Sri Aurobindo Quotes on Knowledge
Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950), the Bengali philosopher-yogi whose The Life Divine (1939–40), The Synthesis of Yoga (serialized 1914–21), and the long epic Savitri gave twentieth-century Indian thought its most ambitious philosophical system, defended the doctrine of integral yoga: the spiritual evolution of consciousness from matter through life and mind toward the supramental knowledge whose progressive descent into terrestrial existence is, on Aurobindo's analysis, the proper philosophical and evolutionary destiny of humanity. The framework draws on the Vedic, Upanishadic, and Tantric traditions while engaging the evolutionary categories of nineteenth-century European thought to construct a future-directed Vedanta whose completion lies ahead rather than behind.
Quotes
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Attributed to Sri Aurobindo:
“True knowledge is not attained by thinking. It is what you are; it is what you become.”
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“Aurobindo, from a letter of Sri Aurobindo that C.R. Das was reading out while defending him in the Alipore Bomb Trial. C.R. Das Speech in defence of Aurobindo Ghosh in the Maincktala Bomb Case. The judgement was issued in 1909. Source: Collected Works of Deshbandhu.”
If it is suggested that I preached the idea of freedom for my country and this is against the law, I plead guilty to the charge. If that is the law here I say I have done that and I request you to convict me, but do not impute to me crimes I am not guilty of, deeds against which my whole nature revolts and which, having regard to my mental capacity, is something which could never have been perpetr -
“Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913)”
Evolution is not finished; reason is not the last word nor the reasoning animal the supreme figure of Nature . As man emerged out of the animal , so out of man the superman emerges. -
“Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)”
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. -
“Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)”
The meeting of man and God must always mean a penetration and entry of the divine into the human and a self-immergence of man in the Divinity. -
“Hinduism , which is the most skeptical and the most believing of all, the most skeptical because it has questioned and experimented the most, the most believing because it has the deepest experience and the most varied and positive spiritual knowledge, that wider Hinduism which is not a dogma or combination of dogmas but a law of life , which is not a social framework but the spirit of a past and ”
The Ideal of the Karmayogin (1921), p. 9