Most of the statements in this volume were first published between the 1930s and 1970s in books and journals put out by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram or groups associated with it. The remaining statements first appeared in 1980 in the first edition of this volume. About two-thirds of the statements were written or spoken in English, the rest in French.
The volume has been divided into six parts, each part having a number of sections. Each section does not necessarily contain all of the statements that could be placed there. Each statement has been put only in one section, though it might have been put in more than one. Statements that appear in other volumes have not, as a rule, been reproduced here.
Quotations from the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are occasionally cited in the text and footnotes. The sources of these works are the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library (SABCL) and the second edition of the Collected Works of the Mother (CWM).
The text of this second edition is the same as that of the first edition, apart from the correction of some typographical errors and the revision of a few English translations.