NEW RELEASES IN English SINCE October 2024

The author has woven a detailed history of the early days of the Ashram with charming accounts of how the Mother guided her disciples in their work and spiritual growth through her daily loving touch. Much of the material here is well known, drawn from Sri Aurobindo’s letters and from reminiscences written by older members of the Ashram, but the author has skillfully gathered the diverse source material into a narrative that describes how life was organised by the Mother. We see how people were drawn into a particular work that eventually developed into a regular service. Creative avenues of expression receive a special emphasis – dance, music, photography, art, skilled handiwork – the Mother encouraged all such avenues for the spiritual development of the sadhaks.

Based on a true incident that took place in a small village in Hungary, Erika found a friend and a Grandma is a delightful story about a seven-year-old girl named Erika and her friendship with an elderly woman named Hanna. Written by Sajjyoti Priya and illustrated by Mahua, this tale celebrates the bond of love and friendship that develops between these two strangers, who decide to spread a message of joy and goodwill in the world.

This volume is a collection of talks given at the Hall of Harmony, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, in 2008. Consisting of only one canto, the longest single canto of the entire poem, the Book picks up the story after Savitri’s victory over Death. The “Eternal Night” that began in Book IX has ended, Death has been defeated and transformed, and that eternal night transformed into “The Eternal Day: The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme Consummation”, the title of this canto. Savitri remains adamant in her decision to work for the earth, declining all divine boons offered. That is her soul’s settled choice. The supreme consummation is the Divine’s declaration that She will descend upon earth in a physical body and secure the deliverance of humanity. “The incarnate dual Power shall open God’s door.” The author contends that this canto, a perfect poetic creation, reflects all the beauty, ecstasy, truth, and love of pure mantra.

In this, the final volume of his commentary on The Synthesis of Yoga, the author attempts to help readers understand the last, gloriously complex six chapters of the book. He begins with some characteristics of the supermind: it is a knowledge by identity and oneness; it is total, encompassing the transcendent, the universal, and the individual simultaneously; there is no division between truth and will or between the idea and its execution, because it is both the knower and the known. When the powers of the supermind descend, they begin to operate with different capacities, retaining their essence and character but diluted from their supramental fullness. Chapters on the gradations of the supermind, the supramental thought and knowledge, its instruments, the supramental sense and time vision seek to characterise a greater perfection that comes by the gradual descent of more and more of the supramental light and energy into the whole mental being, lifting the intuition and its powers towards their source in the supramental nature.

Transcribed from Dr Reddy’s talks on The Synthesis of Yoga, Volume Eight completes his discourse on The Yoga of Integral Knowledge. The author traces Sri Aurobindo’s description of the different planes of consciousness defined by the relationship between Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti.  At the base of the ladder of ascension is the plane of the lower triple purusha—the vital, physical and mental aspects of existence. Transcending this plane of our ordinary consciousness, one ascends towards a hierarchy of worlds. Three chapters are devoted to Vijñana or Gnosis, where the mental man is changed into the gnostic soul, a truth-conscious godhead, the path to attaining that consciousness, and finally the highest level of consciousness, that of Gnosis and Ananda. From there the discourse turns to address the relationship between the higher and lower knowledge, the experience of Samadhi within the Integral Yoga, and the deeper aspects of Hathayoga  and Rajayoga, whose practices are  intended to serve a higher, more dynamic purpose in a spiritual transformation.

The previous volume in this series showed how the psychology of self-perfection applies to the instrumentation of the being, its purification in preparation for the liberation of the Spirit and the Nature, which is where Volume Eleven begins. The liberation of the soul into the limitless Spirit demands freedom from the first two “master-knots of the lower nature”: desire and ego. The liberation of the Nature exacts freedom from the second two: the dual action of Nature and the rule of the three gunas. Subsequent chapters delineate the elements of perfection starting from a basic equality of the soul mounting to an ideal action of the Divine through the perfected being. Along with an integral equality comes the requisite raising of the capacities of the actions of the mind, life, and body to a divine level. In the final chapters the author speaks of the Divine Shakti and how faith in the action of the Shakti is the most essential element in helping to perfect the instrumental being.

Contemporary scholars compare Sri Aurobindo’s perspective on a range of concepts and ideas with noted philosophical and contemplative thinkers from both India and the West. The leadoff essay by Nolini Kanta Gupta sets the high tone of this collection by setting out the ideal of Sri Aurobindo “to divinise the human, immortalise the mortal, spiritualise the material.” Five essays compare Sri Aurobindo’s ideas with other Indian thinkers on subjects such as spiritual awakening and enlightenment and interpretations of Advaita. The remaining essays examine comparisons with Western philosophers including Heraclitus, Gebser, Hegel, and Chalmers; psychologists Freud and Csikszentmihaly; revolutionaries Marx and Gramsci; and educationists and linguists Steiner, Montessori and Bakhtin. In the wideness and depth of these reflections one recognises Sri Aurobindo’s power to reveal, “to the eye of vision and the heart of faith”, the promise of this highest ideal for our future.