Indian poet & philosopher (1872-1950)
If a religion is not universal, it cannot be eternal. A narrow religion, a sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can live only for a limited time and a limited purpose.
SRI AUROBINDO
The Uttarpara Address, May 30, 1909
Life was a sorrowful throb of this Matter teaching it anguish,
Teaching it hope and desire trod out too soon in the mire,
Life the frail joy that regrets its briefness, life the long sorrow.
SRI AUROBINDO
Gems from Sri Aurobindo
The heart's words fall back unheard from Wisdom's throne.
SRI AUROBINDO
Gems from Sri Aurobindo
There is nothing mind can do that cannot be better done in the mind's immobility and thought-free stillness.
SRI AUROBINDO
Essays Divine and Human
Our human knowledge is a candle burnt
On a dim altar to a sun-vast Truth.
SRI AUROBINDO
Gems from Sri Aurobindo
When reason died, then Wisdom was born.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Aphorisms
Spirituality is much wider than any particular religion, and in the larger ideas of it that are now coming on us even the greatest religion becomes no more than a broad sect or branch of the one universal religion, by which we shall understand in the future man's seeking for the eternal, the divine, the greater self, the source of unity and his attempt to arrive at some equation, some increasing approximation of the values of human life with the eternal and the divine values.
SRI AUROBINDO
The Renaissance in India
What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Glimpses
The whole world yearns after freedom, yet each creature is in love with his chains.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Glimpses
Witness and stand back from Nature, that is the first step to the soul's freedom.
SRI AUROBINDO
The Life Divine
The existence of poverty is the proof of an unjust and ill-organised society, and our public charities are but the first tardy awakening in the conscience of a robber.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Aphorisms
To feed death with her works is here life's doom.
SRI AUROBINDO
Savitri
What men call knowledge, is the reasoned acceptance of false appearances. Wisdom looks behind the veil and sees.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Aphorisms
Only when Eternity takes Time by the hand,
Only when infinity weds the finite's thought,
Can man be free from himself and live with God.
SRI AUROBINDO
Gems from Sri Aurobindo
The Atheist is God playing at hide and seek with Himself.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Aphorisms
The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existant and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity.
SRI AUROBINDO
The Life Divine
Indian religion has always felt that since the minds, the temperaments and the intellectual affinities of men are unlimited in their variety, a perfect liberty of thought and of worship must be allowed to the individual in his approach to the Infinite.
SRI AUROBINDO
Sri Aurobindo: The foundations of Indian culture and the renaissance in India
If Hell were possible, it would be the shortest cut to the highest heaven. For verily God loveth.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Aphorisms
What I cannot do now is the sign of what I shall do hereafter. The sense of impossibility is the beginning of all possibilities. Because this temporal universe was a paradox and an impossibility, therefore the Eternal created it out of His being.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Glimpses
All that is born and destroyed is reborn in the sweep of the ages;
Life like a decimal ever recurring repeats the old figure.
SRI AUROBINDO
Gems from Sri Aurobindo