Reading Sri Aurobindo Quotes

“And more specifically, when asked by a youngster about the right way of reading Sri Aurobindo, the Mother replied:4


I advise always to read a little at a time, keeping the mind as tranquil as one can, without making an effort to understand, but keeping the head as silent as possible, and letting the force contained in what one reads enter deep within. This force received in the calm and the silence will do its work of light and, if needed, will create in the brain the necessary cells for the understanding. Thus, when one re-reads the same thing some months later, one perceives that the thought expressed has become much more clear and close, and even sometimes altogether familiar.


It is preferable to read regularly, a little every day, and at a fixed hour if possible; this facilitates the brain-receptivity (emphasis in the original).”
― Gautam Chikermane, Reading Sri Aurobindo

“Savitri itself, one might say, is just such a ‘message from the unknown immortal Light’, revealed to humankind at the dawn of an age of global seeking and aspiration for change. To derive the utmost benefit from reading it, one must, to whatever degree, be able to open oneself to that Light.


Much of Savitri describes things that take place in an inner consciousness or in subtle worlds beyond our normal awareness. The three books of Part One, forming the first half of the epic, are almost entirely of this character. After two opening cantos introducing the heroine’s crisis on the morning of the fateful day to which the narrative returns hundreds of pages later in ‘The Book of Death’, the rest of Part One is a flashback to the spiritual and occult experiences of Aswapati, the king and yogi who is Savitri’s father in the legend. These books culminate in a vision of the Divine Mother and her promise of an incarnation who is to bring a new factor into the play of forces upon earth.”
― Gautam Chikermane, Reading Sri Aurobindo

“A wandering hand of pale enchanted light


That glowed along a fading moment’s brink,


Fixed with gold panel and opalescent hinge


A gate of dreams ajar on mystery’s verge…


The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak


From the reclining body of a god.


Then through the pallid rift that seemed at first


Hardly enough for a trickle from the suns,


Outpoured the revelation and the flame…


A message from the unknown immortal Light


Ablaze upon creation’s quivering edge,


Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues


And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours.

- Sri Aurobindo, Savitri”
― Gautam Chikermane, Reading Sri Aurobindo

“In contrast, he describes spiritual transformation as an ‘established descent of the spiritual peace, light, knowledge, power, bliss from above, the awareness of the self and the divine and of a higher cosmic consciousness and the change of the whole consciousness to that’.18 The path to spiritual transformation leads the seeker through several experiences and realizations: temporary stages of peace, calm and silence; the discovery of the Self and its experience on various planes of consciousness; and experiences on the higher planes with its different layers—Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Overmind. Not only to receive influences from these planes, but to actually live in them is, according to Sri Aurobindo, ‘a definite stage in the movement towards transformation’.19


Finally, we learn about the two main and alternating movements leading to spiritual transformation—the ascent of the lower consciousness towards the higher, and the descent of the higher, of peace, force, light and Ananda, into the lower to transform it. These and the experiences connected with them end this remarkable journey from the first opening of the inner veil to the psychic and spiritual transformation of all the planes and parts of the being, opening the gate to the essence and crown of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga: the supramental transformation.”
― Gautam Chikermane, Reading Sri Aurobindo

“What are the means of bringing forward the psychic? Sri Aurobindo offers several answers according to the nature of the seeker: a constant and sincere aspiration, the will to surrender in the central being, the elimination of selfishness and demand, or a true will to get rid of the movements of the lower nature. In the end, he says, it will simply happen ‘when [we] are sufficiently advanced’.16 Sri Aurobindo then elaborates on different experiences related to the psychic plane—such as the psychic influence in our ordinary life, psychic joy and sorrow, the psychic flame as a first manifestation of the psychic being and the relation of Agni with the psychic fire—and he stresses the different movements of psychic and spiritual transformation:17


Psychisation means the change of the lower nature, bringing right vision into the mind, right impulse and feeling into the vital, right movement and habit into the physical – all turned towards the Divine, all based on love, adoration, bhakti – finally the vision and sense of the Mother everywhere in all as well as in the heart, her Force working in the being etc., faith consecration, surrender.”
― Gautam Chikermane, Reading Sri Aurobindo

“An inward movement, to become aware of one’s inner being, is an essential condition in the Integral Yoga, as ‘To change the outer consciousness entirely without developing this inner consciousness would be too difficult.’11 Sri Aurobindo maps out some general steps on this marvellous journey—detaching oneself from one’s outer being, living within and from within, first from one’s inner mind, vital and physical, then from the corresponding witness purushas or selves of the levels of the being, and finally in and from one’s psychic being or inmost soul. His letters comment on a number of experiences and movements connected with these stages and their relation to the external being, as well as on inner experiences in the state of samadhi or trance.


The conscious awareness of the different planes and parts of his individual inner being puts the seeker in touch with the universal or cosmic consciousness standing behind the individualised personality—an opening to the universal self and forces:12


When one has the cosmic consciousness, one can feel the cosmic self as one’s own self, one can feel one with other beings in the cosmos, one can feel all the forces of Nature as moving in oneself, all selves as one’s own self.


Sri Aurobindo’s letters on this topic cover a number of aspects. These include the relation of the cosmic consciousness to other planes (like the Overmind, the transcendent, or the cosmic self), the different realms of cosmic ignorance and cosmic truth, universal harmony and discords, the cosmic will, the experiences of opening to the cosmic mind and life as well as the broad range of universal and cosmic forces.”
― Gautam Chikermane, Reading Sri Aurobindo

“One puts an intellectual label on the “White Light” and the mind is satisfied and says “Now I know all about it; it is the pure Divine Consciousness light,” and really it knows nothing. But if one allows the Divine White Light to manifest and pour through the being, then one comes to know it and get all its results.”
― Gautam Chikermane, Reading Sri Aurobindo

“For poetic effect rely wholly on the power of your substance, the magic of rhythm and the sincerity of your expression — if you can add subtlety so much the better, but not at the cost of sincerity and straightforwardness. Do not construct your poetry with the brain-mind, the mere intellect — that is not the source of true inspiration, write always from the inner heart of emotion and vision.”
― Gautam Chikermane, Reading Sri Aurobindo

“The text has to be studied with a great patience, a great passivity, waiting for experience, waiting for light & then waiting for still more light. Insufficient data, haste of conclusions, wilful ramming of one’s own favourite opinions into the text, wilful grasping at an imperfect or unfinished experience, wilful reading of a single narrow truth as the sole meaning of this complex harmony of thought, experience & knowledge which we call the Veda,—these are fruitful sources of error. But if a man can make his mind like a blank slate, if he can enter into the condition of bottomless passivity proper to the state of the calm all-embracing Chaitanya Atma, not attempting to fix what the Truth shall be, but allowing Truth to manifest herself in his soul, then he will find that it is the nature of the Sruti to reveal perfectly its own message…..By entering into communion with the soul of the thinker which still broods behind the inspired language, we come to realise what he saw, and what he put into his words, what waits there to make itself known to us.”
― Gautam Chikermane, Reading Sri Aurobindo

“But if it is to survive,’ he continued, ‘it must get rid of the curse of the heavy pedantic style contracted by it in its decline with the lumbering impossible compounds and the overweight of hair-splitting erudition.”
― Gautam Chikermane, Reading Sri Aurobindo