Series XI April 22, 2001

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1) Modern prosperity of ancient values, communal peace of consummate harmony, and world leadership in supramental spirituality are at our door. They await our opening of the door.

Start at home, in your company or organisation. It is the right place to start.

2) Life never fails to warn us. It may not be seen or known. Or, when known, it would always be disregarded. Whoever takes the warning is sure to be saved. Maybe a long time ago things were spoiled. Would he now come forward to surrender his behaviour of that time?

3) Idealist work has never been done by non-idealists.

5) An expansive mind of curiosity enjoys learning, thus growing into knowledge. Mere intelligence has no such capacity. Such minds get educated. They seek cultivation of mental faculties.

7) Life is full of so many pockets of dull energy which will be dormant till it is stirred. Once stirred it acts. One needs to know their equilibrium and must take pains to maintain it.

9) One can rise from very low levels to very high levels, but that will not grant perfection.

10) A few refractory rich men earlier squandered. Now many more aspire to that status. Its first expression, rather the only expression is squandering.

11) Silence compels one to listen. In addition, it enables one to think, though silence is inimical to thinking.

12) God created the world for the joy of Self-discovery, but for that He first hid Himself within Himself. Every step in hiding gives Him joy, even as every stage of discovering Himself yields joy.

13) Before the vision of the MARVEL arises in full splendour, it can present itself as a conception for one who has come into the atmosphere of Mother. It starts as a cosy subconscious feeling, resolving the existing problems gradually, offering greater and greater opportunities. The great beginning of a small glimpse is the conception that life is always preparing through small joys for the final bliss.

15) Gambling is to learn the skill of accurately forecasting the course of events as in a game or race by an energy not yet organised for simple physical actions.

17) Life exists in several layers of society, personality, pure energy and finally force before it is organised as energy. Beyond all that is the Being. What is failure in one level is not a failure at a level further below. Seeing this, feeling this and Being this, Man can SEE no loss any more.

18) Sri Aurobindo said that the World Forces had, sooner or later, never failed to fulfil His ideas. Anyone who has felt His force working in him will see the truth of Sri Aurobindo's statement in a large measure in his own world with respect to his own ideas or wishes.

One has accepted Him in the measure his own ideas have been fulfilled.

19) Any work has dozens of details to be learnt and to produce the result they have to be used in concert. This is true of spirituality also. In this respect, there is no virtue in yoga.

20) Fear is an unknown emotion to royalty. They cannot even be taught it.

22) The greatest idea of the intellect or intelligence makes one a neo-thinker against the vision of the whole.

23) The surface being includes the body in man, the earth in creation.

27) Practical wisdom knows the equilibrium of social forces that keep the house running. And it matters.

28) It is consummate efficiency of social survival to see through the intuition of the intransigent refractory negative individual.

29) Globalisation is Integralisation.

30) One has made his life that of an employee or householder. He can shift the needle and preside over a corporation or a nation.

32) Poisonous insects are the fit and necessary raw material for transformation.

33) The car broke down the inertia of local loyalty.

34) The car is a must not as a status symbol, but as an instrument of breaking down the inertia.

Love is more impersonal than personal.

40) What we know as life -- human life -- is what the soul chooses and wills, and not a whit beyond that.

41) The consummate knowledge of Integral yoga in life is learnt by thousands in their own fields effectively. It is learnt from below, partly. Now that the full theory of creation is available directly from Him, one can learn it fully, from above. That will still come to one as a total knowledge of a smaller whole, not a part.

43) Governments are becoming higher versions of local bodies and are no longer meant for the very strong. They were never meant for the bright and in future bright men are more likely to steer clear of governments.

45) When involution reverses as evolution, the four above invert themselves into four below, not in the same order. Reversal requires a review of the previous order. As the Spirit issues out of Sat, the psychic issues out of Matter not out of life. Hence the reordering.

Lydia as Mrs. Wickham takes precedence over Jane.

46) In matters of high culture as well as spirituality, there are two stages of progress or growth.

Where one explanation of a high value is more useful than several disciplines, and

Where one discipline is more effective than a hundred explanations.

49) Appreciation is relationship. Spiritual relationship arises when appreciation ceases.

50) Even to fully understand one idea in The Life Divine is rich initiation into His yoga.

51) If a right context arises for a work it means the atmosphere is ripe for success.

52) Coordination by communication through a centre is meant for work organisation in the physical plane. In a subtle organisation, news can be received with the centre, not given out.

54) A million mouths may gossip. One single inner move will evaporate all that.

56) Market is collective endorsement of individual achievement.

59) The theory of relativity was not given the Noble Prize, nor did Gandhiji receive it. No local pandit would pass the great poets when the passage is not recognised. No saint was locally popular nor was any genius recognised at home in the beginning.

61) When people are proud of their meanness and trickery, what can you think of one who longs for their applause? Their applause is a condemnation.

64) A man is wise by mistake.

A man is stupid by choice.

65) All-inclusive concentration includes the substance of the body.

66) Spirit and mystic emotion are clothed in poverty in Asia today for Matter and intellect of Europe and America to seek it as market. Man will seek Spirit as market.

67) Human unconsciousness is the conscious awareness of the subliminal.

68) In life we 'surrender' to the professionals, workmen, and DRIVERS we employ. No developed mind can even consider surrender to the Divine.

69) Yogic achievement can never be compared to achievements in life, as yoga tries to accomplish more than all life can. But yoga of life goes beyond yoga. There is nothing beyond yoga in life.

Truth emerges when falsehood dissolves.

71) One's growth is in the measure of his right handling of the sore points of life as they arise. He who has failed has now a chance to do so. Would he be less unwilling now than before?

72) The field of this yoga is the inner emotions and attitudes. Its method is transformation. Its path is to the inner and to the subliminal. Its centre is psychic. By giving up one's fixed poises, one goes down to rise.

73) Eternal adventure of emotions is romance.

74) The urge to break a discipline has the energy to implement it perfectly in the reverse.

75) When parents deeply regret or feel disgusted with the behaviour of their children, the truth is what the children do now only reflects the deep wishes of the parents which they could not enjoy.

76) Realities of life are not in the physical consciousness, but in the substance. Words, ideas, emotions, convictions will not touch it. Hard facts of life alone can touch it.

77) The human collective even in the smallest unit of family is there for ONE to shape himself in its image and the principle holds good for all such collectives big or small.

78) The hallmark of non-existent superiority – true inferiority – is to feel taking as giving.

Men who want LUCK to rush into their lives must give up even poverty consciousness. Let them truly acknowledge what they receive, if not with gratitude which they are incapable of

We are poor. Our perversity preserves our poverty.

Let us know we are false, low, poor and treat ourselves as such with HUMILITY.

Humility that is Gratitude is LUCK.

79) Human success is no more valid than human failure.

80) When a brother is stealing, you want to prevent the stealing, not punish him. Thus, you are soft to the stealing in you, which is there in your brother. You cannot stop his stealing without his getting punished for it. You bail him out of difficulties each time and he never stops stealing. In fact, you protect the 'stealing' in you.

81) Learning is a curiosity. It has no end for any reason, nor is age a bar. There is no limit for knowing or learning or for that matter enjoying.

82) Emotions, at the least sign of a possibility, dream of the result, as emotions achieve at once.

83) Sri Aurobindo's glory begins in the depth. He offers it in the depth as well as on the surface as an integral expression. Man does not want the depth or the integral expression. He asks for the Glory of the surface as the surface.

84) Surrender opens up the subconscious vision.

85) A devotee, or better still a sadhak knows it is he who always wins.

All the time he sees it is only victory.

86) Poisonous creatures, catastrophes of Nature, the incarnation of Evil are the storehouses of divine raw material for the Delight the soul seeks. Are not raw materials necessary?

87) Identifying with Sri Aurobindo's consciousness is to identify with the Transcendent in its aspect of manifestation.

88) Identifying with Mother is to be Her instrument in your life on earth.

89) You are available for any service in the measure different urges have lost their power over you.

90) To become full, one should accept the negative side, appreciate the activities of children and recognise himself in his environment.

91) The greatest of spiritual service is still the service to the ego. Service is to dissolve the ego.

92) Infinity:

Man is FINITE. God is INFINITE. Man is God in disguise. He should transform himself into God in mind, in feeling as well as in fact. To know that the parallel lines do meet, reason becomes intuition, logic becomes Logic of the Infinite, complete minus complete is complete, money expands like knowledge with spending and darkness and pain are their opposites is the beginning.

93) To give something away is great in a world where there are many who cannot part with trifles. Giving away the thing whose value one fully knows is true giving, which ends in Self-giving by one who has realised the Self.

People gather when attention is paid. They go away when it is withdrawn.

Had there been strength in the substance, they will not go away, but

cling faster to you.

95) God has nothing to manage in the world of his creation but to watch with enjoyment. The organisation you create can be more and more self-managing with growing experience.

Enjoyable watching is Management.

Management is self-sustaining.

Organise and watch. Don't try to manage.

96) To know that one's highest creative work is after all a kind of occupation is yogic insight.

97) However little you know, consecration opens the entire knowledge to you. When you rely on your own knowledge, then it is available in little quantities.

98) The world is there to learn self-preservation, not for you to serve. It is a dangerous idea to serve, unless you seek self-destruction.

99) Knowledge

To understand creation, understanding Ignorance is necessary.

The capacity to know a fool's thinking is intelligence.

Accomplishment needs knowledge of the crook.

These are all human achievements.

For the Divine to achieve in us, these are of no use. The Divine begins where Man ends.

Man's ending his efforts is Surrender.

Human accomplishment is by knowledge. For the Divine to accomplish in us, it needs our surrender.

100) The outer politeness apart, the inner human attitude is, "I am the boss of everyone" which is ill-concealed. Should a man recognise that in himself, the best inner discipline for him is to acquire an inner attitude of "Everyone is my boss".

101) To think is to think about objects outside. It is outgoing. Yoga is going inside. To stop thinking is the beginning of yoga. Yoga ends when one is unable to think having lost that faculty.

105) Offensive consciousness offers to hurt when praying for blessings.

106) The physical consciousness of the mind is elated by rating itself too high to recognise the real value of another.

108) Smallness hurts to please.

110) Friendship is neither social, nor spiritual, but psychological.

111) The physical attachment can never give up, but will never tolerate, will even tease to death.

112) Men are free outside organisations. Inside them, they are under human control which in the absence of values degenerates into tyranny. There is no other tyranny.

113) "I don't want my I".

Man cannot even say this today because he is it and he is in it.

Gorbachev is the Avatar come to destroy the ego.

114) Imagination is the greatest faculty of man that abridges his future. It is an enchanting experience to know the imagination of a superstitious person who conceives of a man inside the radio.

115) Adoration of ancient wisdom and adherence to it is also from the fact one has not outgrown them.

116) The emotional capacity to give up the relationships one has overgrown is detachment.

117) One who is fully protected from the negative forces can be safe. When he enters public life, he will be able to command unanimity, if the negative forces he overcame turn around and support him.

118) Sacredness of a promise suggests a stagnant society.

119) Ego engages.

Psychic is essential.

120) Neither can an ignorant man give up ignorance nor can a poor man give up poverty at will, until and unless they rise above ignorance and poverty.

121) To know the different states of Self -- the four statuses of Upanishads included – is an intellectual feat. The Self-conscious Being, the Self at the gates of the Transcendent, the Transcendent Self, the cosmic Self that is beyond Time and Space and in Time and Space, beyond Subjective-objective differentiation, the immobile immutable Self, Purushothama are keen distinctions knowing which mind loses its rigidity, the self-willed intellect, to cross over.

The female attracts. Feminine richness fulfils the masculine abundance.

123) The physically dynamic man will be lazy psychologically and would even resist and frown on inner work, calling it laziness.

125) One can overcome his social personality to become an individual or overcome that too to become the spiritual entity, thus entering the plane of Timelessness. Sri Aurobindo wants us to go further to the psychic from where one's surrender is offered to Him. Man, in offering his surrender, crosses the determinism of Nature and cosmic determinism.

126) Until a work, even a small work, becomes routine, either because the skill is unlearnt or by the newness of interest, it occupies the consciousness. This is, in a way, the Infinite expressing in the finite.

Can you ever assert that this thing won't happen because another thing had been there?

130) Callousness is independent and can coexist with any other quality of any measure.

131) Gandhiji's truth had a certain violence of fadism. Any truth will be rewarded for its strength in life to start with. When the same rigidity appeared in the Muslims as Jinnah, that proved itself more powerful. Nor could violence be avoided.

132) Gandhiji's fast was a success until 1947. It reached its climax in Calcutta because there was victory in the subtle plane behind. It is right for the consciousness to fulfil the achievement of substance instead of following its own inspiration, which is dissipation. In the end, the substance prevails.

133) Nature is a succession of soul moments in Time

.

134) Maya is the self's experience of the Self.

The Self creates in the self by Maya.

135) God who sought the Lila of creation for Delight achieves it by the evolution of Spirit through several births, making the surface mind the crucial field and its crux.

136) Sri Aurobindo's writings are full of humour. One will miss it, if he is unaware of His wider theme. No page of His is without its touch. One such is His euphemism for utter folly of the higher intellect – 'excess of logic'.

138) Secret of Success:

Success is of the totality, never of the part.

The secret of health lies in the knowledge of disease.

The power of peaceful living of the good citizen lies in knowing the details of the underworld.

It is war that ensures peace.

Compassion rests on strength that nourishes the cruel.

Intensity of Love arises from the fact of avoiding the intensity of hatred.

Intelligence becomes useful when it knows idiocy.

139) Man will stir out of his laziness for gaining a hairbreadth of mastery over another rather than for a bundle of money.

140) Buddha, Shankara, Sri Aurobindo.

No theory of evolution is complete without handling evil. Buddha refused to do it. Shankara opened a way out, which is not a solution. The answer lies at the root of creation and particularly in the nature of Ignorance. Sri Aurobindo solves

the mystery, going to the very purpose of creation.

141) What imperfect language finds difficult to express, imprecise emotion can convey so as to touch the reality of the situation.

142) It is a common experience that people cooperate with anyone only within the limits of his authority over them. Beyond that, he is in despair.

Is the experience of those who work for others as they ask far different? They too despair quite often when they have to act outside the scope of their authority. Authority is the limit, not the act.

143) Words, especially of prose, are not rich enough to convey the full power behind the thought that surpasses the emotion and embraces the act.

144) The Indian economy is astir. We see the process of its expression. There is nothing anyone can do with it, as the reality behind is not known. Science has been studying such processes, but never sought the Reality behind.

145) Knowing the Reality, the process is revealed, not vice versa.

146) Memory understands the eternity of the Conscious Being in terms of Time.

Mother's prosperity grows abundantly when not noticed.

152) What the mind sees is true, even if it is partial. When it begins to insist on that as the only truth and goes on denying what others have seen, it becomes false.

153) Only when we insist on knowing something new in terms of the old, there is ununderstanding. By this man insists on being what he is. There is nothing he cannot understand when this insistence is not there.

154) Meeting Mother is initiation. To us their words, spoken or written, are gospel, which means whatever we read from their writings must have the force of their initiation. It is such a relationship that will make one's stay here beneficial for yoga.

Taste of Ignorance is over.

156) Nature is leisurely, purposely delaying evolution so that the taste of Ignorance can be fully enjoyed. Emerging from Ignorance into knowledge is greater than that taste. Man is poised between the two.

157) The intense joy of trance is the joy of being unconscious, which tastes the Ignorance exclusively at its spiritual height.

158) Pain is only for the separative Ego, not for man. Man can come out of ego and enjoy in the subliminal the leisurely taste of Ignorance of Nature or become the psychic to spread over the universe.

159) Sri Aurobindo has broken the mystery of the mystics and rendered the process of creation intelligible. Two more things can be done. The scientist has vast accumulations of facts that do not create a perspective. His philosophy can be so defined to get all the pieces of the scientific puzzle in their places. Another is rendering life in His terms so that the Science of Life will emerge.

- Life Divine

- Science of Life

- Spirit of Science

160) To understand each aspect of a knowledge is an expertise that is valuable. To know each aspect in terms of another or every other is a wholesome knowledge not easily attainable .

161) An expert is an asset. The generalist who enriches the expertise of the expert by his overall view brings wisdom to knowledge.

163) The human choice at any given moment is between the continued leisurely enjoyment of the taste of Ignorance and the delight of emerging out of Ignorance.

164) The One is the Being. The Many are formed out of the divided Force of which the substratum is the Being. It is formed out of a double opening, very much as departments and offices are created out of the government which is the One.

165) When the Force of prosperity goes forth, it is the richest nation that booms until its leaders curb its economic growth.

166) The Upanishadic story of God asking the gods to move a blade of grass withdrawing Himself from it, illustrates that gods too forget God.

168) Depth for us is the depth of the surface.

169) The Truth that is all benevolence will also be extremely strong and more than fortified by any trickery or treachery of the evil forces.

170) When Patience pervades all the planes it becomes equality. Equality is the higher spiritual version of infinite dimension of patience at lower levels.

171) The emotional result for any work is the seeking of the lower vital, which is happiness. The Force that passes through one gives the thrill to the Being which is higher Joy, maybe higher than joy.

172) The psychic makes the moment virginally creative.

Interest makes energy lively. Soul makes life and substance lively. Emerging soul makes everything in the environment lively. It is spiritual liveliness.

· Body is quiet or dull. Vital is on the move. Mind is active and energises the vital. Spirit is full of life but prefers quietness.

· The psychic is unegoistic, energises all parts of the being, renders them spiritually lively.

· The energy of the psychic is not the coarse energy of human parts or the quiescent energy of the soul, but the energy of evolution without the stress of ego or coarseness of the parts.

· The psychic does not take over unless the dynamism of the others is absent.

· The psychic is spiritually lively.

· The evolutionary energy of the psychic is AUÛ.

· The psychic collects behind the heart and awaits.

· It offers silently.

173) One has several parts in himself. They differ. Some are high and others are low. It is he who chooses which part is to be expressed when.

174) A system does not maintain itself. It has to be maintained. When a system maintains itself, it becomes technology.

175) When mind stops thinking, emotions start thinking.

176) The world is like a ship on the sea. The life of the world is the sea. The possibility of the world running out of resources does not exist.

177) Offering of service from one who has not earned money will not bring him money.

178) Past consecration for as many days as the years you have lived is good.

179) Sri Aurobindo left us so that He can be of help to us in the way we may appreciate receiving.

180) As knowledge first enters the subtle plane, when something leaves, it leaves the subtle plane last.

181) If it is a good strategy not to take more, it is wisdom not to give more.

182) The weak man's jealousy kills him.

183) To place ourselves in the scale of knowledge–Ignorance is the first desirable step in emerging out of Ignorance.

184) Seeing ourselves as the small version of God in our activities is the beginning of evolution.

185) All processes of practical learning are the Mind patiently waiting on the mind in the body to remember its origin is Mind, the same process of Lila. Man's delight in learning is the miniature of God's Delight in Lila.

186) Nature splits one phenomenon into two and presents them as contradictions in the physical material plane. Man raising himself to Mind, sees the material contradictions sublimating into a logical opposition.

187) The Westerner who is dynamic is incapable of inner work. The best of Indians who are very much capable of intense inner work, prefer to be dynamic physically and active vitally in gossip.

188) The Psychic is quiet as it lives only in the present.

The richness of the psychic is because of the fullness of the present.

Fullness of the present is the richness of the psychic.

189) For the small mind, any capacity in anyone creates rivalry. For a great mind, those are clear occasions for his personality to expand by the experience of appreciation.

190) Work stagnates when we do not exhaust what we can directly do.

191) God descends through division that is contradictory and ascends through union that is reconciliation.

192) Silence that is absence of thought gives the foundation for equality. Silence that is absence of activity, gives the foundation for the strength of spirituality. There is a Silence behind the Silence.

193) The One seeing itself as Many is a subjective state.

194) A great mind can be great, even shining, but will remain partial and outside the scope of any use. His completion of meaningfulness lies in complementing his insight with that of crass ignorance when it fulfils the evolutionary purpose.

195) The poor man needs money not for use but for dissipation. It is possible for us to give people what they want not for their purpose, but for our aim.

196) Truth is not a mere fact. It escapes a practical mind. In fact, Truth is objective Existence. For one to whom the subjective existence is sincere, Truth reveals. All over the world, in all cultures, it is called values.

197) The surface is the summit of Ignorance. For the Spirit to emerge on the surface is the goal of yoga. The final conquest is on the surface and of Ignorance.

198) The desire to do good to others directly ends in evil for you.

199) Many acts are interesting. Others are flat. We do those acts in spite of their being flat, because work has to be done. It is easy to see that no flat act has ever given results. Any possible trouble, one can see, has come only by doing those flat acts. This applies only to those who consciously endeavour to be non-egoistic.

200) The Rishis could see either the one side or the other side of the Self above. Sri Aurobindo desires us to see both sides together here.

Tapas is the nature of the consciousness.

202) Unsuspecting nature of security is of status unquestioned.

Royalty was oblivious of danger.

Majesty of magnanimity thinks not of loss.

203) The problems of the nation and the world are to be understood at home and at work. What is not learned here will never be learnt.

204) Give up the immediate, in favour of the Ultimate.

-Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukerjee. 24.4.1951

205) Idealism is based on ideas to be realised.

Work is to be based on inner achievements that are to be expressed.

207) Lapse in sex is a social deviation, not a sin on one's conscience, unless the conscience believes it.

208) Equality is possible when the vital physical restlessness calms down.

209) There are occasions when a genius expects the admiration of his ideas by his colleagues who are incapable of understanding it. A Napoleon looks for the approval of a Josephine, an Einstein expects another to applaud his formula. As a rule, invariably they withhold it.

Great minds look for approval of the small.

The small take pleasure in denying it.

212) Determination without discrimination is a violence committed on oneself and peters out sooner or later, either crushing the mind or spirit or frustrating them.

214) The character in the underworld of thieves, robbers, scoundrels, rogues, cheats, etc. is a true measure of a nation's culture.

215) The desire to benefit your family or friends or even the world when they do not deserve it is the same desire for the results without doing any work.

216) The physical uses force where it lacks skill; the vital uses anger, while the mind either curses or forms an opinion. One must patiently acquire the skill.

217) Life is a slow journey along a field of "Snakes and Ladders".

Mother gives you dice that gives the scores you choose.

218) The source of energisation drains.

220) While you are in Silence, most of the work that needs speech – really all the work – is done without speaking, as others speak your thoughts.

222)

The communal carnage of 1947 was a misfortune.

It was because of British duplicity.

It was due to Muslim intransigence.

We can say it was owing to Hindu short-sightedness.

Instead of seeing it as a past misfortune, we can see it as a past inevitability.

It is that which makes future glory possible.

To know it lies in our attitude is to know Him and Her.

All errors are rich raw material for future higher culture.

224) Higher human values converted into higher divine values in life can be exalted but have nothing to do with divine life. What appears unattainable in life is the least the devotee can aspire for.

225) The world has not completed the available resources of knowledge, organisation, technology and values. This backlog is vast. Nor has it fully responded in utilising the new resources.

This is a golden rule for the individual and the collective.

227) If the atmosphere is undisturbed and calm even without a mental effort on your part, it means your substance is calm.

228) Support is that which offers security not only where we are but in the deeper plane too.

230) Obedience can be enforced, not kindness.

231) A man, having committed an error for whatever reason, who is capable of inflicting on himself the punishment the rules enjoin can be called rational and just.

233) Sense of propriety becomes a sacred sentiment in the physical man.

235) There are three levels of the capacity that can change the finite into the infinite.

A one-time capacity.

Capacity to do so consciously in many things.

A permanent state of this higher consciousness.

The first is enough to be lucky. The second will give one the capacity to create luck in others. The last is higher consciousness.

236) When you call a liar truly a liar, he can falsely call you a liar, as verbal expression permits falsehood. So, people catch hold of a liar and beat him. The strength of Truth that cannot be expressed in words can overpower a liar and shut his mouth.

238) Age blunts the force of enjoyment or complaining, but the character remains. Education and refinement change for the better the rigid structure of the force. Neither is transformation. Transformation reverses the structure of character into its opposite.

Creation is Lila for Delight.

Discovery is Delight.

Self-discovery is ultimate Delight.

Delight in the descent, Delight in the ascent.

240) Practical concept of Infinity.

Concrete conception of Eternity.

241) Mother touches the depths of anyone who comes to Her, takes them to the heights for a split second, but we are oblivious of the experience when it happens and later completely forget it.

242) The sign of the whole is

Accomplishment that has the character of Infinity.

Causeless Joy.

243) The idealist who passionately believes that his idealism is of importance to the world subconsciously cherishes his own importance to the world.

244) When we feel it is too much for us to stand, it is the best occasion for us to know what we can do.

Our real inner possibilities will fully reveal only at a moment when we are overwhelmed by stress.

245) The studios produce extraordinary films that are faithful to life and history in spite of the very low atmosphere of dissipated consciousness. It shows the least can achieve the most by values in skills.

246) The arguments of The Life Divine which are explained explicitly at length, are nowhere seen by the intellect in clear coherence. One who gets them in clear sequence will cross over from mind to Supermind.

247) Human handling distorts the issues. Thinking spoils understanding of it; feeling mutilates emotional appreciation; doing destroys.

Mother acts when Man is quiet.

248) If mind is quiet, even reading The Life Divine disturbs it. Even in such a situation, reading Savitri can further quieten the mind.

It does not matter what you do, but it matters how you do it.

We touch the Brahman inside at that moment.

251) To know that HE loses Himself every moment a little bit more in the descent and He emerges a little every moment in the ascent, is to know HIM.

252) When an official is acting, it is possible to see the power of the entire organisation is behind him. The action of the surface man is seen only as his own action, not only by the entire being behind, especially by his own self.

253) Man rarely knows what he wants. He aims at one thing, but actively drives at another. It will be a great moment in his life to know what he really wants, because that knowledge will help him achieve it.

254) Any grand thing, plan, idea or project is of the ego. The sign of something being grand is a danger signal.

255) Occupation is there with things that are not fully understood through experience enough for them to be shed. Preoccupations are by the disturbed sensitivities.

258) One man's silence is an individual discipline. Silence descending on one man making him speak out Silence is universal Silence coming into its own, asking for permission for its rule.

259) Observing the world as your reflection, you know the spots where you need to change.

261) The entire being is there behind every action. It is enough we perceive it. We can see the action itself as the entire conscious being.

262) Delight is discovery.

Discovery is Delight.

To discover he is God is the greatest delight for man.

263) Surrender is to give up that thing which we cannot part with for a moment.

Surrender of the conscious is impossible.

Surrender of the unconscious is must.

Surrender of the conscious makes the surrender of the unconscious possible.

Surrender makes the impossible possible.

264) The Avatar can surrender to the Lord; others cannot. It is to Mother the surrender is due.

There is a Silence behind the Silence.

270) Individual silence will be observed.

Universal silence will be infectious.

271) He who is stung by another's Silence has a little of it.

273) No man understands another's motives, though he sees his actions, as each man has a motive for his own understanding.

274) Man who has lost six senses must regain them as higher senses, the senses of the spirit.

275) Legal justice is to decide one man's problems according to the understanding of all others except himself.

276) Man's surrender starts with his thoughts, feelings, etc. Sri Aurobindo speaks of the surrender of Being, consciousness, power and delight. When he surrenders his thoughts, feelings, etc. he reaches his being and again as power and delight his thoughts and feelings present themselves to be surrendered.

277) Man is capable of doing his yoga as occupation.

To convert his very occupation and even preoccupation into yoga is a must.

278) Surrender is difficult for one who thinks, even as controlling an emotion is difficult while it possesses you.

279) To think and plan for the future is to constrain the future spiritual possibilities to the present limitation.

280) Human insistence:

People unconsciously insist on a certain way of life. All do so in one direction.

It is a negative insistence of NOT being of the higher consciousness.

Each does it in his own unique way. The majority tries to conform to the society. The rest insist on dissipation.

The patterns of conformity are infinite, those of dissipation are equally infinite.

281) Psychological laziness is tradition to the physical.

282) Things cannot be planned for in an unconscious atmosphere. To conceive of any planning there is to hasten the progress or hope for the non-existing.

283)