This page includes some of my favorite quotes from Sri Aurobindo. They are organized by the book in which they are found.
The Integral Yoga by Sri Aurobindo
“The ascent of the human soul to the supreme Spirit is that soul’s highest aim and necessity, for that is the supreme reality; but there can be too the descent of the Spirit and its powers into the world and that would justify the existence of the material world also, give a meaning, a divine purpose to the creation and solve its riddle.”
– Sri Aurobindo, The Integral Yoga, p44-45
“Karma from the past lives exists, much of what happens is due to it, but not all. For we can mend our karma by our consciousness and efforts.”
– Sri Aurobindo, The Integral Yoga, p344
“The first process of Yoga is therefore to open the ranges of this inner being and to live from there outward, governing his outward life by an inner light and force. In doing so he discovers in himself his true soul which is not this outer mixture of mental, vital and physical elements but something of the Reality behind them, a spark from the one Divine Fire.”
– Sri Aurobindo, The Integral Yoga, p4
“The Master is one who has risen to a higher consciousness and being and he is often regarded as its manifestation or representative. He not only helps by his teaching and still more by his influence and example but by a power to communicate his own experience to others.”
– Sri Aurobindo, The Integral Yoga, p5
“It is a fact always known to all yogis and occultists since the beginning of time, in Europe and Africa as in India, that wherever yoga or Yajna is done, there the hostile Forces gather together to stop it by any means.”
– Sri Aurobindo, The Integral Yoga, p280
“This yoga is a spiritual battle; its very attempt raises all sorts of adverse forces and one must be ready to face difficulties, sufferings, reverses of all sorts in a calm unflinching spirit. The difficulties that come are ordeals and tests and if one meets them in the right spirit, one comes out stronger and spiritually purer and greater.”
– Sri Aurobindo, The Integral Yoga, p282
“All who enter the spiritual path have to face the difficulties and ordeals of the path, those which arise from their own nature and those which come in from the outside.”
– Sri Aurobindo, The Integral Yoga, p273
“It is necessary to observe and know the wrong movements in you; for they are the source of your trouble and have to be persistently rejected if you are to be free. But do not be always thinking of your defects and wrong movements. Concentrate more upon what you are to be, on the ideal, with the faith that, since it is the goal before you, it must and will come. To be always observing faults and wrong movements brings depression and discourages the faith. Turn your eyes more to the coming light and less to any immediate darkness. Faith, cheerfulness, confidence in the ultimate victory are the things that help – they make the progress easier and swifter.”
– Sri Aurobindo, The Integral Yoga, p279
“The desire for the Divine or for the bhakti for the Divine is the one desire which can free one from all other desires – at the core it is not a desire but an aspiration, a soul need, the breath of existence of the inmost being, and as such it cannot be counted among desires.”
– Sri Aurobindo, The Integral Yoga, p295
“In our Yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature.”
– Sri Aurobindo, The Integral Yoga, p29
The Upanishads by Sri Aurobindo
“It is the same Lord who dwells in the sum and the part, in the Cosmos as a whole and in each being, force or object in the Cosmos. Since He is one and indivisible, the Spirit in all is one and their multiplicity is a play of His cosmic consciousness. Therefore each human being is in his essence one with all others, free, eternal, immutable, lord of Nature.”
– Sri Aurobindo, The Upanishads, p30
The Mother by Sri Aurobindo
“Calling on God to do everything and save one all the trouble and struggle is a deception and does not lead to freedom and perfection.”
– Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, p7
“Note that a tamasic surrender refusing to fulfill the conditions and calling on God to do everything and save one all the trouble and struggle is a deception and does not lead to freedom and perfection.”
– Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, p7
“The supramental change is a thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness; for its upward ascent is not ended and mind is not its last summit. But that the change may arrive, take form and endure, there is needed the call from below with a will to recognize and not deny the Light when it comes, and there is needed the sanction of the Supreme from above. The power that mediates between the sanction and the call is the presence and power of the Divine Mother.”
– Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, p26
