Contents

Jnana (Knowledge)—First Period of Commentaries (1958)

Jnana (Knowledge)

Knowledge and Wisdom: allied powers

“The truth seen in a distorted medium”

Truth compared to white light

Inspiration: a slender river of brightness

Inspiration, reason and the senses

“How to develop the capacity for inspiration?”

Best method to profit from Sri Aurobindo’s writings

Reason trembles before higher truths

Supramental revolution

Knowledge and work

Silence of perfect receptivity

Obstacles to realisation

Fear, doubt and scepticism

Nature’s way of progressing

Mind receives shock from aphorisms

Danger of abandoning reason

What men call knowledge

Appearances and “reversal of consciousness”

“How to have the experience?”

Intolerance of religions

Mechanism of intolerance

Experience, individual and universal

Relationships are like a mirror

True perfection in oneself

“How do we know what the soul sees?”

Mind and vital: obstacles to the soul

Hearing the soul

Only the soul can know the soul

What would make humanity progress most

“What is the mental personality?”

What Sri Aurobindo calls Immortality

Conditions for indefinite survival of body

Perfection of psychic personality and body

Physical culture

Sadhana of the body

You can prove anything with the mind

Supreme has a sense of humour

Best way to learn more

Grace and seeing

Jnana (Knowledge)—Second Period of Commentaries (1960–61)

Jnana (Knowledge)

“The miracles of the human reason”

Hallucination: term of Science

“Coincidence”

Hallucination and vision

Planes of the mind

Identification with Divine

Physical mind and knowledge of God

Idea of illusion is itself an illusion

World is real; perception of it is false

Does reason alone see things as ugly?

Relativity of beauty and ugliness

Beauty of the hideous

Forgiveness and the Divine

“God gave me a good blow”

Nothing and no one to forgive

Origin of misfortune

Wisdom and suffering

Everything happens by the Grace of the Lord

“To play with Krishna”

God as Torturer

War and evolution

Descent of Supermind and war

Divine and personal will

Purity of instinct and the mental ego

Progress and despair

Experience of a life of failure

The Atheist is God

Divine perfection and receiving blows

The blessing of misfortune

Christ and Krishna

Men cherish suffering and hatred

Existence of Brindavan and Krishna

Evolution and the death of Christ

Christ as Avatar

History and legend

Four great events in history

“The colloquy at Kurukshetra will yet liberate humanity”

Role of the Gospels

Existence of heaven and hell

Hell as a state of consciousness

Contradiction intensifies aspiration

Creation of falsehood on the mental plane

Role of logic and reason

Sri Aurobindo’s experience in prison

Conquest and transformation of the mind

“The beauty of the hideous”

Words and experience

Curing evil and ugliness

True collaboration

Love and transformation

Secret of the divine incarnation

Receptivity of divine love

Not a single sin that is not our sin

Collective human psychological consciousness

Sin is something not in its right place

Revolt is the feeling of an impotent will

Meaning of omnipotence

Hatred of the virtuous

Nature of self-deception

Anger is a deformation of vital power

Giving favourable explanations to all movements

Philanthropy and service of the Divine

Love of Divine and man

Religions and immortality

Physical immortality

Kali and supreme Realisation

Knowledge and debate

Proving what one feels to be true

The truly natural state for man

Mind and individualisation

The Mother’s memory of earthly paradise

Symbol of the tree of knowledge

First human forms

Evolution and the fall

Story of the serpent

Jehovah as the supreme Asura

Spoiling of earth’s atmosphere

Giving a beating to God

Nature of idols

Teaching of Sri Aurobindo and religion

Memory of past lives

Development of the individual

Experience of the Infinite

Folly is distorted mask of Truth

No absolute falsehood

“The destruction of a universe”

Beyond Nirvana and Existence

The weakness of God

Idea of “God the Creator”

Nothing other than God

The Divine Play

Ways of approaching the Divine

Cruelty as an expression of the Divine

Sadism and tamas

Ananda and cruelty

Pralayas of various universes

Equilibrium and perfection

Supermind puts things in their place

Sin and the ego

Jnana (Knowledge)—Third Period of Commentaries (1962–66)

Jnana (Knowledge)

Capacity to express the supramental world

Equality and the supramental

Two conditions for supramental realisation

Problem of physical transformation

Will of the Self

Supramental life and the mind

Individualisation

Widening the body

Occult creation of new body

Role of adverse forces in creation

Offering of the earth consciousness

Consciousness of supreme Love

Origin of Falsehood

Do not try to be among the pure

Thought and Truth

Seeing the Truth in its entirety

Mind always sees successively

Premonitory dreams

The subtle physical and the material plane

Seeing others in the subtle physical

Sources of vision

Universal mental vision

Sincerity and the power of prediction

Changing events in the subtle physical

Experiences of extended consciousness

Methods of developing subtle senses

Seeing at a distance

Wisdom and knowledge

Inadequacy of scientific and spiritual approach

Door to the total Knowledge

More than one Avatar needed for supramental realisation

The Mother’s vision of physical world

Four dimensional world is superficial

Destruction of Europe by a child

Aphorism contains true prediction

Knowledge by inspiration

Knowledge and transformation

Transformation of the body

Organs replaced by chakras

There is no error

A thing is and is not at the same time

Play of the Lord

Man makes play tragic

World of the ‘living’ and the ‘dead’

Worry and the play

Error and infinite possibility

Way to get out of tragedy

Dealing with the old consciousness

Physical presence of the Lord

Vibration that contains everything

God’s laughter

God never takes his works seriously

Virtue and perfection

Limitations of taking life seriously

Only way to make life perfect

Dissolving suffering and pain

Avoid people who take life seriously

We must learn how to play

What men call miracles

Sri Aurobindo performed miracles in the mind

What would be a true miracle?

Miracle belongs only to the finite world

Thirst for the marvellous

Miracles and aspiration

Nature of opposites

Opposition and progress

Bringing creation out of inertia

Pain is the touch of our Mother

Teaching the body to bear pain

The Mother’s experience of renunciation

Progress and the power of dissolution

Renunciation and self-centred consciousness

Rapture and power

Rapturous state of consciousness is dangerous

Perfect renunciation and satisfaction of desire

Vibrations of desire and the divine Will

Lack of receptivity and desire

Difference of vibratory quality

Physical is a field of vibrations

Response of cells to supreme Force

Perception of the totality of vibrations

Action, desire and the vibration of Will

Scriptures are diminution of experience

Truth and individual experience

Revelation is the memory of Truth

Revelation is always personal in form

Experience, idea and words

Explosion of truth-power

Understanding and Scriptures

Sun-consciousness and earth-consciousness

Truth-Consciousness and appearance of world

Only way to change the world

Consciousness of the Lord

Perfect sense of Oneness

“Relation of consciousness”

Intervention of the vibration of harmony

Action of the Truth-Consciousness

Falsehood replaced by Light

Vivekananda and Sannyasa

To be free from all attachment

Fear of being mistaken

Renunciation and elimination

Modern hyper-activity

Why the Ashram was created

Aspiration more intense in the outer world

Man needs extremes

Manifestation of divine Love

Power of pure Love

Aspire intensely, but without impatience

Haste in which men live

Sincere realisation

Narada and Janaka

Gods have no psychic being

Shiva will come with the supramental world

Man alone possesses a psychic being

Sri Aurobindo is a part of the Lord

Falsehood of the creation

Wonders of physical science and the soul

Science cannot predict the future

Power of the soul over Matter

Experience and understanding

Perceiving the new

The refusal to know

Power of silence

Acceptance of the apparent denial of Truth

Demand for the Divine to show his power

Vibration of hate and love are the same

Purity of the central vibration

Morality is a choice between distortions

“There is no end and no beginning”

“Memory of eternity”

Life of the earth

Consciousness and limits

Human mind needs to build a dwelling-place

“Error” of material world was indispensable

There is no manifestation without progress

Consciousness of the dead on earth

Seeing and hearing by consciousness

“Are you ready for anything?”

Consciousness of the body

Perfection of sight and hearing

Action of human will on the Mother’s body

An irresistable Power governing everything

Nature of Will from above

Resistance and divine Action

How the Force acts

Stopping the resistance

Nature of opinion

Action and opinion

Conditions for intervening in someone’s action

How opinions are formed

Jnana (Knowledge)—Fourth Period of Commentaries (1969)

Jnana (Knowledge)

Overcoming the laws of Nature

Psychic being and the laws of Nature

“The nature which exceeds the body”

The role of human aspiration and effort

Disappearance of all human moral notions

Titans are stronger than the gods

Suffering and delight

Pleasure and pain depend on inner attitude

Relationships and psychic contacts

Who is the superman?

Human ego and the superman

The qualities of the superman

Qualities needed for growth of being

Art reveals what Nature hides

Photography and modern art

The secret soul of Nature

Shakespeare, the universalist

Action by contrast and negation

Proof and coincidence

Refusal to learn

Material, immaterial and supramental consciousness

Mind and creation

Sri Aurobindo: “the last Avatar”

Worship of gods and goddesses

Knowledge and delight

“Intellectual culture”

Out of man the superman emerges

Law and freedom

Self-imposed discipline

The law of sin and virtue

Law and progress

Ignorance and the Divine goal

The symbol of the Cross in Yoga

Failure of Christ and Mahomed

Freedom, desire, ignorance and egoism

The human way of understanding

Meaning of failure

The perfect cosmic vision

The prison is the ego

To live for God

Experiencing eternity

The less you speak the better

Perfection and harmony

Consciousness beyond good and bad

Vice and virtue used for evolution

Attitude towards poverty

Individual classed according to his nature

Poverty and society

Ideal of the Ashram and Auroville

Conditions for happiness

Effective remedy for human egoism

Messages to man

Conditions for greatest progress of humanity

The first step of the superman

Karma (Works)—Fourth Period of Commentaries (1969–70)

Escape from the consequences of past errors

Escape from evil and suffering

Ego and beatitude

Self-forgetfulness and self-giving

Anger and vengeance

Only tragedy: failure to find one’s soul

Tragedy and evolution

Nature of genius

Inspiration and madness

Mastering and conquering violence

Unity of mankind

Qualities of a converted Asura

Altruism can kill the soul

God’s command to slay

Instruments and prisons of the soul

Humanity advances by great and noble failures

Atheism and religion

God and temptation

Giving oneself completely to the Divine

Becoming conscious of the Divine Will

Only choice to be made

God is circling about

“Blind faith”

Reason, faith and instinct

Goal of the spiritual life

Perceiving the Divine Command

Motives for action

Persistence in effort

Truth is a difficult conquest

Value of asceticism

Soul and action

Total consecration to the Divine

Soul and the alleviation of suffering

Purity and action

Sorrow and evolution

Man’s possibility of union with the Supreme

To radiate love in all circumstances

Human judgments

Three varieties of self-deceit

World is capable of manifesting the Divine

Beauty and ugliness

Living according to the Truth

Women and spirituality

Asceticism and action in the world

God laughed at Shankara

Essential qualities develop through suffering

Attitude towards transformation

Wisdom lies in the union of opposites

All carry in their souls the divine end

Everything exists from all eternity

The will of Brahman

Anarchic state: true divine state of man

Successful communism

Vedanta and communism

“Freedom, equality, brotherhood,” and the ego

Perfection of the individual and society

Greatness of an action

National and human unity

Sri Aurobindo’s work and human unity

Artist: imitator and creator

The Divine is beyond good and evil

Reaction perfects and hastens progress

Democracy, Socialism and Anarchism

All human governments are a falsehood

Perfection of soul and outer environment

True saintliness

Knowing God’s will

“The soul that is naked and unashamed”

Truth is above all opposites

True governor of humanity

Effects of the supramental consciousness

India and religious conventions

Sincerity: condition for hearing the Lord

Grace leads whatever you do

Death and the ego

“Someone who belongs to the Divine”

Liberation from the ego

Excess in any direction is a violence

Medicines and natural health

The barbarism of modern humanity

Disease and Medical Science

Disease and the mind

The healing power of Grace

The role of mind and faith in medicine

Divine health and disease

Mental faith in drugs

Medicine and the body

Bhakti (Devotion)—Fourth Period of Commentaries (1969–70)

Bhakti (Devotion)

Knowing God as a woman

To commit adultery with God

The joy of being God’s enemy

“The four stages of pain”

Love for only the Divine

Love for Krishna and Kali

Enjoying Nature with the soul

God and the world

Wisdom: capacity to admit all theories

The love of Krishna

Sri Aurobindo reveals the secret of existence

Curing jealousy

The Divine’s way of dealing with virtue

The world will manifest divine joy

The mind and God

Man must accept all as Grace

Beware of all mental constructions

The Divine accepts all sincere aspiration

Delight may be intolerable for humans

The seven beatitudes of life

Conditions for the world becoming heaven

Falsehood of ordinary human consciousness

Krishna stealing the robes of the Gopis

Krishna and sin

Realising true Unity

Keeping the Divine contact in all circumstances

Ways of seeing God

Value of suffering and pain

Pain: the training of delight

One true wisdom

Role of suffering and pain

Divine Love needed in our sorrowful age

Science, the God-lover and God-knower

To be able to laugh at this world

Human science and occultism

The Mother’s experience concerning transformation of the body

True way to understand the Scriptures

Service to the Divine

Doing good to human beings

Liberation from all conventional morality

Weakness and the Divine

The Titan’s four strides to immortality

Understanding the universe

Perceiving the Divine

Suffering and bliss

The soul, mind and pain

Compassion and the Divine Consciousness

Compassion and pity

Constancy in effort and faith

Love, human and divine

“Divine mind”

One drop of true knowledge can create a revolution

The essence and potency of Maya

Seeing God in Huxley and Haeckel

Seeing God in the torturer and the slayer

Note on the Text