Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

His Life and Attempts to Write about It
On Himself as a Writer

On His Philosophy in General [3]

I am thinking of writing a book on your teachings in a systematic Western form in three main sections: (1) Metaphysics, (2) Psychology, (3) Ethics. But to make it presentable in the academic fashion would require a large reading of some past and present Western philosophers and psychologists. And where is the time for it?

I am afraid it would be a rather too colossal affair. But why ethics? I don’t think that there is any ethics; because ethics depends upon fixed principles and rules of conduct, whereas here any such thing can only be for sadhana purposes as conditions for getting the spiritual or higher consciousness and afterwards everything is freely determined by that consciousness and its movements and dictates.

26 July 1936