Sri Aurobindo The Synthesis of Yoga with the Mother's commentaries |
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"He who chooses the Infinite has been chosen by the Infinite." - Sri Aurobindo "It is a magnificent sentence! And it is absolutely true. In Thoughts and Glimpses he uses the word "God" instead of the Infinite. But the idea is the same — that it is God who has chosen you, the Divine who has chosen you. And that is why you run after Him! And this is what gives that kind of confidence, of certitude, precisely, that one is predestined; and if one is predestined, even if there are mountains of difficulties, what can that matter since one is sure to succeed! This gives you an indomitable courage to face all difficulties and a patience that stands all trials: you are sure to succeed." - The Mother |
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"People are occupied with outward things. That means that the consciousness is turned towards external things — that is, all the things of life which one sees, knows, does — instead of being turned inwards in order to find the deeper truth, the divine Presence. This is the first movement. You are busy with all that you do, with the people around you, the things you use; and then with life: sleeping, eating, talking, working a little, having a little fun also; and then beginning over again: sleeping, eating, etc., and then it begins again. And then what this one has said, what that one has done, what one ought to do, the lesson one ought to learn, the exercise one ought to prepare; and then again whether one is keeping well, whether one is feeling fit, etc. This is what one usually thinks about." - The Mother |
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"It may be said that all consciousness, whether it knows it or not — even if it doesn't know it — gravitates towards the Divine. But consciousness must already be there in order to be able to affirm this. And even among men, who at the moment are the most conscious beings on earth, there is an immense majority who are potentially drawn towards the Divine, but who know noth¬ing about it; and there are even some who deliberately refuse this attraction. Perhaps, in their refusal, behind it, something is preparing but neither willingly nor knowingly." - The Mother |
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"The individual being, and particularly the mind in it, have an instinctive repulsion to admitting that it's another force than their own small personal one which does things. There is a kind of instinct which makes you feel absolutely convinced that the effort of aspiration, the will to progress are things belonging to you by your own right and, therefore, that you have all the merit." - The Mother |
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Q.: Sri Aurobindo says here: "The divine working is not the working which the egoistic mind desires or approves; for it uses error in order to arrive at truth, suffering in order to arrive at bliss, imperfection in order to arrive at perfection." How? The Mother: Like that. As the world is today. He explains it at great length afterwards. He says that the human mind would accept to have faith only if the Divine acted in accordance with its conception; and man's ordinary conception of what is divine is that of a perpetual miracle — what he calls a miracle, that is, something that takes place without rhyme or reason. |
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Q.: Mother, one can make an offering of oneself only when one reaches quite a high level, but when one is leading an unconscious life, the self-giving becomes mental, doesn't it? And it is not effective. What should one do? Can one begin from the very beginning by self-giving? The Mother: There are people in whom the psychic movement, the emotional impulse is stronger than intellectual understanding. They feel an irresistible attraction for the Divine without knowing, without having the slightest idea of what it is, of what it can be, what it represents — nothing, no intellectual notion — but a kind of impulse, attraction, a need, an inevitable need. |
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Q. Sweet Mother, "we can enrich our realisation with the booty torn from the powers that oppose us." What is this booty? The Mother: All the adverse forces at work in the world. The world as it is today is under the influence of the adverse forces. We call them adverse because they do not want the divine life; they oppose the divine life. They want things to remain as they are, because it is their field and their power in the world. They know very well that they will lose all power the moment the Divine manifests. So they are fighting openly against the Divine, and we have to tear away from them little by little, all the things they have conquered in the outer life. So when it is torn away from them, it is so much gained. |
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Q.Sweet Mother, how can one feel the divine Presence constantly? How can one do it? The Mother: Why not? I am asking why one should not feel it? Instead of asking the question how to feel it, I ask the question: "What do you do that you don't feel it?" There is no reason not to feel the divine Presence. Once you have felt it, even once, you should be capable of feeling it always, for it is there. It is a fact. It is only our ignorance which makes us unaware of it. But if we become conscious, why should we not always be conscious? Why forget something one has learnt? When one has had the experience, why forget it? It is simply a bad habit, that's all. |
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Q."Often he (the sadhak) finds that even after he has won persistently his own personal battle, he has still to win it over and over again..." Does this mean that others profit by his sadhana? The Mother: You understand, it's like that for everyone. If there was only one, it could be like this: that he alone could do it for all; but if everybody does it.. You are fifty persons doing the Integral Yoga. If it is only one of the fifty who is doing it, then he does it for all the fifty. But if each one of the fifty is doing it, each doing it for all the fifty, he does it actually for one person alone, because all do it for all. |
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The Mother: And sometimes suddenly one perceives it; it seems as if the heavens were opened, and that something has come which was not there before. It is one of those extraordinary moments of earth-life and human life when things are not as they ordinarily are, dull and lifeless. So one has the feeling of living a miracle. If one has had it once, it is already something; the door has been opened. Suddenly one has felt an infinite Grace, it is something marvellous. All those who lived a century ago, hoped for it, awaited it. They had only one chance, that was to live again in a new life and in better conditions. But now, we have these conditions, they are here: the Grace is here. |
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Q. "Our one objective must be the Divine himself to whom, knowingly or unknowingly, something always aspires in our secret nature." What is this something which aspires? The Mother: It is a part of the being which is instinctively open to the influence of the psychic. There is always one part, of which we are not conscious, it is turned to the psychic and receiving its influence. This is the intermediary between the psychic and the external consciousness. |
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"If we are to attempt an integral Yoga, it will be as well to start with an idea of the Divine that is itself integral. There should be an aspiration in the heart wide enough for a realisation without any narrow limits. Not only should we avoid a sectarian religious outlook, but also all one-sided philosophical conceptions which try to shut up the Ineffable in a restricting mental formula." The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 76 Q. What does Sri Aurobindo mean by an integral idea of the Divine? The Mother: Everyone forms an idea of the Divine for himself according to his personal taste, his possibilities of understanding, his mental preferences, and even his desires. |
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Q."For all this first period he has to work by means of the instruments of the lower Nature." The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 79 What is this work, and how is it accomplished? The Mother: There is a positive side and a negative side to this work. The positive side is to increase one's aspiration, develop one's consciousness, unify one's being, to go within in order to enter more and more into contact with one's psychic being; to take up all the parts, the movements, all the activities of one's being and put them before this psychic consciousness so that they fall into their true place in relation to this centre; finally, to organize all one's aspiration and one's progress towards the Divine. That is the positive side. |
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Mother shows the white flower "Psychological Perfection" she is holding in her hand. (Counting the petals) One, two, three, four, five psychological perfections. What are the five psychological perfections? In any case, what is always there, the first among them is sincerity. For if there is no sincerity, one cannot advance even by half a step. But it is possible to translate it by another word, if you prefer it, which would be "transparency". I shall explain this word. Someone is in front of me and I am looking at him; I look into his eyes. And if this person is sincere or "transparent", through his eyes I go down and I see his soul — clearly. |
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"At best we have only the poor relative freedom which by us is ignorantly called free will. But that is at bottom illusory, since it is the modes of Nature that express themselves through our personal will; it is force of Nature, grasping us, ungrasped by us that determines what we shall will or how we shall will it. Nature, not an independent ego, chooses what object we shall seek, whether by reasoned will or unreflecting impulse, at any moment of our existence." Sri Aurobindo, " The Synthesis of Yoga", p. 88 |
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Q. What does Sri Aurobindo mean by "oneness in dynamic force"? The Mother: There is a dynamic force which moves all things, and when you become conscious of it, you see that it is one single Force which moves all things; and as you become conscious, you can even follow its movement and see how it works through men and things. From the minute you become conscious of the Unity — unity of Force, unity of Consciousness and unity of Will — you no longer have the perception which makes you separate from others, so that you do not know what goes on in them, they are strangers to you, you have no contact with others except externally and superficially. |
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"As long as we live in the ignorant seeming, we are the ego and are subject to the modes of Nature. Enslaved to appearances, bound to the dualities, tossed between good and evil, sin and virtue, grief and joy, pain and pleasure, good fortune and ill fortune, success and failure, we follow helplessly the iron round of the wheel of Maya." - Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 88 |
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"In the path of works action is the knot we have first to loosen." The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 94 Q.Why is action a knot? The Mother: Because one is attached to action. The knot is the knot of the ego. You act because of desire. The ordinary way of acting is tied to desire in one form or another, a desire, a need, so that is the knot. If you act only to satisfy desire, which you call a need or a necessity or anything else, but in truth, if you go to the very root of the thing, you see that it is the impulse of a desire which makes you act, if you act only under the effect of the impulse of desire, you will no longer be able to act when you eliminate the desire. |
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"The law of sacrifice is the common divine action that was thrown out into the world in its beginning as a symbol of the solidarity of the universe. It is by the attraction of this law that a divinising, a saving power descends to limit and correct and gradually to eliminate the errors of an egoistic and self-divided creation. This descent, this sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul submitting itself to Force and Matter so that it may inform and illuminate them, is the seed of redemption of this world of Inconscience and Ignorance." - Sri Aurobindo |
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"But there is nothing, not even the most anti-divine force, which in its origin is not the Supreme Divine. So, everything goes back to Him, consciously or unconsciously. In the consciousness of the one who makes the offering it does not go to the Divine but to the smaller demon to whom he turns. But through the wood of the idol or the ill-will of the vital adversary, all returns to the Divine, since all comes from Him. Only, the one who has made the offering receives but in proportion to his own consciousness and to what he has asked. So the response comes from that to which he turned, not from the supreme Origin, for one is not in contact with it but with the intermediary, no higher." - The Mother |
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Q. I have not understood this: "The spirit's inner enemies have to be sacrificed in the harsher sense of the word, whatever pain in going they may throw by reflection on the consciousness of the seeker." The Synthesis of Yoga, p.101 The Mother: This has never happened to you? When, for instance, you have a movement of anger or spite, or an insincerity or something you don't like, when you reject it from yourself, when you want to make an effort not to have it any more, it hurts you, doesn't it? It hurts, it is as though something was being pulled out. This is the pain he is speaking about; he says that it is the bad thing you throw away from you which, when leaving, gives you a nice little knock as a parting gift. |
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"The practice of this Yoga demands a constant inward remembrance of the one central liberating knowledge.... In all is the one Self, the one Divine is all; all are in the Divine, all are the Divine and there is nothing else in the universe, this thought or this faith is the whole background until it becomes the whole substance of the consciousness of the worker. A memory, a self-dynamising meditation of this kind, must and does in its end turn into profound and uninterrupted vision and a vivid and all-embracing consciousness of that which we so powerfully remember or on which we so constantly meditate." - Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 104 |
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"There is one fundamental perception indispensable towards any integral knowledge.... It is to realise the Divine in its essential self and truth" The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 106 Q. How can one understand the Divine? The Mother: By being Him, my child. And that is the only way: by identity. As Sri Aurobindo says, "We know the Divine and become the Divine, because we are That already in our secret nature." It is because He is the very essence of our being that we can become Him and, consequently, understand Him; otherwise it would be quite impossible. |
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"If a departure from the world and its activities, a supreme release and quietude were the sole aim of the seeker, the three great fundamental realisations would be sufficient for the fulfilment of his spiritual life: concentrated in them alone he could suffer all other divine or mundane knowledge to fall away from him and himself disencumbered depart into the eternal silence. But he has to take account of the world and its activities, learn what divine truth there may be behind them and reconcile that apparent opposition between the Divine Truth and the manifest creation which is the starting-point of most spiritual experience." - Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, p.110 |
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"On one side, he [the seeker] becomes aware of a witness recipient observing experiencing Consciousness which does not appear to act but for which all these activities inside and outside us seem to be undertaken and continue. On the other side he is aware at the same time of an executive Force or an energy of Process which is seen to constitute, drive and guide all conceivable activities and to create a myriad forms visible to us and invisible and use them as stable supports for its incessant flux of action and creation." - Sri Aurobindo |
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"On one side, he [the seeker] is aware of an infinite and self-existent Godhead in being who contains all things in an ineffable potentiality of existence, a Self of all selves, a Soul of all souls, a spiritual Substance of all substances, an impersonal inexpressible Existence, but at the same time an illimitable Person who is here self-represented in numberless personality, a Master of Knowledge, a Master of Forces, a Lord of love and bliss and beauty, a single Origin of the worlds, a self-manifester and self-creator, a Cosmic Spirit, a universal Mind, a universal Life, the conscious and living Reality supporting the appearance which we sense as unconscious inanimate Matter." - Sri Aurobindo |
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The Mother: Yes, if he sees the two aspects ― that is to say, the Master of Existence and the World-Mother ― he may see them with an unequal vision, which would mean that he still separates them and gives more importance to one than to the other. And in that case there is a one-sided tendency; he sees only one side or there is a lack of balance between the two perceptions. So the power of effectuation is not perfectly supported, the action of the Mother does not have the support of the Master, or else it is the light of a revelation ― that is, the Consciousness of the Master which is not realised, that is, it is not translated into a creation. |
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"Beyond the limited human conception of God, he will pass to the one divine Eternal" - The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 121 The Mother: What man calls God is a limited consciousness of God, not the full consciousness of God; so he will go beyond this limited consciousness of God and towards the true Divine. Sri Aurobindo means that man has a limited knowledge, a limited consciousness and perception and experience of God, not the full experience of the Divine, and that he must pass beyond this knowledge and perception in order to go to the vaster and truer perception. |
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Q. You have said: The Supramental has descended upon earth. What does that mean exactly? The things that were promised are fulfilled. What are these things? The Mother: This was promised a very long time ago since the beginning of the earth. There have been all kinds of predictions, by all kinds of prophets; it has been said, There will be a new heaven and a new earth, a new race will be born, the world will be transformed. Prophets have spoken about this in all the traditions. |
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"In sum, it may be safely affirmed that no solution offered can be anything but provisional until a supramental Truth-Consciousness is reached by which the appearances of things are put in their place and their essence revealed and that in them which derives straight from the spiritual essence. In the meanwhile, our only safety is to find a guiding law of spiritual experience — or else to liberate a light within that can lead us on the way until that greater direct Truth-Consciousness is reached above us or born within us. For all else in us that is only outward, all that is not a spiritual sense or seeing, the constructions, representations or conclusions of the intellect, the suggestions or instigations of the Life-force, the positive necessities of physical things are sometimes half-lights, sometimes false lights that can at best only serve for a while or serve a little and for the rest either detain or confuse us." - Sri Aurobindo |
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Q. Once or twice, as a game, you took one of your books or Sri Aurobindos and opened a page at random, and read out a sentence. Can these sentences give one a sign or an indication? What should we do to get a true answer? The Mother: Everybody can do it. It is done in this way: you concentrate. Now, it depends on what you want. If you have an inner problem and want the solution, you concentrate on this problem; if you want to know the condition you are in, which you are not aware of — if you want to get some light on the state you are in, you just come forward with simplicity and ask for the light. |
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"Already in the process of spiritualisation it [the spiritualised mind] will have begun to pass out of the brilliant poverty of the human intellect; it will mount successively into the pure broad reaches of a higher mind and next into the gleaming belts of a still greater free intelligence illumined with a Light from above. At this point it will begin to feel more freely, admit with a less mixed response the radiant beginnings of an Intuition, not illumined, but luminous in itself, true in itself, no longer entirely mental and therefore subjected to the abundant intrusion of error. Here too is not an end, for it must rise beyond into the very domain of that untruncated Intuition, the first direct light from the self-awareness of essential Being and, beyond it, attain that from which this light comes. For there is an Overmind behind Mind, a Power more original and dynamic which supports Mind, sees it as a diminished radiation from itself, uses it as a transmitting belt of passage downward or an instrument for the creations of the Ignorance. The last step of the ascension would be the surpassing of Overmind itself or its return into its own still greater origin, its conversion into the supramental light of the Divine Gnosis." - Sri Aurobindo |
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Q. And yet there is in the heart or behind it a profounder mystic light p. 140 What is this mystic light? The Mother: It is love. Q. which, if not what we call intuition — for that, though not of the mind, yet descends through the mind — has yet a direct touch upon Truth and is nearer to the Divine than the human intellect in its pride of knowledge. Is there a relation between this mystic light and intuition? The Mother: It is not intuition. It is knowledge through love, light through love, understanding through love. Sri Aurobindo says that it is not intuition, for the expression of intuition is intellectual. While this is a direct knowledge by identity, which comes from love. |
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Q. Sri Aurobindo speaks of the souls native world. What is the souls native world? It is the divine Principle. Q. Sweet Mother, where does our true spiritual life begin? The true spiritual life begins when one is conscious of the divine Presence in the psychic and in constant communion with the psychic. Then the spiritual life begins, not before. The true spiritual life. When one is united with ones psychic being and conscious of the divine Presence, and receives the impulses for ones action from this divine Presence, and when the will has become a conscious collaborator with the divine Will — that is the starting-point. Before that, one may be an aspirant to the spiritual life, but one doesnt have a spiritual life. |
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"It may be said that a complete act of divine love and worship has in it three parts that are the expressions of a single whole, — a practical worship of the Divine in the act, a symbol of worship in the form of the act expressing some vision and seeking or some relation with the Divine, an inner adoration and longing for oneness or feeling of oneness in the heart and soul and spirit." - Sri Aurobindo |
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Q. I begin to meditate and pray ardently and fervently, my aspiration is intense and my prayer full of devotion; and then, after a certain length of time — sometimes short, sometimes long — the aspiration becomes mechanical and the prayer purely verbal. What should I do? The Mother: This is extremely common. I have already said that people who claim to meditate for hours every day and spend their whole day praying, to me it seems that three-fourths of the time it must be absolutely mechanical; that is to say, it loses all its sincerity. For human nature is not made for that and the human mind is not built that way. In order to concentrate and meditate one must do an exercise which I could call the mental muscle-building of concentration. One must really make an effort — as one makes a muscular effort, for instance, to lift a weight — if you want the concentration to be sincere and not artificial. |
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"At first this experience imposes on the mind and then on all our being an absolute, a fathomless, almost an abysmal peace and silence. Overpowered and subjugated, stilled, liberated from itself, the mind accepts the Silence itself as the Supreme." - Sri Aurobindo |
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Q. Sri Aurobindo writes: "A psychic fire within must be lit into which all is thrown with the Divine Name upon it." SOY p. 155 Isnt the psychic fire always lit? Then how to light it? The Mother: It is not always lit. You can light it by aspiration. By the urge towards perfection. Above all, it is the will for progress and self-purification which lights the fire. Those who have a strong will, when they turn it towards spiritual progress, automatically light the fire within. And each defect one wants to cure, if all that is thrown into the fire, it burns with a new intensity. And it is a fact in the subtle physical. One can feel the warmth and see in the subtle physical the light of the flame. And when one throws his defects into this fire, it begins to burn. |
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"A principle of dark and dull inertia is at its [lifes] base; all are tied down by the body and its needs and desires to a trivial mind, petty desires and emotions, an insignificant repetition of small worthless functionings, needs, cares, occupations, pains, pleasures that lead to nothing beyond themselves and bear the stamp of an ignorance that knows not its own why and whither. This physical mind of inertia believes in no divinity other than its small earth-gods; it aspires perhaps to a greater comfort, order, pleasure, but asks for no uplifting and no spiritual deliverance." - Sri Aurobindo |
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"All or most of the works of life are at present or seem to be actuated or vitiated by the soul of desire; even those that are ethical or religious, even those that wear the guise of altruism, philanthropy, self-sacrifice, self-denial are shot through and through with the threads of its making. This soul of desire is a separative soul of ego and all its instincts are for a separative self-affirmation; it pushes always, openly or under more or less shining masks, for its own growth, for possession, for enjoyment, for conquest and empire." - Sri Aurobindo |
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