Works of Sri Aurobindo

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PART TWO

 

 THE PATH OF YOGA 


The Path  

 

The mountain path leads always in two directions, upward and downward all depends on what we put behind us.  

 

Life is a perpetual choice between truth and falsehood, light and darkness, progress and regression, the ascent towards the heights or a fall into the abyss. It is for each one to choose freely.

29 February 1952

 

In each one’s life a moment comes when he has to choose between the Path and the muddle. You cannot put one foot here and one foot there. If you try to, you will be torn to pieces.

 

A heart that does not choose is a heart that will die.

 

You take up the spiritual path only when you feel you cannot do otherwise.

27 October 1952 

When the path is known it is easy to tread upon it.

19 August 1954

To follow the path to the end, one must be armed with a very patient endurance.

4 September 1954

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On the spiritual path each step forward is a conquest and the result of a fight.

5 September 1954 

The road to the Divine: always long, often dry in appearance, but always abundant in its results.

 

Ascension: stage by stage one climbs towards the Consciousness.

 

Spiritual ascension: fearless, regular, uninterrupted.

 

One will pass through as many stages as it is necessary to take, but one will arrive.

 

The intellectual attitude comes first and practice follows little by little. What is very important is to maintain very alert the will to live and to be what one knows to be the truth. Then it is impossible to stop and even more to fall back.

 

All human beings have a spiritual destiny which is near or far depending on each one’s determination.

One must will in all sincerity.

11 April 1965  

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All depends upon the choice of the force that you allow to make use of you as its instrument. And the choice has to be made at every moment of your life.

 

It is the conflict in you between what is attached to ordinary life and what aspires for the divine life. It is up to you to choose which is the strongest in you and to act accordingly.

19 September 1967

 

You can follow the meanderings of innumerable reincarnations or choose the steep and rapid path of intensive “sadhana”.

 

He who follows the steep path that climbs the heights can easily slip down into the abyss.

 

For those whose destiny it is to scale the summits, the least false step risks being a mortal danger.

 

The perfect path: for each one the path which leads fastest to the Divine.

 

All was gold and gold and gold, a torrent of golden light pouring down in an uninterrupted flow and bringing with it the consciousness that the path of the gods is a sunlit path in which difficulties lose all reality.

Such is the path open before us if we choose to take it. 

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Yoga  

 

Sadhak = one who follows a yogic discipline.

Sadhana = yogic discipline.

            Yoga = union with the Divine (by extension: the path which leads to this union).

 

Would you please explain to me how doing Yoga brings you near to the Divine? And what is the real meaning of Yoga? Is it only contortive body- excerises or is there a yoga of the mind also?

 

This has nothing to do with a spiritual life, not even with religion. X will explain to you in detail, but I can tell you that Yoga is not only an aspiration of the mind towards the Divine but also and chiefly a yearning of the heart.

6 November 1963 

The whole world is in a process of progressive transformation; if you take up the discipline of Yoga, you speed up in yourself the process.

 

Yoga is commensurate with all life.

 

True spirituality transforms life. 

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