Sri Aurobindo

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Shorter Works. 1910 – 1950

Part Two. The Yoga and Its Objects (circa 1912)

Appendix. Explanations of Some Words and Phrases[[Sri Aurobindo wrote these explanations in 1938 in answer to questions asked by a Hindi translator of The Yoga and Its Objects.]]

“Matter itself, you will one day realise, is not material, it is not substance but form of consciousness, guṇa, the result of quality of being perceived by sense-knowledge.” (p. 77)

There is no need to put “the” before “quality” – in English that would alter the sense. Matter is not regarded in this passage as a quality of being perceived by sense; I don’t think that would have any meaning. It is regarded as a result of a certain power and action of consciousness which presents forms of itself to sense perception and it is this quality of sense-perceivedness, so to speak, that gives them the appearance of Matter, i.e. of a certain kind of substantiality inherent in themselves – but in fact they are not self-existent substantial objects but forms of consciousness. The point is that there is no such thing as the self-existent Matter posited by nineteenth-century Science.

“chitta” and “chetas”

Chitta is ordinarily used for the mental consciousness in general, thought, feeling, etc. taken together with a stress now on one side or another, sometimes on the feelings as in citta-pramāthī, sometimes on the thought-mind – that is why I translated it [on p. 75 (maccittaḥ)] “heart and mind” in its wider sense. Chetas can be used in the same way, but it has a different shade of sense, properly speaking, and can include also the movements of the soul, covering the whole consciousness even; [on p. 82] I take it in its most general sense. The translation is not meant to be literal but to render the thought in the line in its fullness. Adhyātmacetasā practically amounts to what in English we would describe as a spiritual consciousness.

“throw our arms around” (p. 78)

It is a figure meaning to comprehend in our consciousness with love and Ananda.

“the nature” (p. 81, lines 29, 31, 33)

Nature here means the parts of Prakriti in the human being: as it is the condition of the Prakriti that changes with shifting of the gunas and it is this condition of the Prakriti that will become illumined by the transformation of sattva into jyotiḥ.

lokasaṅgrahārthāya (p. 85) – Does this mean present order?

No. It is in a more general sense the maintenance of the world order which may be a developing, not necessarily a stationary one, an order spiritual, moral etc. and not merely a social order.