Recommended Reading
- ‘Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo’s Teaching & Method of Practice‘ by Sri Aurobindo
- ‘The Life Divine‘ by Sri Aurobindo
- ‘Powers Within‘ by Sri Aurobindo, The Mother
- ‘The Upanishads, 1st US Edition‘ by Sri Aurobindo
- ‘Synthesis of Yoga, US Edition‘ by Sri Aurobindo
Inspirational Quotes by Sri Aurobindo (Indian Mystic, Philosopher, Poet)
The highest spirituality indeed moves in a free and wide air far above that lower stage of seeking which is governed by religious form and dogma; it does not easily bear their limitations and, even when it admits, it transcends them; it lives in an experience which to the formal religious mind is unintelligible.
—Sri Aurobindo
When we have passed beyond enjoyings, then we shall have Bliss. Desire was the helper; Desire is the bar.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Goals
Even when one has climbed up into those levels of bliss where pain vanishes, it still survives disguised as intolerable ecstasy.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Faith
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.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Freedom
Transform the Animal into the Driver of the herds; let all thyself be Krishna. This is thy goal.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Goals
Care not for time and success. Act out thy part, whether it be to fail or to prosper.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Duty
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.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Persona, Work, Practice, Spiritual, Life, Earth, Nature, Spirit, Act
When I was mounting upon ever higher crests of His joy, I asked myself whether there was no limit to the increase of bliss and almost I grew afraid of God’s embraces.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Faith
Man may be, as he has been defined, a reasoning animal, but it is necessary to add that he is, for the most part, a very badly reasoning animal. He does not ordinarily think for the sake of finding out the truth, but much more for the satisfaction of his mental preferences and emotional tendencies.
—Sri Aurobindo
Watch the too indignantly righteous. Before long you will find them committing or condoning the very offence which they have so fiercely censured.
—Sri Aurobindo
Transform reason into ordered intuition; let all thyself be light. This is thy goal.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Goals
When thou findest thyself scorning another, look then at thy own heart and laugh at thy folly.
—Sri Aurobindo
The meeting of man and God must always mean a penetration and entry of the divine in to the human and a self-immergence of man in the Divinity.
—Sri Aurobindo
What is the use of only knowing? I say to thee, Act and be, for therefore God sent thee into this human body.
—Sri Aurobindo
To commit adultery with God is the perfect experience for which the world was created.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Faith
If thou think defeat is the end of thee, then go not forth to fight, even though thou be the stronger. For Fate is not purchased by any man nor is Power bound over to her possessors. But defeat is not the end, it is only a gate or a beginning.
—Sri Aurobindo
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.
—Sri Aurobindo
The sense of impossibility is the beginning of all possibilities.
—Sri Aurobindo
All life is the play of universal forces.
The individual gives a personal form to these universal forces.
But he can choose whether he shall respond or
not to the action of a particular force. Only most people
do not really choose – they indulge the play of the forces.
Your illness, depressions etc. are the repeated play of such forces.
It is only when you can make oneself free of them that
one can be the true person and have a true life –
but one can be free only by living in the Divine.
—Sri Aurobindo
What men call knowledge, is the reasoned acceptance of false appearances. Wisdom looks behind the veil and sees.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Knowledge
There are no true and false religions, but rather all religions are true in their own way and degree. Each is one of the thousand paths to the One Eternal.
—Sri Aurobindo
Impossibility is only a sum of greater unrealised possibles. It veils an advanced stage and a yet unaccomplished journey.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Goals
If the will is fixed on the purpose it sets itself to accomplish, then circumstances will suggest the right course; but the schemer finds himself always tripped up by the unexpected.
—Sri Aurobindo
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.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Knowledge
There are twallied powers in man; knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is so much of the truth seen in a distorted medium as the mind arrives at by groping, wisdom what the eye of divine vision sees in the spirit.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Knowledge
Arise, transcend thyself. Thou art man and the whole nature of man is to become more than himself.
—Sri Aurobindo
Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge, it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Knowledge
There are times of great change, times when old landmarks are being upset, when submerged forces are rising, and just as we deal promptly or linger over the solution of these problems, our progress will be rapid or slow, sound or broken.
—Sri Aurobindo
Transform the divided individual into the world-personality; let all thyself be the divine. This is thy goal.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Goals
Transform effort into an easy and sovereign overflowing of the soul-strength; let all thyself be conscious force. This is thy goal.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Goals
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 Godward endeavor of the human spirit.
—Sri Aurobindo
Hard is it to be in the world, free, yet living the life of ordinary men; but because it is hard, therefore it must be attempted and accomplished.
—Sri Aurobindo
When we have passed beyond knowings, then we shall have Knowledge. Reason was the helper; Reason is the bar.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Goals
Turn all things to honey; this is the law of divine living.
—Sri Aurobindo
Evolution is not finished; reason is not the last word nor the reasoning animal the supreme figure of Nature. As man emerged out of the animal, so out of man the superman emerges.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Mankind, Man
I learned that when reason died, then Wisdom was born; before that liberation, I had only knowledge.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Knowledge
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.
—Sri Aurobindo
We are all gods and creators; not only the making of new forms of creation, but preservation is creation, destruction itself is creation. It rests with us what we shall create; for we are not unless we choose, puppets dominated by Fate and Maya; we are the facets and manifestations of Almighty Power.
—Sri Aurobindo
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.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Mind, Joy, Experience, Right, Light, Soul
Open thy eyes and see what the world really is and what God; have done with vain and pleasant imaginations.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Knowledge
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