he studied for two years. In 1890 he passed also the open competition for the Indian Civil Service, but at the end of two years of probation failed to present himself at the riding examination and was disqualified for the Service. At this time the Gaekwar of Baroda was in London. Sri Aurobindo saw him, obtained an appointment in the Baroda Service and left England for India, arriving there in February, 1893.

Sri Aurobindo passed thirteen years, from 1893 to 1906, in the Baroda Service, first in the Revenue Department and in secretariate work for the Maharaja, afterwards as Professor of English and, finally, Vice-Principal in the Baroda College. These were years of self-culture, of literary activity -- for much of the poetry afterwards published from Pondicherry was written at this time -- and of preparation for his future work. In England he had received, according to his father's express instructions, an entirely occidental education without any contact with the culture of India and the East. (see note 1) At Baroda he made up the deficiency, learned Sanskrit and several modern Indian languages, assimilated the spirit of Indian civilisation and its forms past and present. A great part of the last years of this period was spent on leave in silent political activity, for he was debarred from public action by his position at Baroda. The outbreak of the agitation against the partition of Bengal in 1905 gave him the opportunity to give up the Baroda Service and join openly in the political movement. He left Baroda in 1906 and went to Calcutta as Principal of the newly-founded Bengal National College.

The political action of Sri Aurobindo covered eight years, from 1902 to 1910. During the first half of this period he worked behind the scenes, preparing with other co-workers the beginnings of the Swadeshi (Indian Sinn Fein) movement, till the agitation in Bengal furnished an opening for the public initiation of a more forward and direct political action than the moderate reformism which had till then been the creed of the Indian National Congress. In 1906 Sri Aurobindo came to Bengal with this purpose and joined the New Party, an advanced section small in numbers and not yet strong in influence, which had been recently formed in the Congress. The political theory of this party was a rather vague gospel of Non-cooperation; in action it had not yet gone farther than some ineffective clashes with the Moderate leaders at the annual Congress assembly behind the veil of secrecy of the "Subjects Committee". Sri Aurobindo persuaded its chiefs in Bengal to come forward publicly as an All-India party with a definite and challenging programme, putting forward Tilak, the popular Maratha leader at its head, and to attack the then dominant Moderate (Reformist or Liberal) oligarchy of veteran politicians and capture from them the Congress and the country. This was the origin of the historic struggle between the Moderates and the Nationalists (called by their opponents Extremists) which in two years changed altogether the face of Indian politics.

The new-born Nationalist party put forward Swaraj (independence) as its goal as against the far-off Moderate hope of colonial self-government to be realised at a distant date of a century or two by a slow progress of reform; it proposed as its means of execution a programme which resembled in spirit, though not in its details, the policy of Sinn Fein developed some years later and carried to a successful issue in Ireland. The principle of this new policy was self-help; it aimed on one side at an effective organisation of the forces of the nation and on the other professed a complete non-cooperation with the Government. Boycott of British and foreign goods and the fostering of Swadeshi industries to replace them, boycott of British law courts, and the foundation of a system of Arbitration courts in their stead, boycott of Government universities and colleges and the creation of a network of National colleges and schools, the formation of societies of young men which would do the work of police and defence and, wherever necessary, a policy of passive resistance were among the immediate items of the programme. Sri Aurobindo hoped to capture the Congress and make it the directing centre of an organised national action, an informal State within the State, which would carry on the struggle for freedom till it was won. He persuaded the party to take up and finance as its recognised organ the newly-founded daily paper, Bande Mataram, of which he was at the time acting editor. The Bande Mataram, whose policy from the beginning of 1907 till its abrupt winding up in 1908 when Sri Aurobindo was in prison was wholly directed by him, circulated almost immediately all over India. During its brief but momentous existence it changed the political thought of India which has ever since preserved fundamentally, even amidst its later developments, the stamp then imparted to it. But the struggle initiated on these lines, though vehement and eventful and full of importance for the future, did not last long at the time; for the country was still unripe for so bold a programme.

Sri Aurobindo was prosecuted for sedition in 1907 and acquitted. Up till now an organiser and writer, he was obliged by this event and by the imprisonment or disappearance of other leaders to come forward as the acknowledged head of the party in Bengal and to appear on the platform for the first time as a speaker. He presided over the Nationalist Conference at Surat in 1907 where in the forceful clash of two equal parties the Congress was broken to pieces. In May, 1908, he was arrested in the Alipore Conspiracy Case as implicated in the doings of the revolutionary group led by his brother Barindra; but no evidence of any value could be established against him and in this case too he was acquitted. After a detention of one year as undertrial prisoner in the Alipore Jail, he came out in May, 1909, to find the party organisation broken, its leaders scattered by imprisonment, deportation or self-imposed exile and the party itself still existent but dumb and dispirited and incapable of any strenuous action. For almost a year he strove single-handed as the sole remaining leader of the Nationalists in India to revive the movement. He published at this time to aid his effort a weekly English paper, the Karmayogin, and a Bengali weekly, the Dharma. But at last he was compelled to recognise that the nation was not yet sufficiently trained to carry out his policy and programme. For a time he thought that the necessary training must first be given through a less advanced Home Rule movement or an agitation of passive resistance of the kind created by Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa. But he saw that the hour of these movements had not come and that he himself was not their destined leader. Moreover, since his twelve months' detention in the Alipore Jail, which had been spent entirely in practice of Yoga, his inner spiritual life was pressing upon him for an exclusve concentration. He resolved therefore to withdraw from the political field, at least for a time. (see note 2)

In February, 1910, he withdrew to a secret retirement at Chandernagore and in the beginning of April sailed for Pondicherry in French lndia. A third prosecution was launched against him at this moment for a signed article in the Karmayogin; in his absence it was pressed against the printer of the paper who was convicted, but the conviction was quashed on appeal in the High Court of Calcutta. For the third time a prosecution against him had failed. Sri Aurobindo had left Bengal with some intention of returning to the political field under more favourable circumstances; but very soon the magnitude of the spiritual work he had taken up appeared to him and he saw that it would need the exclusive concentration of all his energies. Eventually he cut off connection with politics, refused repeatedly to accept the Presidentship of the National Congress and went into a complete retirement. During all his stay at Pondicherry from 1910 onward he remained more and more exclusively devoted to his spiritual work and his sadhana.

In 1914 after four years of silent Yoga he began the publication of a philosophical monthly, the Arya. Most of his more important works, The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, Essays on the Gita, The Isha Upanishad, appeared serially in the Arya. These works embodied much of the inner knowledge that had come to him in his practice of Yoga. Others were concerned with the spirit and significance of Indian civilisation and culture (The Foundations of Indian Culture), the true meaning of the Vedas (The Secret of the Veda), the progress of human society (The Human Cycle), the nature and evolution of poetry (The Future Poetry), the possibility of the unification of the human race (The Ideal of Human Unity). At this time also he began to publish his poems, both those written in England and at Baroda and those, fewer in number, added during his period of political activity and in the first years of his residence at Pondicherry. The Arya ceased publication in 1921 after six years and a half of uninterrupted appearance. Sri Aurobindo lived at first in retirement at Pondicherry with four or five disciples. Afterwards more and yet more began to come to him to follow his spiritual path and the number became so large that a community of sadhaks had to be formed for the maintenance and collective guidance of those who had left everything behind for the sake of a higher life. This was the foundation of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram which has less been created than grown around him as its centre.

Sri Aurobindo began his practice of Yoga in 1904. At first gathering into it the essential elements of spiritual experience that are gained by the paths of divine communion and spiritual realisation followed till now in India, he passed on in search of a more complete experience uniting and harmonising the two ends of existence, Spirit and Matter. Most ways of Yoga are paths to the Beyond leading to the Spirit and, in the end, away from life; Sri Aurobindo's rises to the Spirit to redescend with its gains bringing the light and power and bliss of the Spirit into life to transform it. Man's present existence in the material world is in this view or vision of things a life in the Ignorance with the Inconscient at its base, but even in its darkness and nescience there are involved the presence and possibilities of the Divine. The created world is not a mistake or a vanity and illusion to be cast aside by the soul returning to heaven or Nirvana, but the scene of a spiritual evolution by which out of this material inconscience is to be manifested progressively the Divine Consciousness in things. Mind is the highest term yet reached in the evolution, but it is not the highest of which it is capable. There is above it a Supermind or eternal Truth-Consciousness which is in its nature the self-aware and self-determining light and power of a Divine Knowledge. Mind is an ignorance seeking after Truth, but this is a self-existent Knowledge harmoniously manifesting the play of its forms and forces. It is only by the descent of this supermind that the perfection dreamed of by all that is highest in humanity can come. It is possible by opening to a greater divine consciousness to rise to this power of light and bliss, discover one's true self, remain in constant union with the Divine and bring down the supramental Force for the transformation of mind and life and body. To realise this possibility has been the dynamic aim of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga.

Sri Aurobindo left his body on December 5, 1950. The Mother carried on his work until November 17, 1973. Their work continues.

Read more:
Sri Aurobindo - A Life Sketch