Letters on Yoga (New CWSA Edition)

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Letters on Yoga

Volume 1-4

Sri Aurobindo’s Letters on Yoga (New 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

Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo by Nirodbaran

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Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo

Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo by Nirodbaran is an account of the period of his close personal contact with Sri Aurobindo, the time when he served as Sri Aurobindo’s personal attendant and literary secretary from 1938 to 1950.

Readers of Sri Aurobindo might wonder about the Master’s external personality. The curiosity is perennial in the mind of the seeker; in the Gita, Arjuna cannot refrain from asking Sri Krishna, “How does the sage of settled understanding speak, how sit, how walk?” Equality has always been held as the hallmark of the liberated soul and while signs of equality are subjective, sensitive souls cannot help perceiving the spiritual atmosphere of evolved beings. The Person in them is larger than the personality, and this inner largeness overflows into and suffuses their external nature as well.

Book Details

Author: Nirodbaran
Print Length: 324p.
Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Submitted by: Website Visitor
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Kindle
Language: English
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Sweet Mother by Mona Sarkar

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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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The Glory of The Divine Mother as revealed in Savitri

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The Glory of The Divine Mother as revealed in Savitri

Savitri is a many-layered mantric epic that Sri Aurobindo has gifted to earth and men. Given the mantric nature of Savitri and the incarnate Divine Mother at the center and core of the yoga of supramental transformation, it is felt that invoking Her Presence with the help of these mantric lines is bound to help the aspiring soul to open more and more to Her who holds the key to change human nature into divine nature. It is with this purpose that these passages have been selected, passages that reveal to us the glory of the Divine Mother and Her vast all-embracing, all-transmuting Love.

Book Details

Author: Sri Aurobindo
Compiler: Alok Pandey
Print Length: 145
Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Mobi
Language: English
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Captive of Her Love by Janina Stroka

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Longings for the Mother

This book is a collection of letters, poems and paintings by Janina Stroka, a Polish disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and a member of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, India, from 1957 until her passing in 1964. It is a truly fascinating book that should interest readers of many backgrounds and persuasions. Employing a primarily epistolary mode, through the use of letters, it combines several interesting categories as well: spiritual travelogue, quest narrative, period history and East-West encounter. Above all, it bridges the gap between the falsity of public image vis a vis the reality of our private self.

Janina’s account of her life in Pondicherry in this book is divided into three parts. The main part of the text consists of extracts from letters written to a Dutch friend with whom Janina lived first in Palestine and later in Germany, from December 1957 to June 1958. The letters in the next section were written between 1960 and 1963 to a young Bengali, a writer and social worker. Next, the book contains selected poems and paintings by Janina and concludes with a comment by the Mother on Janina’s passing.

All of these provide an invaluable glimpse into Janina’s inner life in the Ashram, no less than her observation of the details of the seemingly trivial but no less significant aspects of the day to day life in the Ashram and Pondicherry during the late fifties and early sixties. We find, for instance, a perceptive description of meal-time atmosphere in the Dining Room. Those who habitually crib against the Dining Room food would do well to see Janina’s sense of reverence towards this food (“We always get two bananas and a wonderful yoghurt, just a dream!”). She talks memorably of a number of events and impressions of the supramental force spread over Pondicherry, vis a vis the ubiquitous presence of the town’s dirt, filth and squalour; about “bad people in the Ashram”; regarding the problem with maid-servants, their perpetual intrigues and the need to constantly humour them in order to extract work out of their reluctant selves and so on. She also records her encounters with Pavitrada, Nolinida and Medhananda and the quota of luscious mangoes from Bombay that she receives from X, a friend: “What a pity that I do not have a husband” she observes with self-deprecating humour.

Janina reveals in her engrossing accounts that despite their rootedness in reason, science and rationality, (or perhaps because of it!) a dedicated westerner, drawn powerfully to spirituality, is likely to blossom more fully vis a vis his/her eastern counterparts. Her life — full of ordeals, hardships and agony — is testimony to the indomitable human spirit forever in search of the deepest meaning of life. Her narrative offers us a lesson in humility.

(from book review by Dr Sachidananda Mohanty)

Book Details

Author: Janina Stroka
Print Length: 106
Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Mobi
Language: English
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Longings for the Mother by Indra Sen

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Longings for the Mother

I learned of the Mother’s passing on the morning of the 18th November, 1973 at Sri Aurobindo Yoga Mandir, Jwalapur (Hardwar), where my normal work lies as given by the Mother in 1958. The impulse that arose within me was to go deep within and be with the Mother to the best of my capacity. I reduced my external preoccupations to the minimum and began to live in that manner and it was profoundly satisfying. In this experience, there were occasional moments of shock and grief too but, on the whole, there was a feeling of inner assurance and a sense of contact and conversation with the Mother. On the morning of the 27th November, as I sat in this contemplation, a move arose to concretise the inner thought and feeling and I wrote out “Our Mother, who is no more, who is ever more.” Soon all the ten topics ending with “Mother, we read again Your ‘Notes on the Way’” came along. And I read these again and again and enjoyed doing so. I began to do this day after day. I felt that this tended to deepen my inner contact. The next three pieces were written on the following three days, a piece per day. Then I had to go on a short journey and, for about a fortnight, there was no writing. About the middle of December, the writing was resumed and the remaining six pieces were written out. The entire writing was done, on the whole, with ease and simplicity.

To me, all this served to clarify and strengthen an inner contact with the Mother. Many friends, who have read these pieces in typescript, have felt deeply moved and found in varying degrees a greater inner contact.

Book Details

Author: Indra Sen
Print Length: 43
Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Mobi
Language: English
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To Thee Our Infinite Gratitude (Writings on the Passing of Sri Aurobindo)

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To Thee Our Infinite Gratitude

Writings on the Passing of Sri Aurobindo

A series of essays written in commemoration of Sri Aurobindo’s passing. The words of Amal Kiran, Udar and K.R.S.Iyengar give us a vast spiritual, psychological and factual perspective of the event, greatly helping us to understand several aspects of the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, the young American scholar Rhoda P. Le Cocq’s account of the last Darshan of the Master and the Mother unveils that aspect of the power of Grace which so smoothly and silently demolishes the wall of scepticism one had maintained around oneself for long. The compilation brings us a serene calm and an intense feeling of gratitude, and reminds us that:

Death is a stair, a door, a stumbling stride
The soul must take to cross from birth to birth,
A grey defeat pregnant with victory,
A whip to lash us towards our deathless state.

Savitri

Book Details

Author: Nirodbaran, Dr. Prabhat Sanyal, Amal Kiran, Udar Pinto, Pavitra, K.R.S. Iyengar, Rhoda P. Le Cocq
Print Length: 100
Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Mobi
Language: English
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The Mother Abides – Final Reflections

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The Mother Abides
Final Reflections (1973–1983)

by Nolini Kanta Gupta

These thoughts and reminiscences of Nolini Kanta Gupta were written or spoken during the final decade of his life — from the time of the Mother’s passing in November 1973 until shortly before his own passing in February 1984. During that period they served as a source of guidance and consolation to the Ashram community, and they still seem relevant today.

Many of these writings and talks were first presented to the students, young and old, of Nolini-da’s classes. Later they were published in The Advent, a quarterly journal he edited, or in his Collected Works. Details about their publication and a life-sketch of the author are given at the end of the book.

Book Details

Author: Nolini Kanta Gupta
Print Length: 77
Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Mobi
Language: English
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Sri Aurobindo His Life Unique by Rishabhchand

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Sri Aurobindo His Life Unique

A unique biography of Sri Aurobindo, which was written by Rishabhchand Samsukha in response to a request from The Mother, reviewed chapter by chapter by Nolini da, and translated by Andre Morisset for its bilingual publication at the Bulletin over the period of 10 years starting in 1960. The book focuses on early and political life leading up to the formation of the Ashram.

Regarding the works of Rishabhchand, the publisher’s note states: “One cannot fail to perceive in them an unusual harmony of the intellect’s clear thinking, intuition’s deep penetration and the spirit’s permeating suffusion. They stand out impressively against the background of innate humility and colour gracefully the flow of his style and language.”

Book Details

Author: Rishabhchand
Print Length: 454
Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Original source: http://auromaa.org/category/sri-aurobindo-his-life-unique/
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Mobi
Language: English
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My Friend and Master by C.C. Dutt

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My Friend and Master

A Memoir by C.C. Dutt

The book “My Friend and Master” is a personal account of Sri Aurobindo’s pre-Ashram days told by C.C.Dutt, who had been a revolutionary comrade and later became a spiritual disciple of Sri Aurobindo in his ashram. C.C. Dutt’s memoir carries the unmistakable direct presence of the Guide and Master and vivid experience that can only occur in the immediate closeness to the Guru. It will be of a great interest to all those who have been guided on their spiritual paths by Sri Aurobindo’s words and presence. C.C. Dutt’s memoir “My Friend and Master” was originally published in “Sri Aurobindo Circle” Eighth Number, 1952

Book Details

Author: C.C. Dutt
Print Length: 34
Publisher: Auro e-Books
Original source: http://auromaa.org/my-friend-and-my-master-charu-chandra-dutt-part-2/
Submitted by: Krishna
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Mobi
Language: English
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