श्रीमद्भगवद्गीताBhagavad Gītā · in the light of Sri Aurobindo, home

← Writings and letters on the Gita

LetterThe Gita in Sri Aurobindo’s Words

The Gita and the Integral Yoga · Letter 1

CWSA 29 · Letters on Yoga - II · p. 1085

The idea of the supermind, the Truth-Consciousness is there in the Rig Veda according to Sri Aurobindo’s interpretation and in one or two passages of the Upanishads, but in the Upanishads it is there only in seed in the conception of the being of knowledge, vijñānamaya puruṣa, exceeding the mental, vital and physical being; in the Rig Veda the idea is there but in principle only, it is not developed and even the principle of it has disappeared from the Hindu tradition.

CWSA 29 · Letters on Yoga - II · The Gita and the Integral Yoga [1] · pp. 444–445

It is these things among others that constitute the novelty of Sri Aurobindo’s message as compared with the Hindu tradition,—the idea that the world is not either a creation of Maya or only a play, līlā, of the Divine, or a cycle of births in the ignorance from which we have to escape, but a field of manifestation in which there is a progressive evolution of the soul and the nature in Matter and from Matter through Life and Mind to what is beyond Mind till it reaches the complete revelation of Sachchidananda in life. It is this that is the basis of the Yoga and gives a new sense to life.

—

To the question in your last letter there can be no reply except that it is only either a single-minded faith or a fixed will that can give you the open road to the Yoga. It is because your ideas and your will are in a constant state of flux or of oscillation that you do not succeed. Even with a deficient faith, a fixed mind and will can carry one on and bring the experiences by which an uncertain faith is changed into certitude.

CWSA 29 · Letters on Yoga - II · The Gita and the Integral Yoga [1] · p. 445

From The Gita in Sri Aurobindo’s Words · Sri Aurobindo · The Bhagavad Gita · incarnateword.in