Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

3. Religion, Morality, Idealism and Yoga

Fragment ID: 199

See letter itself (letter ID: 536)

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

December 29, 1934

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As to the extract about Vivekananda¹, the point I make there does not seem to me humanitarian. You will see that I emphasise there the last sentences of the page quoted from Vivekananda, not the words about God the poor and sinner and criminal. The point is about the Divine in the world, the All, sarva-bhūtāni of the Gita. That is not merely humanity, still less, only the poor or the wicked; surely, even the rich or the good are the part of the All and those also who are neither good nor bad nor rich nor poor. Nor is there any question (I mean in my own remarks) of philanthropic service; so neither daridrer sevā is the point. I had formerly not the humanitarian but the humanity view – and something of it may have stuck to my expressions in the Arya. But I had already altered my viewpoint from the “Our yoga for the sake of humanity” to “Our yoga for the sake of the Divine”. The Divine includes not only the supracosmic but the cosmic and the individual – not only Nirvana or the Beyond but Life and the All. It is that I stress everywhere.

¹ “I have lost all wish for my salvation, may I be born again and again and suffer thousands of miseries so that I may worship the only God that exists, the only God I believe in, the sum-total of all souls,– and above all, my God the wicked, my God the miserable, my God the poor of all races, of all species is the special object of my worship. He who is the high and low, the saint and the sinner, the god and the worm. Him worship, the visible, the knowable, the real, the omnipresent; break all other idols. In whom there is neither past life nor future birth, nor death nor going nor coming, in whom we always have been and always will be one, Him worship; break all other idols.” (From a letter of Swami Vivekananda; quoted by Sri Aurobindo in The Synthesis of Yoga, Centenary Edition, 1972, pp. 257-58.)

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² CWSA, volumes 28, 35; Sri Aurobindo to Dilip.- Vol. 2: passage

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³ CWSA, volumes 28, 35: part

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⁴ Sri Aurobindo to Dilip.- Vol. 2: only

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⁵ CWSA, volumes 28, 35; Sri Aurobindo to Dilip.- Vol. 2: neither daridrer nor sevā

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⁶ Sri Aurobindo to Dilip.- Vol. 2: are

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Current publication:

Sri Aurobindo. Letters on Yoga // SABCL.- Volume 22. (≈ 28 vol. of CWSA).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1971.- 502 p.

Other publications:

[A letter: ] Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo to Dilip / edited by Sujata Nahar, Shankar Bandyopadhyay.- 1st ed.- In 4 Volumes.- Volume 2. 1934 – 1935.- Pune: Heri Krishna Mandir Trust; Mysore: Mira Aditi, 2003.- 405 p.

Sri Aurobindo. On Himself // SABCL.- Volume 26. (≈ 35 vol. of CWSA)

Sri Aurobindo. Letters on Himself and the Ashram // CWSA.- Volume 35. (≈ 26 vol. of SABCL).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2011.- 658 p.

Sri Aurobindo. Letters on Yoga. I // CWSA.- Volume 28. (≈ 22 vol. of SABCL).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2012.- 590 p.