Sri Aurobindo Quotes

This universe an old enchantment guards; Its objects are carved cups of World-Delight Whose charmed wine is some deep soul's rapture-drink: The All-Wonderful has packed heaven with his dreams, He has made blank ancient Space his marvel-house; He spilled his spirit into Matter's signs: His fires of grandeur burn in the great sun, He glides through heaven shimmering in the moon; He is beauty carolling in the fields of sound; He chants the stanzas of the odes of Wind; He is silence watching in the stars at night; He wakes at dawn and calls from every bough, Lies stunned in the stone and dreams in flower and tree.

But difficulties were made to be overcome and if the Supreme Will is there, they will be overcome.

Do not allow things to intrude from outside.

Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism.

... for we perceive that this miraculous development is not the result of our own efforts: an eternal Perfection is moulding us into its own image.

New sentient creatures filled the unseen depths, Life's glory and swiftness ran in the beauty of beasts.

Only when Eternity takes Time by the hand, Only when infinity weds the finite's thought, Can man be free from himself and live with God.

There are four great events in history, the siege of Troy, the life and crucifixion of Christ , the exile of Krishna in Brindaban and the colloquy on the field of Kurukshetra. The siege of Troy created Hellas, the exile in Brindaban created devotional religion, (for before there was only meditation and worship), Christ from his cross humanized Europe, the colloquy at Kurukshetra will yet liberate humanity.

All true love and all sacrifice are
in their essence Nature's contradiction of the primary egoism and
its separative error; it is her attempt to turn from a necessary first
fragmentation towards a recovered oneness. All unity between
creatures is in its essence a self-finding, a fusion with that from
which we have separated, a discovery of one's self in others.
But it is only a divine love and unity that can possess in the light what the human forms of these things seek for in
the darkness.

If a religion is not universal, it cannot be eternal. A narrow religion, a sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can live only for a limited time and a limited purpose.

If thou desirest Truth, then still thy mind.
[Savitri]

All desires and egoism will have to be banished from the being.

The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man's real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would only be an insect crawling among the ephemeral insects on a spec of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe.

Hinduism ... gave itself no name, because it set itself no sectarian limits; it claimed no universal adhesion, asserted no sole infallible dogma, set up no single narrow path or gate of salvation; it was less a creed or cult than a continuously enlarging tradition of the God ward endeavor of the human spirit. An immense many-sided and many staged provision for a spiritual self-building and self-finding, it had some right to speak of itself by the only name it knew, the eternal religion, Santana Dharma ...

The only necessity in this sadhana is to open yourself to the Divine Force; if one is open the necessary understanding or knowledge will come of itself through spiritual experience.

Sri Aurobindo
Letters on Himself and the Ashram, p.448

Hidden nature is secret God.

The first step on this long path is to consecrate all our works as a sacrifice to the Divine in us and in the world.

An aimless life is always a troubled life. Every individual should have an aim. But do not forget that the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life. Your aim should be high and wide, generous and disinterested; this will make your life precious to yourself and to others. Whatever your ideal, it cannot be perfectly realized unless you have realized perfection in yourself.

The seers of ancient India had, in their experiments and efforts at spiritual training and the conquest of the body, perfected a discovery which in its importance to the future of human knowledge dwarfs the divinations of Newton and Galileo , even the discovery of the inductive and experimental method in Science was not more momentous ...

Only the soul that is naked and unashamed, can be pure and innocent , even as Adam was in the primal garden of humanity .

The consciousness of the seer, is a greater power for knowledge than the consciousness of the thinker. The perceptual power of the inner sight is greater and more direct than the perceptual power of thought: ...

Until you get a guidance from above you cannot be sure; but to get this guidance it requires time and sadhana.

The supreme end is the freedom of the spirit.

Yoga is a generic name for any discipline by which one attempts to pass out of the limits of one's ordinary mental consciousness into a greater spiritual consciousness.

[S]tand aside and watch the working of the divine power in yourself.

And, in order to possess the Truth, the plays of the lower nature must be stopped.

Not only a truer knowledge, but a greater power comes to one in the quietude and silence of a mind that, instead of bubbling on the surface, can go to its own depths and listen.

In our defeated hearts God's strength survives

The Person is a bubble on Time's sea.

What the soul sees and has experienced, that it knows; the rest is appearance, prejudice and opinion.

While doing work if the mind continues to be active let it be so, but there must be at the same time a capacity for silence.

Not in the state of unconsciousness, but in full awareness when the higher Power will descend into and direct us, then only the yogic life will begin.

With which part do you watch? Surely with the mind? That won't do. It is the silent Purusha within who must watch all.

Sin and virtue are a game of resistance we play with God in His efforts to draw us towards perfection.

All fanaticism is false, because it is a contradiction of the very nature of God and of Truth. Truth cannot be shut up in a single book, Bible or Veda or Koran, or in a single religion. The Divine Being is eternal and universal and infinite and cannot be the sole property of the Mussulmans or of the Semitic religions only, - those that happened to be in a line from the Bible and to have Jewish or Arabian prophets for their founders.

That which we call the Hindu religion is really the Eternal religion because it embraces all others.

Vain indeed is all overweening pride in the conquest even of the entire universe if one has not conquered one's own passions.

By your stumbling, the world is perfected.

To attempt social reform, educational reform, industrial expansion, the moral improvement of the race without aiming, first and foremost, at political freedom is the very height of ignorance and futility.

Few are those from whom the Grace withdraws, but many are those who withdraw from the Grace.

Sri Aurobindo
Letters on Yoga, p.613

There is the physical mind which is mechanical but the awareness which is the essential character (dharma) of the mind is also to some extent present there.

There is no greater pride and glory than to be a perfect instrument of the Master.

Safety lies in tending towards our highest and not in resting content with an inferior potentiality ... To rest in or follow after an inferior potentiality may seem safe, rational, comfortable, easy, but it ends badly, in some futility or in a mere circling down the abyss or in a stagnant morass. Our right and natural road is towards the summits.

While doing sadhana you must quieten your mind and keep awake the Purusha consciousness behind all your activities.

Transcendence transfigures; it does not reconcile, but rather transmutes opposites into something surpassing them that effaces their oppositions.

All thoughts, desires, conventions, attachments which come from outside must be ruthlessly pushed away.

The practice of Yoga brings us face to face with the extraordinary complexity of our own being.

For me the path of Yoga has always been a battle as well as a journey, a thing of ups and downs, of light followed by darkness followed by a greater light.

Letters on Himself and the Ashram, p.372

One has to do sadhana for the total manifestation of the Divine in oneself.

In the middle of an ocean on board a ship, one can get a sense of vastness.

What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.

There is nothing mind can do that cannot be better done in the mind's immobility and thought-free stillness. When mind is still, then truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the silence.

The Bhagavad-Gita is a true scripture of the human race a living creation rather than a book, with a new message for every age and a new meaning for every civilization.

Fear not to be nothing that thou mayst be all.

The great are strongest when they stand alone, A God-given might of being is their force.

As in all infant sciences, the universal habit of the human mind - to take a partial or local truth, generalise it unduly and try to explain a whole field of nature in its narrow terms - runs riot here (in psychoanalysis). Moreover, the exaggeration of the importance of suppressed sexual complexes is a dangerous falsehood.

Thy goal, the road thou choosest are thy fate.

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.

Impossibility is only a sum of greater unrealised possibles. It veils an advanced stage and a yet unaccomplished journey.

Knowledge gropes but meets not Wisdom's face.

After having stopped the lower activities of the mind, it must be made receptive; and, instead of weaving all kinds of empty and idle thoughts, the mind should receive intuitions from above.

Evolution of consciousness is the central motive of terrestrial existence.

All can be done if the god-touch is there

Our human knowledge is a candle burnt On a dim altar to a sun-vast Truth.

The soul in man is greater than his fate ...

God within is leading us always aright even when we are in the bonds of the ignorance; but then, though the goal is sure, it is attained by circlings and deviations.

Sri Aurobindo
MCW, vol 10, On Thoughts and Aphorisms, p.258

Love is the keynote, Joy is the music, Knowledge is the performer, the Infinite All is the composer and audience.

The anarchic is the true divine state of man in the end as in the beginning; but in between it would lead us straight to the devil and his kingdom.

The soul attracted leaned to the Abyss:
It longed for the adventure of Ignorance

The Gita is the greatest gospel of spiritual works ever yet given to the race.

The heart's words fall back unheard from Wisdom's throne.

Rather hang thyself than belong to the horde of successful imitators.

There is a knowledge in the heart of sleep.

Man in the world's life works out the dreams of God.

The goal of yoga is always hard to reach, but this one is more difficult than any other, and it is only for those who have the call, the capacity, the willingness to face everything and every risk, even the risk of failure, and the will to progress....

Sri Aurobindo
Letters on Yoga, p.545

Everyone has in him something divine, something his own, a chance of perfection and strength in however small a sphere which God offers him to take or refuse. The task is to find it, develop it & use it. The chief aim of education should be to help the growing soul to draw out that in itself which is best and make it perfect for a noble use.

The psychic being and the mental being, Manomaya Purusha, are not the same. The psychic being is behind the mind, it is what the Westerners call the soul. It takes interest in the movements of the mind and the vital only when there is a harmony between these movements and the truth above. The knowledge of the psychic being is deeper.

Watch the too indignantly righteous. Before long you will find them committing or condoning the very offence which they have so fiercely censured.

There is no logical necessity for the conclusion that the change cannot begin at all because its perfection is not immediately possible.

The Atheist is God playing at hide and seek with Himself; but is the Theist any other? Well, perhaps; for he has seen the shadow of God and clutched at it.

A thought is an arrow shot at the truth; it can hit a point , but not cover the whole target. But the archer is too well satisfied with his success to ask anything farther.

In order to satisfy the vital being, it must be offered some activity, and at the same time the mind should be slowly made to take interest in yoga.

Transform reason into ordered intuition; let all thyself be light. This is thy goal.

To feed death with her works is here life's doom.

Metaphysical thinking will always no doubt be a strong element in her mentality, and it is to be hoped that she will never lose her great, her sovereign powers in that direction.

The meeting of man and God must always mean a penetration and entry of the divine into the human and a self-immergence of man in the Divinity.

The most vital issue of the age is whether the future progress of humanity is to be governed by the modern economic and materialistic mind of the West or by a nobler pragmatism guided, uplifted and enlightened by spiritual culture and knowledge ...

But though hast come and all will surely change.

India is the meeting place of the religions and among these Hinduism alone is by itself a vast and complex thing, not so much a religion as a great diversified and yet subtly unified mass of spiritual thought, realization and aspiration.

Life was a sorrowful throb of this Matter teaching it anguish, Teaching it hope and desire trod out too soon in the mire, Life the frail joy that regrets its briefness, life the long sorrow.

To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughs.

To have a developed intellect is always helpful if one can enlighten it from above and turn it to a divine use.

Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break a dead resistance in the mortal's heart

Physical education for the body to be effective must be rigorous and detailed, far sighted and methodological. This will be translated into habits. These habits should be controlled and disciplined, while remaining flexible enough to adapt themselves to circumstances and to the needs of growth and development of the being.

Propaganda is necessary only for the sake of money!

The supramental transformation, the supramental evolution must carry with it a lifting of mind, life and body out of themselves into a greater way of being in which yet their own ways and powers would be, not suppressed or abolished, but perfected and fulfilled by the self-exceeding.

Remain fixed in the sunlight of the true consciousness - for only there is happiness and peace. They do not depend upon outside happenings, but on this alone.

Letters on Yoga, vol 2, p.1709

Yes, it is difficult for man to cross beyond the idea of duty.

The human mind moves always forward, alters its viewpoint and enlarges its thought substance, and the effect of these changes is to render past systems of thinking obsolete or, when they are preserved, to extend, to modify and subtly or visibly to alter their value.

Not complete inaction, which is an error, a confusion, a self-delusion, an impossibility, but action full and
free done without subjection to sense and passion, desireless and unattached works, are the first secret of perfection.