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)
Our actual enemy is not any force exterior tourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism.
—Sri Aurobindo
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.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Aspirations
When we have passed beyond enjoyings, then we shall have Bliss. Desire was the helper; Desire is the bar.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Goals
Turn all things to honey; this is the law of divine living.
—Sri Aurobindo
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: Act, Persona, Work, Spirit, Nature, Life, Practice, Earth, Spiritual
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
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
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
The sense of impossibility is the beginning of all possibilities.
—Sri Aurobindo
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 individualising, then we shall be real Persons. Ego was the helper; Ego is the bar.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Goals
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
Transform the Animal into the Driver of the herds; let all thyself be Krishna. This is thy goal.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Goals
Others boast of their love for God. My boast is that I did not love God; it was He who loved me and sought me out and forced me to belong to Him.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Faith
Open thy eyes and see what the world really is and what God; have done with vain and pleasant imaginations.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Knowledge
Arise, transcend thyself. Thou art man and the whole nature of man is to become more than himself.
—Sri Aurobindo
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.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Goals
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
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
Transform the divided individual into the world-personality; let all thyself be the divine. This is thy goal.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Goals
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
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
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
Live according to Nature, runs the maxim of the West; but according to what nature, the nature of the body or the nature which exceeds the body ? This first we ought to determine.
—Sri Aurobindo
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
It is easy to distinguish the evil worked by sin and vice, but the trained eye sees also the evil done by self-righteous or self-regarding virtue.
—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
When we have passed beyond knowings, then we shall have Knowledge. Reason was the helper; Reason is the bar.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Goals
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.
—Sri Aurobindo
Transform enjoying into an even and objectless ecstasy; let all thyself be bliss. This is thy goal.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Goals
Live within; be not shaken by outward happenings.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Knowledge
Care not for time and success. Act out thy part, whether it be to fail or to prosper.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Duty
Forgiveness is praised by the Christian and the Vaishnava, but for me, I ask, “What have I to forgive and whom?”
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Knowledge
Hatred is the sign of a secret attraction that is eager to flee from itself and furious to deny its own existence. That too is God’s play in His creature.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Knowledge
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
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: Right, Soul, Experience, Mind, Light, Joy
When we have passed beyond humanity, then we shall be the Man. The Animal was the helper; the Animal is the bar.
—Sri Aurobindo
Topics: Goals
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
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.
—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
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Swami Vivekananda Indian Hindu Monk, Mystic
Swami Chinmayananda Indian Hindu Spiritual Teacher
Ramana Maharshi Indian Hindu Mystic
Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura Indian Hindu Religious Leader
Patanjali Indian Hindu Philosopher
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa Indian Hindu Philosopher
Mohandas K. Gandhi Indian Hindu Political leader
Nisargadatta Maharaj Indian Hindu Religious Leader
Nolini Kanta Gupta Indian Hindu Revolutionary