All Life Is Yoga

“Lord, we are upon earth to accomplish Thy work of transformation. It is our sole will, our sole preoccupation. Grant that it may be also our sole occupation and that all our actions may help us towards this single goal.” (The Mother) – “What one cannot do oneself one can get done by calling the Mother’s force. To receive that and let it work in you is the true means of success in the sadhana.” (Sri Aurobindo)

“The more a person is quiet in front of all occurrences, equal in all circumstances, and keeps a perfect mastery of himself and remains peaceful in the presence of whatever happens, the more he has progressed towards the goal.” (The Mother)

“The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Divine – or, it may be said, she is the Divine in its consciousness-force.” (Sri Aurobindo)

“And finally, the best friend one can have – isn‘t he the Divine, to whom one can say everything, reveal everything? For there indeed is the source of all compassion, of all power to efface every error when it is not repeated, to open the road to true realisation; it is he who can understand all, heal all, and always help on the path, help you not to fail, not to falter, not to fall, but to walk straight to the goal. He is the true friend, the friend of good and bad days, the one who can understand, can heal, and who is always there when you need him. When you call him sincerely, he is always there to guide and uphold you – and to love you in the true way.” (The Mother)

“Strive exclusively to hear the command of the Supreme Lord, and if you are perfectly sincere, He will find a way to make you hear and recognise this command with certainty.” (The Mother)

“Lord, the year is dying and our gratitude bows down to Thee. Lord, the year is reborn, our prayer rises up to Thee. Let it be for us also the dawn of a new life.” (The Mother)

“...look at a rose, a thing that contains such a concentration of spontaneous beauty – not man-made: spontaneous, a blossoming; one has only to see it to be sure that there is a Divine. It is a certainty. One cannot... it is impossible not to believe.” (The Mother)

Question: “Tell me, Mother, what am I?” The Mother: “Outwardly, you are an unconscious child striving to become conscious. Inwardly, you are an eternal soul attempting to manifest in a body.”

“It [the soul] is, according to our psychology, connected with the small outer personality by certain centres of consciousness of which we become aware by Yoga. Only a little of the inner being escapes through these centres into the outer life, but that little is the best part of ourselves and responsible for our art, poetry, philosophy, ideals, religious aspirations, efforts at knowledge and perfection. But the inner centres are, for the most part, closed or asleep – to open them and make them awake and active is one aim of Yoga.” (Sri Aurobindo)

Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s guidance to the disciples on Faith and its importance in Yoga.
The peculiar character of our age is the divorce, says Sri Aurobindo, that has been pronounced between reason and faith, the logical mind and the intuitive heart. At first, the declaration of war between them was attended by painful struggles, a faith disturbed or a scepticism dissatisfied. But now their divorce has created exaggerated tendencies which impoverish human life by their mutual exclusiveness, on the one side a negative and destructive critical spirit, on the other an imaginative sentiment which opposes pure instinct and a faith founded on dreams to the sterile fanaticism of the intellect. Yet a real divorce is impossible. Science could not move a step without faith and intuition and today it is growing full of dreams.
“Strive exclusively to hear the command of the Supreme Lord, and if you are perfectly sincere, He will find a way to make you hear and recognise this command with certainty.” (The Mother)

For all problems of existence are essentially problems of harmony. They arise from the perception of an unsolved discord and the instinct of an undiscovered agreement or unity. To rest content with an unsolved discord is possible for the practical and more animal part of man, but impossible for his fully awakened mind, and usually even his practical parts only escape from the general necessity either by shutting out the problem or by accepting a rough, utilitarian and unillumined compromise. For essentially, all Nature seeks a harmony, life and matter in their own sphere as much as mind in the arrangement of its perceptions. (Sri Aurobindo)

This compilation of Sri Aurobindo’s letters deals primarily with the role of the Divine Mother in the practice of the Integral Yoga. In these letters Sri Aurobindo explains who the Mother is and how one can open oneself to her help. Surrender to the Mother; true relation with her through faith, devotion and love; work for her as part of one’s sadhana; receiving her help in difficulties; her Presence, Light and Force; her human embodiment – these are some of the subjects Sri Aurobindo discusses in these letters. He wrote most of them in the 1930s to disciples living in his Ashram in Pondicherry.

This power of silence is a capacity and not an incapacity, a power and not a weakness. It is a profound and pregnant stillness. Only when the mind is thus entirely still, like clear, motionless and level water, in a perfect purity and peace of the whole being and the soul transcends thought, can the Self which exceeds and originates all activities and becomings, the Silence from which all words are born, the Absolute of which all relativities are partial reflections manifest itself in the pure essence of our being. In a complete silence only is the Silence heard; in a pure peace only is its Being revealed. Therefore to us the name of That is the Silence and the Peace. (Sri Aurobindo)

This power of silence is a capacity and not an incapacity, a power and not a weakness. It is a profound and pregnant stillness. Only when the mind is thus entirely still, like clear, motionless and level water, in a perfect purity and peace of the whole being and the soul transcends thought, can the Self which exceeds and originates all activities and becomings, the Silence from which all words are born, the Absolute of which all relativities are partial reflections manifest itself in the pure essence of our being. In a complete silence only is the Silence heard; in a pure peace only is its Being revealed. Therefore to us the name of That is the Silence and the Peace. (Sri Aurobindo)

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on receptivity, the power to receive the Divine Force and to feel its presence and the presence of the Mother in it and allow it to work, guiding one’s sight and will and action.

When I spoke of being faithful to the light of the soul and the divine Call, I was not referring to anything in the past or to any lapse on your part. I was simply suggesting the great need in all crises and attacks, – to refuse to listen to any suggestions, impulses, lures and to oppose to them all the call of the Truth, the imperative beckoning of the Light. In all doubt and depression, to say “I belong to the Divine, I cannot fail”; to all suggestions of impurity and unfitness, to reply “I am a child of Immortality chosen by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother; I have but to be true to myself and to them – the victory is sure; even if I fell, I would be sure to rise again”; to all impulsions to depart and serve some other ideal, to reply “This is the greatest, this is the Truth, this alone can satisfy the soul within me; I will endure through all tests and tribulations to the very end of the divine journey.” This is what I mean by faithfulness to the Light and the Call. (Sri Aurobindo)