Sri Aurobindo Quotations

India saw from the beginning, and, even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance, she never lost hold of the insight, that life cannot be rightly seen in the sole light, cannot be perfectly lived in the sole power of its externalities.

Indian religion has always felt that since the minds, the temperaments and the intellectual affinities of men are unlimited in their variety, a perfect liberty of thought and of worship must be allowed to the individual in his approach to the Infinite.

She saw too that man has the power of exceeding himself, of becoming himself more entirely and profoundly than he is, truths which have only recently begun to be seen in Europe and seem even now too great for its common intelligence.

Life is life - whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man's own advantage.

Spirituality is indeed the master key of the Indian mind; the sense of the infinitive is native to it.

India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples. And that which must seek now to awake is not an anglicised oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed to repeat the cycle of the occident's success and failure, but still the ancient immemorable Shakti recovering her deepest self, lifting her head higher towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and a vaster form of her Dharma.

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

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.

She saw the myriad gods, and beyond God his own ineffable eternity; she saw that there were ranges of life beyond our present life, ranges of mind beyond our present mind and above these she saw the splendors of the spirit.

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.

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

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

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

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

Sit in meditation ! But do not think ! Look only at your mind ! You will see thoughts coming into it ! Before they can enter, throw these away from your mind till your mind is capable of entire silence.

Spirituality is the master key of the Indian mind. It is this dominant inclination of India which gives character to all the expressions of her culture. In fact, they have grown out of her inborn spiritual tendency of which her religion is a natural out flowering. The Indian mind has always realized that the Supreme is the Infinite and perceived that to the soul in Nature the Infinite must always present itself in an infinite variety of aspects.

One mighty deed can change the course of things; a lonely thought becomes omnipotent.

For the powers of our mind, life, and body are bound to their own limitations, and however high they may rise or however widely expand, they cannot rise beyond them. But still, mental man can open to what is beyond him and call down a Supramental Light, Truth, and Power to work in him and do what the mind cannot do. If mind cannot by effort become what is beyond mind, Supermind can descend and transform mind into its own substance.

Recover the source of all strength in yourself, and all else will be added to you ... political freedom, the mastery of human thought, the hegemony of the world.

Death is but changing of our robes to wait in wedding garments at the Eternal's gate.

Outside and above the mind there is the play of a consciousness which is lighted by the higher Truth, but man is not conscious of it and of that he has to be conscious.

Trust the divine power, and she will free the godlike elements in you and shape all into an expression of divine nature.

Turn all things to honey; this is the law of divine living.

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.

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.

The spiritual path is one of falling on your face, getting up, brushing yourself off, turning and looking sheepishly at God and then taking the next step.

Live within; be not shaken by outward happenings.

Delight is the secret. Learn of pure delight and thou shalt learn of God. What then was the commencement of the whole matter? Existence that multiplied itself for sheer delight of being and plunged into numberless trillions of forms so that it might find itself innumerably.

The subliminal mind receives and remembers all those touches that delight the soul. Our soul takes joy in this right touching by the Essence of all experience.

Care not for time and success. Act out thy part, whether it be to fail or to prosper.

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 aggressive and quite illogical idea of a single religion for all mankind, a religion universal by the very force of its narrowness, one set of dogmas, one cult, one system of ceremonies, one ecclesiastical ordinance, one array of prohibitions and injunctions which all minds must accept on peril of persecution by men and spiritual rejection or eternal punishment by God, that grotesque creation of human unreason which has been the parent of so much intolerance, cruelty and obscurantism and aggressive fanaticism, has never been able to take firm hold of the Indian mentality.

Suffering makes us capable of the full force of the Master of Delight; it makes us capable also to bear the utter play of the Master of Power. Pain is the key that opens the gates of strength; it is the high-road that leads to the city of beatitude.

The fly that touches honey cannot use it's wings; so too the soul that clings to spiritual sweetness ruins it's freedom and hinders contemplation.

He who chooses the infinite has been chosen by the infinite.

Detachment is the beginning of mastery.

The supreme end is the freedom of the spirit.

We cannot afford to raise any institution to the rank of a fetish. To do so would be simply to become the slaves of our own machinery.

The existence of poverty is the proof of an unjust and ill-organised society, and our public charities are but the first tardy awakening in the conscience of a robber.

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

By your stumbling, the world is perfected.

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: ...

Peace is the first condition, without which nothing else can be stable.

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.

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

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

The Divine Truth is greater than any religion or creed or scripture or idea or philosophy.

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...

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

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.

To hope for a true change of human life without a change of human nature is an irrational and unspiritual proposition.

The deeper we look, the more we shall be convinced that the one thing wanting, which we must strive to acquire before all others, is strength strength physical, strength mental, strength moral, but above all strength spiritual which is the one inexhaustible and imperishable source of all the others. If we have strength everything else will be added to us easily and naturally.

The first and the most important thing is to know that life is one and immortal. Only the forms, countless in number, are transient and brittle. The life everlasting is independent of any form but manifests itself in all forms. Life then does not die... but the forms are dissolved.

True knowledge is not attained by thinking. It is what you are; it is what you become.

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.

Arise, transcend Thyself, Thou art man and the whole nature of man Is to become more than himself.

All existence is a manifestation of God.

The supreme state of human love is...the unity of one soul in two bodies.

We have to create strength where it did not exist before; we have to change our natures, and become new men with new hearts, to be born again ... We need a nucleus of men in whom the Shakti is developed to its uttermost extent, in whom it fills every corner of the personality and overflows to fertilise the earth. These, having the fire of Bhawani in their hearts and brains, will go forth and carry the flame to every nook and cranny of our land.

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.

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.

They proved to me by convincing reasons that God does not exist; Afterwards I saw God, for he came and embraced me. And now what am I to believe- the reasoning of others or my own experience? Truth is what the soul has seen and experienced; the rest is appearance, prejudice and opinion.

Each victory gained over oneself means new strength to gain more victories.

The whole world yearns after freedom, yet each creature is in love with his chains; this is the first paradox and inextricable knot of our nature.

One who loves God finds the object of his love everywhere.

When mind is still, then truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the silence.

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.

In order to see, you have to stop being in the middle of the picture

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.

A quiet mind does not mean that there will be no thoughts or mental movements at all, but that these will be on the surface, and you will feel your true being within, separate from them, observing but not carried away

The yoga we practice is not for ourselves alone, but for the Divine; its aim is to work out the will of the Divine in the world, to effect a spiritual transformation and to bring down a divine nature and a divine life into the mental, vital and physical nature and life of humanity. Its object is not personal Mukti, although Mukti is a necessary condition of the yoga, but the liberation and transformation of the human being. It is not personal Ananda, but the bringing down of the divine Ananda - Christ's kingdom of heaven, our Satyayuga - upon the earth.

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.

Perfect health, sincerity, honesty, straightforwardness, courage, disinterestedness, unselfishness, patience, endurance, perseverance, peace, calm, self control are all things that are taught infinitely better by example than by beautiful speeches.

Be conscious first of thyself within, then think and act. All living thought is a world in preparation; all real act is a thought manifested. The material world exists because an idea began to play in divine self–consciousness.

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.

There should of course be left a field of work for the sake of experiment but at all times one must remember that there will always remain open a possibility of err.

Can everybody contact the higher forces? No, not indeed; but they submit themselves to a discipline and this brings them success.

There are all kinds of people, and in the attempt to build up a solidarity among them, defects of each one affect all the others.

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

What sort of politics you people do? Such is the way of all parliaments: one can sense even beforehand the trend of voting, in which direction it will turn.

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.

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

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

Thus to act under the guidance coming from above, this is one side of the sadhana, the dynamic side. The other one is the discrimination between the Purusha and the Prakriti. The Purusha will calmly observe, give sanction, choose, but will realise that all this does not belong to him - all these are outside him. This is the static side of the sadhana. These two aspects constitute the basis of Yoga.

Turkey, Japan do great work because they can keep under control their little personal selfishness, egoism, jealousy, etc. when they get down to work.

The higher Truth is all the time working in us but through the lower power - Aparashakti. It is when we become conscious of the play of this higher Power then only yoga begins.

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

What I cannot do now is the sign of what I shall do hereafter. The sense of impossibility is the beginning of all possibilities. Because this temporal universe was a paradox and an impossibility, therefore the Eternal created it out of His being.

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

In the normal play of our mind there are all sorts of perversions; hence the need to stop all these things and inculcate right thinking, right willing - in other words, Truth must be established.

Do not belong to the past dawns,but to the noons of future

Even if the being is not entirely purified, varieties of inspirations and powers may come down from above but this may lead to serious errors. Inspirations from above mixing with the impurities from below get all muddled up and the sadhak takes this for an absolute command. Many a sadhak has thus fallen into danger. Therefore, one must particularly lay stress on the purification of the being.

Do not allow things to intrude from outside.

For all problems of existence are essentially problems of harmony.

Samskrit language, as has been universally recognized by those competent to form a judgment, is one of the most magnificent, the most perfect, the most prominent and wonderfully sufficient literary instrument developed by the human mind.

Forgiveness is praised by the Christian and the Vaishnava, but for me, I ask, "What have I to forgive and whom?"

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

The progressive growth of the finite consciousness of man towards this Self, towards the universal , the eternal, the infinite, in a word his growth into spiritual consciousness by the development of his ordinary ignorant natural being into an illumined divine nature, this is for Indian thinking the significance of life and the aim of human existance.

It is true that the subliminal in man is the largest part of his nature and has in it the secret of the unseeen dynamisms which explain his surface activities. But the lower vital subconscious which is all that this psycho-analysis of Freud seems to know, - and of that it knows only a few ill-lit corners, - is no more than a restricted and very inferior portion of the subliminal whole... to begin by opening up the lower subconscious, risking to raise up all that is foul or obscure in it, is to go out of one's way to invite trouble.

Do not be eager for things above.