Sri Aurobindo Quotes (1872-1950)

“The Puranas are authoritative scriptures of the Hindu dharma. Like the “Sruti” (the audible word), the “Smriti” (the divine word remembered) is an authoritative scripture though not of the same order.”

“The hypothesis, invented to fill the gap, that these ideas were borrowed by barbarous Aryan invaders from the civilised Dravidians, is a conjecture supported only by other conjectures. It is indeed coming to be doubted whether the whole story of an Aryan invasion through the Punjab is not a myth of the philologists.”

“[Is the system in England different from that introduced in India?] Yes, [in India] they want only clerks and the education is intended for nothing else.”

“The 'nation idea' India never had. By that I mean the political idea of the nation. It is a modern growth. But we had in India the cultural and spiritual idea of the nation.”

“We have in the Rig-veda,—the true and only Veda in the estimation of European scholars,—a body of sacrificial hymns couched in a very ancient language which presents a number of almost insoluble difficulties. ... The scholar in dealing with his text is obliged to substitute for interpretation a process almost of fabrication. We feel that he is not so much revealing the sense as hammering and forging rebellious material into some sort of shape and consistency.”

“Politics is the work of the Kshatriya and it is the virtues of the Kshatriya we must develop if we are to be morally fit for freedom.”

“I say, of the Congress, then, this... that its aims are mistaken, that the spirit in which it proceeds towards their accomplishment is not a spirit of sincerity and whole-heartedness, and that the methods it has chosen are not the right methods, and the leaders in whom it trusts, not the right sort of men to be leaders;... in brief, that we are at present the blind led, if not by the blind, at any rate by the one-eyed.”

“You can live amicably with a religion whose principle is toleration. But how is it possible to live peacefully with a religion whose principle is 'I will not tolerate you? How are you going to have unity with these people? Certainly, Hindu-Muslim unity cannot be arrived at on the basis that the Muslims will go on converting Hindus while the Hindus shall not convert any Mahomedan. You can't build unity on such a basis. Perhaps the only way of making the Mahomedans harmless is to make them lose their fanatic faith in their religion....”

“When Gandhi's movement was started, I said that this movement would lead either to a fiasco or to a great confusion. And I see no reason to change my opinion. Only I would like to add that it has led to both.”

“… a means by which the sadhak might receive something from the Mother by an interchange in the material consciousness.”

“You aim at a result and your efforts subserve one that is different or contrary. It is Shakti that has gone forth and entered into the people.”

“I find that Shankara had grasped much of Vedantic truth, but that much was dark to him. I am bound to admit what he realised; I am not bound to exclude what he failed to realise.”

“Nevertheless, if Sayana’s work has been a key turned with double lock on the inner sense of the Veda, it is yet indispensable for opening the antechambers of Vedic learning. All the vast labour of European erudition has not been able to replace its utility. At every step we are obliged to differ from it, but at every step we are obliged to use it. It is a necessary springing-board, or a stair that we have to use for entrance, though we must leave it behind if we wish to pass forwards into the penetralia.”

“Only the soul that is naked and unashamed, can be pure and innocent, even as Adam was in the primal garden of humanity.”

“Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa are the Indian equivalents of Homer, Dante and Shakespeare. The story of Rama, the ideal son and ruler, Sita, the ideal wife, Bharata and Lakshmana, the ideal brothers and Hanuman, the ideal devotee, has been so beautifully stated in the epic poem of Ramayana that even in the remotest village of India, even the most illiterate man, woman or child is familiar with the characters and situations in the story. The credit for this goes to the poetic and dramatic genius of Valmiki.”

“Vivekananda was a soul of puissance if ever there was one, a very lion among men, but the definite work he has left behind is quite incommensurate with our impression of his creative might and energy. We perceive his influence still working gigantically, we know not well how, we know not well where, in something that is not yet formed, something leonine, grand, intuitive, upheaving that has entered the soul of India and we say, "Behold, Vivekananda still lives in the soul of his Mother and in the souls of her children."”

“The Russians are a queer mixture of strength and weakness. They have got a passion in their intellect, say, a passionate intellect. They have a distracted and restless emotional being, but there is something behind it which is very fine and psychic, though their soul is not very healthy. And therefore I am not right in saying that Gandhi is a Russian Christian, because he is so very dry. He has got the intellectual passion and a great moral will-force, but he is more dry than the Russians. The gospel of suffering that he is preaching has its root in Russia as nowhere else in Europe... other Christian nations don't believe in it. At the most they have it in the mind, but the Russians have got it in their very blood. They commit a mistake in preaching the gospel of suffering, but we also commit in India a mistake in preaching the idea of vairagya [disgust with the world].”

“The Congress movement was for a long time purely occidental in its mind, character, and methods, confined to the English-educated few, founded on the political rights and interests of the people read in the light of English history and European ideals, but with no roots either in the past of the country or in the inner spirit of the nation. ... To bring in the mass of the people, to find the greatness of the future on the greatness of the past, to infuse Indian politics with Indian religious fervor and spirituality are the indispensable conditions for a great and powerful political awakening in India. Others, writers, thinkers, spiritual leaders, had seen this truth. Mr. Tilak was the first to bring it into the actual field of practical politics. ... There are always two classes of political mind: one is preoccupied with details for their own sake, revels in the petty points of the moment and puts away into the background the great principles and the great necessities, the other sees rather these first and always and details only with them. The one type moves in a routine circle that may or may not have an issue; it cannot see the forest for the trees and it is only by an accident that it stumbles, if at all, on the way out. The other type takes a mountain-top view of the goal and all the directions and keeps that in its mental compass through all the deflections, retardations and tortuosities which the character of the intervening country may compel it to accept; but these it abridges as much as possible. The former class arrogates the name of a statesman in their day; it is to the latter that posterity concedes it and sees in them the true leaders of great movements. Mr. Tilak, like all men of pre-eminent political genius, belongs to this second and greater order of mind.”

“There is certainly nothing in Arabinda Ghose's past record which would justify exceptional tenderness to him. On the contrary, though he escaped conviction on the actual charge of conspiracy in the Alipore case, yet it is beyond doubt that his influence has been pernicious in the extreme. He is not a mere blind and unreasoning tool, but an active generator of revolutionary sentiment. He is imbued with a semi-religious fanaticism which is a powerful factor in attracting adherents to his cause: and I attribute the spread of seditious doctrines to him personally in a greater degree than to any other single individual in Bengal, or possibly in India.”

“I appeal to you, therefore, that a man like this stands not only before the bar of this court, but stands before the bar of the high court of History… Long after this controversy is hushed in silence, long after this turmoil and this agitation ceases, long after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone his words will be echoed and re-echoed not only in India but across distant seas and lands.”

“He shot like a meteor across the political sky, and soon retired into a self-chosen seclusion in search of new visions and victories. But the trail he blazed in the realm of India’s spirituality and culture yet holds the promise of a still more dazzling dawn.Sri Aurobindo confirmed and completed the ideological work undertaken by his predecessors - Maharshi Dayananda, Bankim Chandra and Swami Vivekananda. The National Vision now became a vision which had fully awakened to Sanãtana Dharma in all its dimensions. It was the ancient Vedic Vision at its highest and best. Sri Aurobindo’s insights into India’s inheritance - spiritual, philosophical, cultural, artistic, social, and political - went very far in restoring our people’s legitimate pride in their great past. He was very soon hailed as the Prophet of Indian Nationalism.”

“I felt the utterance of the ancient Hindu Rishis spoke from him of that equanimity which gives the human Soul its freedom of entrance into the All. I said to him, "You have the word and we are waiting to accept it from you. India will speak through your voice to the world, Hearken to me … O Aurobindo, accept the salutations from Rabindranath."”

“Of all modern Indian writers Aurobindo — successively poet, critic, scholar, thinker, nationalist, humanist — is the most significant and perhaps the most interesting … In fact, he is a new type of thinker, one who combines in his vision the alacrity of the West with the illumination of the East. To study his writings is to enlarge the boundaries of one's knowledge … He is blessed with a keen intuition. He knows that a man may be right and not wise. He treats each word of his as though it were a drop of elixir. In all this he is unique — at least in modern India. … a yogi who writes as though he were standing among the stars, with the constellations for his companions.”