Contents

Questions and Answers 1956

Integral idea of the Divine

All things attracted by the Divine

Bad things are things no longer in their place

Moving idea-force; small and great ideas

New Year Message of 1956

Consequences of manifestation

Work of the Spirit through Nature

Change consciousness: the world changes

11 January 1956

Desire and self-deception

Giving all one is and has

Sincerity: more powerful than will

Joy of progress

Definition of youth

18 January 1956

Positive and negative sides of individual work

A chosen human vessel of the Divine

Aspiration of plants, of children

Active consciousness in plants

Being chosen by the Divine

Perfect relation with the Divine

India is free: already accomplished in 1915

Division of India, not decreed

25 January 1956

The divine way of life

Divine; Overmind; Supermind

Material body—for discovery of the Divine

Five psychological perfections

1 February 1956

Path of knowledge

Finding the Divine in life

Capacity for contact with the Divine

Partial and total identification with the Divine

Manifestation and hierarchy

8 February 1956

Forces of Nature expressing a higher Will

Illusion of separate personality

One dynamic force which moves all things

Linear and spherical thinking

Common ideal of life: microscopic

15 February 1956

Nature and the Master of Nature

Conscious intelligence

Theory of the Gita: not the whole truth

Surrender to the Lord

Change of nature

22 February 1956

Strong immobility of an immortal spirit

Equality of soul

Is all an expression of the divine Will?

Loosening the knot of action

Using experience as a cloak to cover excesses

Sincerity, a rare virtue

29 February 1956

Sacrifice: self-giving

Divine Presence in the heart of Matter

Divine Consciousness

Divine in the inconscient aspires for the Divine

Animal sacrifice

Sacrifices to hostile forces

Sacrifice: receive in proportion to consciousness

To be luminously open

Integral transformation

Pain of rejection; delight of progress

Spirit behind intention

Spirit and matter: over-simplified distinction

Dynamic meditation

Do all as an offering to the Divine

Significance of 23.4.56.

If twelve men of goodwill call the Divine

Identify with the Divine

The Divine: the most important thing in life

The starting-point of spiritual experience

The boundless finite

The Timeless and Time

Mental explanation not enough

Changing knowledge into experience

Sat-Chit-Tapas-Ananda

The witness soul

A Gita enthusiast

Propagandist spirit; Tolstoy’s son

Manifestation of Time and Space

Brahman-Maya and Ishwara-Shakti

Personal and Impersonal

Ishwara and Shakti: seeing both aspects

The Impersonal and the divine Person

Soul: the presence of the divine Person

Going to other worlds; exteriorisation; dreams

Telling stories to oneself

Creative power in world of vital forms

God: human conception and the true Divine

Earthly existence: to realise the Divine

Ananda: divine pleasure

Relations with the divine Presence

Asking the Divine for what one needs

Allowing the Divine to lead one

Threefold union

Manifestation of the Supramental

Profiting from the Divine

Recognition of the Supramental Force

Ascent, descent, manifestation

Beginning of the true spiritual life

Spirit gives value to all things

To be helped by the supramental Force

Needs of the body: not true in themselves

Spiritual and supramental law

Aestheticised Paganism

Morality: checks true spiritual effort

Effect of supramental descent

Half-lights and false lights

Yoga and religion

Story of two clergymen on a boat

The Buddha and the Supramental

Hieroglyphs and phonetic alphabets

A vision of ancient Egypt

Memory for sounds

Forms as symbols of the Force behind

Art as expression of contact with the Divine

Supramental psychological perfection

Division of works

The Ashram: idle stupidities

Sign or indication from books of revelation

Spiritualised mind

Stages of sadhana

Reversal of consciousness

Organisation around central Presence

Boredom: most common human malady

Effects of the Supramental action

Education and the Supermind

Right to remain ignorant

Concentration of mind

Reason: not supreme capacity of man

Physical education and studies

Self-imposed inner discipline

True usefulness of teachers and instructors

The heart’s mystic light and intuition

Psychic being; psychic contact

Secular refrigeration; secular ethics

True role of mind

Realisation of the Divine through love

Depression; pleasure; joy

Heart: mixture in its action

To follow the soul and not the mind

Physical energy: progressive effort; rest

To remember the Mother

Collective discipline; laws of atavism

Birth: entry of soul into body

Formation of the supramental world

Aspiration for progress

Cerebral filter

Progress and resistance

Aspiration when one sees a shooting star

Preparing the body; making it understand

Getting rid of pain and suffering

Beauty restored to its priesthood

Occult worlds; occult beings

Difficulties and the supramental force

Radha-consciousness

Separation and identification

Ananda of identity and Ananda of union

Sincerity, meditation and prayer

Enemies of the Divine

The universe is progressive

A complete act of divine love

Sports programme same for boys and girls

How to profit by stay at Ashram

“To Women about Their Body”

Value of worship

Spiritual realisation and the integral yoga

Symbols: translation of experience into form

Sincerity: fundamental virtue

Intensity of aspiration: with anguish or joy

The divine Grace

How to light the psychic fire; will for progress

Helping from a distance; mental formations

Prayer and the divine Grace

Grace at work everywhere

Protection, purification, fear

Atmosphere at the Ashram on Darshan days

Significance of Darshan messages

Significance of fifteenth August

State of surrender

Divine Grace: has always been all-powerful

Assumption of the Virgin Mary

Sri Aurobindo’s message of 15 August 1947

The heaven of the liberated mind

Trance or samadhi

Occult discipline for leaving consecutive bodies

To be greater than one’s experience

Total self-giving to the Grace

The truth of the being

Unique relation with the Supreme

To live spontaneously

Mental formations

Absolute sincerity

Balance is indispensable: the middle path

When in difficulty, widen the consciousness

Easiest way of forgetting oneself

5 September 1956

Material life: seeing in the right way

Effect of the Supermind on the earth

Emergence of the Supermind

Falling back into the same mistaken ways

12 September 1956

Questions, practice and progress

19 September 1956

Power: predominant quality of vital being

The Divine, the psychic being, the Supermind

How to come out of the physical consciousness

Look life in the face

Ordinary love and Divine love

26 September 1956

Openness; harmony with Nature

Communion with divine Presence

Individuality, difficulties and the soul of desire

Utility of personal contact with the Mother

Inner receptivity

Bad thoughts in the presence of the Mother

The Mother’s different ways of speaking

The new manifestation

A new element: new possibilities

Greater number of child prodigies

Laws of Nature and the supramental

Logic of the unforeseen

Child prodigies: example of a child of eight

Creative writers; the hands of musicians

Prodigious children, prodigious men

10 October 1956

The supramental race—in a few centuries

Condition for new realisation

Everyone must follow his own path

Progress: no two paths alike

17 October 1956

Delight: the highest state

Delight and detachment

Quietude, mental and vital

Calm and strength

Experience and expression of experience

24 October 1956

Taking a new body

Different cases of incarnation

Departure of soul from body

31 October 1956

Manifestation of divine love

Deformation of Love by human consciousness

Experience and expression of experience

7 November 1956

Thoughts created by forces of universal Mind

Our own thought hardly exists

Idea: origin higher than mind

14 November 1956

The Synthesis of Yoga: effect of reading

Conquering the desire to appear good

Self-control and control of the life around

Power of mastery

Be a great yogi to be a good teacher

Organisation of the Ashram school

Elementary discipline of regularity

21 November 1956

“Knowings” and Knowledge

Reason: summit of man’s mental activities

“Willings” and the true will

Personal effort

First step to have knowledge

Relativity of medical knowledge

Mental gymnastics to make the mind supple

Spiritual life: traditional and in the Ashram

28 November 1956

Desire, ego, animal nature

Consciousness: a progressive state

Ananda: desireless state beyond enjoyings

Personal effort that is mental

Reason: when to disregard it

Reason and “reasons”

5 December 1956

Even and objectless ecstasy

Transform the animal

Individual personality and world-personality

Characteristic features of a world-personality

Expressing a universal state of consciousness

Ordered intuition

12 December 1956

Virtue of paradoxes

Nothing is impossible

The unfolding universe and the Eternal

Attention, concentration and effort

Capacity for growth almost unlimited

Why everything is not the same

Distinction between will and “willings”

Suggestions and formations

The vital world: adverse suggestions

19 December 1956

Preconceived mental ideas

Process of creation

Destructive power of bad thoughts

To be perfectly sincere

26 December 1956

Defeated victories

Change of consciousness

Experiences that indicate the road to take

Choice and preference

Diversity of the manifestation

Note on the Text