Sri Aurobindo On Himself
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The following quotes are from Volume 26, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, "On Himself"
p. 378
I see that you have persisted in giving a biography -- is it really
necessary or useful? The attempt is bound to be a failure, because
neither you nor anyone else knows anything at all of my life; it has
not been on the surface for men to see.
p.222 (13-11-1936)
Q: How did your intellect become so powerful even before you
started Yoga?
A: It was not any such thing before I started the Yoga. I started the
Yoga in 1904 and all my work except some poetry was done
afterwards. Moreover, my intelligence was inborn and so far as it
grew before the Yoga, it was not by training but by a wide haphazard
activity developing ideas from all things read, seen or experienced.
That is not training, it is natural growth.
p.148-9 (13-2-1935)
I had no urge toward spirituality in me, I developed spirituality. I was
incapable of understanding metaphysics, I developed into a
philosopher. I had no eye for painting -- I developed it by Yoga. I
transformed my nature from what it was to what it was not. I did it by
a special manner, not by a miracle and I did it to show what could be
done and how it could be done. I did not do it out of any personal
necessity of my own or by a miracle without any process. I say that if
it is not so, then my Yoga is useless and my life was a mistake -- a
mere absurd freak of Nature without meaning or consequence. You
all seem to think it a great compliment to me to say that what I have
done has no meaning for anybody except myself -- it is the most
damaging criticism on my work that could be made. I also did not do
it by myself, if you mean by myself the Aurobindo that was. He did it
by the help of Krishna and the Divine Shakti. I had help from human
sources also.
p.153-4
But what strange ideas again! -- that I was born with a supramental
temperament and that I know nothing of hard realities! Good God!
My whole life has been a struggle with hard realities, from hardships,
starvation in England and constant and fierce difficulties to the far
greater difficulties continually cropping up here in Pondicherry,
external and internal. My life has been a battle from its early years
and is still a battle: the fact that I wage it now from a room upstairs
and by spiritual means as well as others that are external makes no
difference to its character. But, of course, as we have not been
shouting about these things, it is natural, I suppose, for others to
think that I am living in an august, glamorous, lotus-eating dreamland
where no hard facts of life or Nature present themselves. But what
an illusion all the same!
p.154 (8-3-1935)
You think then that in me (I don't bring in the Mother) there was
never any doubt or despair, no attacks of that kind. I have borne
every attack which human beings have borne, otherwise I would be
unable to assure anybody "This too can be conquered." At least I
would have no right to say so. Your psychology is terribly rigid. I
repeat, the Divine when he takes on the burden of terrestrial nature,
takes it fully, sincerely and without any conjuring tricks or pretence.
If he has something behind him which emerges always out of the
coverings, it is the same thing in essence even if greater in degree,
that there is behind others -- and it is to awaken that that he is here.
The psychic being does the same for all who are intended for the
spiritual way -- men need not be extraordinary beings to follow it.
That is the mistake you are making -- to harp on greatness as if only
the great can be spiritual.
p.239
Q: We have been wondering why you should have to write and
rewrite your poetry -- for instance, "Savitri" ten or twelve times --
when you have all the inspiration at your command and do not have
to receive it with the difficulty that faces budding Yogis like us.
A: That is very simple. I used Savitri as a means of ascension. I
began with it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a
higher level I rewrote from that level. Moreover I was particular -- if
part seemed to me to come from any lower levels I was not satisfied
to leave it because it was good poetry. All had to be as far as
possible of the same mint. In fact Savitri has not been regarded by
me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of
experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's
own Yogic consciousness and how that could be made creative. I
did not rewrite Rose of God or the sonnets except for two or three
verbal alterations made at the moment.
p.354-5 (23-2-1935)
Q: The Overmind seems so distant from us, and your Himalyan
austerity and grandeur takes my breath away, making my heart
palpitate!
A: O rubbish! I am austere and grand, grim and stern! every
blasted thing I never was! I groan in an un-Aurobindian despair
when I hear such things. What has happened to the common sense
of all you people? In order to reach the Overmind it is not at all
necessary to take leave of this simple but useful quality. Common
sense by the way is not logic (which is the least commonsense-like
thing in the world), it is simply looking at things as they are without
inflation or deflation -- not imagining wild imaginations -- or for that
matter despairing "I know not why" despairs.
p.463 (5-5-1932)
You say that this way is too difficult for you or the likes of you and it
is only "Avatars" like myself or the Mother that can do it. That is a
strange misconception; for it is, on the contrary, the easiest and
simplest and most direct way and anyone can do it, if he makes his
mind and vital quiet, even those who have a tenth of your capacity
can do it. It is the other way of tension and strain and hard
endeavour that is difficult and needs a great force of Tapasya. As for
the Mother and myself, we have had to try all ways, follow all
methods, to surmount mountains of difficulties, a far heavier burden
to bear than you or anybody else in the Ashram or outside, far more
difficult conditions, battles to fight, wounds to endure, ways to cleave
through impenetrable morass and desert and forest, hostile masses
to conquer -- a work such as, I am certain, none else had to do
before us. For the Leader of the Way in a work like ours has not only
to bring down and represent and embody the Divine, but to represent
too the ascending element in humanity and to bear the burden of
humanity to the full and experience, not in a mere play or Lila but in
grim earnest, all the obstruction, difficulty, opposition, baffled and
hampered and only slowly victorious labour which are possible on the
Path. But it is not necessary nor tolerable that all that should be
repeated over again to the full in the experience of others. It is
because we have the complete experience that we can show a
straighter and easier road to others -- if they will only consent to take
it. It is because of our experience won at a tremendous price that we
can urge upon you and others, "Take the psychic attitude; follow the
straight sunlit path, with the Divine openly or secretly upbearing you -
- if secretly, he will yet show himself in good time, -- do not insist on
the hard, hampered, roundabout and difficult journey."
p.455 (10-9-1931)
The Mother's consciousness is the divine Consciousness and the
Light that comes from it is the light of the divine Truth, the Force that
she brings down is the force of the divine Truth. One who receives
and accepts and lives in the Mother's light, will begin to see the truth
on all the planes, the mental, the vital, the physical. He will reject all
that is undivine, -- the undivine is the falsehood, the ignorance, the
error of the dark forces; the undivine is all that is obscure and
unwilling to accept the divine Truth and its light and force. The
undivine, therefore, is all that is unwilling to accept the light and force
of the Mother. That is why I am always telling you to keep yourself in
contact with the Mother and with her light and Force, because it is
only so that you can come out of this confusion and obscurity and
receive the Truth that comes from above.
When we speak of the Mother's Light or my Light in a special sense,
we are speaking of a special occult action -- we are speaking of
certain lights that come from the Supermind. In this action the
Mother's is the White Light that purifies, illumines, brings down the
whole essence and power of the Truth and makes the transformation
possible. But in fact all light that comes from above, from the highest
divine Truth is the Mother's.
There is no difference between the Mother's path and mine; we have
and have always had the same path, the path that leads to the
supramental change and the divine realisation; not only at the end,
but from the beginning they have been the same.
The attempt to set up a division and opposition, putting the Mother on
one side and myself on another and opposite or quite different side,
has always been a trick of the forces of the Falsehood when they
want to prevent a Sadhak from reaching the Truth. Dismiss all such
falsehoods from your mind.
Know that the Mother's light and force are the light and force of the
Truth; remain always in contact with the Mother's light and force,
then only can you grow into the divine Truth.
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