Indian poet & philosopher (1872-1950)
Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism.
SRI AUROBINDO
New Lamps for Old
When I approached God at that time, I hardly had a living faith in Him. The agnostic was in me, the atheist was in me, the sceptic was in me and I was not absolutely sure that there was a God at all. I did not feel His presence. Yet something drew me to the truth of the Vedas, the truth of the Gita, the truth of the Hindu religion. I felt there must be a mighty truth somewhere in this Yoga, a mighty truth in this religion based on the Vedanta.
SRI AUROBINDO
The Uttarpara Address, May 30, 1909
Spirituality is indeed the master-key of the Indian mind; the sense of the infinite is native to it. 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 perfectly lived in the sole power of its externalities.
SRI AUROBINDO
The Renaissance in India
Even soul-force, when it is effective, destroys. Only those who have used it with eyes open, know how much more destructive it can be than the sword and the cannon.
SRI AUROBINDO
"Kurukshetra", Essays on the Gita
Religions, creeds and forms are only a characteristic outward sign of the spiritual impulsion and religion itself is the intensive action by which it tries to find its inward force. Its expansive movement comes in the thought which it throws out on life, the ideals which open up new horizons and which the intellect accepts and life labours to assimilate.
SRI AUROBINDO
The Renaissance in India
The supreme end is the freedom of the spirit.
SRI AUROBINDO
Bhagavad Gita and Its Message
What then was the commencement of the whole matter? Existence that multiplied itself for sheer delight of being and plunged into numberless trillions of forms so that it might find itself innumerably.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Glimpses
Life, the river of the Spirit, consenting to anguish and sorrow.
SRI AUROBINDO
Ahana
When we have passed beyond knowings, then we shall have Knowledge.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Glimpses
Sin and virtue are a game of resistance we play with God in His efforts to draw us towards perfection.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Aphorisms
Rather hang thyself than belong to the horde of successful imitators.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Aphorisms
A God who cannot smile, could not have created this humorous universe.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Aphorisms
Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge, it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Aphorisms
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.
SRI AUROBINDO
attributed, Humanimal
The aggressive and quite illogical idea of a single religion for all mankind, a religion universal by the very force of its narrowness, one set of dogmas, one cult, one system of ceremonies, one ecclesiastical ordinance, one array of prohibitions and injunctions which all minds must accept on peril of persecution by men and spiritual rejection or eternal punishment by God, that grotesque creation of human unreason which has been the parent of so much intolerance, cruelty and obscurantism and aggressive fanaticism, has never been able to take firm hold of the Indian mentality.
SRI AUROBINDO
Sri Aurobindo: The foundations of Indian culture and the renaissance in India
The Person is a bubble on Time's sea.
SRI AUROBINDO
Gems from Sri Aurobindo
Genius discovers a system; average talent stereotypes it till it is shattered by fresh genius.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Aphorisms
That which we call the Hindu religion is really the eternal religion, because it is the universal religion which embraces all others.
SRI AUROBINDO
The Uttarpara Address, May 30, 1909
Evolution is not finished; reason is not the last word nor the reasoning animal the supreme figure of Nature. As man emerged out of the animal, so out of man the superman emerges.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Aphorisms
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.
SRI AUROBINDO
Arya: A Philosophical Review, January 1921