|
FOREWORD
This second series of Sri Aurobindo’s letters is intended to be complementary to the volume published on his 75th birthday —the 15th August, 1947. It is a farther instalment from the vast store of his letters which yet remain to be published. Some idea of their immense quantity can be had from the fact that regularly for six to eight hours every day over a period of about ten years he gave replies to the innumerable inquiries addressed to him by the spiritual aspirants in his Ashram and elsewhere. The letters included in the first volume were selected with a view to giving a broad outline of the basic principles of his spiritual metaphysics and psychology and his system of Integral Yoga. The letters in the present volume are compiled so as to throw a closer light and give a some- what more intimate insight into the various aspects of the dynamic development of the spiritual practice enunciated by him. And as this practice aims not only at a liberation from the chains of Ignorance that bind our life but also at a decisive spiritual conquest and transmutation of that Ignorance, resulting in the complete divinisation of our entire existence, the manifold problems of human life also come up at many places for illuminating elucidation from the central spiritual vision, besides the questions directly connected with Yoga and arising in the course of the difficult journey on the spiritual path. For this reason it is expected that this book will prove of great value not only to all spiritual seekers in need of guidance and help in their endeavour, but also to those who are eager to comprehend the true significance of the enigmatic complexities of human existence and their final issue. The names of the persons to whom these letters were addressed have all been omitted following the direction given by Sri Aurobindo himself in a letter : "Coupled with a reference to names what is written raises needless criticism and controversy while the same thing put impersonally is better received and more easily accepted."
November 24, 1948 K.H.G. |