Description
Letters on Yoga – I, the first of four volumes, contains letters in which Sri Aurobindo speaks about the foundations of his spiritual teaching and method of Yogic practice. The letters in these volumes have been selected from the large body of letters that Sri Aurobindo wrote to disciples and others between 1927 and 1950, but primarily in the 1930s. About one-third of the letters in the present volume were not published in the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library.
This first volume is arranged by subject in five parts: the Divine, the Cosmos, and the individual; the parts of the being and the planes of consciousness; the evolutionary process and the supermind; the problems of philosophy, science, religion, and society; and questions of spiritual and occult knowledge. Individual letters deal with many subjects relating to these themes, including definitions of the outer being, the inner being, and the psychic being as well as of the planes of consciousness from the supermind to the subconscient, the supramental descent and transformation, doubt and faith in yoga, and answers to questions about destiny, karma, death, and rebirth.
“The Divine has three aspects for us:
1. It is the Cosmic Self and Spirit that is in and behind all things and beings, from which and in which all is manifested in the universe – although it is now a manifestation in the Ignorance.
2. It is the Spirit and Master of our own being within us whom we have to serve and learn to express his will in all our movements so that we may grow out of the Ignorance into the Light.
3. The Divine is transcendent Being and Spirit, all bliss and light and divine knowledge and power, and towards that highest divine existence and its Light we have to rise and bring down the reality of it more and more into our consciousness and life.
In the ordinary nature we live in the Ignorance and do not know the Divine. The forces of the ordinary nature are undivine forces because they weave a veil of ego and desire and unconsciousness which conceals the Divine from us. To get into the higher and deeper consciousness which knows and lives consciously in the Divine, we have to get rid of the forces of the lower nature and open to the action of the Divine Shakti which will transform our consciousness into that of the Divine Nature.
This is the conception of the Divine from which we have to start – the realisation of its truth can only come with the opening of the consciousness and its change.”
– Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga – I, pp.7-8
Download a PDF of Letters on Yoga – I
SABDA catalog listing for Letters on Yoga – I
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.