Towards Perfect Health - Compilations by Auromere Ayurvedic Imports

This compilation focuses on the health of the body and its necessary role in the total transformation of the being as part of the manifestation of a divine life on earth. The material has been organised into sections that explain the importance of a healthy and conscious body reflecting an inner harmony and consecration, the origin and causes of illness, how the right attitude towards sleep, food, physical culture, and medicine, for example, can make the body healthier, and the secret of perfect health in the practice of Sri Aurobindo’s integral yoga.

REVIEW

Health is a subject of perennial interest, given the precarious balance of human existence. Much has been written and debated on the subject and each is useful in its own place. But nowhere does one find the depth and wideness of vision as in the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. This vision includes all details, putting each in its just measure, right proportion, and true relation to the total scheme of things.

For this very reason it is not easy to bring out a compilation of their writings. Every compiler has a tendency to look at the vastness of the Truth they have given to earth and men from his own narrow angle of vision, to express his own subjective tilt and preference. The average reader, perhaps unable to appreciate the exact shade and context of the excerpt, may run the risk of sometimes turning a wide and plastic truth into a fixed formula. It is important therefore not to use a compilation for quoting purposes, but to try living some of the truths that naturally and spontaneously appeal to us. For only when we live a vision can we truly begin to understand its depth and subtlety. The Mother cautions us:

Each one has his own idea and finds out suitable sentences from Sri Aurobindo’s writings to support his views. Those who oppose such views can also find suitable sentences from his writings. That is the way mutual opposition works. Nothing can be truly done until Sri Aurobindo’s total view of things is taken.

10 October 1954

Words of the Mother. CWM 13: 22

Most compilations suffer from this difficulty and this one is no exception. By choosing a few out of the many more things said about the subject, the compiler often ends up overstressing some points while omitting or downplaying others. Unless care is taken, this may create an impression in the mind of a novice reader that this is all that has been said on a subject and sometimes tend to turn an axiomatic truth into a dogmatic one. Sri Aurobindo cautions us against this tendency: