Top 256 Quotes & Sayings by Sri Aurobindo

To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughs.

That which we call the Hindu religion is really the Eternal religion because it embraces all others.

Indian religion has always felt that since the minds, the temperaments and the intellectual affinities of men are unlimited in their variety, a perfect liberty of thought and of worship must be allowed to the individual in his approach to the Infinite.

The Gita is the greatest gospel of spiritual works ever yet given to the race.

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.

India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples.

Hidden nature is secret God.

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.

She saw the myriad gods, and beyond God his own ineffable eternity; she saw that there were ranges of life beyond our present life, ranges of mind beyond our present mind and above these she saw the splendors of the spirit.

She saw too that man has the power of exceeding himself, of becoming himself more entirely and profoundly than he is, truths which have only recently begun to be seen in Europe and seem even now too great for its common intelligence.

India is the meeting place of the religions and among these Hinduism alone is by itself a vast and complex thing, not so much a religion as a great diversified and yet subtly unified mass of spiritual thought, realization and aspiration.

Metaphysical thinking will always no doubt be a strong element in her mentality, and it is to be hoped that she will never lose her great, her sovereign powers in that direction.

Spirituality is indeed the master key of the Indian mind; the sense of the infinitive is native to it.

The consciousness of the seer, is a greater power for knowledge than the consciousness of the thinker. The perceptual power of the inner sight is greater and more direct than the perceptual power of thought.

If a religion is not universal, it cannot be eternal. A narrow religion, a sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can live only for a limited time and a limited purpose.

Live within; be not shaken by outward happenings.

The supreme state of human love is...the unity of one soul in two bodies.

One who loves God finds the object of his love everywhere.

The first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught.

Man is a transitional being, he is not final; for in him and high beyond him ascend the radiant degrees which climb to a divine supermanhood. The step from man towards superman is the next approaching achievement in the earth's evolution. There lies our destiny and the liberating key to our aspiring, but troubled and limited human existence — inevitable because it is at once the intention of the inner Spirit and the logic of Nature's process.

Each victory gained over oneself means new strength to gain more victories.

To hope for a true change of human life without a change of human nature is an irrational and unspiritual proposition.

There is nothing small in God's eyes; let there be nothing small in thine

We have to create strength where it did not exist before; we have to change our natures, and become new men with new hearts, to be born again. We need a nucleus of men in whom the Shakti is developed to its uttermost extent, in whom it fills every corner of the personality and overflows to fertilise the earth. These, having the fire of Bhawani in their hearts and brains, will go forth and carry the flame to every nook and cranny of our land.

When Reason died, then Wisdom was born.

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.

The business of both parent and teacher is to enable and to help the child to educate himself, to develop his own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and practical capacities and to grow freely as an organic being, not to be kneaded and pressured into form like an inert plastic material

He who chooses the infinite has been chosen by the infinite.

Trust the divine power, and she will free the godlike elements in you and shape all into an expression of divine nature.

All fanaticism is false, because it is a contradiction of the very nature of God and of Truth. Truth cannot be shut up in a single book, Bible or Veda or Koran, or in a single religion. The Divine Being is eternal and universal and infinite and cannot be the sole property of the Mussulmans or of the Semitic religions only, - those that happened to be in a line from the Bible and to have Jewish or Arabian prophets for their founders.

Peace is the first condition, without which nothing else can be stable.

Our human knowledge is a candle burnt On a dim altar to a sun-vast Truth.

True knowledge is not attained by thinking. It is what you are; it is what you become.

Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism.

The whole world yearns after freedom, yet each creature is in love with his chains; this is the first paradox and inextricable knot of our nature.

An aimless life is always a troubled life. Every individual should have an aim. But do not forget that the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life. Your aim should be high and wide, generous and disinterested; this will make your life precious to yourself and to others. Whatever your ideal, it cannot be perfectly realized unless you have realized perfection in yourself.

Sit in meditation ! But do not think ! Look only at your mind ! You will see thoughts coming into it ! Before they can enter, throw these away from your mind till your mind is capable of entire silence.

Evolution of consciousness is the central motive of terrestrial existence.

Love is the keynote, Joy is the music, Knowledge is the performer, the Infinite All is the composer and audience.

The practice of Yoga brings us face to face with the extraordinary complexity of our own being.

The first and the most important thing is to know that life is one and immortal. Only the forms, countless in number, are transient and brittle. The life everlasting is independent of any form but manifests itself in all forms. Life then does not die... but the forms are dissolved.

One mighty deed can change the course of things; a lonely thought becomes omnipotent.

The existence of poverty is the proof of an unjust and ill-organised society, and our public charities are but the first tardy awakening in the conscience of a robber.

There are four great events in history, the siege of Troy, the life and crucifixion of Christ, the exile of Krishna in Brindaban and the colloquy on the field of Kurukshetra. The siege of Troy created Hellas, the exile in Brindaban created devotional religion, (for before there was only meditation and worship), Christ from his cross humanized Europe, the colloquy at Kurukshetra will yet liberate humanity.

The cup has to be left clean and empty for the divine liquor to be poured into it.

Remember that you are at an exceptional hour in a unique epoch, that you have this great happiness, this invaluable privilege, of being present at the birth of a new world.

By your stumbling, the world is perfected.

A quiet mind does not mean that there will be no thoughts or mental movements at all, but that these will be on the surface, and you will feel your true being within, separate from them, observing but not carried away

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.

In order to see, you have to stop being in the middle of the picture

What the soul sees and has experienced, that it knows; the rest is appearance, prejudice and opinion.

What is required is faith. Man has body, life and mind but that is not all that constitutes man. He has risen to the mind as a result of evolution. Now a higher consciousness will be evolved - this I call Supermind. It is the instrument of the Divine Consciousness, the Truth-Consciousness.

Everyone has in him something divine, something his own, a chance of perfection and strength in however small a sphere which God offers him to take or refuse. The task is to find it, develop it & use it. The chief aim of education should be to help the growing soul to draw out that in itself which is best and make it perfect for a noble use.

What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.

Detachment is the beginning of mastery.

For the powers of our mind, life, and body are bound to their own limitations, and however high they may rise or however widely expand, they cannot rise beyond them. But still, mental man can open to what is beyond him and call down a Supramental Light, Truth, and Power to work in him and do what the mind cannot do. If mind cannot by effort become what is beyond mind, Supermind can descend and transform mind into its own substance.

When mind is still, then truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the silence.

The Divine Truth is greater than any religion or creed or scripture or idea or philosophy.

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 the yoga, but 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.

The mind has these four levels: physical, vital, buddhi, higher mind. The Supermind is far above these.