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Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Yoga

4. Reason, Science and Yoga

Fragment ID: 260

See largest or earliest found fragment here

Sri Aurobindo — Unknown addressee

October 16, 1931

There1 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.

 

1 This explanation is apropos of the following passage in The Yoga and Its Objects (1968 Edition), p.13:

“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.”

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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:

[Largest or earliest found passage: ] Sri Aurobindo. Letters on Himself and the Ashram // CWSA.- Volume 35. (≈ 26 vol. of SABCL).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2011.- 658 p.