Sri Aurobindo Quotes and Saying
Sri Aurobindo Ghosh was an Indian nationalist and mystic philosopher, considered a saint by many Indians. He was born in Calcutta on August 15, 1872, and was educated at the University of Cambridge. He passed away in 1950.
“All life is yoga”, while many believe that yoga is a series of physical exercises or consists of specific practices taken up as part of one’s daily life, Sri Aurobindo set forth an entirely different understanding and methodology which seeks to take up every aspect of our life and existence, to bring conscious self-aware attention to every movement, feeling, emotion and thought that we experience. Sri Aurobindo was a mystic who achieved his ascending levels of consciousness through yoga and meditation.
Sri Aurobindo describes the evolution of consciousness, the limitations of our current stage in that process, and the potentiality of the human being, with self-aware and directed action, to participate in the development and manifestation of the next phase of evolutionary development.
Sri Aurobindo holds that self-aware human beings can consciously participate in this evolutionary process, and it is the practice of integral yoga to help bring about this solution to the current crises. However, he did not advocate a withdrawal from the affairs of life, but a full political engagement that was based on spiritual understanding and practice.
Let us remember this scholar on this blessed day of India’s rebirth through some of his motivational quotes.
“The first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught.” – Sri Aurobindo
“True knowledge is not attained by thinking. It is what you are; it is what you become.” – Sri Aurobindo
“My God is love and sweetly suffers all.” – Sri Aurobindo
“The Divine Truth is greater than any religion or creed or scripture or idea or philosophy.” – Sri Aurobindo
“By your stumbling, the world is perfected.” – Sri Aurobindo
“The first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught. The second principle is that the mind has to be consulted in its own growth. The third principle of education is to work from the near to the far, from that which is to that which shall be.” – Sri Aurobindo
“A teacher should be like torch-light.” – Sri Aurobindo
“What men call knowledge, is the reasoned acceptance of false appearances. Wisdom looks behind the veil and sees.” – Sri Aurobindo
“Care not for time and success. Act out thy part, whether it be to fail or to prosper.” – Sri Aurobindo
“Late, I learned that when reason died, then Wisdom was born; before that liberation, I had only knowledge.” – Sri Aurobindo
“There is nothing mind can do that cannot be better done in the mind’s immobility and thought-free stillness. When the mind is still, then truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the silence.” – Sri Aurobindo
“Love is the keynote, Joy is the music, Knowledge is the performer, the Infinite All is the composer and audience.” – Sri Aurobindo
“Life is life – whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man’s own advantage.” – Sri Aurobindo
“When the mind is still, then truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the silence.” – Sri Aurobindo
“The yoga we practice is not for ourselves alone, but for the Divine; its aim is to work out the will of the Divine in the world, to effect a spiritual transformation and to bring down a divine nature and a divine life into the mental, vital and physical nature and life of humanity. Its object is not personal Mukti, although Mukti is a necessary condition of yoga, the liberation, and transformation of the human being. It is not personal Ananda, but the bringing down of the divine Ananda – Christ’s kingdom of heaven, our Satyayuga – upon the earth.” – Sri Aurobindo
“They proved to me by convincing reasons that God does not exist; Afterwards I saw God, for he came and embraced me. And now what am I to believe- the reasoning of others or my own experience? Truth is what the soul has seen and experienced; the rest is appearance, prejudice, and opinion.” – Sri Aurobindo
“There is no greater pride and glory than to be a perfect instrument of the Master.” – Sri Aurobindo
“Hatred is the sign of a secret attraction that is eager to flee from itself and furious to deny its own existence. That too is God’s play in His creature.” – Sri Aurobindo
“Man is a transitional being. He is not final. The step from man to superman is the next approaching achievement in the earth’s evolution. It is inevitable because it is at once the intention of the inner spirit and the logic of nature’s process.” – Sri Aurobindo
“Perfect health, sincerity, honesty, straightforwardness, courage, disinterestedness, unselfishness, patience, endurance, perseverance, peace, calm, self-control are all things that are taught infinitely better by example than by beautiful speeches.” – Sri Aurobindo
“There are two allied powers in man; knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is so much of the truth seen in a distorted medium as the mind arrives at by groping, wisdom what the eye of divine vision sees in the spirit.” – Sri Aurobindo
Bhakti is not an experience, it is a state of the heart and soul. It is a state which comes when the psychic being is awake and prominent. -Sri Aurobindo
“India saw from the beginning, and, even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance, she never lost hold of the insight, that life cannot be rightly seen in the sole light, cannot be perfectly lived in the sole power of its externalities.” – Sri Aurobindo