Experience Comes Through Many Errors — Sri Aurobindo

Posted on April 28, 2024 by sriaurobindocenterla

The spiritual aim will recognise that man as he grows in his being must have as much free space as possible for all its members to grow in their own strength, to find out themselves and their potentialities. In their freedom they will err, because experience comes through many errors, but each has in itself a divine principle and they will find it out, disengage its presence, significance and law as their experience of themselves deepens and increases. Thus true spirituality will not lay a yoke upon science and philosophy or compel them to square their conclusions with any statement of dogmatic religious or even of assured spiritual truth, as some of the old religions attempted, vainly, ignorantly, with an unspiritual obstinacy and arrogance. Each part of man’s being has its own dharma which it must follow and will follow in the end, put on it what fetters you please. The dharma of science, thought and philosophy is to seek for truth by the intellect dispassionately, without prepossession and prejudgment, with no other first propositions than the law of thought and observation itself imposes. Science and philosophy are not bound to square their observations and conclusions with any current ideas of religious dogma or ethical rule or aesthetic prejudice. In the end, if left free in their action, they will find the unity of Truth with Good and Beauty and God and give these a greater meaning than any dogmatic religion or any formal ethics or any narrower aesthetic idea can give us. But meanwhile they must be left free even to deny God and good and beauty if they will, if their sincere observation of things so points them. For all these rejections must come round in the end of their circling and return to a larger truth of the things they refuse. Often we find atheism both in individual and society a necessary passage to deeper religious and spiritual truth: one has sometimes to deny God in order to find him; the finding is inevitable at the end of all earnest scepticism and denial.

The Spiritual Aim and Life, The Human Cycle, CWSA, Sri Aurobindo.

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To Thee Our Infinite Gratitude — Mother

Posted on April 21, 2024 by sriaurobindocenterla

To Thee who hast been the material envelope of our Master, to Thee our infinite gratitude. Before Thee who hast done so much for us, who hast worked, struggled, suffered, hoped, endured so much, before Thee who hast willed all, attempted all, prepared, achieved all for us, before Thee we bow down and implore that we may never forget, even for a moment, all we owe to Thee.

December 9th 1950, Mahasamadhi, Words of the Mother, CWM.

Lord, we are upon earth to accomplish Thy work of transformation. It is our sole will, our sole preoccupation. Grant that it may be also our sole occupation and that all our actions may help us towards this single goal.

January 1st 1951, Mahasamadhi, Words of the Mother, CWM.

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It is No Longer Necessary to Clutter One’s Brain — Mother

Posted on April 13, 2024 by sriaurobindocenterla

“I am not a Jnani, for I have no knowledge except what God gives me for His work. How am I to know whether what I see be reason or folly? Nay, it is neither; for the thing seen is simply true and neither folly nor reason.” – Jnana, Thoughts and Aphorisms, CWSA.

The Mother:

“I am not a Jnani…” The Jnani is one who follows the path of Knowledge, one who wants to realise Yoga exclusively through Knowledge, and who follows a purely intellectual path with the will to go beyond it and attain Knowledge, which is no longer intellectual, but spiritual. And Sri Aurobindo says: I am not a Jnani…. I do not seek knowledge. I have given myself to the Divine to accomplish His work and, by the divine Grace, at every moment I know what must be known in order to accomplish this work.

It is an admirable state; it is perfect peace of mind. There is no longer any need to accumulate acquired knowledge, received ideas which have to be memorised; it is no longer necessary to clutter one’s brain with thousands and thousands of things in order to have at one’s command, when the time comes, the knowledge that is needed to perform an action, to impart a teaching, to solve a problem. The mind is silent, the brain is still, everything is clear, quiet, calm; and at the right moment, by divine Grace a drop of light falls into the consciousness and what needs to be known is known. Why should one care to remember—why try to retain that knowledge? On the day or at the moment that it is needed one will have it again. At each second one is a blank page on which what must be known will be inscribed—in the peace, the repose, the silence of a perfect receptivity.

One knows what must be known, one sees what must be seen, and since what must be known and seen comes directly from the Supreme, it is Truth itself; and it completely eludes all notions of reason or folly.

What is true is true—that is all. And one has to sink very low to wonder whether it is folly or reason.Silence and a modest, humble, attentive receptivity; no concern for appearances or even any anxiety to be—one is quite modestly, quite humbly, quite simply the instrument which of itself is nothing and knows nothing, but is ready to receive everything and transmit everything.

The first condition is self forgetfulness, a total self giving, the absence of ego.And the body says to the Supreme Lord: “What You want me to be, I shall be; what You want me to know, I shall know; what You want me to do, I shall do.”

On Thoughts and Aphorisms, CWM, October 3 1958.

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The Inner Happiness Can Only Come by Right Living — Sri Aurobindo

Posted on April 7, 2024 by sriaurobindocenterla

To follow the law of desire is not the true rule of our nature; there is a higher and juster standard of its works. But where is it embodied or how is it to be found? In the first place, the human race has always been seeking for this just and high Law and whatever it has discovered is embodied in its Shastra, its rule of science and knowledge, rule of ethics, rule of religion, rule of best social living, rule of one’s right relations with man and God and Nature. Shastra does not mean a mass of customs, some good, some bad, unintelligently followed by the customary routine mind of the tamasic man. Shastra is the knowledge and teaching laid down by intuition, experience and wisdom, the science and art and ethic of life, the best standards available to the race. The half-awakened man who leaves the observance of its rule to follow the guidance of his instincts and desires, can get pleasure but not happiness; for the inner happiness can only come by right living. He cannot move to perfection, cannot acquire the highest spiritual status.The law of instinct and desire seems to come first in the animal world, but the manhood of man grows by pursuit of truth and religion and knowledge and a right life. The Shastra, the recognised Right that he has set up to govern his lower members by his reason and intelligent will, must therefore first be observed and made the authority for conduct and works and for what should or should not be done, till the instinctive desire nature is schooled and abated and put down by the habit of self-control and man is ready first for a freer intelligent self-guidance and then for the highest supreme law and supreme liberty of the spiritual nature.

Deva and Asura, Second Series, Essays on the Gita, Sri Aurobindo.

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Make No Conditions, Ask for Nothing — Sri Aurobindo

Posted on March 30, 2024 by sriaurobindocenterla

The first process of the yoga is to make the saṅkalpa of ātmasamarpaṇa. Put yourself with all your heart and all your strength into God’s hands. Make no conditions, ask for nothing, not even for siddhi in the yoga, for nothing at all except that in you and through you his will may be directly performed. To those who demand from him, God gives what they demand, but to those who give themselves and demand nothing, he gives everything that they might otherwise have asked or needed and in addition he gives himself and the spontaneous boons of his love.


The Yoga and its Objects, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Sri Aurobindo.

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Who can Understand Sri Aurobindo? — Mother

Posted on March 23, 2024 by sriaurobindocenterla

Question:

Sweet Mother,

Often when I read Sri Aurobindo’s works or listen to his words, I am wonder-struck: how can this eternal truth, this beauty of expression escape people! It is really strange that he is not yet recognised, at least as a supreme creator, a pure artist, a poet par excellence! So I tell myself that my judgments, my appreciations are influenced by my devotion for the Master—and not everyone is devoted. I do not think this is true. But then, why are men’s hearts not yet enchanted by His Words?

The Mother:

Who can understand Sri Aurobindo? He is as vast as the universe and his teaching is limitless…The only way to come a little close to him is to love him sincerely and give oneself unreservedly to his work. In that way, each one does his best and contributes as much as he can to the transformation of the world which Sri Aurobindo has predicted.

Letters to a Young Captain, Some Answers from the Mother, Vol 16, CWM, December 2nd 1964.

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If Birth is a Becoming, Death also is Becoming — Sri Aurobindo

Posted on March 16, 2024 by sriaurobindocenterla

Man, born into the world, revolves between world and world in the action of Prakriti and Karma. Purusha in Prakriti is his formula: what the soul in him thinks, contemplates and acts, that always he becomes. All that he had been, determined his present birth; and all that he is, thinks, does in this life up to the moment of his death, determines what he will become in the worlds beyond and in lives yet to be. If birth is a becoming, death also is becoming, not by any means a cessation. The body is abandoned, but the soul goes on its way, tyaktvā kalevaram. Much then depends on what he is at the critical moment of his departure. For whatever form of becoming his consciousness is fixed on at the time of death and has been full of that always in his mind and thought before death, to that form he must attain, since the Prakriti by Karma works out the soul’s thoughts and energies and that is in real fact her whole business. Therefore, if the soul in the human being desires to attain to the status of the Purushottama, there are two necessities, two conditions which must be satisfied before that can be possible. He must have moulded towards that ideal his whole inner life in his earthly living; and he must be faithful to his aspiration and will in his departing. “Whoever leaves his body and departs” says Krishna “remembering me at his time of end, comes to my bhāva,” that of the Purushottama, my status of being. He is united with the original being of the Divine and that is the ultimate becoming of the soul, paro bhāvaḥ, the last result of Karma in its return upon itself and towards its source. The soul which has followed the play of cosmic evolution that veils here its essential spiritual nature, its original form of becoming, svabhāva, and has passed through all these other ways of becoming of its consciousness which are only its phenomena, taṁ taṁ bhāvam, returns to that essential nature and, finding through this return its true self and spirit, comes to the original status of being which is from the point of view of the return a highest becoming, mad-bhāvam. In a certain sense we may say that it becomes God, since it unites itself with nature of the Divine in a last transformation of its own phenomenal nature and existence.

The Supreme Divine, Second Series, Essays on the Gita, Sri Aurobindo.

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Sri Aurobindo Is Full of Marvels — Mother

Posted on March 10, 2024 by sriaurobindocenterla

I do not know if you trust me, but I will tell you that every sentence of Sri Aurobindo is the expression or translation of a precise experience, and not only is it like a world enclosed in a few words, but it also contains the vibration of the experience, almost the quality of light of the particular world he contacts; and through the words one contacts, or can very well contact, the experience. I tell you, Sri Aurobindo is full of marvels – pure marvels – and I discover new ones every time I read his texts again, I say to myself, “Oh, how well he saw this!” And if there happens to be some haziness, I am sure a discovery remains to be made there. Sri Aurobindo never used one word too much. As soon as he comes to the mentally obvious – what would be for you precisely the starting point of a brilliant development – he cuts off. He smiles and leaves you hanging in midair – oh, he is surprisingly “discreet,” as you yourself put it, for a man who wrote thousands of pages!

Mother’s Agenda, Volume 10, March 27th 1969.

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People Are Not Aware — Mother

Posted on March 2, 2024 by sriaurobindocenterla

People are not aware of the workings of Grace except when there has been some danger, that is, when there has been the beginning of an accident or the accident has taken place and they have escaped it. Then they become aware. But never are they aware that if, for instance, journey or anything whatever, passes without any accident, it is an infinitely higher Grace. That is, the harmony is established in such a way that nothing can happen. But that seems to them quite natural. When people are ill and get well quickly, they are full of gratitude; but never do they think of being grateful when they are well; and yet that is a much greater miracle!

CWM, Questions and Answers, December 23, 1953.

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One Must Do Something a Little Unselfish — Mother

Posted on February 25, 2024 by sriaurobindocenterla

If you want to begin to do sadhana, you must do something which does not have an exclusively personal motive. One must do something a little unselfish, for if one is exclusively occupied with oneself, one gets shut up in a sort of carapace and is not open to the universal forces. A small unselfish movement, a small action done with no egoistic aim opens a door upon something other than one’s own small, very tiny person.

CWM, Questions and Answers, June 2nd 1954.

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Hunt for all the little dark corners hidden in you — Mother

Posted on February 11, 2024 by sriaurobindocenterla

Evidently there is one difficulty: in your conscious being something does not want the difficulty, wishes sincerely to overcome it, but there are numberless movements in other parts of your consciousness of which you are not conscious. You say, “I want to be cured of that”; unfortunately it is not sufficient to say “I want”, there are other parts of the consciousness which hide themselves so that you may not be busy with them, and when your attention is turned away these parts try to assert themselves. That is why I say and shall always repeat, be perfectly sincere; do not try to deceive yourself, do not say, “I have done all that I could.” If you do not succeed, it means that you do not do all that you can. For, if you truly do “all” that you can, you will surely succeed. If you have any defect which you want to get rid of and which still persists, and you say, “I have done all that I could”, you may be sure that you have not done all that you should have. If you had, you would have triumphed, for the difficulties that come to you are exactly in proportion to your strength—nothing can happen to you which does not belong to your consciousness, and all that belongs to your consciousness you are able to master. Even the things and suggestions that come from outside can touch you only in proportion to the consent of your consciousness, and you are made to be the master of your consciousness. If you say, “I have done all that I could and in spite of everything the thing continues, so I give up”, you may be already sure that you have not done what you could. When an error persists “in spite of everything” it means that something hidden in your being springs up suddenly like a Jack-in-the-box and takes the helm of your life. Hence, there is only one thing to do, it is to go hunting for all the little dark corners which lie hidden in you and, if you put just a tiny spark of goodwill on this darkness, it will yield, will vanish, and what appeared to you impossible will become not only possible, practicable, but it will have been done. You can in this way in one minute get rid of a difficulty which would have harassed you for years. I absolutely assure you of it. That depends only on one thing: that you truly, sincerely, want to get rid of it.

CWM, Questions and Answers, February 5 1951.

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Making Truth Valuable — Mother

Posted on February 3, 2024 by sriaurobindocenterla

All of you who have come here have been told many things; you have been put into contact with a world of truth, you live within it, the air you breathe is full of it; and yet how few of you know that these truths are valuable only if they are put into practice, and that it is useless to talk of consciousness, knowledge, equality of soul, universality, infinity, eternity, supreme truth, the divine presence and… of all sorts of things like that, if you make no effort yourselves to live these things and feel them concretely within you. And don’t tell yourselves, “Oh, I have been here so many years! Oh, I would very much like to have the result of my efforts!” You must know that very persistent efforts, a very steadfast endurance are necessary to master the least weakness, the least pettiness, the least meanness in one’s nature. What is the use of talking about divine Love if one can’t love without egoism? What is the use of talking about immortality if one is stubbornly attached to the past and the present and if one doesn’t want to give anything in order to receive everything? You are still very young, but you must learn right away that to reach the goal you must know how to pay the price, and that to understand the supreme truths you must put them into practice in your daily life.

CWM, Questions and Answers, March 1957.

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The only safety in life — Mother

Posted on February 1, 2024 by sriaurobindocenterla
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Correction: Doug Grimes passed away on January 22, 2024

Posted on January 25, 2024 by sriaurobindocenterla

Doug Grimes passed away on January 22, 2024 and not January 22, 2023. We apologize for the error in the previous post.

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Doug Grimes passed away on January 22, 2024

Posted on January 25, 2024 by sriaurobindocenterla

Doug Grimes, dedicated seeker deeply devoted to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, and a precious friend and well-wisher of Sri Aurobindo Center of Los Angeles, passed away peacefully in the early morning hours of January 22, 2024. His last days were marked by a increasing absorption in thoughts of the Divine Mother.

He discovered the Sri Aurobindo Center of Los Angeles a little more than two years ago, and quickly endeared himself to all the devotees there, sharing an affectionate bond with all through his warm, caring, and largely sattwic nature. He became an intimate part of the Center’s Satsang group that meets thrice weekly. He rarely missed a meeting, if any, and his presence was a precious part of the soul nurturing atmosphere that we aspire to create. Drawn powerfully by the atmosphere of the relics, he frequently drove from San Diego to stay at the Center where he offered himself enthusiastically with laborious work in the garden and miscellaneous tasks in the house.

His adoration, love and devotion for the Divine incarnate in the Master and Mother always shone through his keen analytical mind, and was a notable quality of his soul. His passing leaves a lacuna in our meetings, and his place there will be deeply missed, reminding us powerfully of the words of the Mother:

We have, every one of us, a role to fulfil, a work to do, a place which we alone can occupy.

Sri Aurobindo Center of Los Angeles

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