The spiritual life reveals the one essence in all, but reveals too its infinite diversity; it works for diversity in oneness and for perfection in that diversity. True spirituality is not to renounce life, but to make life perfect with the Divine Perfection. This is what India must show to the world now.

For spiritual rebirth means the constant throwing away of our previous associations and circumstances and proceeding to live as if at each virgin moment we were starting life a new…To give you an idea of the final height of spiritual rebirth, I may say that there can be a constant experience of the whole universe actually disappearing at every instant and being at every instant newly created.

Why Avatars Married

When Sri Aurobindo was once asked by Nirodbaran: why did they choose married life as they knew it as an obstacle to spirituality or not? Sri Aurobindo replied: Do you think that Buddha or Confucius or myself were born with a pre-vision that they or I would take to the spiritual life? So long as one is in the ordinary consciousness, one lives the ordinary life — when the awakening and the new consciousness come, one leaves it — nothing puzzling in that.

Significance of Marriage

Q. Sweet Mother, What is the true significance of marriage?

The Mother: It has hardly any true significance — it is a social custom for the perpetuation of the species.

10 May 1963

— — — — — — — — — — -

The Mother: … Of course the whole idea of marriage is amusing because I consider the thing childish.

You know in Auroville there will be no marriages. If a man and a woman love each other and want to live together they may do so without any ceremony. If they want to separate they can also do so freely. Why should people be compelled to stay together when they have ceased to love each other?

A lot of crimes would be prevented if people were free in this respect. They would not have to hide things from one another or even commit crimes to be separated. Of course, if they truly love each other they will continue to live together always naturally, without being forced to do so by any law. That is why this ceremony and ritual of marriage is so childish.

Children born in Auroville will have no family name. They will have just the first name.

15 June 1968

Sri Aurobindo’s Views on Marriage

Sri Aurobindo: As to the question of marriage in general, we do not consider it advisable for one who desires to come to the spiritual life. Marriage means usually any amount of trouble, heavy burdens, a bondage to the worldly life and great difficulties in the way of single-minded spiritual endeavour. Its only natural purpose would be, if the sexual trend was impossible to conquer, to give it a restricted and controlled satisfaction. I do not see in what way it could help you to keep the mind under control and subjugation; a restless mind can only be quieted from within.

Letters On Yoga Vol. IV 543

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

(Dilip Kumar Roy wrote a letter to Sri Aurobindo asking certain questions regarding marriage. These are the answers of Sri Aurobindo

NOVEMBER 1924

Sri Aurobindo: No cut and dry answer can be given to such questions as that will convey a wrong impression of this very complex and complicated subject. A solution is hardly possible in a few words. It depends, so Sri Aurobindo tells you something in a general way.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

D wrote a letter to M, a disciple, on 14–11–1924. It was meant to be read to Sri Aurobindo.

D had requested Sri Aurobindo to give his views on marriage, particularly as he intended taking up the yoga in future. He wanted to know what attitude a person intending to take up the highest spiritual life should adopt towards marriage. D. admitted that he felt sex-attraction and did not want to resort merely to repression.

Sri Aurobindo: It is rather a delicate matter to answer. Perhaps the following points may be offered to him.

1. What is ordinarily known as sex-attraction is mainly a pull on the vital and physical planes between man and woman. This attraction, generally, gets mixed up with emotions and sentiments and is almost always mistaken for love, or psychic relation.

For those who want to give up life altogether — that is to say, for sannyasins etc. — marriage in the ordinary sense is out of the question. Because marriage is the one thing that strongly fixes down a person to life. Woman by nature has the strongest tendency to stick to life. She, gene rally, pulls down the man and fixes him to life. This is especially intended by nature for the continuance of the race and life.

2. Secondly, there is a meeting together of the psychic of the man and of the woman, — a union of soul with soul. This, of course, is difficult to get. The first point refers to the ordinary life in the vital and the physical planes.

In the higher life there are two types, two gradations, of meeting of man and woman. One is the psychic union, the other is the spiritual.

The man of high idealism — the poet, the artist, has a developed psychic being. In the ordinary man, it is not developed. For a psychically developed man to get a woman of the right type is rather difficult. But if such a union could come about it would be a great help to both of them.

Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, p.124, 25 November 1924

Sri Aurobindo: “This is not a yoga of renunciation in the sense that one has not to reject life or the world externally. But that does not mean that one has to give room to lower forces and allow them full play in their lower forms.

“This is a yoga of rising into the Divine Nature from the lower nature. What that higher Nature is you will understand afterwards. You have to become fit for it. You can now see your lower nature; especially the vital play of Kama (lust) and Krodha (anger) etc — is essentially the Dharma — the functioning — of the animal man. You have to rise into the Divine Nature by rejecting the lower nature. How can you get the Divine Nature unless you conquer the nature of the animal-man in you? The first step has been given to you: you must learn to separate yourself as the Purusha, and look unmoved at all the play of nature in you. You must externalise the play and see all its actions as outside yourself. You ought not to allow any mental justification for the play of the lower forces of the vital beings. The Shuddhi — purification — necessary in this yoga cannot be attained with the forces of lust and anger and there is no question of harbouring them.”

Then Sri Aurobindo continued :

“In this matter, you must resort to simple thinking and simple action, leaving all mental complications and Shastric injunctions. You must not allow the intellect to play with them. Your ideas about Spastic injunctions are nothing else but justifications. Really it is the lower play of the vital being. In this rejection of the lower nature you ought to be ever alert — vigilant.

· The ideal relation between man and woman in this yoga you cannot at present understand. You have, first, to make yourself fit for it. Your own ideas of married life and Shastra etc. are dangerous and if you follow these ideas there is every chance of your fall from the yoga. All of them are mental constructions. The first thing in a case where both man and woman are aspirants is to help each other in Sadhana, the spiritual effort. They must exchange their forces and help each other to rise into the Higher Consciousness.

· Secondly, there is the question of love. What most People call ‘love’ is a superficial thing and mostly bound up with the vital craving of lust. That has to be completely rejected.

There is a relation deeper than that: it is of the Soul. That relation comes from within by itself. It manifests itself in both as an ideal oneness — oneness in mind, oneness of the soul, oneness of self. That relation is Shanta, full of peace, wide, pure — pavitra. In it there is no trace of vital lust and physical craving. There is also possible a relation of Purusha and Shakti between man and woman. But that relation is not social, it is not ordinary. Because one is married to a certain woman it does not follow that his wife is necessarily his Shakti.

You must remove the misunderstanding from your mind about your wife that she does not love you, etc. She has an aspiration for the yoga and therefore she wants to reject all the lower play of nature from herself and from you. You ought not to press her or induce her to fall from the path of yoga. If you can’t control yourself you should live separately and fight your nature.

He has, first, to try to understand his own nature and get rid of egoistic motives from his actions and of desires from the vital being. He must try to acquire Samata — equality and Sattwic balance. That is to say, he should reject lower motives and learn to act from higher motives and with a Sattwic temperament. All our actions proceed from a certain inner attitude and he has to see whether he can change the motive of desire for a higher one.

Are Marriages Divine?

There was a reference to a “divine marriage” that was to be celebrated at Chandernagore. A letter and a photograph were sent for Sri Aurobindo’s approval.

Sri Aurobindo : I refuse to have anything to do with the matter. It is the girl who must choose her husband, and not I.

I can only add that marriages, generally, are not divine; and when they are divine no arrangements are necessary.”

Disciple: Some people are trying to drag these things into the Supermind; but they must themselves get into the Supermind before they can drag others into it.

Sri Aurobindo: If they were in the Supramental, then the question would not arise, as they would never try to drag anyone into it.

So long as these relations are not understood and experienced by you another possible relation is that of friends. That is to say, you ought to live with your wife just as you would with a friend who has the same aim of life, without any other relation than that of friendship.

For a person who aspires for some kind of higher life it is common, especially for those who have a strong vital being, to have a tendency for vital enjoyment, and vital relation with a woman. Sri Aurobindo has no objection to this as an experience and perception. Only, in a Yogi’s life these have to be transformed into the movements of the Higher Nature.

Will it be Mother’s Will?

The Mother: If there is, somewhere in some part of your being, still the need for human affection and love, it is better to go through the experience of life; it is the best preparation for Yoga. CWM — 14

The Mother told me, “People come and ask me for blessings, for so many things, they want to pass their examinations, they want to get a job, they.re going on a journey, this thing, that thing, for so many things they come and ask my blessings — I give blessings, but for only one thing: that is, the growth of the spirit”. To greaten the spirit — this is the only boon we should demand. She said: “That’s the only thing that interests me in anybody — the growth of the spirit”. And she said, “Sometimes it’s a bit dangerous to ask blessings for a marriage”. She said, “Sometimes my blessings can break up a marriage, so be careful when you ask me for blessings for marriages”. Mother had quite a good sense of humour you know — both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

— — — — — —

My blessings are very dangerous. They cannot be for this one or for that one or against this person or against that thing. It is for… or, well, I will put it in a mystic way:

It is for the Will of the Lord to be done, with full force and power. So it is not necessary that there should always be a success. There might be a failure also, if such is the Will of the Lord. And the Will is for the progress, I mean the inner progress. So whatever will happen will be for the best.

Ref : Words of The Mother Vol I

Is Marriage a Terrible Bondage?

Q. My dear mother, No, I cannot do all those things. Why did you think that? Is there any special reason? Will you tell me one thing: why are you now so far away from me?

The Mother: My dear child, I don’t know at all what things you mean. All I told you was that to develop your artistic faculties you are much better off here than anywhere else. I added that only if you wanted to marry would you have to leave the Ashram.

But you know that I never advise anyone to marry; it is a terrible bondage.

I have never thought that you really wanted to marry, but now and then it is good that I remind you that you are free and that it is for you to make the decision; that’s all.

I don’t feel that you are far from me; for me you are always in my arms. So if you feel that you are far away, it is a false feeling which does not conform to the truth.

Love from your mother. — 28 July 1937

No Concept Called — Suitable Partner / Complimentary Soul Mate

Sri Aurobindo: For a sadhak the suitable partner does not exist — and any “partner” would create a barrier between him and the Divine. A companion, not of the same sex, is a different matter.

Sri Aurobindo: The first [question] was about a complementary soul and marriage. The answer is easy to give; the way of the spiritual life lies for you in one direction and marriage lies in quite another and opposite. All talk about a complementary soul is a camouflage with which the mind tries to cover the sentimental, sensational and physical wants of the lower vital nature. It is that vital nature in you which puts the question and would like an answer reconciling its desires and demands with the call of the true soul in you. But it must not expect a sanction for any such incongruous reconciliation from here. The way of the supramental Yoga is clear; it lies not through any concession to these things, — not, in your case, through the satisfaction, under a spiritual cover if possible, of its craving for the comforts and gratifications of a domestic and conjugal life and the enjoyment of the ordinary emotional desires and physical passions, but through the purification and transformation of the forces which these movements pervert and misuse. Not these human and animal demands, but the divine Ananda which is above and beyond them and which the indulgence of these degraded forms would prevent from descending, is the great thing that the aspiration of the vital being must demand in the sadhaka.

Letters on Yoga — Vol. IV , pg. 309

Sri Aurobindo: There is a love in which the emotion is turned towards the Divine in an increasing receptivity and growing union. What it receives from the Divine it pours out on others, but freely without demanding a return — if you are capable of that, then that is the highest and most satisfying way to love.

Sri Aurobindo (SABCL 23:814)

True Relationship

Sri Aurobindo: An inner (soul) relation means that one feels the Mother’s presence, is turned to her at all times, is aware of her force moving, guiding, helping, is full of love for her and always feels a great nearness whether one is physically near her or not — this relation takes up the mind, vital and inner physical till one feels one’s mind close to the Mother’s mind, one’s vital in harmony with hers, one’s very physical consciousness full of her. These are all the elements of the inner union, not only in the spirit and self but in the nature.

Sri Aurobindo: For the spiritual life does not at all rest on the external physical relations; it is the Divine alone with whom one has then to do.

The inner being turned to the Divine naturally draws away from old vital relations and outer movements and contacts till it can bring a new consciousness into the external being.

Sri Aurobindo (SABCL 23:813)

Personal Relations in Yoga

Personal relation is not a part of the Yoga. When one has the union with the Divine, then only can there be a true spiritual relation with others.

A personal relation is formed when there is an exclusive mutual looking to each other. The rule about personal relations in this Yoga is this:

(1) All personal relations to disappear in the single relation between the sadhaka and the Divine;

(2) All personal (psychic-spiritual) relations to proceed from the Divine Mother, determined by her, and to be part of the single relation with the Divine Mother. In so far as it keeps to this double rule and admits no physical indulgence or vital deformation or mixture, a personal relation can be there. But since as yet the Supramental has not taken possession but is only descending and there is still

struggle in the vital and physical levels, there must be a great carefulness such as would not be necessary if the supramental transformation were already there. Both have to be in direct relation with the Mother and in a total dependence on her and to see that that remains and that nothing diminishes its totality or cuts across it in the least degree.

I don’t think it is much use writing about personal relations in the true spiritual life (which does not yet exist here). None would understand it except as a form of words. Only three points —

(1) Its very base would have to be spiritual and psychic and not vital. The vital would be there but as an instrument only.

(2) It would be a relation flowing from the higher Truth, not continued from the lower Ignorance.

(3) It would not be impersonal in the sense of being colourless, but whatever colours were there would not be the egoistic and muddy colours of the present relations.

The Yoga cannot be done if equality is not established. Personal relations must be founded on the relation with the Divine in himself and the Divine in all and they must not be “ties” to pull one down and keep bound to the lower nature but part of the higher unity.

The natural feeling of one sadhak to another should be kindliness and good feeling to all and the friendliness which is natural or ought to be so between all who follow the same spiritual aim, but personal attachment is supposed to be overcome, as all attachments of the vital must be. Personal relations can exist if they are founded on the spiritual consciousness or help towards it, but nothing that holds one back or turns one away from.

Need of Marriage as an Institution

Nirodbaran: Marriage as an institution, the Mother felt, belongs to the old world, where one gets stuck in a system and has to remain in it forever. She said that two people can live together as long as they are bound by higher ideas, and if the bond between them weakens, they can separate instead of continuing to stay together and suffering.

Of course, marriage is getting out of fashion; you know that very well by now. And we understand that, in Auroville (I’m not very certain whether it is true or not), there will be no marriages.

Sri Aurobindo once jocularly equated Politics with Marriage:

“Politics, as I was saying, is a very dirty affair — it is like marriage, an unfortunate necessity”.

Marriage as a Part of Society

The Question is: How long should we be part of the Society and follow its dictates?

We all live in a society bound by moral laws and social customs from ages.

Nirodbaran wrote: Had Buddha adhered to moral rules, he could not have left the world, because moral rules will bind you to the laws of society. He would have had to be King, and look after his wife and children and his subjects. That would be moral. So is the case, I suppose, with Sri Aurobindo. He could not have left his family; neither could I have. I could not have left my poor old mother behind, and it doesn’t concern you so much because you have been brought here by your own parents. So that is moral law. When you belong to society, you have to obey the rules of the society. If your parents have brought you up, fed you and bred you and married you off, for good or for ill, you have to obey those rules. This is moral law. You can break the moral laws only when you have another call from above — the spiritual.

Responding to this higher call, Buddha left the world, for the good of the world, and Sri Aurobindo left the world for the sake of a greater world. Moral laws can be ignored only when the spiritual call is there, not otherwise. So this is the call of the spirit ! The call of the spirit does not obey this moral law because it is a higher law; it is the law of God, whereas the moral laws are the laws of man.

In countries like Japan, Moral rules are more prevalent, where there’s no chance of the tiny whispering voice within being heard. So in order to be able to lead the spiritual life, you have to break some of the moral rules — the moral barriers. But so long as you don’t hear that voice, you have to obey the moral law. In our land here, you see, we have become spiritual. Moral laws are not for us brothers. The first thing we have established in our spiritual life is: freedom.

Is Family System — Redundant or Required?

Is Family System Redundant Now?

Q.1. Do You consider this dissolution of the family system indispensable only for the few exceptional individuals who follow some high mental or spiritual ideal or also for the general humanity?

The Mother: Yes, only for the few exceptional individuals who follow some high mental or spiritual ideal.

Q.2. If You advocate a complete dissolution of the family system for the entire humanity, do You consider it advisable for it to happen even before the new process of birth by direct materialisation has been normalised on earth?

The Mother: More liberty and plasticity in the system are advisable. Fixed rules are harmful to evolution.

Q.3. Do You also consider the abolition of the marriage system as equally indispensable as the abolition of the family system for the higher development of humanity? So long as the new process of birth has not been normalised, would not the present manner of sexual procreation continue? In that case, would not some form of marriage relationship be necessary?

The Mother: Marriage will always take place, but legal ceremonies must not be enforced, to avoid illegality.

Q.4. So long as the new process of birth has not been normalised and the children continue to be born through the present sexual process, is not the family life and atmosphere best suited to their upbringing, especially in their early formative years? The other alternative is to provide for their care and upbringing through some other agency, like the State-nurseries, as was advocated by some Communist thinkers. But this view has not found many supporters, for it has been realised that the tender and affectionate care which the young children need could best be provided only in the intimate atmosphere of the family home by the parents. If this is true, then for the sake of the young children at least, would not the family be necessary, until the new method of birth becomes possible and normal in future?

The Mother: Here also both things must be equally admitted and practised. There are many cases in which it would be a blessing for the baby to be separated from his parents.

A minimum of rules.

A maximum of freedom.

All possibilities must have equal scope for manifestation, then humanity will progress more rapidly. 21 July 1960

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

There was reference made to Sri Aurobindo about the marriage of a girl who was the sister of a Disciple.

Make Lifelong Friendship With Divine Than Humans

The Mother:

Friendship with the Divine: delicate, attentive and faithful, ever ready to respond to the smallest appeal.

Closeness to the Divine will always grow with the growth of consciousness, equanimity and love.

Child, you say to me, “To love me is to do what I want.” But I say to you that for the Divine to love truly is to do what is best for the one He loves.

May 1946

Each and every one, when he turns to the Divine, demands that He should do for him exactly what he asks. Whereas the Divine does for each one what is best for him from all points of view. But man, in his ignorance and blindness, revolts against the Divine when his desire is not satisfied, and says to Him, “You do not love me.” 28 May 1946

“The streams of heaven shall murmur in her laugh.” Savitri p. 346

Sri Aurobindo (SABCL 23:814)

Human Love and Divine Love

The Mother: All the forms that love has taken in the human consciousness on earth are but awkward attempts, deformed and incomplete, to find once again true Love.

23 March 1967

The Mother: The need for human love, to the extent that it is not merely in obedience to the instinct of Nature or to a vital attraction, is the need to have a Divine for oneself alone, at one’s entire and exclusive disposal, a Divine who is one’s personal property and to whom one gives oneself totally only if the gift is reciprocated. Instead of enlarging oneself to the size of the Divine and having a love as vast as the universe, one tries to reduce the Divine to one’s own size and have His love for oneself alone. Therefore, human love is not a need of the soul, but rather a concession it makes for a time to the ego.

One thing only I can tell you that whatever the sincerity, simplicity and purity of the relation between two human beings, it shuts them off more or less from the direct divine force and help and limits their strength, light and power only to the sum of their potentialities.

You lose a great part of your strength, energy and capacity due to your so-called human love. It is a great hindrance in your progress.

The Mother (CWM 14:120)

The Mother: It is not through human love that one can learn to love the Divine, for the love is of quite a different nature. First learn to give yourself sincerely to the Divine and then the joy of love will come afterwards. By giving yourself sincerely all your difficulties will disappear.

28 December 1955

The Mother: I was telling you not to be sad because of passing friendships and unlasting loves — -that you can always take refuge on my lap and feel at home in my arms. The Divine is the sure friend who never fails, the Power, the Support, the Guide. The Divine is the Light which scatters darkness, the conqueror who assures the victory. Our best friend is he who loved us in the best of ourselves and yet does not ask us to be other than we are. There is no better way to become friends than to laugh together.

The Mother: Human love is shallow. A man and a woman find real love once in a lifetime if they are fortunate, for the majority it is only a dream eternally out of reach. — The Mother.

Mother has said that the union of physical existences and material interests, the sharing of defeats and victories, is the very basis of marriage; yet that is not enough. Being united in feelings, having the same tastes and pleasures, vibrating in a common response to the same things, all this is good and necessary; but this is not enough either. To be one in sentiments and affections, to be jointly proof against all shocks of life, to be able to experience happiness together under all circumstances, all this is very necessary; yet this too is not enough. As with the physical, the emotional and the sentimental spheres of life, to accomplish the union of minds, thoughts and intellectual preoccupations, that is splendid, yet even this is not the seal and sanction of integral success in marriage. What, then, is the ultimate secret of success?

In Yoga the proper means is to train the mind and vital to meet women without thought of sex, to look on them as sadhaks and human beings only, not as objects of sexual possession and enjoyment.

The limitations of human love in its many forms and the quality of divine love as the culmination and crystallisation of human love:

The Mother:.. .the best way when love comes, in whatever form it may be, is to try and pierce through its outer appearance and find the divine principle which is behind and which gives it existence. Naturally, it is mil of snares and difficulties, but it is more effective. That is to say, instead of ceasing to love because one loves wrongly, one must cease to love wrongly and want to love well. Instead of drying up the veins of love, it would be wiser to purify them:

…one must learn how to love better: to love with devotion, with self-giving, self-abnegation, and to struggle, not against love itself, but against its distorted forms…. Not to want to possess, dominate…. Simply to be happy to love, nothing more. And from the purer forms of human love, it should be a natural movement towards divine love, whether it be manifested in a personal being (an avatar, for example) or whether it is unmanifested and impersonal. In a later conversation, the Mother described the quintessence of this divine love, how difficult it is to realise, and yet how needful:

This Divine Love which animates all things, penetrates all, upbears all and leads all towards progress and an ascent to the Divine, is not felt, not perceived by the human consciousness, and that even to the extent the human being does perceive it, he finds it difficult to bear not only to contain it, but be able to tolerate it… for its power in its purity, its intensity in its purity, are of too strong a kind to be endured by human nature…. …a human being, unless he raises himself to the divine heights, is incapable of receiving, appreciating and knowing what divine Love is.

My love is not a hunger of the heart,

My love is not a craving of the flesh;

It came to me from God, to God returns.

Even in all that life and man have marred,

A whisper of divinity still is heard,

A breath is felt from the eternal spheres.

Sri Aurobindo: Human affection is obviously unreliable because it is so much based upon selfishness and desire; it is a flame of the ego sometimes turbid and misty, sometimes more clear and brightly coloured — sometimes tamasic based on instinct and habit, sometimes rajasic and fed by passion or the cry for vital interchange, sometimes more sattwic and trying to be or look to itself disinterested. But fundamentally it depends on a personal need or a return of some kind inward or outward and when the need is not satisfied or the return ceases or is not given, it most often diminishes or dies or exists only as a tepid or troubled remnant of habit from the past or else turns for satisfaction elsewhere. The more intense it is, the more it is apt to be troubled by tumults, clashes, quarrels, egoistic disturbances of all kinds, selfishness, exactions, lapses even to rage and hatred, ruptures. It is not that these affections cannot last — tamasic instinctive affections last because of habit in spite of everything dividing the persons, e.g. certain family affections; rajasic affections can last sometimes in spite of all disturbances and incompatibilities and furious ruptures because one has a vital need of the other and clings because of that or because both have that need and are constantly separating to return and returning to separate or proceeding from quarrel to reconciliation and from reconciliation to quarrel; sattwic affections last very often from duty to the ideal or with some other support though they may lose their keenness or intensity or brightness. But the true reliability is there only when the psychic element in human affections becomes strong enough to colour or dominate the rest. For that reason friendship is or rather can oftenest be the most durable of the human affections because there there is less interference of the vital and even though a flame of the ego it can be a quiet and pure fire giving always its warmth and light. Nevertheless reliable friendship is almost always with a very few; to have a horde of loving, unselfishly faithful friends is a phenomenon so rare that it can be safely taken as an illusion . . . .
In any case human affection whatever its value has its place, because through it the psychic being gets the emotional experiences it needs until it is ready to prefer the true to the apparent, the perfect to the imperfect, the divine to the human. As the consciousness has to rise to the higher level so the activities of the heart also have to rise to that higher level and change their basis and character. Yoga is the founding of all life and consciousness in the Divine, so also love and affection must be rooted in the Divine and a spiritual and psychic oneness in the Divine must be their foundation — to reach the Divine first leaving other things aside or to seek the Divine alone is the straight road towards that change. That means no attachment — it need not mean turning affection into disaffection or chill indifference.

Sri Aurobindo (SABCL 23:808–809)

Divine Love

In the Divine’s love we always find all support and all consolation.

7 May 1954

When you reach the contact with the Divine’s love you see this love in everything and all circumstances.

20 July 1954

The Divine’s love and knowledge must always govern our thoughts and actions.

24 July 1954

May the Divine’s love dwell as the sovereign Master of our hearts and the Divine’s knowledge never leave our thoughts.

29 October 1954

The Divine’s love can generate in all peace and the satisfaction that comes from benevolence.

27 November 1954

The Divine’s love is an eternal truth.

21 July 1955

The Divine Love is the essence of Truth and cannot be affected by human confusions.

When Consciousness separated from its Origin and became Inconscience, the Origin emanated Love to reawaken Consciousness from the depth of the Inconscience and bring it back into touch with its Origin.

118

It may be said that at its origin love is the supreme power of attraction which awakens, in response, the irresistible need of an absolute self-giving; they are the two poles of the urge towards complete fusion.

No other movement could, better and more surely than this, throw a bridge across the abyss dug by the sense of separation that comes from the formation of the individual. It was necessary to bring back to itself what had been projected into space without destroying for this purpose the universe created thus.

That is why love sprang up, the irresistible power of union.

When the baker wants to make the dough of his bread rise, he puts some leaven into it, and it is from within that the transformation takes place.

When the Divine wanted to rouse Matter, awaken it and make it rise towards God, He threw Himself into Matter under the form of love, and it is from within that the transformation takes place.

So it is by living from within an organisation that one can help it to become enlightened and rise towards the Truth.

17 January 1965

Consciousness is a state and a power. Love is a force and an action.

The Divine has an equal love for all human beings, but the obscurity of consciousness of most men prevents them from perceiving this divine love.

Truth is wonderful. It is in our perception that it is distorted.

26 November 1971

119

Only he who loves can recognise love. Those who are incapable of giving themselves in a sincere love, will never recognise love anywhere, and the more the love is divine, that is to say, unselfish, the less they can recognise it.

To become conscious of the Divine Love, all other love must be abandoned.

Choosing between Human Love and Divine Love?

(Those who are drawn to a spiritual life are expected to survive by Divine Love but, being human, they also possess a residual desire for human love. This creates a quandary where one has to chose between two extremes. In this passage, the Mother points out that the best way to resolve this dilemma is to go behind the appearance of human love and transmute it — to make it pure and impersonal — and grow out of it.)

Q. It is said that to become conscious of Divine Love all other love has to be abandoned. What is the best way of rejecting the other love which clings so obstinately [laughter] and does not easily leave us?

The Mother: To go through it. To go through, to see what is behind it, not to stop at the appearance, not to be satisfied with the outer form, to look for the principle which is behind this love, and not be content until one has found the *origin* of the feeling in oneself. Then the outer form will crumble of itself and you will be in contact with the divine Love which is behind all things.

That is the best way. To want to get rid of the one in order to find the other is very difficult. It is almost impossible. For human nature is so limited, so full of contradictions and so exclusive in its movements that if one wants to reject love in its lower form, that is to say, human love as human beings experience it, if one makes an inner effort to reject it, one usually rejects the entire capacity of feeling love and becomes like a stone. And then sometimes one has to wait for years or centuries before there is a reawakening in oneself of the capacity to receive and manifest love.

Therefore, the best way when love comes, in whatever form it may be, is to try and pierce through its outer appearance and find the divine principle which is behind and which gives it existence. Naturally, it is full of snares and difficulties, but it is more effective. That is to say, instead of ceasing to love because one loves wrongly, one must cease to love wrongly and want to love well.

For instance, love between human beings, in all its forms, the love of parents for children, of children for parents, of brothers and sisters, of friends and lovers, is all tainted with ignorance, selfishness and all the other defects which are man’s ordinary drawbacks; so instead of completely ceasing to love — which, besides, is very difficult as Sri Aurobindo says, which would simply dry up the heart and serve no end — one must learn how to love better: to love with devotion, self-giving, self-abnegation, and to struggle, not against love itself, but against its distorted forms: against all forms of monopolising, of attachment, possessiveness, jealousy, and all the feelings which accompany these main movements. Not to want to possess, to dominate; and not to want to impose one’s will, one’s whims, one’s desires; not to want to take, to receive, but to give; not to insist on the other’s response, but be content with one’s own love; not to seek one’s personal interest and joy and the fulfilment of one’s personal desire, but to be satisfied with the giving of one’s love and affection; and not to ask for any response. Simply to be happy to love, nothing more.

If you do that, you have taken a great stride forward and can, through this attitude, gradually advance farther in the feeling itself, and realise one day that love is not something personal, that love is a universal divine feeling which manifests through you more or less finely, but which in its essence is something divine.

The first step is to stop being selfish. For everyone, it is the same thing, not only for those who want to do yoga but also in ordinary life: if one wants to know how to love, one must not love oneself first and above all selfishly; one must give oneself to the object of love without exacting anything in return. This discipline is elementary in order to surmount oneself and lead a life which is not altogether gross.

As for yoga, we may add something else: it is as I said in the beginning, the will to pierce through this limited and human form of love and discover the principle of divine Love which is behind it. Then one is sure to get a result. This is better than drying up one’s heart. It is perhaps a little more difficult but it is better in every way, for like this, instead of egoistically making others suffer, well, one may leave them quiet in their own movement and only make an effort to transform oneself without imposing one’s will on others, which even in ordinary life is a step towards something higher and a little more harmonious.

Above all, seek refuge in Divine Love alone.

Finally, there is one thing which must be learned in life (and it is a difficult lesson for sure) and that is to understand that all human beings are imperfect. As long as one relies on the love of others, one risks disappointment and more at some future stage. One has to firmly set anchor in the Divine alone as the Mother points out here.

There is one thing you must learn, never to rely on anyone or anything whatever except the Divine. For if you lean upon anyone for support, that support will break, you may be sure of that. From the minute you start doing yoga (I always speak of those who do yoga, I do not speak about ordinary life), for those who do yoga, to depend upon someone else is like wanting to transform that person into a representative of the Divine Force; now you may be sure there is not one in a hundred million who can carry the weight: he will break immediately. . . .Never seek a support elsewhere than in the Divine. Never seek satisfaction elsewhere than in the Divine. Never seek the satisfaction of your needs in anyone else except the Divine — never, for anything at all. All your needs can be satisfied only by the Divine. All your weaknesses can be borne and healed only by the Divine. He alone is capable of giving you what you need in everything, always, and if you try to find any satisfaction or support or help or joy or… heaven knows what, in anyone else, you will always fall on your nose one day, and that always hurts, sometimes even hurts very much.”

The Mother: Certainly one has the right to love and true love carries in itself its joy, but unhappily human beings are egoistic and immediately mix with their love the desire to be loved in return, and this desire is contrary to spiritual truth and the cause of passions and sufferings.

The one you love must have the right of freedom in her feelings and if you want the truth you must understand this right and accept it. Otherwise there will be no end to your miseries. This is an occasion to surmount your egoism and to open to the true life. If you decide to make this effort my help will be with you.

Vol 14, CWM

At first one loves only when one is loved.

Next, one loves spontaneously, but one wants to be loved in return.

Then one loves even if one is not loved, but one still wants one’s love to be accepted.

And finally one loves purely and simply, without any other need or joy than that of loving.

15 April 1966, Vol 14, CWM

Love is not sexual intercourse.

Love is not vital attraction and interchange.

Love is not the heart’s hunger for affection.

Love is a mighty vibration coming straight from the One, and only the very pure and very strong are capable of receiving and manifesting it.

To be pure is to be open only to the Supreme’s influence and to no other.

Vol 14, CWM

The Mother: I may add that in all human relations there is always such a coating of vital attractions and impulses over what can be hidden there of a psychic movement that one is never too much on one’s guard.

Blessings. — — 11 January 1944

The point is that [human] relations and friendships are usually founded on the vital and are very mixed affairs. That is why they turn out to be obstacles in sadhana.

In the evening I saw the Mother in the Playground. She received me with a broad smile and told me that my mother’s forehead was full of ethereal light which Laljibhai and myself had inherited. She also said that my mother’s soul went to her every night, and she was full of love and devotion towards the Divine. Then suddenly the Mother went into a trance for a while and said tenderly:

The Mother: Child, when your mother said that she was offering you to me, it was a mistake because it is you who have offered yourself willingly and freely to the Divine. You see, each and every soul makes decisions for itself and there is no human interference whatever in this matter. Every soul is independent and expresses itself.

Huta: For a second I looked inward and became aware of the truth about human

relationships. The people whom I called mine might not have been mine in previous births — neither might they be mine in future births. I raised my eyes to meet the Mother’s which were full of compassion. She gave me a sweet smile and patted my hands. She embraced me lovingly. I experienced the strength of those strong and soothing arms about me, and, in their close embrace, I felt all threats and worries were trivial things nothing could upset me or harm me while she held me thus.

NIRODBARAN: No, my question is not that. Someone asked me, "If love is a seeking for the Divine, why does one seek human love after taking up Yoga?"

SRI AUROBINDO: But is the man conscious of the Divine? If he is, either of two things may happen. All human relations may fall off or, keeping the divine love, he may keep human love as an appendage trying to raise it towards the Divine. I am not speaking of sex relations.

NIRODBARAN: He may have faith that here is the Divine.

SRI AUROBINDO: Faith is not consciousness. It is a preliminary element.

NIRODBARAN: And if he is unconscious?

SRI AUROBINDO: It depends on particular types. Some persons, as I said, after being conscious of the Divine don't want any other relation with anyone else; at the same time they can keep a universal love for everybody. Others may keep a special relation with some, keeping it pure and trying to centralise everything towards the Divine.

The Mother: Lean more exclusively on the Divine’s love. When one receives the Divine’s love, of what value can be any human love?

There is always a bitter taste behind the human love — it is only the Divine Love which never disappoints.

Do not grieve. Human love is fugitive. It is only the Divine’s love that never fails.

Certainly one has the right to love and true love carries in itself its joy, but unhappily human beings are egoistic and immediately mix with their love the desire to be loved in return, and this desire is contrary to spiritual truth and the cause of passions and sufferings.

The Mother: So long as the ego is there, one cannot love.

Love alone can love, Love alone can conquer the ego.

One can Marry if One is Not Ready for Spiritual Life

Sri Aurobindo: It is not helpful to abandon the ordinary life before the being is ready for the full spiritual life. To do so means to precipitate a struggle between the different elements and exasperate it to a point of intensity which the nature is not ready to bear. The vital elements in you have partly to be met by the discipline and experience of life, while keeping the spiritual aim in view and trying to govern life by it progressively in the spirit of Karmayoga. It is for this reason that we gave our approval to your marriage.

Letters on Yoga Vol IV, Pg. 543

Sri Aurobindo: These movements are part of man’s ignorant vital nature. The love which human beings feel for one another is also usually an egoistic vital love and these other movements, claim, demand, jealousy, abhimiina, anger, etc., are its common accompaniments. There is no place for them in yoga — nor in true love, psychic or divine. In yoga all love should be turned towards the Divine and to human or other beings only as vessels of the Divine — abhimiina and the rest should have no place in it.

Sri Aurobindo (SABCL 23:810)

Marriage and Family Life can Come Across One’s Spiritual Path

Sri Aurobindo : It is not right once you have turned to the Divine, to allow despondency of any kind to take hold of you. Whatever the difficulties and troubles, you must keep this confidence that by relying on the Divine, the Divine will take you through. Now I answer the questions you put to me in your letter.

1. If to follow the spiritual path is your resolve, marriage and family life can only come across it. Marriage would be the right thing only if the sexual push was so strong that there was no hope of overcoming it except by a controlled and rational indulgence for some time during which it could be slowly brought under subjection to the will. But you say its hold on you is diminishing, so that does not seem indispensable.

2. As for leaving all and coming away from there that must be only when there is a clear and settled decision within you. To do so on an impulse would be to feel all the pull of old things after you come here and entail severe disturbance and struggle in the sadhana. When the other things fall away or are cut away from you then it can be done. Persist in your aspiration, insist on your vital to have faith and be more quiet. It will come.

Letters on Yoga Vol IV, Pg. 544

Full Divine Support and Protection For Your Spiritual Resolve

Sri Aurobindo: Again, you are entirely right in your resolution not to marry again; to do so would be in any case to invite serious and probably insuperable difficulties in your following the path of Yoga, and, as in this path of Yoga it is necessary to put away sexual desire, marriage would be not only meaningless but an absolute contradiction of your spiritual life. You can expect full support and protection from us in your resolve and, if you keep a sincere will and resolution in this matter, you may be sure that the Divine Grace will not fail you.

Letters on Yoga Vol IV, Pg. 545

Should One Be Forcefully Stopped from Marriage?

Sri Aurobindo: It seems she wants to marry; in that case it is no use trying to restrain her artificially, or trying to foist Sadhana on her when she is not willing.

Let her choose out of the three proposals. About yoga, if she has a call – a deep call –it will last and assert itself. It can never be lost. On the contrary, an artificial demand for Sadhana created by external pressure may be very bad for her. It may not last and would easily give way before the demands of the ordinary life and its impulses.

Some Marry to Keep Themselves Busy/Occupied

The Mother: Human nature is such that when you concentrate on your body you fall ill; when you concentrate on your heart and feelings you become unhappy; when you concentrate on the mind you get bewildered.’

(Laughing) And it’s absolutely true!

‘There are two ways of getting out of this precarious condition.

‘One is very arduous: it is a severe and continuous tapasya. It is the way of the strong who are predestined for it.

‘The other is to find something worth concentrating upon that diverts your attention from your small, personal self. The most effective is a big ideal, but there are innumerable things that enter into this category. Most commonly, people choose marriage, because it is the most easily available (Mother laughs). To love somebody and to love children makes you busy and compels you to forget your own self a little. But it is rarely successful, because love is not a common thing.

‘Others turn to art, others to science; some choose a social or a political life, etc., etc.

‘But here also, all depends on the sincerity and the endurance with which the chosen path is followed. Because here also, there are difficulties and obstacles to surmount.

‘So, in life, nothing comes without an effort and a struggle.

‘And if you are not ready for the effort and the struggle, then it is better to accept the fact that life will be dull and unsatisfactory, and submit quietly to this fact.’

[Mother’s Agenda, Vol. 2, pg 42]

Avoid Vital Restlessness for Marriage

Sri Aurobindo: I have no idea why he wants to change [his work]. If he wants to make himself some day fit for the spiritual life, the first thing to be avoided is vital restlessness. To do the work one has to do with a quiet mind, making an offering of it to the Divine and trying to get rid of egoism and vital desire, is the best way to prepare oneself.

The bitterness you feel is that of a restless and dissatisfied vital which did not get what it desired because it could not desire anything strongly and persistently. Otherwise it could have all the vital desires—marriage, friends, position etc.—but it could stick to nothing owing to a kind of weak restlessness. In the Yoga it has shown the same restless weakness,—otherwise it could by this time have attained something, and besides there was the sex-impulse which it would neither satisfy nor leave. You must know what you want and want it with your whole will — it is only so that there can be an end of this restlessness and failure.

A human vital interchange cannot be a true support for the sadhana and is, on the contrary, sure to impair and distort it, leading to self-deception in the consciousness and a wrong turn of the emotional being and vital nature.

Sri Aurobindo (SABCL 23:811–812)

Better to Marry than to Suppress Sexual Instinct

Sri Aurobindo: If she consents to marry, that would be the best. All these vital disturbances proceed from suppressed sex-instinct, suppressed but not rejected and overcome. A mental acceptance or enthusiasm for the sadhana is not a sufficient guarantee nor a sufficient ground for calling people, especially young people, to begin it. Afterwards these vital instincts rise up and there is nothing sufficient to balance or prevail against them, only mental ideas which do not prevail against the instinct but on the other hand also stand in the way of their natural socialmeans of satisfaction. If she marries now and gets experience of the human vital life, then hereafter there may be a chance of her mental aspiration for sadhana turning into the real thing.

[Letters on Yoga Vol IV, Pg. 543]

Some Marry for Sexual Satisfaction

The Mother: I do not like that the word love should be polluted to speak of sexual desire, the human inheritance of the animal.

You are making a great confusion between maternal sentiment which is, in the physical, an expression of the force of the universal Mother, and the physical act of procreation which is something wholly animal, most often even bestial, and which is only a means that Nature has found to perpetuate the different species.

6 October 1952

Sri Aurobindo: For every sexual act is a step towards death.

Each lie uttered is a step taken towards disintegration.

...one must abstain from all pleasure-seeking including the sexual pleasure. For each sexual act is a step towards death.

The Mother: Sexual activities bind man to the animal and they will be completely transformed in the future.

Those who want to work for the future and prepare themselves to live it, would do well not to be hypnotised by this subject which animalises the consciousness. Above all, do not associate it with love in your thought, for they really have nothing to do with each other. - 23 November 1971

We are always too attracted by animals, and it is more interesting to look to the future than towards the past. As far as I am concerned, a zoo does not interest me. We already tend to be too attached to animality rather than supermentality.

31 August 1972

The Mother: If you remain full of sexual thoughts and try to prevent them from manifesting in some kind of action, that is holding them within and sitting on them. It is the same with anger or any other passion. They have to be thrown away, not kept in you.

If your rejection is not successful, you have to control. The control at least prevents you from being the slave of your vital impulses. Once you have the control, it is easier to reject successfully. Absence of control does not bring successful rejection.

The Mother: The rules are very few so that each one can enjoy the freedom needed for his development; but a few things are strictly forbidden; they are (1) politics, (2) smoking, (3) alcoholic drink and (4) sex enjoyment.

The Mother: All gross animal indulgence of sex desire and impulse would have to be eliminated; it could only continue among those who are not ready for the higher life or not yet ready for a complete spiritual living. In all who aspired to it but could not yet take it up in its fullness sex will have to be refined, submit to the spiritual or psychic impulse and a control by the higher mind and the higher vital and shed all its lighter, frivolous or degraded forms and feel the touch of the purity of the ideal.

Sri Aurobindo: …the excitement accompanying the ordinary sexual act destroys the psychic possibilities of the man. He gets separated and dissociated from the higher centres of consciousness and goes downwards. People say that they take the attitude of Shakti taking Bhoga through them, but that is only a way of saying. People indulge in lower movements, yield to hostile forces and at the same time pass as yogis. Even, the Vedantic attitude is often made an excuse for yielding to the hostile forces. "All this is Maya, illusion, there is no virtue, no sin, no good, no evil," they say and give themselves up to lower vital forces.

Disciple: But are the lower movements of nature themselves not hostile?

Sri Aurobindo: No, but they offer an opening to the hostile forces and the hostile forces use these lower movements for their own purpose.

Disciple: As regards the degrading effects of the sexual act, does marriage and legal sanction make any difference?

Sri Aurobindo: Absolutely none. These moral injunctions are for the maintenance of society, for the welfare of the children born, but so far as the yogic life is concerned the sexual act with one's own wife is as much harmful as that with any other woman. Only those who have risen above the human level, those who have a certain kind of spiritual force as well as vital force, can possibly make a proper use of the sexual act for a spiritual purpose. If Sadhakas at a lower stage take to these things they are certain to fall.

Disciple: If the sexual act is so full of danger, why should it at all be used as a help ? Why not confine oneself to a safer course?

Sri Aurobindo: That is a dangerous question to answer. I shall answer that question when you have risen above the human level.

Disciple : When one has reached, that level beyond the human consciousness, how is the loss due to the sexual act averted ? What happens to the excitement and dissociation from the higher centres of consciousness?

Sri Aurobindo: The Higher Power can take up the things in its own way and prevent the harmful effects. Then the method and the act become absolutely different from the human.

Sri Aurobindo: This Yoga demands a full ascension of the whole lower or ordinary consciousness to join the spiritual above it and a full descent of the spiritual into the mind, life and body to transform it. The total ascent is impossible so long as sex desire blocks the way; the descent is dangerous so long as sex desire is powerful in the vital. One must, therefore, clear this obstacle out of the way; otherwise there is either no safety or no free movement towards finality in the sadhana. The sadhaka has to turn away entirely from the invasion of the vital and the physical by the sex-impulse—for, if he does not conquer the sex-impulse there can be no settling in the body of the divine consciousness and the divine Ananda.

When people speak of sexual desire, instead of giving it the noble name of ‘love,’ they should simply call it ‘vital cannibalism.’

Turn your consciousness to the Supramental Light, and let the supramental influence permeate through a pure mind, your sex centre. Then you will obtain mastery over the sex centre.

When the present form of the sex-power is overcome (falls dead), it can be turned into any higher energy in the body— vital, mental, spiritual. For it is the basic physical energy (that can feed the physical expression of all the others) which Nature has turned into power for her sexual uses.

To eliminate it one must first be careful to harbour no sexual imagination or feeling in the waking state, next, to put a strong will on the body and especially on the sexual centre that there should be nothing of the kind in sleep.

Inactivity is an atmosphere in which sex easily rises.

There are a number of women who can love with the mind, the psychic, the vital (heart), but they shrink from a touch on the body and even when that goes, the physical act remains abhorrent to them. They may yield under pressure, but it does not reconcile them to the act which always seems to them animal and degrading. Women know this, but men seem to find it hard to believe; but it is perfectly true.

Q. Why doesn’t the sexual illusion go away?

The Mother: Too many roots in the human vital. Sex has a terrible tenacity. Besides, the universal physical nature has such a need of it that even when man pushes it away, it comes back to him as long as possible.

Sri Aurobindo: Kamana basana have no part in Yoga, they cannot be its help (sahaya), they can only be hindrances. So long as desire and ego remain, there can be no surrender to the Divine, no fulfilment in the Yoga. They are movements of the vital and cannot be anything else.

Q. How to bring about the change in the sex centre and turn the energy into a creative power, and Ananda pure and divine?

The Mother: By an infusion, little by little, of the Light into the centre.

The energies that human beings use for reproduction, which take such a predominant place in their lives, should instead be sublimated and used for progress and higher development, to prepare the advent of the new race. But first the vital and the physical must be freed from all desire; otherwise there is a great risk of disaster.

This is why we do physical culture. In this way the energies are used to develop strength, beauty, skill and all that; and one is more capable of control. You will see, those who do a lot of physical culture are much more capable of controlling their impulses.

Is Sex a Type of Asura?

Sri Aurobindo: This is indeed one of the three forces—power, wealth, sex— that have the strongest attraction for the human ego and the Asura and are most generally misused by those who retain them...

Sex and Hostile Force

Disciple: My original question was whether the attack of the hostile forces can be utilised by the Sadhaka?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes; by conquering it. The Sadhaka acquires knowledge of the action of the hostile forces and of the defects in his own nature which invite the attack.

Disciple: Does he acquire anything more than the knowledge?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, new openings may occur to the Higher Power, his strength may increase and so forth.

Disciple: Can a hostile force be changed and transformed by conquest into something good and helpful?

Sri Aurobindo: A force of nature can be so transformed, but how can you change a hostile being or its; force? Of course, the hostile beings have certain forces of nature in their clutches. If you conquer the hostile beings these forces of nature are liberated and help in fulfilling the Lila of God. Thus anger is a; force, of; nature in the clutches of hostile powers. If it can be freed from their influence, it can be used for the divine purpose.

Disciple: So, can one say that the Higher Power sends hostile forces to the Sadhaka?

Sri Aurobindo: The hostile forces are there and the Higher Power may use them for its own purpose. Of course, everything comes from the Supreme Power, but that must not be understood in the crude way. The hostile power may be used to test the capacity of the Sadhaka.

Disciple: The Higher Power may, sometimes, act as a hostile power as when by the descent of the Higher Power the Sadhaka breaks down.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, by the descent of the Higher Power the unfit Adhaars break down, while the fit ones progress. There are certain risks but all great achievements involve dangers and risks. When one is not fit and prepared and constantly calls to God, "Come down, come down," then the Power may come down and the Adhaar may collapse.

Disciple: Is the power of the hostile attack always proportional to the resisting power of the Sadhaka ?

Sri Aurobindo: Not always; otherwise why so many failures and defeats? The Guru may fill the deficiency.

Disciple: At times does the Guru even ward off the attack without any effort on the part of the Sadhak ?

Sri Aurobindo : Yes. There is no general rule; in some eases the Guru does the whole thing, sometimes the Sadhaka acts and the Guru helps – which means that the Higher Power helps and the Guru is made only an instrument.

Master Of Your Body

The first step towards this realisation is to become master of this body instead of remaining an impotent slave. Immediate failure in actuality may be intended by the Master as a step towards subsequent mastery. To get at the consciousness of the inner manomaya and pranamaya Purusha is always a step towards the unveiling of the psychic being.

Is Marriage the Solution of Loneliness?

The Mother: One is outwardly alone only if one is closed to the divine love. 8 December 1960

The Mother: The thirst for affection and love is a human need, but it can be quenched only if it turns towards the Divine. As long as it seeks satisfaction in human beings, it will always be disappointed or wounded.

There is a thirst for Love which no human relation can quench. It is only the Divine’s love that can satisfy that thirst.

You feel lonely because you feel the need to be loved. Learn to love without demand, to love just for the joy of loving (the most wonderful joy in the world!) and you will never again feel lonely.

The Mother (CWM 14:121)

Q. Mother, Y has long been friendly with me and now she is coming to me for advice. Sometimes she feels very lonely and thinks of getting married. Sometimes she feels that her place is in the Ashram and the other things are useless. I never give her direct advice, but I would like to know whether she is meant for this life and what line I should take when she comes with her difficulty.

The Mother: The fact of being here proves that there is an aspiration somewhere in her being and with help the aspiration can spread in the whole being.

With love.

Sri Aurobindo: The inner loneliness can only be cured by the inner experience of union with the Divine; no human association can fill the void.

To be alone with the Divine is the highest of all privileged states for the sadhak, for it is that in which inwardly he comes nearest to the Divine and can make all existence a communion in the chamber of the heart as well as in the temple of the universe. Moreover that is the beginning and base of the real oneness with all, for itestablishes that oneness in its true base, on the Divine, for it is in the Divine that he meets and unites with all and no longer in a precarious interchange of the mental and vital ego.

The love of the sadhak should be for the Divine. It is only when he has that fully that he can love others in the right way.

Sri Aurobindo (SABCL 23:814)

To Be Alone with the Divine is the Highest of All Privileged States for A Sadhak

Sri Aurobindo: The inner loneliness can only be cured by the inner experience of union with the Divine; no human association can fill the void. In the same way, for the spiritual life the harmony with others must be founded not on mental and vital affinities, but on the divine consciousness and the union with the Divine. When one finds the Divine and finds others in the Divine, then the real harmony comes. Meanwhile what there can be is the goodwill and unity founded on the feeling of a common divine goal and the sense of being all children of the Mother. Real harmony can come only on a psychic or a spiritual basis.

To be alone with the Divine is the highest of all privileged states for the sadhak, for it is that in which inwardly he comes nearest to the Divine and can make all existence a communion in the chamber of the heart as well as in the temple of the universe. Moreover that is the beginning and base of the real oneness with all, for it establishes that oneness in its true base, on the Divine, for it is in the Divine that he meets and unites with all and no longer in a precarious interchange of the mental and vital ego. So do not fear loneliness but put your trust in the Mother and go forward on the Path in her strength and Grace. Letters on Yoga – Vol. IV – pg .310

Personal Feelings in the Ashram

The Mother: With “personal feelings” nothing can be done in the Ashram.

Rise above personal feelings and the doors of realisation will open.

Sri Aurobindo: Personal relation is not a part of the yoga. When one has the union with the Divine, then only can there be a true spiritual relation with others.

The Mother: When one has found divine Love, it is the Divine that one loves in all beings. There is no longer any division.

1 May 1967

Once one has found divine Love, all other loves, which are nothing but disguises, can lose their deformities and become pure — then it is the Divine that one loves in everyone and everything.

6 May 1967

Marriage in the Ashram

Sri Aurobindo: If she has the true call to the Yoga and not only an impulse due to the influence of others, the necessary conditions will be created. Even if the circumstances seem adverse, it will be only a test or ordeal and she will come through in the end. On the other hand, if she is not yet truly called or if her nature is not yet ripe, the marriage may take place and she may have to go through the ordinary life before she can return to the spiritual.

There was never any suggestion from here that the girl should come to Pondicherry; how is it that it has been raised over there? 25 April 1930

Sri Aurobindo: No member of the Ashram can while he is a member contract a marriage whether it is spiritual or sexual or bring in a woman to be his life-companion or establish such a relation with anyone outside. This is no part of the Ashram life. He can do it outside by leaving the Ashram, for then he is no longer a member and can order his life as he pleases; he is then responsible to himself alone for his action and its spiritual or other consequences concern only himself and that other person.

In the cases you cite there is no tie of spiritual marriage between the persons concerned: the sexual connection has been renounced, but no new inner tie has been formed—there is therefore no similarity with the action you propose. As special cases they are allowed to live in the same house for certain outward conveniences, but it is clearly understood that the old dependence of husband and wife on each other has to cease; they have to accustom themselves to be only sadhaks having no inner dependence on each other, but separately depending on the Mother alone, receiving spiritual help from her alone, offering to her alone the obedience of the disciple to the Master.

For your case to assimilate to theirs you would have to marry legally and socially with the consent of the father, live for twenty years or more together outside and then come for admission to the Ashram with the resolution to develop an inner life independent from each other and turned to the Divine alone.

What you propose as described in your letter is something quite different—it might stand in a Vaishnava sadhana or in some form of Karma Yoga, but it has no place here. An old relation is one thing,—its root being cut, time may be given in special cases at the Mother’s discretion to get free from some of its outer results and habits which are not of the first importance; to bringing a new marriage relation with the full intention of giving it free play and making it a part of the sadhana is a very different thing.

I do not know what you mean by “true sadhana”. Each path of sadhana has its own way and procedure which may be quite different from that of other paths. For this path the Mother and I can alone determine what is necessary or not necessary, what is admissible or not admissible. If one has some other way of life which he finds necessary and considers part of the true sadhana, he is free to practise it elsewhere, but he has no claim to do it here and make it a part of this sadhana or of the life of the Asram if it is not sanctioned and approved by the Mother and myself. 13 May 1937

There is only one answer to X’s question—marriage and Yoga are two different movements going opposite ways; if he follows one, he will be moving away from the other. So if he marries, either of two things will happen—he will sink into the ordinary life and go far away from us in spirit or he will find married life unsatisfactory, renounce his wife and return to the path that leads towards the Divine. Marriage with the first result would be only a stupidity; marriage for the second result would be an irrational inconsequence. So in either way—

Q. Sweet Mother, Why have You started to allow marriage in the Ashram?

The Mother: I have allowed it to people who declare that they do not want any sexual relationship—in the hope that they are sincere. It is a matter between them and their conscience. Blessings.

23 December 1969

Mixing on the Vital Plane Is Dangerous

Sri Aurobindo: It [mixing with women] is not so harmful for a woman as mixing freely with men under the vital impulse—but all mixing on the vital plane has its dangers. What you should do in mixing with women is not to give yourself vitally, to remain within yourself, but to mix with them outwardly in a quiet way—forming no vital relation with any.

Sri Aurobindo The first thing you have to do is to make up your mind what you want. If you want to have a free mind and vital to pursue your sadhana, you must get rid of the attachment for X left from the past; if you once do so entirely, you can either mix with him or not meet him without any reaction or inconvenience. Till then both the impulse or need of seeing him and the recoil from it carry too much of the savour of the old relation to be effective.

Family Life and the Ashram

Sri Aurobindo: I hope you have not given any reason to your relatives to understand that it is by my orders that you do not correspond with them or return to family life! You have remained here and taken to the spiritual life by your own choice and it was at your prayer that your temporary stay was changed into a permanent one. When you make a choice, you must have the courage to take your stand upon it on your own responsibility before your family and the world. Otherwise each one here is at liberty to remain on the path or leave it as he chooses. I think you had better make that clearly understood by your people. 14 February 1930

The accompanying letter is from my wife. Till now I have been guilty of writing to her without trying to know your opinion. I was keeping up the communication partly in order not to shock or pain her too much and partly with a desire to see that she might also take up the spiritual path some day. What attitude should I keep with respect to her?

I return the letter, but I leave the necessity of reply or otherwise to your own discretion. To keep any attachment is obviously inconsistent with the Yogic attitude, as also any desire of the kind you express; if she is to enter the spiritual life some day it should be as her own independent destiny and her being your wife is not relevant to it. Detachment is the main thing; if you have that, to write or not to write is a secondary matter.

12 June 1932

Write to her that permission cannot be given this time. You will also explain to her that she cannot come here (permanently) merely because she is the wife of a sadhak staying here. All relations of that kind are to cease when one becomes a member of the Asram. It is only if one makes progress in the sadhana and is considered fit for stay in the Asram that permission can be given. 18 January 1933

Neither the Mother nor Sri Aurobindo are in the habit of holding any correspondence except with the sadhaks and on matters proper to the sadhana. Sri Aurobindo sees no one except at the three Darshans and speaks with no one. The Mother except at the Darshan times sees only the sadhaks and receives them only or else, but rarely, people who come with a desire for sadhana.

As regards X X chose the Ashram life because after several attempts he found that trying to do the sadhana at home was a failure and he only multiplied ties and obstacles while here he progressed swiftly and was able to live the spiritual life. It is impossible for us to order him to go back permanently or temporarily or to live here in circumstances and conditions which he feels disturbing to his sadhana so long as he himself does not wish it or decide from his own inner determination to go. The sadhana here is not a mere matter of pranam or darshan; it is a life that has to be lived so that one may always be conscious in the Divine.

As regards X’s family As for his wife and children they could only have lived here in a separate house and had the expenses met by the family, but this is no longer possible. The difficulty of doing anything more arises from the rules and the nature of the Ashram life.

(1) It is a strict rule that husband and wife living in the Ashram cannot keep up the old conjugal relations and conjugal life. They either live separately or, if together, which is sometimes but not often allowed, as sadhak and sadhika only, each turned wholly to the Divine.

(2) Children of a tender age, under 10, are not allowed to live in the Ashram, they are even not allowed as a rule to enter the Ashram precincts. Even in houses not belonging to the Ashram but still in some way connected with it (like the private house of Y where Z is temporarily staying) they are allowed only in very exceptional cases when we are sure that they can accommodate themselves to the Ashram life and atmosphere.

(3) Children of low age are not admitted first because there is no proper arrangement for them—either for their food or their upbringing or their education or medical treatment. All is arranged with an eye to the life of grown-up sadhaks with limited requirements and no special provision can be made for anyone. The Ashram is not in a position to undertake the responsibility for the maintenance or upbringing of children.

(4) Children are not admitted for another reason, because it was found when exceptions were made that they could not keep their health here and, after one death occurred, the prohibition was made absolute. They are too young and delicate to bear the atmosphere which is full of a tension of strong forces and, in most cases, their consciousness is too undeveloped for them to receive and profit easily by the supporting and protecting force received here from the Mother by the sadhaks. Faith and responsiveness are needed and such things cannot be expected from little children unless they have a very exceptional mind and character. The ill-health of the children and the dangerous illness of the second among them seem to be a clear warning that these children cannot prosper here. The Mother consented with much reluctance to Z and her children remaining in a separate house but it was under conditions that have not been fulfilled. It was never contemplated that X would live with them or earn his living. That is impossible unless he ceased to be a member of the Asram and this he does not wish to do. The family were very kindly allowed by Mr. Y to put up in his house, but this was supposed to be only for a short time. If they were to stay here, the Mother does not know where to put them or how to keep them. Even if this difficulty were solved in some way, they would be living in conditions quite unsuitable which they would probably not be able to bear. If Z were alone, it would be possible to put her up, but with the children we do not see any way. If she will be persuaded to return until at least they have the proper age, that would be the most advisable course. To separate from them and live here as the other sadhakas of the Asram would be the other alternative, but that, we understand, she is quite unwilling to do. It is not possible for the Asram to modify its rules and character and way of life so as to suit the ideas and ways of living and demands and needs of the ordinary life. The Asram has its own reason of existence which is the spiritual life alone and it could not do that without losing its object and true character. These considerations are placed before you so that you may know the position and keep them in view in advising Z. For she does not seem to understand them and it is this that has created difficulties with X; he feels that he is being pressed to abandon the spiritual life and that is why he is not at ease in going there.

21 December 1934 -

[CWSA – Letters on Himself and The Ashram]

Every Soul is Independent even Inside a Family

In the evening I saw the Mother in the Playground. She received me with a broad smile and told me that my mother's forehead was full of ethereal light which Laljibhai and myself had inherited. She also said that my mother's soul went to her every night, and she was full of love and devotion towards the Divine. Then suddenly the Mother went into a trance for a while and said tenderly:

Huta: For a second I looked inward and became aware of the truth about human

relationships. The people whom I called mine might not have been mine in previous births - neither might they be mine in future births. I raised my eyes to meet the Mother's which were full of compassion. She gave me a sweet smile and patted my hands. She embraced me lovingly. I experienced the strength of those strong and soothing arms about me, and, in their close embrace, I felt all threats and worries were trivial things nothing could upset me or harm me while she held me thus.

How to Discover one’s Life Partner

K.D: How can one know when he meets his psychic mate?

Sri Aurobindo: How do you know a spiritual experience? How do you know when you have the right leader? It is all a matter of feeling and inner perception. It is an art and not a science. When she walks into your life you will know her right enough. As I have told you again and again, no rigid and hard and fast rule is possible in things like this. Union with woman is right in one case and perhaps wrong in other 99 cases. In that one case again without his Shakti the man's progress will be very slow and he may even go wrong. In the other 99 cases contact with woman itself may prove an obstacle. There are so many hostile powers working against the right union of complementary souls that very often, you can seldom meet your right mate. Of course I am talking of the path and not of the goal. When you reach the highest you will have to see whether you can get your Shakti. Without a Shakti you can yourself be perfect, in the sense that you can attain full knowledge, power and Ananda and change your entire organised being into its divine nature, but when you want to throw your powers on the world for creation, it is different. Take my instance. It may so happen that I reach the highest all alone, my Shakti falling in the way. Then I cannot create without her. I can by my highest siddhi only prepare the way for others to follow and accomplish the rest in the future. It is not only the dark forces who obstruct and make it impossible for the twin souls to meet, but even when they actually meet their life may get wrecked owing to mental and vital impediments. It is only when the psychic or the spiritual part is predominant in both, the two can really fulfil one another and progress higher and higher. The hostile powers working against the siddhi of yogis are difficult to conquer. Ordinarily we are in complete darkness or ignorance with only flashes of knowledge now and then, even when the sadhaka has risen into a continual glow of knowledge and can discern the play of all the dark forces, he is not exempt from attack. Only when he reaches full illumination and is in serene and revealed knowledge he is beyond them and safe.

Sri Aurobindo: You are right in feeling that the protection and grace are always there and that all has been for the best. In your wife's condition, the best was that she should change her body and she has been able to do so in the state of mind which would give her the happiest conditions both after death and for a renewal hereafter of the spiritual development for which she had begun to aspire. It is good also that you have been able to keep your poise and the freedom of your spirit in this occurence.

Again, you are entirely right in your resolution not to marry again; to do so would be in any case to invite serious and probably insuperable difficulties in your following the path of yoga, and, as in this path of yoga it is necessary to put away sexual desire, marriage would be not only meaningless but an absolute contradiction of your spiritual life. You can expect full support and protection from us in your resolution and, if you keep a sincere will and resolution in this matter, you may be sure that the Divine Grace will not fail you.

6.10.31

Sri Aurobindo in Savitri

“Savitri replied to the dark Power:

“A dangerous music now thou findst, O Death,

Melting thy speech into harmonious pain,

And flut’st alluringly to tired hopes

Thy falsehoods mingled with sad strains of truth.

But I forbid thy voice to slay my soul.

My love is not a hunger of the heart,

My love is not a craving of the flesh;

It came to me from God, to God returns.

Even in all that life and man have marred,

A whisper of divinity still is heard,

A breath is felt from the eternal spheres.

Allowed by Heaven and wonderful to man

A sweet fire-rhythm of passion chants to love.

There is a hope in its wild infinite cry;

It rings with callings from forgotten heights,

And when its strains are hushed to high-winged souls

In their empyrean, its burning breath

Survives beyond, the rapturous core of suns

That flame for ever pure in skies unseen,

A voice of the eternal Ecstasy.

One day I shall behold my great sweet world

Put off the dire disguises of the gods,

Unveil from terror and disrobe from sin.

Appeased we shall draw near our mother’s face,

We shall cast our candid souls upon her lap;

Then shall we clasp the ecstasy we chase,

Then shall we shudder with the long-sought god,

Then shall we find Heaven’s unexpected strain.

Not only is there hope for godheads pure;

The violent and darkened deities

Leaped down from the one breast in rage to find

What the white gods had missed: they too are safe;

A mother’s eyes are on them and her arms

Stretched out in love desire her rebel sons.

One who came love and lover and beloved

Eternal, built himself a wondrous field

And wove the measures of a marvellous dance.

There in its circles and its magic turns

Attracted he arrives, repelled he flees.

In the wild devious promptings of his mind

He tastes the honey of tears and puts off joy

Repenting, and has laughter and has wrath,

And both are a broken music of the soul

Which seeks out reconciled its heavenly rhyme.

Ever he comes to us across the years

Bearing a new sweet face that is the old.

His bliss laughs to us or it calls concealed

Like a far-heard unseen entrancing flute

From moonlit branches in the throbbing woods,

Tempting our angry search and passionate pain.

Disguised the Lover seeks and draws our souls.

He named himself for me, grew Satyavan.

For we were man and woman from the first,

The twin souls born from one undying fire.

Did he not dawn on me in other stars?

How has he through the thickets of the world

Pursued me like a lion in the night

And come upon me suddenly in the ways

And seized me with his glorious golden leap!

Unsatisfied he yearned for me through time,

Sometimes with wrath and sometimes with sweet peace

Desiring me since first the world began.

He rose like a wild wave out of the floods

And dragged me helpless into seas of bliss.

Out of my curtained past his arms arrive;

They have touched me like the soft persuading wind,

They have plucked me like a glad and trembling flower,

And clasped me happily burned in ruthless flame.

I too have found him charmed in lovely forms

And run delighted to his distant voice

And pressed to him past many dreadful bars.

If there is a yet happier greater god,

Let him first wear the face of Satyavan

And let his soul be one with him I love;

So let him seek me that I may desire.

For only one heart beats within my breast

And one god sits there throned. Advance, O Death,

Beyond the phantom beauty of this world;

For of its citizens I am not one.

I cherish God the Fire, not God the Dream

Q. Y, a lady teacher, is presently here on a visit. She decided some years ago to turn to spiritual life and has been trying her best to do so. But she finds the pull of sex too strong and does not know how to proceed. She prays for Mother’s guidance on whether it is advisable for her to marry or to persist in sadhana, whatever the difficulty. Her photo is enclosed.

The Mother: Let her marry now and take to spiritual life later on; she is not yet ready.

When the call really comes, there is no possible hesitation. Blessings.

October 1962

The Mother: Each one must be free to decide about his or her own life.

Disciple: But his question would be how to find out the right sort of woman for marriage.

Sri Aurobindo: There is no hard and fast rule in these things. It is all to be found out by an inner perception. It is not a science, it is an art.

Even when the union of the psychic takes place between the two, the other parts, the mental, the vital and the physical of one may clash with that of the other and the gain of the psychic being may be spoiled by this disharmony. But if the psychic being dominates in both then these difficulties may slowly clear up. The spiritual relation between man and woman is the most difficult to achieve. The man seeking the higher divine life, the seeker after divine Consciousness and the Truth – who is Purusha, – if he meets the woman of the right type, the woman who is his Shakti – then his spiritual life, the life which he is to manifest, is enriched and becomes full. In this case also there is the psychic union between the two.

In the case of those who have the psychic union of the proper kind to start with, the spiritual relation may gradually develop and manifest itself.

In the spiritual union the woman who is the Shakti must be really a Power – that is to say, a powerful personality who can receive the help from the Purusha in the proper way. Each must be of real help to the other: this relation is the most difficult to attain. These difficulties come to the Sadhaka. To the Siddha, the perfected soul, there is no difficulty. He knows fully well what is to be manifested. If his Shakti is there he knows where she is and he will get her.

No Need of Animal Procreation Through Sex

The supramental being, as conceived by Sri Aurobindo, is not at all formed in the ordinary Animal way, but directly, by a process which for the moment still appears occult to us; it is a direct handling of the substance and forces in such a way that the body is a materialisation and not a formation following the ordinary animal principle.

The supramental body will be unsexed, since the need for animal procreation will no longer exist.

The human form will retain only its symbolic beauty, and one can foresee even now the disappearance of certain ungainly protuberances, such as the genital organs of man and the mammary glands of woman.

Strong Body: The supramental transformation is hard labour and needs a strong body. For some time more, probably more than a hundred years, the physical body will need to eat in order to keep its strength; and we have to comply with this necessity.

Woman is not Slave

The Mother: The idea that women should cook for males is against my principles. Are they slaves?

On Maid Service:

The Mother calls it maid service –

Disciple: I could not quite follow what the Mother said the other day about keeping a mate. What is the difference between keeping a mate and marrying?

The Mother said “maid”, not “mate”. You spoke of having wished to marry again because you needed someone to nurse you when ill, etc. etc. These are good reasons for keeping a servant, not for marrying. (30 September 1929).

Slavery of Men and Women

Slavery of Women

No law can liberate women unless they liberate themselves.

What makes them slaves is:

(1) Attraction towards the male and his strength,

(2) Desire for home life and its security,

(3) Attachment to motherhood.

If they get free from these three slaveries, they will truly be the equal of men.

Slavery of Men:

(1) Spirit of possession, attachment to power and domination,

(2) Desire for sexual relation with women,

(3) Attachment to the small comforts of married life.

If they get rid of these three slaveries, they can truly become the equal of women.

1 August 1951

Relationship between Women and Men

Q. I ask Your forgiveness for having kept up a certain familiarity with Y, although You told me not to do so. O Mother, I want Your love! Without love how can I live?

The Mother: To obtain the divine love, all other love must be abandoned.

Q. There was a certain friendship between Y and me. Then suddenly one day, he stopped talking to me and has been avoiding me. I don’t need anyone because You are mine and I am Yours. O Mother, O Mother, You are everything to me!

The Mother: Human relationships are obviously very unstable. Only relationships with the Divine can be permanent. 14 December 1936

But here too, if one wants to have this experience, one must not seek in life and among men for these relationships, because if one seeks them in the ordinary life, as ordinary relationships, one becomes incapable of feeling them exactly as the Divine can give them. And usually, most people, even those who have a living soul, seek these relations with the Divine only after they have had the most bitter and disappointing experiences in their search for human relationships.

This makes them lose much time and wastes a lot of energy. And usually, they are already quite worn out and spent when they reach the state in which they are capable of having these relations in all their splendour with the divine Presence. That means much time lost and much wastage of energy; but it would seem that very few people can go straight avoiding all these roundabout ways. Mostly, when they are told that there is a divine Joy and a divine Plenitude which far surpass all they can imagine in ordinary life, they don’t believe it; and to believe it they must have, as I said, gone through a painful experience of all that is false, deceptive and disappointing in ordinary relationships. It is said that example is the best teacher, but in fact there are very few who care to follow an example—especially when the examples are a little too far beyond them. They all want to have their own experience; they have the right to it, but that makes the path interminable.

No half-measure would be enough to please you. In short, what you want is a Divine for yourself, who would have no other occupation than to satisfy you, a Divine whom you could see physically at every hour of the day or night, whom you could argue with at your leisure, whom you could live with, marry—for in its ideal principle, marriage is nothing else but that. But for it to be so, this Divine would have to be of your own size, your own stature. And towards what could He lead you if not towards yourself as you are. Is this what you really want in the truth of your being?

I refuse to believe it.

Relations between Men and Women in Yoga

Sri Aurobindo: As for turning all to the Divine, that is a counsel of perfection for those who don’t care to carry any luggage. But otherwise friendship between man and man or man and woman or woman and woman is not forbidden provided it is the true thing and sex does not come in and also provided it does not turn one away from the goal. If the central aim is strong, that is sufficient. When I spoke of personal relation I certainly did not mean pure indifference, for indifference does not create a relation: it tends to non-relation altogether. Emotional friendship need not be an obstacle.

The only relation permissible between a sadhak and sadhika here is the same as between a sadhak and sadhak or between a sadhika and sadhika—a friendly relation between followers of the same path of Yoga and children of the Mother.

In a general way the only method for succeeding in having between a man and a woman the free and natural Yogic relations that should exist between a sadhak and a sadhika in this Yoga is to be able to meet each other without thinking at all that one is a man and another a woman—both are simply human beings, both sadhaks, both striving to serve the Divine and seeking the Divine alone and none else. Have that fully in yourself and no difficulty is likely to come.

Even in the world there have been relations between man and woman in which sex could not intervene—purely psychic relations. The consciousness of sex difference would be there no doubt, but without coming in as a source of desire or disturbance into the relation. But naturally it needs a certain psychic development before that is possible.

The Mother: Sexual relations belong to the past, when man was closer to the animal than to the Divine. All depends on what you expect from life, but if you sincerely want to do the Yoga, you must abstain from all sexual activities.

23 March 1968

It is certainly easier to have friendship between man and man or between woman and woman than between man and woman, because there the sexual intrusion is normally absent. In a friendship between man and woman the sexual turn can at any moment come in in a subtle or a direct way and produce perturbations. But there is no impossibility of friendship between man and woman pure of this element; such friendships can exist and have always existed. All that is needed is that the lower vital should not look in at the back door or be permitted to enter. There is often a harmony between a masculine and a feminine nature, an attraction or an affinity which rests on something other than any open or covert lower vital (sexual) basis—it depends sometimes predominantly on the mental or on the psychic or on the higher vital, sometimes on a mixture of these for its substance. In such cases friendship is natural and there is little chance of other elements coming in to pull it downwards or break it.

It is also a mistake to think that the vital alone has warmth and the psychic is something frigid without any flame in it. A clear limpid goodwill is a very good and desirable thing—one has only to consider what a changed place the Asram would be if all had it for each other. But that is not what is meant by psychic love. Love is love and not merely goodwill. Psychic love can have a warmth and a flame as intense and more intense than the vital, only it is a pure fire, not dependent on the satisfaction of ego-desire or on the eating up of the fuel it embraces. It is a white flame, not a red one; but white heat is not inferior to the red variety in its ardour. It is true that the psychic love does not usually get its full play in human relations and human nature, it finds the fullness of its fire and ecstasy more easily when it is lifted towards the Divine. In the human relation the psychic love gets mixed up with other elements which seek at once to use it and overshadow it. It gets an outlet for its own full intensities only at rare moments. Otherwise it comes in only as an element, but even so it contributes all the higher things in a love that is predominantly vital—all the finer sweetness, tenderness, fidelity, self-giving, self-sacrifice, reachings of soul to soul, idealising sublimations that lift up human love beyond itself come from the psychic. If it could dominate and govern and transmute the other elements, mental, vital, physical, of human love, then love could be on the earth some reflection or preparation of the real thing, an integral union of the soul and its instruments in a dual life. But even some imperfect appearance of that is rare. Here we do not talk of psychic love between sadhaks, for the reason that that comes usually to be employed as a cover and excuse for things that are not at all psychic and have no place in the spiritual life. Our view is that the normal thing is in Yoga for the entire flame of the nature to turn towards the Divine and the rest must wait for the true basis; to build higher things on the sand and mire of the ordinary consciousness is not safe. That does not necessarily exclude friendships or comradeships, but these must be subordinate altogether to the central fire. If anyone makes meanwhile the relation with the Divine his one absorbing aim, that is quite natural and gives the full force to the sadhana. Psychic love finds itself wholly when it is the radiation of the diviner consciousness for which we are seeking; till then it is difficult for it to put out its undimmed integral self and figure.

P. S. Mind, vital, physical are properly instruments for thesoul and spirit; when they work for themselves then they produce ignorant and imperfect things—if they can be made into conscious instruments of the psychic and the spirit, then they get their own diviner fulfilment; that is the idea contained in what we call transformation in this Yoga.

Letters on Yoga Vol. IV pg 307-309

To avoid X is not the way to get rid of these feelings [of possessiveness and jealousy]. The Mother allowed the relation between you because you had need of help and there was a need also of psychic and spiritual comradeship in the work, a support to each other among its difficulties. That something vital got into the relationship and caused the disturbances of jealousy, sense of possession etc. is true; but the remedy is not to break off but to let it grow into the true thing. It is difficult to get rid of the vital mixture all at once, because these movements had created in you a habit of recurrence supported by forces that wanted to break your sadhana. These forces have now lost a great deal of their power,—but the movement itself still recurs and from force of habit your nature responds and gets troubled. Do not be discouraged by this recurrence; it happens with everyone. Keep your psychic perception and quietly stand back from the jealousy and sense of possession when it occurs, not accepting it as a thing right or natural, but not desponding either because of its recurrence. In time the growth of the psychic in you will help you to turn the relation into the true thing altogether.

Letters on Yoga Vol. IV pg 310

The Mother: A decisive choice has to be made between lending the body to nature’s ends in obedience to her demand to perpetuate the race as it is, and preparing this very body to become a step towards the creation of a new race. The two cannot go together; at every minute you have to decide whether you wish to remain within the manhood of yesterday or belong to the supermanhood of tomorrow.

Q. Somebody has said, “Sex is of the mind. The act is no problem. Sex is a problem to us because we are not sufficiently creative.”

Is not sex a thing not only of the mind but also of the vital being and the physical? What is it essentially and intrinsically? And how is the attraction between the sexes to be completely erased from the being?

The Mother: Sex seems rather to be more of the body. It is only when you pass from the lower to the higher hemisphere that you can completely erase the thing. Sex belongs to Nature in her lower working and as long as you belong to that Nature, her working will be there automatically in you.

Q. At present I am much disturbed by sex difficulty. My rejection is not of much value, and I feel confused.

The Mother: You have to persevere until it is valid.

When you will think no more of sex at all and see no more women as women but only as human beings, then and then only 128I will know that you are beginning to get cured.

Sexual desires do not come from eating well but from thinking wrongly and concentrating on that. The less you think about it, the better it is. You should not concentrate on what you do not want to be, but on the contrary on what you want to become.

7 June 1964

Instead of being dominated by the sexual impulsions, they must be put under the domination of the highest will.

Passion: it is a force, but is dangerous and cannot be used unless it is perfectly surrendered to the Divine.

Human passions changed into love for the Divine: may they become a real fact, and their abundance will save the world.

Perfect attachment to the Divine replaces all vital attractions and passions.

Secret of Lasting Union

The Mother:…. Beyond all that, in the depths, at the centre, at the summit of the being, there is a Supreme Truth of being, an Eternal Light, independent of all the circumstances of birth, country, environment, education; That is the origin, cause and master of our spiritual development; it is That which gives a permanent direction to our lives; it is That which determines our destinies; it is in the consciousness of That that you must unite. To be one in aspiration and ascension, to move forward at the same pace on the same spiritual path, that is the secret of a lasting union. (March 1933)

Real Union is With the Supreme

The Mother: There are two stages. First, you will feel your unity with the other centres of consciousness `in the silence’. It is in the Transcendent that you will feel the identification. Later, you will realise this union even in the manifested activity—in the play of forces—and at that moment the union you speak about is possible.

What I call “being on the path” is being in a state of consciousness in which only union with the Divine has any value—this union is the only thing worth living, the sole object of aspiration. Everything else has lost all value and is not worth seeking, so there is no longer any question of renouncing it because it is no longer an object of desire.

Are All Human Relationships Transient and Unstable?

The Mother: Human relationships are obviously very unstable. Only relationships with the Divine can be permanent.

The Mother: All that is based on human relationship is unstable and transient, mixed and unsatisfactory; it is only what is established in the Divine and through the Divine that can last and give satisfaction.

Human beings are in the habit of basing their relationships with others on physical, vital and mental contacts; that is why there is almost always discord and suffering. If, on the contrary, they based their relationships on psychic contacts (between soul and soul), they would find that behind the troubled appearances there is a profound and lasting harmony which can express itself in all the activities of life and cause disorder and suffering to be replaced by peace and bliss.

The Mother: Keep yourself free from all human attachment and you will be happy. Remembrance is a dangerous ally of attachment. To practise Yoga implies the will to overcome all attachments and turn to the Divine alone.

Relations after taking up Yoga should be less and less based on a physical origin or the habits of the physical consciousness and more and more on the basis of sadhana. Family ties create an unnecessary interchange and come in the way of a complete turning to the Divine.

The ideal of the yoga is that all should be centred in and around the Divine and the life of the sadhaks must be founded on that firm foundation, their personal relations also should have the Divine for their centre.

Moreover, all relations should pass from the vital to the spiritual basis with the vital only as a form and instrument of the spiritual—this means that, from whatever relations they have with each other, all jealousy, strife, hatred, aversion, rancour and other evil vital feelings should be abandoned, for they can be no part of the spiritual life.

So, also, all egoistic love and attachment will have to disappear—the love that loves only for the ego’s sake and, as soon as the ego is hurt and dissatisfied, ceases to love or even cherishes rancour and hate. There must be a real living and lasting unity behind the love. It is understood of course that such things as sexual impurity must disappear also.

Child-parent relation is a law of the human society, not a law of Karma. The child did not ask the father to bring him into the world—and if the father has done it for his own pleasure, it is the least he can do to bring up the child. All these are social relations, but whatever they are, they cease once one takes to the spiritual life. It is the Divine alone with whom one has to do.

Indian devotion has especially seized upon the most intimate human relations and made them stepping-stones to the supra-human. God the Guru, God the Master, God the Friend, God the Mother, God the Child, God the Self, each of these experiences—for to us they are more than merely ideas,—it has carried to its extreme possibilities. But none of them has it pursued, embraced, sung with a more exultant passion of intimate realisation than the yearning for God the Lover, God the Beloved. It would seem as if this passionate human symbol were the natural culminating point for the mounting flame of the soul’s devotion: for it is found wherever that devotion has entered into the most secret shrine of the inner temple.

In the Yoga of Bhakti it is the emotional nature that is made the instrument. Its main principle is to adopt some human relation between man and the Divine Being by which through the ever intense flowing of the heart's emotions towards him the human soul may at last be wedded to and grow one with him in a passion of divine Love.

I felt strongly within my true being about human relationships, love and passion, that they are all so wrong, so terribly wrong -these desires, these yearnings that know no peace or rest, these selfishnesses, clashes, misunderstandings, jealousy and separations, these agonies, these attachments which human beings call "love"...In one of the Mother's letters to me she wrote aptly about "Love".

The Lord's action through the Supreme Mother is the spontaneous result of the dharma of each being and everything direct, absolute and true. Human action is based on feelings or on principles - feelings in those who are impulsive, principles in those who are governed by reason. Human beings love some and not others, love sometimes and sometimes not. The Lord's love is constant, equal; universal, unchanging - permanent.

Sri Aurobindo: Relations which are part of the ordinary vital nature in human life are of no value in the spiritual life — they rather interfere with the progress ; for the mind and vital also should be wholly turned towards the Divine. Moreover, the purpose of sadhana is to enter into a spiritual consciousness and base everything on a new spiritual basis which can only be done when one has entered into complete unity with the Divine. Meanwhile one has to have a calm goodwill for all, but relations of a vital kind do not help — for they keep the consciousness down on a vital basis and prevent its rising to a higher level.

All talk about a complementary soul is a camouflage with which the mind tries to cover the sentimental, sensational and physical wants of the lower vital nature. It is that vital nature in you which puts the question and would like an answer reconciling its desires and demands with the call of the true soul in you. But it must not expect a sanction for any such incongruous reconciliation from here.

The way of the supramental yoga is clear; it lies not through concession to these things, — not, in your case, through satisfaction, under a spintual cover if possible, of its craving for the comforts and gratifications of a domestic and conjugal life and the enjoyment of the ordinary emotional desires and physical passions, — but through the purification and transformation of the forces which these movements pervert and misuse. Not these human and animal demands, but the divine Ananda which is above and beyond them and which the indulgence of these degraded forms would prevent from descending, is the great thing that the aspiration of the vital being must demand in the sadhak.

Sri Aurobindo (SABCL 23:811)

What is True Love

· Love is a yearning of the One for the One.

· Love is an intense self-expression of the soul of Ananda.

· Love is self-giving without asking for anything in exchange.

· Love is not a personal thing. Love is a universal divine feeling that is manifesting through you.

· Even if there is only one person on earth who loves me truly, for myself, then it will be difficult for me to leave the earth.

· Take refuge in my love and blessings which never fail you.

· My dear children, love work and you will be happy. Love to learn and you will progress.

· Love is, in its essence, the joy of identity; it finds its ultimate expression in the bliss of union.

· Love is the bright link twixt earth and heaven.

· It is only the Lord’s Love that is constant and eternal.

· Love is one of the great universal forces; it exists by itself and its movement is free and independent of the objects in which and through which it manifests.

· Love lacks ego. Ego lacks love.

· LOVE is the one emotion in us which can be entirely motiveless and self-existent; love need have no other motive than LOVE.

· Love is in its nature the desire to give oneself to others and to receive others in exchange; it is a commerce between being and being.

· Love is the keynote, Joy is the music, Knowledge is the performer, the Infinite All is the composer and audience.

· Rungs of Love:

At first one loves only when one is loved.

Next, one loves spontaneously but one wants to be loved in return.

Further on, one loves even if one is not loved but one still wants one’s love to be accepted. And finally one loves purely and simply without any other need or joy than that of loving.

The Mother: True love has no need of reciprocation; there can be no reciprocation because there is only one Love, the Love, which has no other aim than to love. It is in the world of division that one feels the need of reciprocation — because one lives in the illusion of the multiplicity of Love; but in fact there is only One Love and it is always this sole love which, so to say, responds to itself.

19 April 1967

True love, that which fulfils and illumines, is not the love one receives but the love one gives.

And the supreme Love is a love without any definite object — the love which loves because it cannot do other than to love.

15 May 1968

It is not the love that someone feels for you that can make you happy, it is the love you feel for others that makes you happy: for you receive the love that you give from the Divine, who loves eternally and unfailingly.

20 March 1967

Indeed, there is only one Love, universal and eternal, as there is only one Consciousness, universal and eternal.

All the apparent differences are colorations given by individualisation and personification. But these alterations are purely superficial. And the “nature” of Love, as of Consciousness, is unalterable.

20 April 1967

The true love for the Divine is self-giving, free of demand, full of submission and surrender. It makes no claim, imposes no condition, strikes no bargain, indulges in no violences of jealousy or pride or anger — for these things are not in its composition.

When the true and sacred love is there (love from the Divine and for the Divine), whatever happens is always utilised as a means for increasing and perfecting the union. This leaves no place for worry, regret and depression, but, on the contrary, fills the consciousness with the certitude of victory.

Integral love for the Divine: pure, complete and irrevocable, it is a love that gives itself for ever.

Flaming love for the Divine: ready for all heroism and all sacrifice.

To love truly the Divine we must rise above attachments.

Love is with all, working for the progress of each one equally — but it triumphs in those who care for it.

Psychic Love:

When the psychic loves it loves with the Divine Love.

When you love, you love with the Divine’s love diminished and distorted by your ego, but in its essence still the Divine’s love.

It is for the facility of the language that you say the love of this one or that one, but it is all the same one Love manifested through different channels.

I have given you the clue to find the love you are seeking for since many years; but it is not a mental clue; and it is only if your mind falls silent that you can feel what I want to convey to you.

Blessings.

14 March 1970

As for true love, it is the Divine Force that allows consciousnesses to unite themselves with the Divine.

22 May 1971

True love is something very deep and calm in its intensity; it may quite well not manifest itself in any exterior acts sensational or affectionate.

Divine Love, true love, finds its delight and its satisfaction in itself; it has no need to be received and appreciated, nor to be shared — it loves for the sake of loving, as a flower blooms.

To feel this love in oneself is to possess an immutable happiness.

21 June 1971

No half-measure would be enough to please you.

In short, what you want is a Divine for yourself, who would have no other occupation than to satisfy you, a Divine whom you could see physically at every hour of the day or night, whom you could argue with at your leisure, whom you could live with, marry — for in its ideal principle, marriage is nothing else but that.

But for it to be so, this Divine would have to be of your own size, your own stature.

And towards what could He lead you if not towards yourself as you are. Is this what you really want in the truth of your being?

I refuse to believe it.

28 May 1946

Duty for the Divine More Perfect than Duty Towards Society and Family

The Mother:

Child, you say to me, “To love me is to do what I want.”

But I say to you that for the Divine to love truly is to do what is best for the one He loves.

Sri Aurobindo: Altruism, duty, family, country, humanity are the prisons of the soul when they are not its instruments.

The Mother: Duty towards the Divine is far more sacred than any social or family duty; it is all the more sacred because within the human collectivity it is almost wholly ignored or misunderstood. Vital relations are always dangerous. A complete, absolute consecration of the vital to the Divine is the only solution.

Sri Aurobindo: One who has given himself to the Divine has no longer any other duty than to make that consecration more and more perfect. The world and those who live in it have always wanted to put human—social and family—duty before duty to the Divine, which they have stigmatized as egoism. How indeed could they judge otherwise, they who have no experience of the reality of the Divine ? But for the Divine regard their opinion has no value, their will has no force. These are movements of ignorance, nothing more. You should not attempt to convince; above all, you should not let yourself be touched or shaken. You must shut yourself carefully within your ivory tower of consecration and attend from the Divine alone help, protection, guidance and approbation. To be condemned by the whole world is nothing to him who knows that he has the approval of the Divine and his support.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it is difficult for man to cross beyond the idea of duty.

Q.: Two things make me very restless: first, a sense of duty towards my family. My wife and children are going through all sorts of suffering due to my negligence.

Sri Aurobindo: You won’t be able to help them anyway. Only, while trying to do them good you will brings harm to yourself. Don’t consider them as your own, see them as so many souls (struggling for self-manifestation).

The Mother: My dear little X,

Do not worry; I only meant that you are not yet completely free from social ties—but that will surely come as the flame of aspiration towards the Divine burns more and more ardently in you.

With my blessings and all my love. 16 January 1941

The Mother: I have nothing to say about it. Each one has to find his own direction. Once you have chosen to live for the Divine, nothing else in the world should count; but so long as you have not taken the decision, you must find in yourself the direction you want to give to your life. Only one who has totally consecrated himself to the Divine has the right to forsake his duty to his parents.

Blessed among all days be that day when the earth at last awakened shall know Thee and shall live for Thee!

If a Spiritually Inclined Person Marries

Q. Disciple : Suppose a person aspiring for spiritual life marries what would happen to him?

Sri Aurobindo: If such a man marries three things might happen:

If it is an ordinary marriage he may be pulled down to the lower level of consciousness, apart from the cares, anxieties and responsibilities he may be burdened with. In that case he may lose his aspiration for the higher life and may be completely changed on account of the woman's influence on him

He may be spiritually ruined altogether by the marriage.

Or if he gets the woman of the right type it may be a great help to him. You can write to D. that Sri Aurobindo does not believe in marriage as it exists at present in society and as an institution. He does not ask a person to marry or not to marry; it is left entirely to the person concerned.

In any case, marriage is not a direct way to prepare oneself for sadhana. It can be an

indirect one if the outward nature needs troubles and disappointments to get rid of all worldly attachments, but in that case the experiment usually ends by separation and often a painful one, at least for one of the two associates. That is all I can tell you on the subject.

25-11-1924

Types of Bonds in a Marital Union

Three Kinds of Bonds in a Marital Union as per Sri Aurobindo:

1. Vital or Physical

2. Psychic and

3. Spiritual.

His insights must be read with the understanding that no cut and dried answers can be given to such intricate questions.

Bonds or union between man and woman are generally of three kinds.

1. Vital and the Physical bond: This is very common and ninety nine out of every hundred marriages result in this type of union. This is the only possible bond among men and women of ordinary type and there is absolutely nothing wrong in it.

In fact it is neither right nor wrong, but is rather necessary for them for gaining experience in their progress of life. It is also there for fulfilling a great purpose of Nature, that is, reproduction or the continuity of the race. You ask why sexual impulse is so strong in man making him almost a helpless tool in its hand. Because, as Sri Aurobindo has said, it is there placed by Nature for fulfilling her most primary and primitive purpose, that of reproduction, and it is strong in order to compel man to do it in spite of himself. For ordinary men it is the only principle and in fact the sole impulse, however man may try to cover it with his emotional and aesthetic ideas and ideals.

[by vital and physical bond, Sri Aurobindo implies a marriage which thrives on the general enjoyment of life – La Dolce Vita – having sex, traveling to exotic places, eating good food, socializing, making money and so on.]

2. Psychic Bond: The second type of union between man and woman is the psychic bond. Those who are extraordinary in type, of rare refinement and culture and have a call for a greater ideal in life than the average man and woman, as for instance, for art, music, poetry, patriotism, they should seek their life companion not from sexual desires but from a higher outlook so that their union may result in this type of pure and psychic bond. In such a case of an extra- ordinary man a psychic woman alone can be his real partner of life. She alone can help him to fulfil himself and add to his power and Ananda. A wrong choice for him spells a set-back, and even ruin. A vital and physical union with a lower type of woman may blunt his aspirations and even wreck his life according as the woman is. This psychic union is very rare in the world and is so difficult to find — especially as your seeking for a partner is always coloured by your clamouring of desires and lower impulses. On the other hand, when found, your life is extremely happy and both of you grow in power and purity and may even develop the highest type of bond — the spiritual out of this psychic one. Because psychic union is so rare and a real companion of life is so hard to find for a man of higher ideal, they generally remain single. Some of them find their mate late in life like Mustafa Kamal. Some are fortunate like Browning and are very happy all their life.

K.D: What about Napoleon and Josephine? Isn't that relation psychic?

SRI AUROBINDO: Not entirely; it is half and half. Something in Josephine's luck helped Napolean. Josephine had a better chance of being an Empress than Napolean had of being an Emperor. It was by marrying her he made his chance secure.

3. Spiritual Bond: The spiritual bond is the third and the highest and is for him who feels the true call for spiritual life and has to find his Shakti or complementary soul who will be at once his partner and guide in his sadhana. If you have spiritual life as an ideal in view, you must not seek either an ordinary woman or a mere psychic one but a woman of that spiritual type who is also psychic and something more. This spiritual bond between man and woman is still more difficult to find and only one per cent of the marriages in the world, if at all, result in such a union. When found, a spiritual companion doubles your life and power and increases your speed of progress tenfold. It is really the Purusha and Prakriti fulfilling themselves in their world and raising themselves to the Divine plane by their united power. A wrong choice in the type of one who seeks spiritual greatness is worse than in the psychic bond, the fall is swifter and the result may be fatal. Where there is spiritual union, the psychic is sure to be, but where there is psychic, the higher may not be; only in some cases the higher can be evolved out of it. But out of the lowest the highest cannot certainly come and even the psychic is hardly possible.

What Ramakrishna had in his mind Sri Aurobindo cannot say, but he thinks Ramakrishna dreaded marriage from the point of view of the ascetic life. If one's ideal is to renounce the world he has to avoid woman, she being like wealth and ambition, one of the great forces in Nature which drag down man's consciousness to the lower planes of vital and physical desires. Ramakrishna's insistence on renouncing woman was from a moral and ascetic standpoint. You can very well see that Sri Aurobindo does not tell you anything from this ascetic or moral point of view, but because of the above facts.

These are general truths relating to union of man and woman. In your own case everything depends on your ideal. If it is to be the ordinary life of vital and physical enjoyments you can choose your mate just wherever you like. If it is a nobler ideal of art or music or patriotism, the seeking for a companion of life must not primarily be from the sexual desire but from something higher and the woman must have something in her in tune with the psychic part of your being. If on the other hand, your ideal is spiritual life you must think fifty times before you marry: Sri Aurobindo has already told you how rare a fit mate is for such a spiritual union. You are here given the general principles only. From its complexity you can easily imagine how difficult it will be for Sri Aurobindo to give you any clear-cut answer. With these data before you, you must decide for yourself.

Champaklal Treasures. P. 247

The Mother: “One is complementary to the other. But in truth, we are both one and the same. It is the same thing, the same entity, which in the manifestation takes two separate forms to uphold the creation. Without that, it is the same – me and him. There is no difference, no separation, no division, One, unique and the same. What he is, I am, entirely, in essence. It is like this (Mother locks the fingers of both hands) we are united, the same and identical, the One without division. But in the manifestation, it seems, the One divides itself, the One becomes two, like this (Mother separates the fingers) to come into the manifestation. But it is only in appearance that the One divides itself in order to uphold the manifestation. In fact, it is the same, the One who takes two bodies – me and him, only for the manifestation. In reality, these two entities are one and unique. It is in this way that the One appears in the manifestation. But what he is, I am. There is no difference. It is apparently a difference formed in the manifestation. We have two separate bodies but we are, one and the other, the same. No difference at all. We are like this (Mother makes the same gesture). And beyond that, there is yet something – what we are in reality, beyond, up there. But that is not to be spoken of.

Blessings of the Grace: Conversations with the Mother Recollected by Mona Sarkar and Some of Her Written Answers, p.105

Persons with Ordinary Life can do the Sadhana

There was a letter from Y. In reply Sri Aurobindo said : "Her experience indicates the nature of the obstruction in her Sadhana. She has the ordinary feminine love and attachment and also a conventional mind. She is also attached to her children. She has to get rid of it if she wants to get along in Sadhana.

She had some aspiration in the mind and she has got some capacity there; but she was careful to keep her vital being untouched, and. so she can't get on further unless she asks for the Truth there also".

Another letter from A to which he said in reply : It is no use her feeling the ascetic tendency. She must combine life and yoga. There is growth by meditation and also by life. She ought to try to be unattached and must bring the Higher Consciousness to bear upon life. She must do actions from that Consciousness.

As to external disturbance, tell her not to depend too much on outside circumstances for her Sadhana. In fact, "one never gets the ideal conditions. The Sadhaka must depend upon his inner force and continue his Sadhana even when there is noise. I do not see why a man should not be able to meditate when the Hindu-Muslim riot is going on.

Meditation is one half of the development, while being able to keep the attitude all the time is the other part. When one has got the right poise he can meditate under any condition.

Disciple : Even when music is going on by the side ?

Sri Aurobindo (humourously) : This information is for those who have to suffer the noise, – not for those who make it –(Laughter}.

Marriage is nothing but "a co-operative venture in consumption and production. Let us not be mammals.

A marriage sustained by mutual respect and adjustment could be viewed as a happy marriage by worldly-wise people.

Turning of Human Relationship to Deva Sangha (Divine Communities)

That it should be a marriage of heaven and earth, heaven descended on an equal footing to a changed and transformed earth.

Academic laurels, the lure of marriage and motherhood and social life, the pull of the homestead, kith and kin - all were nothing, less than nothing. To be with the Mother Divine was everything! It was with such one-pointed, unwavering and almost unselfconscious consecrations that the Mother built the marvellous House of the Divine that is Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

What Sri Aurobindo had in mind was a Deva Sangh, divine communities" spiritual community - a working group oriented towards the Divine, that would begin as a pilot project somewhere, and then spread over the whole world. All human activity would come within the purview of the Deva Sangha, "but we must give them a new life, a new form". At the root of it all would be a feeling of delight in everything, in the body as much as in the spirit .... No one is a god, but each man has a god within him. To manifest him is the aim of divine life."

Let me be free and fill every vessel. Let all become one, let all take place within that vast unity." All this is true, but it is only one side of the truth. Our business is not with the formless Spirit only; we have to direct life as well. Without shape and form, life has no effective movement. It is the formless that has taken form, and that assumption of name and form is not a caprice of May a. The positive necessity of form has brought about the assumption of form. We do not want to exclude any of the world's activities. Politics, trade, social organisation, poetry, art, literature - all will remain. But all will be given a new life, a new form.'

For instance, love between human beings, in all its forms, the love of parents for children, of children for parents, of brothers and sisters, of friends and lovers, is all tainted with ignorance, selfishness and all the other defects which are man’s ordinary drawbacks; so instead of completely ceasing to love — which, besides, is very difficult as Sri Aurobindo says, which would simply dry up the heart and serve no end — one must learn how to love better: to love with devotion, with self-giving, self-abnegation, and to struggle, not against love itself, but against its distorted forms: against all forms of monopolising, of attachment, possessiveness, jealousy, and all the feelings which accompany these main movements. Not to want to possess, to dominate; and not to want to impose one’s will, one’s whims, one’s desires; not to want to take, to receive, but to give; not to insist on the other’s response, but be content with one’s own love; not to seek one’s personal interest and joy and the fulfilment of one’s personal desire, but to be satisfied with the giving of one’s love and affection; and not to ask for any response. Simply to be happy to love, nothing more. If you do that, you have taken a great stride forward and can, through this attitude, gradually advance farther in the feeling itself, and realise one day that love is not something personal, that love is a universal divine feeling which manifests through you more or less finely, but which in its essence is something divine.

19 Sep 1956, Pg 301, Vol 08, CWM

Marriage, Service and Yoga

A letter from you dated July 25th of this year duly reached Sri Aurobindo, but at the time he was not in a position to give any definite answer. Later, He has read your letter again and instructs me to write the following reply.

First, as regards your question about your married life. The sound principle in these matters is that so long as you feel the sense of duty, it is better to follow it out until you are liberated; you must not carry a scruple or a remorse or any kind of backward pull or attraction into the spiritual life. Equally, if you have any strong attraction towards the usual human active life, towards earning, bright prospects, the use of your capacities for the ordinary motives or on the ordinary plane of human consciousness, you ought not to leave everything behind you for what may after all be only a mental attraction towards spiritual ideals and Yoga. The spiritual consciousness and spiritual life are exceedingly difficult to attain; it needs a deep and strong call and the turning of all the energies towards the one object to arrive at any kind of full success (siddhi).

Even those who have cut off all other ties, find it difficult not to live in a double consciousness, one inward and turned towards the spiritual change and the other which is still chained to the ordinary movements and pulls them down from their spiritual experience into the persistent and unchanged course of the lower nature. If you have not the entire and undivided call, it is better not to take the plunge, unless you are prepared for very bitter inner struggles, great difficulties and relapses and a hampered and doubtful progress. It is better in that case to prepare yourself by meditation and concentration while still living in the family and the usual human life, until the spiritual attraction is strong enough to overshadow and destroy all others.

Next, you speak of leading a higher life in order to fit yourself for service to others. But leading a higher life is a vague mental phrase and the object of Yoga is not service to others. The object of Yoga is to enter into an entirely new consciousness in which you live no longer in the mind and the ego but in the divine consciousness and grow into the true inmost truth of your being

Above mind and life and body. The aim in most ways of Yoga is to draw back altogether from life into this greater existence. In Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga, the aim is to transform mind, life and body into an expression of this divine Truth and to make the outward as well as the inward life embody it—a much more difficult endeavour. To act out of this greater consciousness becomes the only rule of life, abandoning all other dharmas. Not to serve either one’s own ego or others, but to serve the Divine Shakti and be the instrument of her works is the law of this life. Your other question,—about the Ashram, arises only when you have found your call and your true way,—if that leads you here. In all cases Sri Aurobindo prefers to be assured of the call and the capacity before he admits anyone to his Ashram. The first of these two questions however, you have to decide mostly for yourself; the second can be settled only if, supposing you decide in this sense, you are called here and personally tested with a view for the Yoga. - 1927

Future of Humanity

Sri Aurobindo:

I saw the Omnipotent’s flaming pioneers

Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life

Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth;

Forerunners of a divine multitude...

The sun-eyed children of a marvellous dawn,

The great creators with wide brows of calm,

The massive barrier-breakers of the world...

The labourers in the quarries of the gods,

The messengers of the Incommunicable,

The architects of immortality,

Carrying the magic word, the mystic fire,

Carrying the Dionysian cup of joy...

(in Savitri)

True Attitude of an Awakened Sadhak (Bachelor or a Married Person)

Let’s not be hopeless particularly the married lot, for whom The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have not spoken exclusively. Still we can profess some basic Attitude as part of our Sadhana:

1. Chance of Perfection: We must remember the Mother’s Words:

Everyone has in him something divine, something his own, a chance of perfection and strength in however small a sphere which God offers him to take or refuse.

2. We must realize: Love is a yearning of the One for the One. The true nature of love is an intense aspiration, a yearning of the Divine in me for the Divine in you. We may be clothed in different human forms, or two different individuals, but what seeks and what relates itself is the Self. In an Upanishad it is said, one loves the wife not for the sake of the wife, but for the sake of the Self. The Self in me greets the Self in you, and there is an outflow of love, self-giving. So, wherever there is true movement of love, it is a movement of the Divine principle in one self to another similarly situated divine embodiment. Till we arrive at that stage, till we equate our relation in love with that joining of the One with the One in the other, love is not pure.

3. Accept others’ destinies: In the universe, there are no two destinies alike – there cannot be. Each one’s destiny is inevitably fulfilled, but the nearer one is to the Divine, the more this destiny assumes its divine qualities.

4. Consult the Inner Guide: We need to always Consult the inner Guide, which can guide us the right path.

5. 24x7 Work for the Divine: We must offer every moment for the Divine, every activity for the Divine.

6. Widen the consciousness: We must realize that in a divine body, consciousness must be universal, we need to merge with the Universal consciousness. With sincerity and constant aspiration towards self-progress, self-perfection we can expand our consciousness.

7. Communicate through Silence: We must start communicating through Silence. The mind is really conscious only during periods of silence. The silent mind is a result of Yoga, the ordinary mind is never silent. It is only in silence that true progress can be made, it is only in silence that one can rectify a wrong movement. Silence is the condition of the being when it returns to the Divine. In silence seek God’s meaning in thy depths. In the mind’s silence the transcendent acts, And in the hushed heart hears the unuttered Word. In absolute silence sleeps an absolute power.

Despite chaos and problems all around, we need to observe peace all around, above, within always, create a zone of silence around us. We need to be constantly aware of the Truth behind the word Peace, and Peace becomes real. Chant the Mantra: Peace Peace, Peace.

Supreme Lord, teach us to be silent that in the Silence we may receive Your Force and understand Your will.

8. Tackle Hostile Atmosphere by Silence: If you live in a hostile environment, and it there is no escape, one way to reduce tension is to reply in Silence. Any amount of explaining further aggravates the situation. No lips to move. We should always remember, behind everyone, there is a Force, and we are dealing with that Force. And this Force is infinitely more intelligent than us. Chant the Mantra:

In the name of the Mother,

For sake of the Mother,

By the power of the Mother,
With the Strength of the Mother

To all adverse or harmful beings, or force

I order to quit this place at once and forever.

9. Give less importance to human love: As it is full of selfishness and desire, we should give less importance to human love.

10. Practise Brahmacharya - Rejection is a principle element in this sadhana. But what I say is that one can reject best by bringing in the positive psychic and spiritual forces through the pursuit of positive things like brahmacharya and the rest. It is one of the greatest obstacles to the transformation of the body. We must eliminate its effects from our consciousness, by applying the Mother’s Light., so that they should not respond to thoughts, emotions, impulses concerning sex.

11. Reduce unnecessary gossip - which degrades the consciousness to a great extent.

Constantly Become Aware of Our Supramental Goal

Sri Aurobindo:

Widening of Love and Merging into the Love of Divine:

Love would remain, all forms of the pure truth of love in higher and higher steps till it realised its highest nature, widened into universal love, merged into the love of the Divine.

Elevation of Love from humans to Divine: The love of man and woman would also undergo that elevation and consummation; for all that can feel a touch of the ideal and the spiritual must follow the way of ascent till it reaches the divine Reality.

Sexual Abstinence:

Extension of this Ideal Voluntary: The number of those who lead the divine life can be maintained and increased, as the ideal extends itself, by the voluntary adhesion of those who are touched by the aspiration and there need be no resort to physical means for this purpose, no deviation from the rule of a strict sexual abstinence.

Unsexed Body: The supramental body will be unsexed, since the need for animal procreation will no longer exist; sexual activity will have absolutely no more reason to exist in the functions of nature when the need to create in that way no longer exists.

No Procreation through Sex process: A soul wishing to enter into a body or form for itself a body and take part in a divine life upon earth might be assisted to do so or even provided with such a form by this method of direct transmutation, without passing through birth by the sex process or undergoing any degradation or any of the heavy limitations in the growth and development of its mind and material body inevitable to our present way of existence. A transitional species that will discover the means of producing new beings without going through the old animal means.

All Relationships with the Divine Alone: All relations with the Divine will be his: the trinity of God-knowledge, divine works and devotion to God will open within him and move towards an utter self-giving and surrender of his whole being and nature.

Transformed Existence of both life and form: It might then assume at once the structure and greater powers and functionings of the truly divine material body which must one day emerge in a progressive evolution to a totally transformed existence both of life and form in a divinised earth-nature.

Live in the Divine: He will live in God and with God, possess God, as it is said, even plunge in him forgetting all separate personality, but not losing it in self-extinction.

Divine Love: The love of God and all the sweetness of love will remain his, the bliss of contact as well as the bliss of oneness and the bliss of difference in oneness.

Power of Supramental Love: The supramental love means an intense unity of soul with soul, mind with mind, life with life, and an entire flooding of the body consciousness with the physical experience of oneness, the presence of the Beloved in every part, in every cell of the body.

Joy of the Infinite: All the infinite ranges of experience of the Infinite will be his and all the joy of the finite in the embrace of the Infinite.

Only Reality: The manifestation of a supramental truth consciousness is therefore the capital reality that will make the divine life possible.

Formation of Body: But for this Supramental work, the way the body is formed has an almost crucial importance, and not only in relation to spiritual elements nor even to mental power; these aspects have no importance AT ALL. The capacity to endure, to last is the important thing.

Body to be more Aware of its own Truth: Even the body, if it can bear the touch of Supermind, will become more aware of its own truth—for there is a body consciousness that has its own instinctive truth and power of right condition and action, even a kind of unexpressed occult knowledge in the constitution of its cells and tissues which may one day become conscious and contribute to the transformation of the physical being.

We are here to manifest the Divine. Divine Supramental Being will have following characteristics:

1. Divine Body will be luminous, (body of light) – with no blood, skin, or bones, man of the organs will disappear.

2. Only Psychic will drive our life, Role of Mental logic and vital emotion will be over.

3. Lightness, - Body can fly from one place to another

4. Plasticity – Not vulnerable to damage or extinction

5. Adaptability- adapt to any size to suit any situation or circumstance

6. Visible – Visible to man but the body can be projected at 12 different places at the same time- it will seem as if Gods are inhabiting the earth. Shiva has committed himself to come down to the earth in a supramental body.

7. Physical immortality: Bodies will not be prone to old age, disease, and decay or death.

The Mother says: Those of you who have the slightest inner contact with the Supermind will feel the change in your life. Somewhere we have closed the window to the Descent which the Mother has brought down for the benefit of all.

Although the Mother says it will take another 300 years for the arrival of Supramental being, from year to year if we go on perfecting ourselves, with Her Force, we can transform ourselves, when all is perfect, it is no longer a question of years. That is the highest ideal we can put before ourselves and before our near and dear ones (whether married or bachelor it is immaterial.)

We need to have Utsaha (be enthusiastic about the aim) and offer ourselves before the Divine to take possession of the body, mind, vital.

After we invoke the Divine for the Descent of Her Force, we can be ready to perfect our being – psychological and integral perfection, with our sincerity, aspiration, rejection and surrender.

Calling for the Divine Mother

When, in our despair, we cry to the Divine, always He answers to our call.

It is better for you not to go to a house where no one calls the Divine. But if you are sent there, even then call the Mother. If you can’t do it any other way, do as you do now, silently in your mind - in such a way that nobody will understand or know.

Then you will get the result of your calling the Mother.

The question you are to answer is this:

Do you want the Yoga for the sake of the Divine?

Is the Divine the supreme fact of your life, so much so that it is simply impossible for you to do without it?

Do you feel that your very raison d’etre is the Divine and without it there is no meaning in your existence?

If so, then only can it be said that you have a call for the path.

If she has the true call to the Yoga and not only an impulse due to the influence of others, the necessary conditions will be created. Even if the circumstances seem adverse, it will be only a test or ordeal and she will come through in the end. On the other hand, if she is not yet truly called or if her nature is not yet ripe, the marriage may take place and she may have to go through the ordinary life before she can return to the spiritual.

Time flies with fantastic speed but the slightest thing that pulls me out of that state is like being pulled into hell. The discomfort is so great one feels one can’t last a minute like that. So one...one calls the Divine. You feel as if you are curling up in the Divine. Then it goes well.

How to Appear the Tests of the Divine

The integral yoga is made up of an uninterrupted series of tests that you must pass through without any advance notice, thereby forcing you to be always vigilant and attentive.

Three groups of examiners conduct these tests. Apparently they have nothing in common and their methods are so different, at times even so seemingly contradictory, that they do not appear to work towards the same goal, and yet they complete one another, they work together for a common aim and each is indispensable for the integral result.

These three categories of tests are:

· those conducted by the forces of Nature,

· those conducted by the spiritual and divine forces, and

· those conducted by the hostile forces.

This latter category is the most deceptive in its appearance, and a constant state of vigilance, sincerity and humility is required so as not to be caught by surprise or unprepared.

The most commonplace circumstances, people, the everyday events of life, the most seemingly insignificant things, all belong to one or another of these three categories of examiners. In this considerably complex organization of tests, those events generally considered the most important in life are really the easiest of all examinations to pass, for they find you prepared and on your guard. One stumbles more easily over the little pebbles on the path, for they attract no attention.

The qualities more particularly required:

Ø For the tests of physical Nature: Endurance and plasticity, cheerfulness and fearlessness.

Ø For the Spiritual tests: Aspiration, Confidence, Idealism, Enthusiasm and generosity in self-giving.

Ø For the tests stemming from the hostile forces: Vigilance, sincerity and humility.

But do not imagine that those who are tested are on one side and those who test on the other; depending upon the times and circumstances, we are both examiners and examined, and it may even happen that simultaneously, at the very same moment, we are the examined and the examiner. And whatever benefits we derive depend, in both quality and quantity, upon the intensity of our aspiration and the alertness of our consciousness.

To conclude, a final recommendation: never pose as an examiner. For while it is good to remember constantly that perhaps one is passing a very important test, it is, on the other hand, extremely dangerous to imagine oneself entrusted with applying tests to others, for that is an open door to the most absurd and harmful vanities. It is not an ignorant human will that decides these things but the Supreme Wisdom.

The fundamental truth to be noted is that the Spirit is power, not merely consciousness: indeed the very definition of the spirit is that it is consciousness-energy. And it is this consciousness-energy that is at the source of all cosmic activities. Man's action too springs from this original source, although apparently it seems to be caused by other secondary and derivative energies. As a matter of fact what these energies that seem to be actually in play do is not the origination but rather the deviation and diversion, a diminution and adulteration of the supreme energy, a lowering of the quality, the tone and temper of the dynamism.

Self-Giving is the Only Right of Love

The Mother: They always speak of the rights of love but love’s only right is the right of self-giving.

Without self-giving there is no love; but self-giving is very rare in human love which is full of selfishness and demands.

15 August 1955

Self-love is the great obstacle.

Divine love is the great remedy.

— —

One is outwardly alone only if one is closed to the divine love.

8 December 1960

Conclusion

The Mother said on the afternoon of 27.12.1929

She heard a voice:

“There is a Power that no ruler can command;

there is a Happiness that no earthly success can bring;

there is a Light that no wisdom can possess;

there is a Knowledge that no philosophy, no science can master;

there is a Bliss of which no satisfaction of desire can give the enjoyment;

there is a thirst for Love that no human relation can appease;

there is a Peace that one finds nowhere here, not even in death.

“It is the Power, the Happiness, the Light, the Knowledge, the Bliss, the Love, the Peace that flow from the Divine Grace.”

The Mother: Do not worry. Do not be concerned about your own self, your progress and realisation, nor about others. I am here, look at me, gaze into me, enter into me wholly, merge into my being, lose yourself into my love, with your love. You will see all problems solved, everything done. Forget everything, forget the world. Remember me alone, be one with me, with my love.

The Mother and Sri Aurobindo on Marriage

Aim of Ordinary Life and Spiritual Life