….the sole aim of life is to dedicate oneself to the divine realization. You must first (you may deceive yourself, but that doesn't make any difference), first be convinced that this is what you want and you want this alone—primo.

… I didn't want to put prohibitions in, because prohibitions … first of all, it's an encouragement to revolt, always, and then there is a good proportion of characters who, when they are forbidden to do something, immediately feel an urge to do it …

I am making a distinction: there are people who come here and want to dedicate themselves to divine life, but they come to do work and they will work (they won't do an intensive yoga because not one in fifty is capable of doing it, but they are capable of dedicating their life and of working and doing good work disinterestedly, as a service to the Divine—that's very good), but in particular, To those who want to practice the integral yoga, it is strongly advised to abstain from three things … So, the three things you put your fingers in your ears): sexual intercourse (it comes third) and drinking alcohol and ... (whispering) smoking.

Then I came to live in Sri Aurobindo's house, we spoke freely, and one day I told him, "How awful the smell of smoke is! It's disgusting!" So he said to me, "Oh, you don't like the smell?" "Oh, no!" I said, "Not only that, but I had to make a yogic effort to stop it from making me feel sick!" The next day, he had stopped. It was over, he never smoked again … That was kind. It wasn't on principle, it was because he didn't want to impose the smell on me. But I had never said anything: it was simply because he asked me just like that, while talking, so I told him. And when he stopped smoking, everyone had to stop too—smoking wasn't allowed anymore, since he didn't smoke anymore…   more »

I used to see Purani almost every night, and then some fifteen days ago, before he left his body here, like that, I saw him in a place ... It's a place which is entirely made of a sort of pinkish gray clay—it's sticky, gluey, and rather liquid. There were lots of people. It was a place where lots of people were going to prepare themselves there for the supramental life…   more »

In the monotheistic religious mind nothing could be more false and reprehensible than polytheism. The religion of the Hindus has often been vilified by the Western religious mind which finds that the idea of a superior one god is the final outcome of religious history: belief in many gods is bound to be false. We need not here go into arguments for the justification of polytheism. Suffice it to note that to the Hindu mind the many gods are the forms and personalities of the One. This One is not assimilable to the monotheistic God, although some Indians, beleaguered by the criticism of their belief in many gods, have tried to prove that Hinduism also is in essence monotheistic, by quoting the Vedic verse that the Being is One (ekam sat), people give it various names —Indra, Agni, etc.

In the Upanishad there is a report of a dialogue. Shakalya asks Yajnavalkya, “How many gods are there?”, and Yalnavalkya answers in accordance with the tradition: “Three hundred and three, and three thousand and three.” “All right. How many gods are there?” Shakalya repeats his question. ‘Thirty three.’ But the enquirer reiterates the question several times and Yajnavalkya’s answers are respectively six, three, two, and finally, one (eka). But this one god should not be equated with the monotheistic god who is the creator of the world but sits outside it—and governs it like an autocrat. A Vedic hymn says that the one Person (puruşa) encompasses the earth, but exceeds it. This implies that he surpasses the universe and is therefore the Transcendence, but it also implies that the world is also he. All animate and inanimate things are his becoming. Nothing is outside him.

In Indian polytheism “the worshipper of many gods,” Sri Aurobindo says, “still knows that all his divinities are forms, names, personalities and powers of the One; his gods proceed from the one Purusha, his goddesses are energies of the one divine Force.” ...   more »