Tag Archive for: English

Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo (Recorded By A. B. Purani)

Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo

Recorded By A. B. Purani

Evening Talks is A.B. Purani’s record of informal conversations between Sri Aurobindo and his disciples during two periods: 1923–1926, when the talks were held on the verandahs of the houses in which Sri Aurobindo stayed, and 1938–1943, when they took place in Sri Aurobindo’s room. The talks cover a wide range of topics—yoga, philosophy, art, poetry, psychology, science, and contemporary history, notably India’s struggle for independence and the Second World War. They reveal something of the versatile nature of Sri Aurobindo’s personality and his wide-ranging, profound knowledge of life as well as a glimpse of the heights of spiritual consciousness he embodied and through which he acted on both world events and on the natures of those drawn to his yoga.

Book Details

Author: Sri Aurobindo

Print Length: 836 pages

Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Book format: PDF, ePub, Kindle

Language: English Read more

Preparing for the Miraculous by Georges Van Vrekhem

Preparing for the Miraculous

Preparing for the Miraculous is a series of ten talks given by Georges Van Vrekhem in Auroville in 2010 covering a wide range of subjects, examined from the Aurobindonian viewpoint. The book explores timeless questions in the light of Sri Aurobindo’s evolutionary concept and casts a refreshing new look on issues that have been the lasting preoccupation of seekers throughout the ages. In these talks, Georges discusses such questions as:

  • What is the meaning of our existence in the cosmic scheme?
  • Is there a divine purpose in life or is it merely the mechanical playing-out of competing “greedy genes”?
  • Do we live in a blind universe aimlessly running its course from Big Bang to Big Crunch or is there a higher purpose in evolution?
  • If there is a conscious guiding intent, why does it allow evil to exist?
  • How do we transcend the limits of a blind “scientism” locking itself out of a vaster understanding by refusing to admit the existence of any factors outside of its self-imposed limits of “scientific” verifiability? Can these questions be tackled without landing in the other extreme of religious dogma?
  • Is our planet Earth special in the universe?
  • Do we human beings have a special role in evolution?

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Sunil – The Mother’s Musician by Clifford Gibson

Sunil – The Mother’s Musician

This portrait of Sunil Bhattacharya as a composer, teacher, sadhak, and friend consists of his correspondence with the Mother on his music, and his exchange of letters, dating from the early 1960s to the late 1990s, with the many friends all over the world who admired his music. Interspersed throughout the story told in these letters are reminiscences by residents of the Ashram that serve to highlight Sunil’s character and talents. In the first few pages of the book, Sunil describes his early childhood in Krishnagar, West Bengal, and his life in Calcutta, where he learned to play the sitar.

Book Details

Author: Clifford Gibson
Print Length: 356 pages
Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Submitted by: Author (Clifford Gibson)
Book format: PDF
Language: English Read more

Letters on Yoga (CWSA Edition)

Letters on Yoga (Volume 1-4)

Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo Volumes 28-31

Sri Aurobindo’s Letters on Yoga (CWSA Edition) Four volumes of letters on the integral yoga, other spiritual paths, the problems of spiritual life, and related subjects. In these letters, Sri Aurobindo explains the foundations of his integral yoga, its fundamentals, its characteristic experiences and realisations, and its method of practice. He also discusses other spiritual paths and the difficulties of spiritual life. Related subjects include the place of human relationships in yoga; sadhana through meditation, work and devotion; reason, science, religion, morality, idealism and yoga; spiritual and occult knowledge; occult forces, beings and powers; destiny, karma, rebirth and survival. Sri Aurobindo wrote most of these letters in the 1930s to disciples living in his ashram.

Letters of Sri Aurobindo was first compiled and published in four series from 1947 to 1951. The First, Second and Fourth Series contained letters on yoga, the Third letters on poetry and literature. Prior to that, small collections of letters were published in The Riddle of This World (1933), Lights on Yoga (1935), Bases of Yoga (1936) and More Lights on Yoga (1948). Some letters were also published periodically in various Ashram journals: Sri Aurobindo Circle, Sri Aurobindo Mandir, The Advent and Mother India.

The First and Second Series of Letters of Sri Aurobindo were reissued in 1950 and 1954 respectively.

In 1958 all the above letters, excepting those on poetry and literature in the Third Series, were published again, along with additional material as Volumes VI and VII of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education Series in two volumes. Volume One was reissued in 1969 with further additions.

In 1970 Letters on Yoga was published as volumes 22, 23 and 24 of the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library. This edition contained a large number of letters not included in the two volumes of the Centre of Education edition. It was reprinted several times.

In 1997, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram began to publish the Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo in a uniform library edition of 37 volumes. A considerable number of new letters has are being published for the first time in the new CWSA edition.

Book Details

Author: Sri Aurobindo

Print Length: 2420 pages

Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Book format: PDF, ePub, Kindle

Language: English Read more

AUROVILLE: The first six years 1968-1974 by Savitra

AUROVILLE: The first six years
1968-1974

“Auroville, the first 6 years – 1968-1974” written by Savitra is one of only two records of what was happening on the Auroville plateau during the first 6 years of its creation.

Book Details

Author: Savitra
Print Length: 102 pages
Publisher: Auropublications
Original source: Auroville Archives
Contributors: Gilles Guigan
Book format: PDF, ePub, Kindle
Language: English

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Sweet Mother by Mona Sarkar

Sweet Mother

Luminous Notes

This book includes the Conversations with the Mother recollected by Mona Sarkar published earlier in Sweet Mother — Harmonies of Light and Sweet Mother — Harmonies of Light — Part 2, as well as some new material. The text has been revised in places. These conversations were held in French. They were noted down from memory, except for a few talks which were recorded on tape. Occasionally, the Mother spoke in English.

Book Details

Author: Mona Sarkar
Print Length: 126
Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Contributor: Website Visitor
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Mobi
Language: English
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Savitri Bhavan – The Buildings

Savitri Bhavan – The Buildings

This booklet has been created in response to the widespread interest in the architecture of Savitri Bhavan expressed by students and professionals.

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Songs from the Soul by Anilbaran Roy

Songs from the Soul

A collection of meditations and mystic poems by Anilbaran Roy. Anilbaran Roy was a professor of philosophy for seven years in Bengal. Subsequently he felt a call for national work and actively participated in the Non-cooperation Movement. He became profoundly impressed by the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and in June 1926 he joined the Ashram. Anilbaran was a prolific writer and has written books in three languages, English, Bengali and Hindi.

Sri Aurobindo translated his poem and wrote in November 1935 of his translation (which he has apparently just completed): “Anilbaran’s song is best rendered by an Elizabethan simplicity and intensity with as little artifice of metre and diction as possible. I have tried to do it in that way.”

The Mother made selection from Anilbaran’s prayers offered to her. She termed the collection a “Spiritual Dictionary”. They were published as part of this book “Songs from the Soul”

The following quotation from “The Mother” by Sri Aurobindo was chosen by Anilbaran to open the book:

“Follow your soul and not your mind, your soul that answers to the Truth, not your mind that leaps at appearances; trust the Divine Power and she will free the godlike elements in you and shape all into an expression of Divine Nature.”

Book Details

Author: Anilbaran Roy
Print Length: 116
Publisher: Sandhanam Printing Works
Contributor: Website Visitor
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Mobi
Language: English
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The Mind of the Cells or Willed Mutation of Our Species

The Mind of the Cells
or Willed Mutation of Our Species

Le Mental des Cellules (The Mind of the Cells), a synopsis and introduction of the whole Agenda, with many fascinating and important excerpts, and written with great passion by Satprem. He also refers to personal experiences, including the 1976 attempt upon his life, which he only survived by going into a state of complete non-resistance.

“The Mind of the Cells”: Six and a half billion Homo sapiens are now learning the futility of their ways of existence, just as one day some fish learned the futility of their gills on dry land. If those fish had sought to improve their aquatic science, invent new fins and new philosophies, they would have been mistaken. The question is whether we will find the WAY, not to improve human suffocation, but to be and live in another way on earth. Is there in this human body a spring, a lever which will enable us to change our terrestrial conditions, just as three million years ago a first mental vibration prepared Einstein and the Boeing 747? What vibration? Where, in the body? Could it be that life’s raw material, the cell, conceals a power of consciousness or a “vibratory mode” which would make obsolete all our cerebral means and our dead-end devices? A Mind of the Cells which will open up to us new sources of energy, new means of communication, a new power to handle Matter. A new biology and a new consciousness which will enable us to meet the challenge of a species on its way to self-destruction. Such is Sri Aurobindo’s and Mother’s incredible discovery in the cells of the body, at a time when the earth is asphyxiating. For “salvation is physical” said she, who at the age of eighty, dared to knock at the body’s last door, and who made the most tremendous discovery since Darwin.

Book Details

Author: Satprem
Print Length: 234
Publisher: Institut de Recherches Évolutives
Contributor: Website Visitor
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Mobi
Language: English
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The English of Savitri Volume 5

The English of Savitri
volume 5

This is the fifth volume of the English of Savitri series based on transcripts of classes led by the author at Savitri Bhavan, in this case from 6 January to 11 August 2011. The transcripts have been carefully revised and edited for conciseness and clarity, while aiming to preserve the informal atmosphere of the course. This volume contains detailed explanations of the first four Cantos of Book Two, The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds. Each sentence is examined closely and explanations are given about vocabulary, sentence structure and imagery. The aim is to assist a deeper understanding and appreciation of the poem which the Mother has characterised as ‘the supreme revelation of Sri Aurobindo’s vision’.

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