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QUOTABLE -QUOTES
Sri ^yrobmdo
QUOTABLE QUOTES
SRI AUROBINDO
Compiled by
Rajendra Upadhyaya
Publications Division
Ministry of Information
And Broadcasting
Government of India
COMMUNITY HEALTH CELL
326, V Main, I Clock
Koram< ngnla
Bangalore-560034
India
January 1991 (Magha 1912)
OZA
©Publications Division
Price: Rs. 1.00
Published by the Director, Publications
Division^linistry of Information and Broad
casting, Government of India, Patiala House,
New Delhi - 110001.
Publisher's Note
We are happy to introduce the new series
"Quotable quotes" from great men and
women of India. It is said that a good
saying is like fragrance which lingers on
enthusing our lives and deeds. If we start
our day with a good thought, perhapsthat may give us necessary fillip which is
much needed to face tension-ridden
modern day life. We hope the readers will
welcome the series of these mini-antholo
gies which are handy and can easily fit
into a pocket or a purse.
Printed at: Seema Offset Press, Delhi-6
Dr. S.S.Shashi
Director
Publications Division
HUMANITY
This is a miracle that men can love
God, yet fail to love humanity. With
whom are they in love then?
Beatitude is God's aim for humanity;
get this supreme good for thyself first
that thou mast distribute it entirely to
the fellow-beings.
He who acquires for himself alone,
acquires ill, though he may call it
heaven and virtue.
Family, nationality, humanity are
Vishnu's three strides from an iso
lated to a collective unity. The first
has been fulfilled, we yet strive for the
perfection of the second, towards the
third we are reaching out our hands
and the pioneer work is already at
tempted.
Those who are poor, ignorant, ill-bom
or ill-bred are not the common herd;
the common herd are all who are satis
fied with pettiness and an average
humanity.
It is impossible to change humanity by
political mechanism.
Spirituality must be the basis; other
wise your success will be your failure.
FAILURES
When I look back on my past life, I see
that if I had not failed and suffered, I
would have lost my life's supreme
blessings; yet at the time of the suffer
ing and failure, I was vexed with the
sense of calamity.
Souls that do not aspire are God's
failures, but Nature is pleased and
loves to multiply them because they
assure her of stability and prolong her
empire.
What I cannot do now is the sign of
what I shall do hereafter. The sense
of impossibility is the beginning of all
possibilities.
Impossibility is only a sum of greater
unrealised possibles. It veils an advance
state and a yet unaccomplished jour
ney.
3
2
Work as if the ideal had to be fulfilled
swiftly and in thy life time; Persevere
asif thou knewestitnot to be unless
purchased by a thousand years yet of
labour.
All is not settled when a cause is hu
manly lost and hopeless; all is settled,
only when the soul renounces its effort.
Suffering is a sign of imperfection of
nature. It is a stamp of imperfection on
the individual and universal nature.
The soul is not here for suffering.
FAITH
Faith in the heart is the obscure and
often distorted reflection of a hidden
So long as a Cause has on its side one
soul, that is intangible in faith, it can
not perish.
Mental faith is the anticipation of the
knowledge that is coming. Vital faith
anticipates the effectuation that is
coming. Faith in the physical antici
pates what is going to be realised. Ef
fectuation is the work of force, realisa
tion is a fact.
Fate is God's foreknowledge outside
Space and Time of all that in Space and
Time shall yet happen; what He has
foreseen, Power and Necessity work
out by the conflict of forces.
knowledge.
4
5
MIRACLE
The supernatural is that the nature of
which we have not attained or do not
yet know, or the means of which we
have notyet conquered. Thecommon
taste for miracles is the sign that man's
ascent is not yet finished.
Great saints have performed miracles;
greater saints have railed at them; the
greatest have both railed at them and
performed them.
Thou thinkest the ascetic in his cave or
in his mountaintop a stone and a donothing. What dost thou know? He
may be filling the world with the mighty
currents of his will and changing it by
the pressure of his soul-state.
6
As the light of a star reaches the earth
hundreds of years after the star has
ceased to exist, so the event already
accomplished in Brahman at the begin
ning manifests itself now in our mate
rial experience.
KNOWLEDGE
When knowledge is fresh in us, then it
is invincible; when it is old, it loses its
virtue. This is because God moves
always forward.
Shun the barren snares of an empty
metaphysicsand the dry dust of unfer
tile intellectuality. Only that knowledge
is worth having which can be made use
of for a living delight and put out into
temperament, action, creation and being.
7
Become and live the knowledge thou
hast; then is thy knowledge the living
God within thee.
What men call knowledge is the rea
soned acceptance of false appearance.
Wisdom looks behind the veil and sees.
Reason fixes details and contrasts
them. Reason divides, Wisdom mar
ries contrasts in a single harmony.
Inspiration is a slender river of bright
ness leaping from a vast and eternal
knowledge; it exceeds reason more
perfectly than reason exceeds the knowl
edge of senses.
The seatofthoughtisnotthebrain.The
brain is only the communicating chan
nel.
When, O eager disputant, thou hast
prevailed in a debate, then art thou
greatly to be pitied, for thou hast lost a
chance of widening knowledge.
To see the composition of the sun or
the lines of mars is doubtless a great
achievement, but when thou hast the
instrument that can show thee a man's
soul as thou seest a picture, then thou
will smile at the wonders of physical
Science as the playthings of babies.
WRITING
It is always very disappointing to read
9
8
one's own writing. One feels how igno
rant one was!
Poets make much of death and exter
nal afflictions, but the only tragedies
are the soul's failures and the only epic
man's triumphant ascent towards
godhead.
self-righteousness is the worst ci.emy
of virtue, for the one cannot sec its own
errors nor the other its own imperfec
tions.
KARMA
Humanity is not organised for art.
The Law of Karma is not mathematical
or mechanical.
If Art's service is but to imitate Nature,
then burn all the picture galleries and
let us have instead photographic stu
dios. 11 is because Art reveals what Na
ture hides that a small picture is worth
more than all the jewels of the million
aires and the treasures of the princes.
When certain energies are put forward
then certain results tend to be pro
duced. Karma is not the fundamental
law of consciousness. The basic law is
spiritual. Karma is a secondary ma
chinery to help the consciousness to
grow by experience.
Logic is the worst enemy of truth, as
10
It is quite possible to eliminate the
Karmic force; it is not absolute.
11
The love of inaction is folly and the
scorn of inaction is folly; there is no
inaction. The stone lying inert upon
the sands, which is kicked away in an
idle moment, has been producing its
effect upon the hemisphere.
housed itself in a mind and body made
of its own elements.
MAN
WOMEN
The animal is Man disguised in a hairy
skin and upon four legs; the worm is
Man writhing and crawling towards
the evolution of his Manhood. Even
^crude forms of Matter are Man in his
inchoate body. All things are Man, the
Purusha.
The mediaeval ascetics hated women
and thought they were created by God
for the temptation of monks. One may
be allowed to think more nobly both of
God and of women.
Without the man the moment is a lost
opportunity; without the moment the
man is a force inoperative.
\
MIND AND BRAIN
For what do we mean by Man? An un
created and indestructible soul that has
The brain is not the centre of thinking.
It is the mind that thinks, the brain
only reacts to it. There is a parallelism
12
13
NATIONALITY
between the movements of the brain
and those of the higher mind. But the
brain is only a communicating channel,
it is a support for the higher activity.
Wine and narcotics generally prohibit
the action of the most tamasic centres
in the physical brain; and the other
centres in the brain get stimulated.
This helps one to escape from the
limitations of the physical conscious
ness and one may get into other places
of consciousness.
It is not the medicine that cures so
much as the patient's faith in the
doctor and the medicine. Both are a
clumsy substitute for the natural faith
in one's own self power which they
have themselves destroyed.
14
Nationality is a stride of the progres
sive God passing beyond the stage of
the family; therefore the attachment to
clan and tribe must weaken and perish
before a nation can be born.
God's world advances step by step
fulfilling the lesser unit before it seri
ously attempts the larger. Affirm free
nationality first, if thou wouldst ever
bring the world to be one nation.
DEMOCRACY
The gain of democracy is the security
of the individual's life, liberty and
goods from the caprices of the tyrant
15
t
one or the selfish few, its evil is the
decline of greatness in humanity.
DICTATORSHIP
Dictatorship is as old as the world.
When there is a confusion and muddle
in the affairs of men or nations, the
dictator has come, set things right and
pulled out the race from it.
CHARITY
Examine thyself without pity, then
thou will be more charitable and
pitiful to others.
The existence of poverty is the proof of
an unjust and ill organised society
and our public charities are but the
first tardy awakening of the conscience
of a robber.
LEADERSHIP
Help men, but do not pauperise them
of their energy; lead and instruct men,
but see that their initiative and origi
nality remain intact; take others into
thyself, but give them in return the full
godhead of their nature. He who can
do this, is the leader and the guru.
_ 16
Fling not thy alms abroad everywhere
in an ostentation of charity, under
stand and love where thou helpest. Let
thy soul grow within thee.
Help the poor while the poor are with
thee; but study also and strive that
there may be no poor for thy assistance.
17
Selfishness is the only sin, meanness
the only vice, hatred the only criminal
ity. All else can easily be turned into
good, but these are of obstinate resist
ers of deity.
The perfect cosmic vision and cosmic
sentiment is the cure of all error and
suffering,but most men succeed only
in enlarging the range of their ego.
ELEMENTALS
Ignorant forces working on the subtlephysical plane.
There are two kinds of'elemental',
one mischievous and the other inno
cent. What the Europeans call the
gnomes come under this category.
BEGINNING AND END
The beginning and end of things is a
conventional term of our experience;
in their true existence these terms
have no reality, there is no end and no
beginning.
TRUE
Only those thoughts are true the oppositeofwhichis also true in its own time
and application; indisputable dogmas
are the most dangerous kind of false
hoods.
18
19
ASURA
The Asura is really the dark side of
God on the mental plane. Mind is the
very field of the Asura. His characteris
tic is egoistic strength which refuses
the Higher Law. The Asura has got
self-control, tapas, intelligence; only all
that is for his ego.
On the vital plane the corresponding
forces we call the Rakshasas which
represent violent passions and impulses.
Al truism i s good for man, bu t less good
when it is a form of supreme self-indul
gence and lives by pampering the self
ishness of others.
Selfishness kills the soul; destroy it.
But take care that your altruism docs
not kill the soul of others.
20
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Very usually, altruism is only the
sublimest form of selfishness.
ATHEISM
Atheism is a necessary protest against
the wickedness of the churches and the
narrowness of creed. God uses it as a
stone to smash these soiled card-houses.
The Atheist is God playing at hide and
seek with Himself, but is the Theist
any other? Well, perhaps, for he has
seen the shadow of God and clutches
at it.
SILENCE
All speech and action comes prepared
out of the eternal Silence.
WATCHES
VOICES
Leap not too quickly at all voices, for
there are lying spirits ready to deceive
thee, but let thy heart be pure and af
terwards listen.
Watches behave differently with dif
ferent men. It is also certain they
answer to man's thought and will.
GOD AND NATURE
God speaks to the heart when the brain
cannot understand him.
DIVINE LIFE
Turn all things to honey, this is the law
of divine living.
Stride swiftly, for the goal is far; rest
not unduly for thy master is waiting for
thee at the end of thy Journey.
MEMORY
Even the soles of our feet have got a
memory of their own.
22
Our country is God, the Mother; speak
not evil of her unless thou canst do it
with love and tenderness.
God and Nature are like a boy and girl
at play and in love. They hide and run
from each other when glimpsed so that
they may be sought after and chased
and captured.
23
What is God after all? An eternal child
playing an eternal game in an eternal
garden.
There is nothing small in God’s eyes'
let there be nothing small in thine.
God is there not only in the still small
voice, but in the fire and in the whirl
wind.
All first awakening is an act of Grace.
You are given a glimpse and then you
have to work it out.
If the Siddha never laughs it is an im
perfection.
O son of Immortality, live not thou
according to Nature, but according to
God; and compel her also to live ac
cording to the deity within thee.
A God who cannot smile could not
have created this humorous universe.
There will always be more in the God
than the thought of man has ever con
ceived or the tongue of man has ever
uttered.
24
GOD AND HUMANITY
How shall I know God's will with me?
I have to put egoism out of me,
hunting it from every lair and burrow
and bathe my purified and naked soul
in His infinite workings, then He Him
self will reveal it to me.
25
Be wide in me, O Varuna; be mighty in
me, O Indra; O Sun, be very bright and
luminous; O Moon, be full of charm
and sweetness. Be fierce and terrible,
O Rudra; be impetuous and swift, O
Maruts; be strong and bold, O
Aryama; be voluptuous and pleasur
able, O Bhaga; be tender and kind
and loving and passionate, O Mitra.
Be bright and revealing, O Dawn; O
Night, be solemn and pregnant. O Life,
be full, ready and buoyant; O Death,
lead my steps from mansion to
mansion. Harmonise all these, O
Brahmanaspati. Let me not be subject
to these gods, O Kali.
26
There are two for whom there is hope,
the man who has felt God's touch and
been drawn to it and the sceptical seeker
and self-convinced atheist; but for the
formularists of all the religions and
the parrots of free thought, they are
dead souls who follow a death that
they call living.
Genius is Nature's first attempt to lib
erate the imprisoned God out of her
human mould; the mould has to suffer
in the process. It is astonishing that
the cracks are so few and unimpor
tant.
Atheism is the shadow or dark side of
the highest perception of God. Every
formula we form about God, though
always true as a symbol, becomes false
27
when we accept it as a sufficient for
mula. The Atheist and Agnostic come
to remind us of our error.
The old writings call the Titans the
elder gods. So they still are, nor is any
god entirely divine unless there is hid
den in him also a Titan.
God is infinite Possibility. Therefore
Truth is never at rest, therefore also
Error is justified of her children.
If I cannot be Rama, then I would be
Ravana, for he is the dark side of Vishnu.
The Titans are stronger than the gods
because they have agreed with God to
front and bear the burden of His wrath
and enmity; the gods were able to ac
cept only the pleasant burden of his
love and kindlier rapture.
Thesaintand the angel are not the only
divinities; admire also the Titan and
the Giant.
28
Only by perfect renunciation of
desire or by perfect satisfaction of
desire can the utter embrace of God
be experienced, for in both ways the
essential precondition is effected —
desire perishes.
Men in the world have two lights - duty
and principle, but he who has passed
over to God, has done with both and
replaced them by God's will. If men
abuse thee for this, care not, O divine
29
instrument, but go on thy way like the
wind or the sun fostering and destroy
ing.
ILLUSION
Chance is not in this universe; the idea
of illusion is itself an illusion. There
was never illusion yet in the human
mind, that did not conceal and disfig
ure a truth.
LOVE
Love is a fine flower, but unity of
consciousness is the root.
Love God in thy opponent, even while
thou strikesthim; so shall neither have
hell for his portion.
When all is said, Love and Force to
gether can save the world eventually,
but not Love only or Force only.
HATRED
Hate not the oppressor, for, if he is
strong, thy hate increases his force of
resistance; if he is weak, thy hate was
needless. Hatred is a sword of power,
butits edge is always double. Itis like
the Kriya of the ancient magicians which,
if baulked of its prey, returned in fury
to devour its sender.
Hatred is the sign of a secret attraction
that is eager to flee from itself and
furious to deny its own existence.
30
31
Men talk of enemies, but where are
they? I only see wrestlers of one party
or the other in the great arena of the
universe.
BODY
Body has nodesires, it has needs and it
knows what it needs.
DEATH
Death is sometimes a rude valet, but
when he changes this robe of earth for
that brighter raiment, his horseplay
and impertinence can be pardoned.
Disease will always return to the body
if the soul is flawed; for the sins of the
mind are the secret cause of the sins of
the body.
Death is the question Nature puts con
tinually to Life and her reminder to it
that it has not yet found itself. If there
were no seige of death, the creature
would be bound forever in the form of
an imperfect living. Pursued by death
he awakes to the idea of perfect life and
PROPERTY
seeks out its means and its possibility.
All property is theft.
Immortality is not the survival of the
mental personality after death, though
. 32
33
1894
1900
thatalsoistrue,but the waking posses
sion of the unbom and deathless Self
of which the body is only an instru
ment and a shadow.
1901 April
1902 Dec.
1905 March
1906
Chronology (1872-1950)
1872 Aug. 15
Born in Calcutta.
1879
Was taken to England.
1893 Feb.6
Arrived in Bombay.
1893 Feb. 8
Joined service in the
Survey Settlement of the
State Government in
Baroda.
1906 Aug. 14
1907 June 18
1907 August
1908 Feb.
1908 May 2
34
Visited Bengal.
Professor of English in
Baroda College.
Married Mrinalini Devi.
MetTilakatAhmedabad
Congress session.
Principal of the Baroda
College.
Organised the National
ist Party with Bal Gangadhar Tilak.
Principal of the Bengal
National College.
Resigned from Baroda
State Service.
Was arrested for having
published certain articles
in the BandeMataram.
Returned to Calcutta.
Arrested alongwith 41
other revolutionaries in
connection with the Bomb
case.
1909 May
1909 June 19
1910 April 4
1918 Dec. 17
1925 Jan. 5
1926 Nov. 24
1928 May 29
1948 Dec. 11
1950 Dec. 5
Acquitied, delivered the
inspired speech at Uttarpara that made history.
Started a weekly Kar
mayogin.
Left for Pondicherry by a
French Boat, under an as
sumed name.
Wife Mrinalini Devi died.
Lala Lajpat Rai met him.
Came to be known as Sri
Aurobindo.
Rabindranath Tagore vis
ited him.
Andhra University pre
sented National Prize to
him.
Entered into Mahasamadhi.
Position: 1279 (4 views)