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Note on the Texts
RECORD OF YOGA is a diary of Sri Aurobindo’s sādhana or practice of yoga. He wrote entries with some regularity between 1912 and 1920, as well as scattered entries during the years 1909, 1911 and 1927. Some sections of entries have titles, such as “Journal of Yoga”, “Record of the Yoga”, “”, “Notebook of the Sadhana”, “Yoga Diary” and “Yoga Record”. The title he used most often is “” In the text itself he generally referred to the work as “the record” and used the verb “to record” for the act of writing in it. For these reasons the editors have chosen as the general title of the work. In the entry of 1 July 1912, Sri Aurobindo noted that he had been doing yoga for almost seven years. He had begun in 1905 with the practice of prāṇāyāma or breath control. This practice became irregular when he started his political career in 1906 and by the end of 1907 he suffered a “complete arrest” of yogic experience. In January 1908 a yogi named Vishnu Bhaskar Lele showed him how to silence the activity of his mind. This led to the experience of the static Brahman or Nirvana. A few months later, in Alipore Jail, he had the experience of the dynamic Brahman or cosmic consciousness. He later referred to these as the first two of the “four great realisations” of his yoga. The other two—“that of the supreme Reality with the static and dynamic Brahman as its two aspects and that of the higher planes of consciousness leading to the Supermind”—began in jail, but developed more fully during the period of sadhana chronicled in the Record. In April 1910, Sri Aurobindo left politics and settled in Pondicherry. Sometime after his arrival, as he explained in 1926, he “was given” a “programme of what I would do” in yoga. This programme had seven sections, each made up of four elements. It thus was known as “sapta chatusthaya” or the seven tetrads. (The proper transliteration of the Sanskrit phrase is sapta catuṣṭaya. Sri Aurobindo almost 1486 invariably spelled the second word “chatusthaya”.) Because of the importance of this system to the yoga of the Record, the editors have placed Sri Aurobindo’s written presentations of the seven chatusthayas before the dated Record entries. The system is explained in more detail in the “scribal version” of Sapta Chatusthaya, which is published in the Appendix, and in the introduction to the glossary, which is published in a separate booklet. All the terms of the system and all other non-English terms found in the Record are defined in the glossary. Sri Aurobindo used an assortment of notebooks and loose sheets for writing the Record. The notebooks are of the same kinds as those used for other writings of the period; indeed many of them also contain notes, prose articles, poems, etc. Most of them are cheap student exercise-books, others are simply perforated pads of note-paper. There are also a few bound pocket notebooks; only one of these is a printed diary. In all, twenty-eight notebooks were used exclusively or principally for the Record. Several others contain significant amounts of Record material. In addition, a number of diary entries, mostly undated, and an assortment of Record-related jottings have been found scattered in a dozen or more notebooks and on loose sheets and odd scraps of paper. Most diary entries, as opposed to records of "script" and "lipi" (these terms are explained below), seem to have been written down directly without notes. Entries were usually written on the dates given in the headings; sometimes there were two or more sittings in a day. Occasionally, however, the sadhana of the preceding night was noted down the next morning. Sometimes a single entry covers two or more days. Other entries seem to have been written a day or two in retrospect. Many Record entries are divided into sections by means of single and double lines in the manuscript. That the lines had a specific purpose is indicated by the fact that Sri Aurobindo sometimes cancelled them. So far as typography permits, such lines and other markings are reproduced as they occur in the notebooks. The editors have divided the Record proper, that is, the dated diary entries, into three parts: (1) entries written before the start of the “regular record” in November 1912; (2) the main series of entries, written between November 1912 and October 1920; (3) entries written in 1927 (and perhaps also at the end of 1926). The editors have further 1487 divided each of the parts into sections. These begin either where Sri Aurobindo resumed making entries after a significant break in the writing, or where he began work in a new notebook. Each section thus covers a specific chronological period, though sometimes there is a bit of overlap between sections. In one place the editors have put three partly concurrent groups of entries in a single section. Thus divided, the Record proper comprises forty-four sections. Some of these contain scores of entries covering more than a hundred pages, others only a handful of entries covering less than a dozen pages. Sri Aurobindo began some but not all sections with headings written above the first entry or on the cover of the notebook. These have been reproduced as written. The editors have placed a heading in bold type at the beginning of every section. These editorial headings are in the following form: 28 JANUARY 17 FEBRUARY 1911. Over the course of the years, Sri Aurobindo structured sections of entries in different ways. Recurrent features were sometimes abandoned, only to be taken up again months later. Some entries consist only of the briefest notations, occasionally presented in tabular fashion. Other entries were written in discursive prose that sometimes has literary qualities. During certain periods, Sri Aurobindo divided longer entries by means of subheadings. Most of these make use of the terminology of the seven chatusthayas. Like all diaries—consciously literary productions excepted—the Record was written chiefly as an aid to the diarist. Sri Aurobindo’s conception of its purpose is contained in certain early entries. It was meant to be a “pure record of fact and experience” (13 January 1912). The “condition of the activity” of his sadhana was “to form the substance of the record” (2 January 1913). Stated otherwise, it was the “progress of the siddhi” that was “to be recorded” (31 December 1912). This and other uses of the verb “record” suggest that Sri Aurobindo’s writing down of an experience was a means by which he established it in his consciousness. Sri Aurobindo wanted to record “definite results”, not “every fluctuation of the siddhi” (15 August 1914). On a path like his, where “all life is yoga”, this involved not only noting down such purely yogic activities as “trikaldrishti, aishwarya, samadhi-experience”, but also mentioning “work, literary & religious”, and making “brief note of the 1488 physical siddhi” (27 December 1912). All parts of the sadhana were given attention. We find one passage in which Sri Aurobindo speaks first of applied yogic knowledge and force, trikāladṛṣṭi and tapas, then the subtle physical power of levitation and then, in the next sentence, the condition of his teeth. This is followed, without a pause, by a note on the intensity of ̄ananda (delight) then being felt in his body. The paragraph closes with a mention of the state of “the personal lilamaya relation with the Master of the Yoga”, the personal divinity who guided his sadhana (17 September 1913). Another purpose of the Record was to be a register of guidance from this and other sources. It was, he wrote on 18 November 1914, to “include not only the details of what is accomplished & the lines of the accomplishment that is being attempted, but also the record of experiences and the indications of the future movement”. Such indications were supplied by various means, notably “script”, “lipi”, “sortilege”, and “vani”. Full definitions of these terms are given in the glossary. Roughly, “script” is writing on paper, similar to but not the same as “automatic writing” (see below); “lipi” is writing seen by the subtle vision; “sortilege” is printed or handwritten texts sought or found by chance and interpreted; “vani” is the hearing of a voice. Sri Aurobindo transcribed many examples of each of these sorts of communication in the Record. Sometimes he seems to have jotted down scripts or lipis on handy pieces of paper and then copied them into the Record. A few rough notations of scripts that later were copied exist. The copied versions show some amplification. Sometimes only the rough notations have survived; these have been among the most difficult parts of to transcribe. There are also numerous examples of script written separately from the Record proper and never incorporated into it. Some of these identify themselves explicitly as “script”, others do not. As a rule such scripts are published in Part Four, separately from the Record proper. The distinction between script and record is one made by Sri Aurobindo himself, but it was sometimes difficult for the editors to fix the boundary between the two. He occasionally used both words to refer to the same piece of writing. For example, in the regular record of 14 January 1912 he mentioned an “accompanying memorandum” containing the “rest of the record of January 14th & the record of 1489 January 15th”. This “memorandum” speaks of itself as “script”. Some regular Record entries read like others that identify themselves as script; some entries (for instance, many in June to August 1914) give under the heading “Script” the sort of information generally found in the regular Record. The principal difference between Record proper and script proper appears to be the way the writings took form in Sri Aurobindo’s consciousness. Record was Sri Aurobindo’s own “record of fact and experience”, written in much the same was as he wrote his other writings. In the Record the word “I”, if it occurs, refers to Sri Aurobindo himself. Script, on the other hand, was communicated to Sri Aurobindo by “the Master of the Yoga” or another source. This source sometimes addressed itself as “I” and Sri Aurobindo as “you” (see for example page 1303). In recording script, Sri Aurobindo often wrote down only the source’s replies, not the mental questions to which the replies were given. This makes some scripts seem discontinuous and incomplete; reading them is like overhearing one end of a telephone conversation. Script has some affinities with “automatic writing”, a means of written communication in which the pen is said to be directed by a disembodied spirit. Some examples of this are published in Part Five; the phenomenon is discussed below, in the note to that part. Sri Aurobindo considered many automatic writings to be transcriptions of “the thing that is present in the subconscious part of the medium”. He did not consider script to be of this nature. A comparison of the script published as parts of Record entries and in Part Four with the automatic writing published in Part Five reveals marked differences in subject matter, tone, elevation, and purpose. Script was a “means of spiritual communication” which was used “for all sorts of purposes”. Chief among these was the prediction of future events—mostly events in Sri Aurobindo’s sadhana, but also outward happenings, ranging from great world events to trivial domestic matters. Scripts relating to sadhana were often called Prediction or Programme; they gave indications about inner movements a few days or a week in advance. Sri Aurobindo sometimes looked back on old scripts, predictive lipis and sortileges to check their accuracy. He occasionally jotted down whether they were fulfilled or not. Such notations are among the only evidence we have that Sri Aurobindo read back over 1490 the Record. He certainly never revised it in the way he did almost all his other writings. Additions to and corrections of the Record manuscripts were, with few exceptions, evidently made during the act of writing.
INTRODUCTION. SAPTA CHATUSTHAYA
As mentioned above, Sapta Chatusthaya or the seven tetrads was the “programme” of Sri Aurobindo’s sadhana that he received sometime after his arrival in Pondicherry in April 1910. It is not known exactly when the system came to him, but it must have been familiar to him by 16 January 1912, when he referred in the Record to “the first two chatusthayas”. (Note that the term “chatusthaya” does not occur in the Record of 28 January — 17 February 1911.) The system consists of twenty-eight elements arranged in seven groups of four. Throughout the Record the chatusthayas are referred to both by name and by number. These are listed in the chart below, along with the elements of each chatusthaya:
First chatusthaya. Samata chatusthaya [earlier, Shanti chatusthaya] Samata, Shanti, Sukha, Hasya [later, (Atma)prasada] Second chatusthaya. Shakti chatusthaya Virya, Shakti, Chandibhava [later, Daivi Prakriti], Sraddha Third chatusthaya. Vijnana chatusthaya Jnana, Trikaldrishti, Ashtasiddhi, Samadhi Fourth chatusthaya. Sharira chatusthaya Arogya, Utthapana, Saundarya, Ananda [or Vividhananda] Fifth chatusthaya. Karma chatusthaya [or Lila chatusthaya] Krishna, Kali, Karma, Kama [last two sometimes reversed] Sixth chatusthaya. Brahma chatusthaya Sarvam Brahma, Anantam Brahma, Jnanam Brahma, Anandam Brahma Seventh chatusthaya. Yoga chatusthaya [or (San)siddhi chatusthaya] Shuddhi, Mukti, Bhukti, Siddhi
This is what Sri Aurobindo called the “natural and logical order” of the chatusthayas and is the only one referred to in the Record proper. Other orders occur, however; for example, the one given in “Outline of the Seven Chatusthayas (Revised Order)” (see next page). 1491 In the Record, the elements, or “siddhis”, of each chatusthaya are sometimes referred to by the number of the element within the chatusthaya: for example, “the second element of the shakti-chatusthaya”. In addition the siddhis of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh chatusthayas are often referred to by the numbers 1 to 21—21 and not 20 because in this enumeration the third chatusthaya is considered to have five instead of four elements. The scheme is as follows:
1. Jnana 2. Trikaldrishti 3. Rupa(-siddhi) 4. Tapas 5. Samadhi 6. Arogya 7. Ananda 8. Utthapana 9. Saundarya 10. Krishna 11. Kali 12. Karma 13. Kama 14. Sarvam Brahma 15. Anantam Brahma 16. Jnanam Brahma 17. Anandam Brahma 18. Shuddhi 19. Mukti 20. Bhukti 21. Siddhi
Sapta Chatusthaya. This text almost certainly was written on 20 November 1913. On that day Sri Aurobindo noted in the Record: “The day was chiefly occupied in writing the seven chatusthayas.” The handwriting and paper used for the manuscript of this piece are similar to those of other manuscripts of 1913. Outline of the Seven Chatusthayas (Revised Order). Sri Aurobindo wrote this outline during or not long after 1914 in an exercise-book used previously by one of his disciples for some of the notes published in the Appendix as “Material from Disciples’ Notebooks”. In it the chatusthayas are listed in a different order from the one generally used in the Record. The “three general chatushtayas” come first, the one that Sri Aurobindo called the “means, the sum and the completion of all the rest” heading the list. Then follow the “four chatusthayas of the Adhara-siddhi”, the perfection or siddhi of the individual “vehicle” (ādhāra). Incomplete Notes on the First Chatusthaya. Sri Aurobindo wrote these notes in the exercise-book he used for the above “Outline of the Seven Chatusthayas”, at around the same time. The end of the last sentence, from the word “qualities”, is not found in the manuscript, but is in several scribal copies of the text written by disciples; it undoubtedly was added by Sri Aurobindo to a copy that has since been lost. 1492 PART ONE. DIARY ENTRIES 1909 1912
The diary entries in the first two sections of this part differ in kind from those written afterwards. The first section dates from ten months before Sri Aurobindo’s arrival in Pondicherry in April 1910, and contains little of the terminology of the Sapta Chatusthaya. The entries of 1911, unlike the rest of the Record, are arranged under subject headings. The three sections from 1912 contain entries that differ little from those published in Part Two, but they come before the beginning of what Sri Aurobindo called “the regular record of the sadhana”.
17 25 June 1909. Sri Aurobindo made these entries in a small pocket notebook during a visit to East Bengal (the present Bangladesh). A month and a half earlier, he had been released from jail after his acquittal in the Alipore Bomb Case. As the most prominent leader of the Bengal Nationalist party, he had been invited to Jhalakati, a town in Bakarganj District, to attend the 1909 session of the Bengal Provincial Conference of the Indian National Congress. The principal event of the tour was the speech he delivered in Jhalakati on 19 June 1909 (reproduced on pages 33 42 of Karmayogin, volume 8 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO). 28 January 17 February 1911. During this period Sri Aurobindo wrote dated Record entries under the following six headings: "Physical,” “Communications”, “Vision of other worlds”, “Record of the Drishti”, “Siddhis”, and “Record of Ideal Cognitions”. He wrote them on scattered pages of a notebook he had used years earlier in Baroda as a book catalogue, and later in Pondicherry for various prose and poetic writings. 13 January 8 February 1912. The Record of 12 December 1911 to 11 January 1912, referred to in the first sentence of the entry of 13 January, has not survived. Sri Aurobindo wrote Record entries for January and February 1912 in a notebook he had used in Baroda for literary essays and in Pondicherry for notes and articles on linguistics and other subjects. Above the first entry he wrote the heading “Record of the Yoga”. This is the first surviving heading for a section of Record entries. An “accompanying memorandum” containing dated script for 14 and 15 January, which he wrote on a separate sheet of paper, is 1493 published between the notebook entries for 14 and 16 January. Note that Sri Aurobindo left long horizontal blanks after some sentences in the notebook. These appear to serve the purpose of paragraph separators. 1 25 July 1912. During this period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record in a large ledger used otherwise for notes on linguistics and for prose writings on many subjects. He headed it “Journal of Yoga”. 12 October 26 November 1912. During this period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record in a small notebook used for Vedic and linguistic notes, translations, Bengali and Latin poetry, etc. The entries of 18 October to 17 November were written in ink on consecutive pages (with one page left blank between the first and second entries of 18 October). The remainder of the entries were written in purple pencil on scattered pages, sometimes upside down in relation to the rest of the entries. In the same notebook he also wrote a brief record of sortileges of May and June 1912 and several other Record-related pieces that are published in Part Four.
PART TWO. RECORD OF YOGA 1912 1920
The undated general note preceding the entry of 26 November 1912 begins: “The regular record of the sadhana begins today. . . .” The editors have followed this indication by making the entry of 26 November the first in the main series of Record entries. There are, all told, entries for a little more than half of the ninety-six months making up the “regular” period of November 1912 to October 1920.
26 November 31 December 1912. During this period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record in an exercise-book used previously for notes on the Veda. The daily entries are preceded by an undated general note, written probably on 26 November. 1 31 January 1913. During this period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record in an eighty-page exercise-book used only for this purpose, making it the first notebook devoted exclusively to the Record. Inside its front cover he wrote “Record of the Yoga. / 1913. / January.” 1 14 February 1913. During this period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record in the first part of an exercise-book, most of which was later 1494 used for another purpose. Inside the front cover he wrote “Record of the Yoga / 1913 / February”. After the second week of February, he discontinued the Record until the beginning of April. 1 and 12 April, 19 and 21 May 1913. On 1 April 1913 Sri Aurobindo began keeping the Record in a new exercise-book, on the cover of which he wrote “Record of Yoga— / April.” After making two entries during the first two weeks of April and two entries in May, he set the notebook aside until July. 4 30 June 1913. During the month of June 1913, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record in three separate forms that sometimes overlap, with the result that there are sometimes two entries for a single date. (1) Between 4 June and 28 June, he wrote entries on three sheets of blank paper, each folded to form four narrow pages. He headed this bunch “Record”. These entries are similar to those making up the rest of the Record, although they are written in a more tabular and abbreviated form. (2) Between 16 and 24 June, he wrote a second set of entries on two sheets of blank paper folded like the ones described above. He headed this bunch “Script”. These entries include not only the kind of communications to which he usually gave that name, but also more general comments. (3) Between 25 and 30 June, he wrote several entries similar to the above script notations on a separate sheet of paper (of the same kind as the others and folded similarly) under the title “Record of Details & Guidance.” These three groups of entries are published separately in the above order. 1 11 July 1913. During this period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record in the notebook he had set aside in May. The entry of 1 July starts on the page that has the end of the entry of 21 May. No Record was written, or none survives, for the month of August 1913. 5 21 September 1913. During this period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record in the notebook he had set aside in July, leaving three blank pages between the entry for 11 July and the two entries for 5 September. The first of these entries was written in pencil and may be considered an incomplete draft of the second, which is written in pen. The first sentence of the first entry suggests that a now-lost Record was kept 1495 during the first days of September and perhaps also for part or all of August, perhaps on loose sheets, like the Record of June. 22 30 September 1913. Sri Aurobindo wrote these entries on four pages of the notebook used previously for the “Record of Yogic details” of 31 May 15 June and the “Record of Yoga. / Theosophic” of 13 and 15 September (both published in Part Four). They are more in the nature of script than ordinary record. No entries were written, or none have survived, for the month of October 1913. 11 23 November 1913. During this period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record on four pieces of writing paper folded to form sixteen narrow pages (two of which were not used). 24 November 2 December 1913. On 24 November Sri Aurobindo returned to the notebook last used on 21 September. He continued to make entries in this notebook through most of December. 1 12 December 1913. Sri Aurobindo wrote most of the entries for this period on four loose sheets of paper. He also wrote entries for 1, 2 and 12 December in the notebook used for most of 1913 (see the notes immediately above and below). 12 21 December 1913. On 12 December Sri Aurobindo returned to the exercise-book last used on 2 December. He continued to make daily entries in this notebook until 21 December, when he reached its last page. 22 December 1913 15 January 1914. On 22 December Sri Aurobindo began a new exercise-book, on the front cover of which he wrote ” Record of Yoga/ Dec 22d 1913…”. On 1 January, in order to mark the new year, he wrote the heading “1914. January.” and part of a verse from the Rig Veda (1.13.6), on an otherwise blank page of the notebook. He continued to use it until 15 January 1914. No Record was written, or none survives, for the period between 15 January and 12 March 1914. 12 March 14 April 1914. On 12 March Sri Aurobindo began a new exercise-book, which he used for the Record until 14 April. He later wrote on its cover: “Record of Yoga. March. April. / 1914.” 15 April 1 June 1914. Sri Aurobindo kept the Record for this period in a single exercise-book, on the cover of which he wrote: “Record of Yoga / April 15th to / 1914″. After the entry for 1 June he wrote a heading for 2 3 June, but made no entry and then abandoned the 1496 notebook. When he resumed the Record on 10 June, he began work in a new notebook. 10 June 29 September 1914. During this period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record in a small, thick hard-cover notebook which he used for no other purpose. He wrote the heading “.Record of Yoga. / June. 1914 ” on an otherwise blank page facing the first page used for entries. After writing the incomplete entry for 29 September, he went on to a new notebook, leaving the last five pages of this one blank. 29 30 September 31 December 1914. After reaching the end of the notebook containing the Record of June to September 1914, Sri Aurobindo began work in a similar small, hard-cover notebook. Inside the front cover he wrote “October 1914.” Before writing the entry dated “October 1″, he wrote a long note headed “Preliminary” and dated “Sept 29 30″. 1 January 27 February 1915. Sri Aurobindo kept the Record for this period partly in the notebook in use since October 1914 and partly in another. The first notebook contains, after an otherwise blank sheet headed “January”, an introductory note followed by entries for 1 6 and 24 30 January and 1 6, 25 and 27 February 1915. In the second notebook Sri Aurobindo kept an “intermediate record” for 2 23 January. There are thus two sets of entries for 2 6 January. The editors reproduce the intermediate record after the first set of entries for 1 6 January, and before the entries of 24 January 27 February. Sri Aurobindo wrote two annotations to the entry of 3 January in the “intermediate record” sometime after the original entry. The pen and the ink used for the annotations are the same as those used for the Record of January February 1917, which was kept in the same notebook. Apparently Sri Aurobindo wrote these comments when he took up this notebook again after a lapse of two years. 22 April 26 August 1915. During this period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record in a letter-pad of the sort he used for writing material for the Arya, his monthly philosophical review. The entries begin abruptly; no mention is made of the gap between 27 February and 22 April. Sri Aurobindo put a question-mark after the date “April 22d“. The year of these entries is nowhere written, but the dates and days of the week correspond to those of 1915. After the entry of 26 August 1497 Sri Aurobindo left a few pages blank, then began the entry dated “February 1916″ with the words, “In the interval since August. . . .” 19 February 20 March 1916. Sri Aurobindo wrote no Record entries between 26 August 1915 and mid-February 1916. On 19 February 1916 he resumed the Record, using the letter-pad he had set aside in August. The last paragraph of the entry for 19 February is found at the bottom of the preceding page in the manuscript, after the general introduction to February 1916. In the margin next to this paragraph, Sri Aurobindo wrote: “This should have been recorded on the next page.” He also put a long double line to separate the misplaced paragraph from the rest of the contents of the page, and inserted the date “Saturday Feb 19th” at the top of the paragraph. This date has been put editorially within square brackets at the head of the entry of the nineteenth, which itself is dated only “Feb”. After the entry of 5 March, the dates written in the manuscript do not agree with the days of the week according to the calendar for 1916. The discrepancy continues until the entry marked “Monday. 19th March” in the manuscript, where the Record for 1916 terminates. It may be noted that Sri Aurobindo left a page blank between the entry of “Sunday / March 5″ and the one marked “Tuesday. Mar 6″. This suggests that he wrote no entry for Monday, 6 March, and this resulted in a confusion of dates. The editors have accordingly emended the dates rather than the days of the week. 9 January 14 February 1917. No Record was written or survives for the period of March 1916 to January 1917. Sri Aurobindo kept the Record of 9 January 14 February 1917 in a small bound notebook used previously for notes on the Veda, for the “intermediate record” of 2 23 January 1915, and again for notes and an essay on the Veda. The entries for January February 1917 were written on pages or parts of pages that had been left blank when the Vedic work was done. At one point thirty pages of Vedic material intervene between pages used for the Record. After the entry of 14 February this notebook was set aside, though a few usable pages remained. 15 February 31 March 1917. During this period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record in a small hard-cover notebook similar to the one he had used from 9 January to 14 February. Like that notebook, the present one had previously been used for notes on the Veda. It was abandoned after the entry of 31 March, many of its pages being left unused. No 1498 record was kept or has survived for the period from 1 April to 14 August 1917. 15 August 28 September 1917. During this period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record in an old exercise-book, a few pages of which had been used some years earlier for the poem Ilion. Sri Aurobindo left half a page blank between the entry for 28 September and the one for 14 February 1918. No Record was kept or none survives for the intervening period of more than four months. 14 28 February 1918. During this period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record in the notebook he had commenced on 15 August 1917. 3 27 March 1918. During this period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record on a few pages of an old exercise-book used previously for Vedic notes and translations. 20 April 20 May 1918. During this period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record in a new “Aryan Store Exercise-Book”. (The manager of the Aryan Store was Saurin Bose, the “S” or “Sn” of the Record.) This was the first notebook to be used exclusively for the Record since June September 1914. On its cover Sri Aurobindo wrote “Notebook of the Sadhana”. This is the first heading given to a section of Record entries since June 1914. 21 May 1 July 1918. Sri Aurobindo continued the Record of 1918 in an “Aryan Store Exercise-Book” similar to the one used between 20 April and 20 May. Only three entries were made in June due to “the absorption of work”. He set the notebook aside after the entry of 1 July and did not take it up again until June 1919. No Record was kept or none survives for the intervening period of almost one year. 24 June 14 July 1919. Sri Aurobindo kept the Record for this period in the notebook set aside on 1 July 1918. He left five pages blank between the entry for that date and the one for 24 June 1919. 15 26 July 1919. During this period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record in a thin exercise-book used only for this purpose. On its cover he wrote the heading “Yoga Diary” and the opening and closing dates. 27 July 13 August 1919. During this period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record in a thin exercise-book similar to the previous one, and like it used only for Record entries. On its cover he wrote the heading “Yoga Diary” and the opening and closing dates. 14 August 24 September 1919. During this period, Sri Aurobindo 1499 kept the Record in a thin exercise-book similar to the previous two, and like them used only for Record entries. On its cover he wrote the heading “Yoga Diary” and the opening date. It has almost daily entries until 2 September, then one dated “Sept. 3 to 24″, which explains the gap before the final entry of 24 September. He apparently did not resume the Record until February of the next year. 1 29 February 1920. During this period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record on seven pieces of paper of different sizes and shapes folded in various ways. Entries which continue from one page to another sometimes have the date repeated at the top of the new page followed by “continued” or “(cont.)”. These headings have been omitted from the printed text. 1 March 10 April 1920. During this period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record in a thin exercise-book used only for the purpose. Above the long introduction preceding the entry dated 1 March he wrote the heading “Yoga Diary. / 1920 / March.” No entries have been found for the period between 10 April and 7 June 1920. 7 26 June 1920. During this period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record in a thin exercise-book similar to the previous one, and like it used only for this purpose. Above the first entry he wrote the heading “Yoga Record / June.” 17 19 October 1920. Sri Aurobindo wrote Record entries for these three days on a few pages of a letter-pad. He wrote the date “17th October 1920″ on the first sheet of the pad.
PART THREE. RECORD OF YOGA 1926 1927
No Record entries were written, or none survive, for the six-year period between October 1920 and December 1926. Sri Aurobindo wrote very little during this period. There are no known articles or poems and only a few letters that have dates to show that they were written during the six years that followed the suspension of the Arya in January 1921. The abrupt beginning of the entries preceding those of December 1926 January 1927 suggests that Sri Aurobindo may have made Record entries during parts of the period between 1920 and 1926, but chose not to preserve them, as he chose not to preserve those of October 1927 (see below). 1500 December 1926 6 January 1927. Sri Aurobindo wrote these entries in a letter-pad used previously for writing Vedic notes and several pieces published in Part Four, including “The Seven Suns of the Supermind”. That piece comes immediately before the first entry here, which speaks of the “supramental life-energy” in the “seven centres”. The first two pages of this section of Record notes are undated. The third page begins with three short paragraphs which seem to have been written on a single day. This was probably Sunday, 2 January 1927, for the entry is followed on the same page by closely related entries marked “Monday”, “Tuesday” and “Wednesday”, then by one dated “Thursday. Jan 6.” Sri Aurobindo did not write the year 1927 until 7 April (see below), but the agreement between the dates and days of the week written in the notebook and those of the calendar for 1927 proves that this was the year for the entries of January and February. The two pages of undated entries preceding the partially dated ones were apparently written shortly before them. Most likely they belong to the first of three “curves” of progress in Sri Aurobindo’s sadhana (25 December 3 January, 3 7 January and 7 12 January) which he mentioned in the entry for 6 January. This inference is supported by the text of a prediction written on the second undated page: “Monday next. An ascending scale till then.” It seems probable that Monday, 3 January, the end of the “curve” that began on 25 December, was also the culmination of the “ascending scale” mentioned in the prediction. 7 January 1 February 1927. Sri Aurobindo wrote these entries in the letter-pad used for the above section. The entry of 7 January is preceded by some diagrams and script jottings published in Part Four. 7 22 April 1927. Sri Aurobindo kept the Record for this period in the letter-pad used for the two preceding sections. Between the entry for 1 February and the one for 7 April come several blank pages, two drafts of an essay, some script, and a poem written in French. No Record was written, or none survives, for the period between April and October 1927. 24 31 October 1927. During this eight-day period, Sri Aurobindo kept the Record on two loose sheets of paper. Another sheet discovered with them contains a passage of script published in Part Four. It would appear that Sri Aurobindo tore these three sheets up and threw them 1501 away. They were saved from destruction by A. B. Purani, one of his early disciples. The explanatory note reproduced below was written by Purani during the 1950s or 1960s:
These few pages of Sri Aurobindo’s diary of his Sadhana were intended to be burnt. The story of how they escaped that fate is as follows. To prepare hot water for the Mother’s bath very early in the morning was part of the work I had undertaken almost from 1926. I was staying in the `guest-house’ at that time & used to come to the main house between 2.30 3 in the night. In order not to disturb the inmates of the house I was given a key of one of the gates to enter it. The water had to be ready before 4 o’clock, often it was needed at 3.30. (This continued up to 1938 November 23rd when Sri Aurobindo got the accident.) The boiler room is well-known—it is now the place from where incense is still fired and flowers distributed when it rains. The fuel used was ordinary wood with wooden shavings from the Carpentry department & waste papers. The wooden shavings often contained strips of teak-wood & many other useful tit-bits. I used to preserve them and make time-piece cases, photo-frames, corner brackets from them. When the matter was brought to Mother’s notice by someone she approved of such salvaging from waste & added that there were men in France—in Paris—the chiffonniers who became rich only by utilising the enormous waste of papers & rags in the big city. But the papers I invariably burnt. Perhaps the god of Fire must have become suddenly active, because one day I was struck by half a basketful of torn small bits & casually looked at them. To my surprise and horror I found Sri Aurobindo’s handwriting. I put them aside and looked at them in the daylight. I was able to make out with great labour extending for days—like a jig-saw puzzle—two or three readable pages. These pages are dated & they are evidently notes kept by Sri Aurobindo regarding his own Sadhana. 1502 It is not known whether other pages of the Record from this period, or other periods, were actually destroyed.
PART FOUR. MATERIALS WRITTEN BY SRI AUROBINDO RELATED DIRECTLY TO RECORD OF YOGA, C. 1910 1931
This part consists of writings in Sri Aurobindo’s own hand that may be considered components of Record of Yoga, but which have not been included in Parts One to Three because they are undated or incompletely dated or, if dated, not concerned with Sri Aurobindo’s day-to-day sadhana. A number of different sorts of writings are represented: brief undated Record entries, scripts, sortileges, lipis, and notes on a wide variety of sadhana-related topics. They have been arranged in rough chronological order, groups of scripts being placed together in several chronological series.
Undated Record and Record-related Notes, c. 1910 1914. Sri Aurobindo wrote these fourteen items in different notebooks during the early part of his stay in Pondicherry, that is between 1910 and 1914. Further details on individual pieces or groups of pieces follow. [1] Sri Aurobindo jotted down these undated notes around 1910 in a notebook containing translations and other pieces written years earlier in Baroda and Calcutta. [2] Sri Aurobindo wrote these notes in a notebook used in Baroda for miscellaneous literary writings and in Pondicherry for philological notes. They begin with a reference to Sri Aurobindo’s philological research under the heading “Bhasha” (“Language”). Sri Aurobindo’s did most of his philological research around 191112. The present notes may be assigned to the same period. They have, in addition, some similarity to the Record entries of January February 1911. Both the notes and the entries are arranged by category, and have one heading in common: “Prophecy”. This term is used several times in January February 1911 for what Sri Aurobindo normally called “trikaldrishti”. “Prophecy” occurs rarely in 1912 and all but disappears from the terminology of the Record after that. [3 13] Sri Aurobindo wrote all but one of these eleven pieces on scattered pages of a notebook used in Pondicherry (and perhaps also earlier in Bengal) for miscellaneous writings, notably the play Eric, 1503 as well as notes on philology and other subjects. They date from the earliest years in Pondicherry, that is, 1910 12. Some of them may even have been written slightly before that. [14] Sri Aurobindo wrote these “Psychological Notes” (his title) in an exercise-book of the kind he used to keep the Record of 1913 and early 1914. The exercisebook also contains a draft of the last version of the “Life Divine” commentary on the Isha Upanishad (see Isha Upanishad, volume 17 of the THE COMPLETE WORKS). This commentary may be dated to 1914. The psychological notes apparently date from the same year. Sortileges of May and June 1912. These two sortileges were written on a page of the notebook that later was used for the Record of 12 October to 26 November 1912 (see above). Undated Notes, c. November 1912. Written on the first two pages of the notebook used for the Record of 12 October to 26 November 1912. Draft Programme of 3 December 1912. Written on one of the last pages of the notebook used for the Record of 12 October to 26 November. The programme subsequently was copied, with a few changes, in the Record entry of 3 December, which was written in another notebook. Undated or Partly Dated Script, 1912 1913. These nine scripts were written on nine different sheets or sets of sheets during the years 1912 and 1913. Further details on individual pieces follow. [1] Written apparently around July 1912, the approximate date of the incomplete “Commentary on the Kena Upanishad” which is referred to in the script. Note also that in the Record of 4 July 1912, Sri Aurobindo wrote “Automatic script recommenced today”, and mentioned “prophetic script”, a term found nowhere else in the Record. [2] This “record of thought” or script was written at the bottom of a loose sheet containing linguistic notes. Two sentences from it appear verbatim in the Record of 14 October 1912. The script evidently was written on that day and part of it transcribed in the Record. [3] These three pieces of script were written on the inner pages of a large folded sheet of paper used otherwise for linguistic notes and fragmentary writings on other subjects. The linguistic notes are very similar to those found along with item [2]. It is therefore likely that the scripts date from roughly the same period. The predictions contained in the first script may be the same as the “programme suggested on the tenth” mentioned in 1504 the Record of 21 December 1912. There are a number of similarities between the elements of sadhana mentioned in the present script and those described in the Record of 10 11 December 1912. [4] This item, written on the last ten of a set of twenty-eight small pages formed by folding loose sheets of paper, may be assigned with some confidence to January 1913. It consists of a long undated passage, followed by four shorter entries with dates from the “21st” to the “24th“. The month and year are not specified, but under the “23d” there is a reference to “this month of January”. The year 1913 may be established by comparison with the regular Record of January of that year. See for example the almost identical references to the Turkish city of Adrianople in the script of the “23d” and the Record of 24 January 1913. Since the partly dated portions of the script belong to 21 24 January 1913, the undated passage preceding them must have been written just before the 21st. Note also that the Record of 19 January states: “This morning script became profuse and intimate. . . .” The script contains some examples of writings in different languages known and unknown. Sri Aurobindo wrote or “received” a number of such writings around this time. The first eighteen of the set of pages on which the script is written are devoted to this project. Some examples of such “writings in different languages” are published in Vedic Studies with Writings on Philology, volume 14 of THE COMPLETE WORKS. [5] This script was written sometime around June 1913 on a sheet of letter paper found along with some Vedic and linguistic notes. The paper is of the type used also for item [6] as well as for letters written around June 1913. The third and fifth of the seven “rules” here correspond to some of the five “positive directions” given in the script of 22 June 1913, which is published as part of the Record proper. [6] These four paragraphs of script, written on two loose sheets similar in type to those used for item [5], contain no explicit dating clues, but the position they describe corresponds closely to the one referred to in the Record of 10 and 11 July 1913. The first paragraph says: “Lipi is already moving forward to the mahat. . . .” The Record of 10 July speaks of the “successful movement from manas to mahat predicted in the script”, and observes: “The only siddhi which advanced during the day was the lipi.” The second paragraph deals with a movement of the vijnana to brihat, to be followed by a further change to satyam and ritam. This is the situation 1505 described at the beginning of the second sentence of the Record of 11 July 1913: “At first the knowledge was merely brihat in manas. . . .” [7] This script, written on a single loose sheet, contains no explicit dating clues, but the situation it describes corresponds to the position of Sri Aurobindo’s sadhana between July and September 1913. The script may well have been written during the suspension of the regular Record between 11 July and 5 September 1913. [8] This short piece was written at the bottom of the sheet containing the first six paragraphs of the Record of 12 November 1913, but upside down in relation to them. It apparently was written before the commencement or at any rate the completion of the Record entry, which otherwise would have used the space occupied by the script. The style is similar to that of some of the “Thoughts and Aphorisms” and to the “Thought” noted down in the Record of 24 June 1914 beginning “Despise not, O thinker. . . .” [9] This long script was written on a large loose sheet folded to make four pages, the bottom edges of all of which have been damaged. The sheet was found together with the Record entries of 11 23 November 1913 and apparently belongs to the same period; note the phrase “till December” in the second paragraph. There are many similarities between the position of the sadhana as described in this script and in the Record of 12 18 November 1913. Compare, for example, the following passage in the script: ” Today a great movement forward. . . . The trikaldrishti, telepathy, power, lipi have now all to move towards absolute perfection dragging the samadhi & drishti with them. Till that is done, the fourth chatusthaya will only prepare its advance . . .” with this passage in the Record of 14 November: “Today is to be a day of rapid progress in the third chatusthaya and the preparation of rapid progress in the fourth.” Similarly the last page of the script has parallels with the Record of 17 and 18 November, while the last complete paragraph of the script has similarities to the Record of 18 November 1913. Sortilege of 15 March [1913]. Written on a page of a notebook used mostly for Ilion and other poems. The year is not given but it may be inferred from (1) the handwriting, (2) the period of the other pieces in the notebook, (3) the fact that no regular Record, in which a sortilege would normally have been entered, was kept in March 1913. Accounts of 31 May 15 June 1913. Written on the first five pages 1506 of a notebook used later for Vedic translations and notes, the Record notes of 13 and 15 September (see below) and the Record of 22 30 September 1913. Sri Aurobindo wrote “Record of Yogic details” on the cover of this notebook. It should be remembered that to him “All life is Yoga.” Record Notes, 13 and 15 September 1913. Sri Aurobindo wrote these two entries under the heading “Record of Yoga. / Theosophic.” in the notebook used previously for the “Record of Yogic details” (see above) and subsequently for the Record of 22 30 September 1913. The year, not given explicitly, may be inferred from this position. Note that Sri Aurobindo also wrote a regular Record entry in another notebook on 13 September. Vedic Experience, 14 and 15 December 1913. Sri Aurobindo wrote regular Record entries for both these days, but chose to enter this experience in a notebook used otherwise for Vedic translations and notes. Undated Notes, c. 1914. Sri Aurobindo wrote these notes headed “Vijnanachatusthaya” on a loose sheet of paper that was found inserted in a notebook used, among other things, for the Record of July 1912. The sheet, however, does not appear to be connected with anything in the notebook, and may have been put there simply as a placemark. The handwriting is that of 1912 14. It is possible that these notes are the “separate detailed record of the results” of the “formulated & steady activity for the regulation of the third chatusthaya” that Sri Aurobindo wrote of having “commenced” in the Record of 1 June 1914. Notes on Images Seen in March 1914. Sri Aurobindo wrote this piece, which he entitled “The Evolutionary Scale”, in March 1914 in an exercise-book of the same sort as he was using then for the Record. In the Record entry of 22 March 1914, he spoke of certain “scenes of a pursuit in the early Manwantaras of a race of divinised Pashus by Barbarians” which were “recorded elsewhere”. The reference is evidently to the second section of “The Evolutionary Scale”, which begins: “A series of images and a number of intimations have been given yesterday in the chitra-drishti to illustrate the history of the first two Manwantaras. . . .” The word “yesterday”, which was added between the lines, would seem to indicate that the second, and probably the first and third sections as well, were written on 23 March. Further 1507 references in the Record make it clear that the images of the fourth section and the first paragraph of the fifth section were seen on 24 March, and that the images of the rest of the fifth section and probably those of the sixth were seen on 25 March. Undated Script, c. 1920. The first of these two scripts is the last piece of writing in a letter-pad whose other contents (Vedic translations, etc.) provide no explicit dating clues. The term “drashtri vijnana”, which occurs in the script, is found otherwise only in the Record of March 1920. The second piece, consisting of three short entries, was written on two loose sheets that cannot be precisely dated. The third entry employs the term “logos Vijnana”, which occurs in the Record only in October 1920. Undated Notes, c. December 1926. Sri Aurobindo wrote all but the last of these seven pieces in a letter-pad used previously for Vedic notes and subsequently for the Record of January February and April 1927, as well as for certain undated Record entries, scripts, etc. “The Seven Suns of the Supermind” is followed closely by Record entries that are considered to have been written in December 1926. It seems likely that that piece and the five preceding it were written in the same month. Sri Aurobindo wrote the seventh piece, “The Seven Centres of the Life”, on a sheet from another letter-pad, apparently around the same time. Undated Notes, c. January 1927. Sri Aurobindo wrote these notes, in which the names of some of his disciples are linked with those of historical, legendary and divine figures, in the letter-pad of 1926 27 referred to above. Before and after it are Record notes that have been dated to the last week of December 1926 and the first week of January 1927. Notes on Physical Transformation, c. January 1927. Sri Aurobindo wrote these notes in the letter-pad of 1926 27. They come just before the Record notes dated “Thursday. Jan 6.” They appear to be more in the nature of script than ordinary writing. (The word “you” obviously refers to Sri Aurobindo, while “she” designates the Mother, as it does in several Record entries of January 1927.) Diagrams, c. January 1927. Written and drawn in the letter-pad of 1926 27 between entries dated 6 January and 7 January. Miscellaneous Notations, c. February April 1927. [1 2] Written on two separate pages of the letter-pad of 1926 27, the first a few pages 1508 after the Record entry of 1 February, the second between the two parts of the entry of 9 April. (The script must have been written before this date, since the splitting of the entry of 9 April evidently was due to the fact that the intervening pages had already been used.) [3] This lipi, dated 2 April 1927, was written in the letter-pad of 1926 27 between the two parts of the entry of 9 April. [4] Sri Aurobindo wrote this mantra in the letter-pad of 1926 27, just after the lipi described above. Record of Drishti, 30 July 1927. Sri Aurobindo wrote these dated notes in a tiny note-pad used otherwise to record electric-meter readings. Undated Script, c. 1927. Sri Aurobindo wrote these three sets of script notations in a notebook belonging to the year 1927. Pieces [1] and [2] come a little before writings that may be dated with some certainty to July August 1927; but some similarities between the terminology of these entries and the Record of January 1927 suggest that the entries may have been written earlier in the year. The third piece occurs further on in the same notebook, and appears to date from somewhat later in 1927. Undated Script, c. 1927 1928. These four passages of script all come from manuscripts datable to late 1927 or 1928. All contain references to “overmind”, a term that first occurs in the Record in the entry of 29 October 1927. [1] The torn-up sheet on which this passage was written was found by A. B. Purani together with those containing the Record of 24 31 October 1927. Its opening is similar to number 14 of the “Undated Script Jottings” (see below), which was found in a notebook used in 1928. [2 3] These two passages occur in two different notebooks, both from the period 1927 28. Their terminology suggests that they may have been written after October 1927, although this would mean that they were jotted down after most of the contents of the subsequent pages of the notebooks were written. [4] These two fragments were found on a scrap of a sheet detached from a letter-pad. The first occupies what was originally the top of the front of the sheet. It begins in the middle of a sentence. The preceding page or pages have been lost. The second fragment occupies what was the bottom of the reverse of the sheet. (The pad was stitched at the top.) Between the two fragments came whatever was written on the bottom three-quarters of the front page and the top three-quarters of the reverse. 1509 Notes on Prophetic Vision, 1929. Sri Aurobindo wrote these dated notes in a small “Bloc-Memo” pad used otherwise for miscellaneous jottings and writings. Diagrams, c. 1931. Written and drawn on both sides of a piece of letter paper, at the top of which is the conclusion of a letter-draft whose beginning has been lost. The draft ends:
However I give the schema below and you can see for yourself—it is arranged according to an ascending scale of consciousness, grades superimposed on each other, but that does not mean that there is no interpenetration of one by another. The letter was rewritten on 15 April 1931 and sent without the diagrams. Undated Script Jottings. These fifteen passages of script were jotted down by Sri Aurobindo on the pages of various notebooks and loose pieces of paper between circa 1915 and the late 1920s. They are arranged in roughly chronological order, though their dates and sometimes even periods are difficult to determine. [1] Written on a sheet torn out of a letter-pad of the sort Sri Aurobindo used for the Record in 1915 16 and for other writings during approximately the same period. [2] Written on a page of a letter-pad containing writings that can be dated 1916 18. [3] Jotted on the last page of a notebook containing Vedic translations and English poetry written at different times. [4 5] Written on two pages of a notebook used around 1926. [6] Written on the back of a letter to Sri Aurobindo dated 16 August 1926. [7 8] Written on the front and back of a loose sheet inserted in the note-pad used for the Record of 1926 27; the loose sheet may once have been the first sheet of the pad, in which case the jottings may date to December 1926. [9 11] Written on three pages of the notebook that was used for the “Undated Script, c. 1927″ (see above). [12] Written circa 1927 28 on a torn sheet used otherwise for a passage intended for the revised version of The Synthesis of Yoga. [13] Written on a torn letter, perhaps from slightly later than 1928. [14] Written and cancelled at the top of a page of a stenographic pad used around 1928. [15] Written in the margin of a page of a notebook used for the poem Savitri in the late 1920s. 1510
PART FIVE. AUTOMATIC WRITING
Sri Aurobindo first tried automatic writing—defined by him as writing not “dictated or guided by the writer’s conscious mind”—towards the end of his stay in Baroda (that is, around 1904). He took it up “as an experiment as well as an amusement” after observing “some very extraordinary automatic writing” done by his brother Barin; “very much struck and interested” by the phenomenon, “he decided to find out by practising this kind of writing himself what there was behind it.” Barin seems at least sometimes to have used a planchette for his experiments, but Sri Aurobindo generally just “held the pen while a disembodied being wrote off what he wished, using my pen and hand”. He continued these experiments during his political career (1906 10) and afterwards. In this part are published one example from 1907, an entire book received as automatic writing in 1910, and a number of examples from two years during which he also kept the Record: 1914 and 1920. His “final conclusion” about automatic writing
was that though there are sometimes phenomena which point to the intervention of beings of another plane, not always or often of a high order, the mass of such writings comes from a dramatising element in the subconscious mind; sometimes a brilliant vein in the subliminal is struck and then predictions of the future and statements of things known in the present and past come up, but otherwise these writings have not a great value. During the period of the Record, Sri Aurobindo made much use of a form of writing he called “script”. As explained above, this was similar to automatic writing in that it came as a communication from another source, but differed from automatic writing in coming from a source that he considered to be higher and more reliable. It should be noted, however, that the distinction of “script” from ordinary automatic writing was not always strictly maintained. Some writings from a lower source refer to themselves as script (see for example page 1410), and Sri Aurobindo used the word “script” for writings that were produced in séances with others (see for example the Record of 17 July 1914, where he writes: “Today excellent script with R [Richard] 1511 & Madame R.”) In these examples, “script” is used as a generic term to cover all forms of written communication from other sources.
“The Scribblings”, c. 1907. Written in a notebook previously used by Sri Aurobindo in Baroda for miscellaneous writings. In May 1908 this notebook and several others were seized by the police when Sri Aurobindo was arrested in connection with the Alipore Bomb Case. These automatic writings were submitted by the prosecution as evidence against Sri Aurobindo, but were not accepted by the judge as being in Sri Aurobindo’s hand. They were, however, certainly written by him, though, being automatic, they are somewhat illegible; hence the name by which they were known during the trial: “The Scribblings”. They mention Barindra Kumar Ghose, Sri Aurobindo’s younger brother, who was the active head of a revolutionary group, as well as three other members. Yogic Sadhan. Sri Aurobindo received this book as automatic writing in 1910. According to his biographer A. B. Purani,
During the first three months of the stay at Pondicherry [April June 1910] there used to be séances in the evening in which automatic writing was done. The book Yogic Sadhan was written in this way. At the rate of one chapter per day, the book was finished in a week or eight days. . . . The Editor’s Epilogue added after the last chapter was written by Sri Aurobindo himself. The editor’s name is given as “the Uttar[a] Yogi”. A year later, the text that had been received was transcribed and published under the title Yogic Sadhan by Sri Vani Vilas Press, Srirangam. “The Uttara Yogi” (the Yogi from the North) is a name by which Sri Aurobindo was known to the person who published the book. A second edition of Yogic Sadhan, lightly revised, was brought out by the Modern Press, Pondicherry, in 1920. Two further editions were brought out by Arya Publishing House, Calcutta, in 1923 and 1933. The present text follows the second edition with a few emendations, mainly in chapters 7 9, for which a manuscript in Sri Aurobindo’s hand survives. Sri Aurobindo permitted the publication of Yogic Sadhan, but he did not consider it his own work. In a letter of 1934 he wrote: 1512
The Yogic Sadhan is not Sri Aurobindo’s own writing, but was published with a note by him, that is all. The statement made to the contrary by the publishers was an error which they have been asked to correct. There is no necessity of following the methods suggested in that book unless one finds them suggestive or helpful as a preliminary orientation of the consciousness—e.g. in the up-building of an inner Will etc. The “note” referred to is the “Editor’s Epilogue”, which was included in all editions of Yogic Sadhan. Sri Aurobindo allowed the book to go out of print after the edition of 1933 was sold out. It has not been reprinted since then in the form of a book. Automatic writings, c. 1914 (First Set). These four pieces of automatic writing are found on four loose sheets of paper folded together. They are not dated but almost certainly were written in 1914. The sheet on which item [1] was written contains also a draft of something published in the journal Arya in August of that year. Item [2] contains a reference to “the Review”, that is, the Arya, which was conceived around 1 June 1914 and first published in August. Items [3] and [4] seem to have been written around the same time as the first two items. Automatic writings, c. 1914 (Second Set). These two pieces of automatic writing were written on four loose sheets of paper folded to make eight pages. The sheets were found along with those on which the previous set were written, and appear to belong to the same period. Automatic Writing, c. 1920. This short writing was found in a letterpad used principally for Vedic translations and notes. Below it, on the same page, are a few lines that have been classified as Record-related script and published in Part Four (the first piece of “Undated Script, c. 1920″). That piece has been dated by terminology to around March 1920. The present writing describes itself as “script”, that is, a “means of embodied communication with the other worlds”; but the “spirit of the higher realms” who speaks is evidently not the Master of the Yoga. The item is therefore classified as automatic writing rather than script. Automatic Writings, c. 1920. These nineteen writings were found together in a single batch of seventy-eight loose sheets. They are published here in the order in which they were found. It is likely that each 1513 item is the product of a separate séance. References to known events in some of the writings lead one to date them to the summer of 1920. Lokamanya Tilak, who is referred to in item [9] as having departed from the body, apparently rather recently, died on 1 August 1920. The letter referred to in item [8] very likely is the one written by Tilak’s associate Dr. B. S. Munje to Sri Aurobindo, inviting him to preside over the 1920 session of the Indian National Congress. Sri Aurobindo’s reply turning down this offer is dated 30 August 1920. Mirra Richard (The Mother) and Paul Richard participated in some if not all the sessions. (See especially item [9].) They returned to Pondicherry from Japan on 24 April 1920. Richard left Pondicherry in December of the same year.
APPENDIX. MATERIAL FROM DISCIPLES‘ NOTEBOOKS
The pieces in this Appendix have been transcribed from versions handwritten by early disciples of Sri Aurobindo. They are copies of notes written by Sri Aurobindo or of written records of his oral remarks. With one partial exception, none of these items exist in the form of manuscripts in Sri Aurobindo’s handwriting. The exception is on the last page of item [1] of the “Miscellaneous Notes”, where there are three pieces that were written or revised by Sri Aurobindo in his own hand. Only these pieces may be considered to be as authentic as the handwritten Record. Nevertheless, Sri Aurobindo may be regarded as the origin of all the pieces in this appendix, as they are either transcriptions of his talks or copies of now-lost written texts. They represent aspects of his teaching in an early form as given to his earliest disciples. Miscellaneous Notes, c. 1914. These seven sets of notes are reproduced from handwritten copies made by disciples of Sri Aurobindo in various notebooks. Early copies of items [1], [2] and [5] were written in the exercise-book he used subsequently for the “Incomplete Notes on the First Chatusthaya” published in the Introduction. This notebook has “1914″ printed on the cover. Another notebook containing the principal versions of items [3], [4], [6] and [7] has calendars for 1913 and 1914 printed inside the front cover. Many of the disciples’ notebooks contain a copy of a letter written by Sri Aurobindo on 21 September 1514 1914. It is reasonable to conclude that the pieces date roughly from the period around 1914. Sapta Chatusthaya—Scribal Version. This presentation of Sapta Chatusthaya is the most complete one available. There is no manuscript of the piece in Sri Aurobindo’s hand, but he was undoubtedly its source. The text survives only in the form of transcripts written down by disciples. Several of these “scribal copies”, as the editors term them, have been collated and two of the oldest selected as the basis of the present text. One of the scribal copies may date from as early as 1914; two others are from the mid-1920s, and most or all of the rest from the 1930s. These copies were made either from a now-lost manuscript written by Sri Aurobindo or, more likely, from one or more written records of a series of talks given by him. The scribal copies may be considered on the whole to be reliable records of the substance of what Sri Aurobindo must have written or said; but all of them contain obvious distortions of his words. Because of this, a much freer hand has been used in the editing of this piece than would have been permissible if the text was based on a handwritten manuscript. The text is “eclectic”; that is to say, it follows for the most part the scribal version that seems to offer the best text as a whole, but it makes use of readings from the other principal scribal copy where these appear more likely to represent Sri Aurobindo’s actual words. Where the scribal copies agree but the reading seems defective, an editorial alternative has been printed between square brackets, as part of the text, and the scribal version given in a footnote. (Such footnote variants are preceded by “MS (scribal)“.) The editors have silently made minor corrections of the spelling, punctuation, etc. of these scribal texts.
PUBLISHING HISTORY
No part of Record of Yoga was published during Sri Aurobindo’s lifetime. The notebooks and loose sheets containing the diary entries and related materials were found after his passing along with his other manuscripts. Most of Record of Yoga was published in the journal Sri Aurobindo: Archives and Research between 1986 and 1994. Some material—mainly in Parts One, Four and the first section of the Appendix 1515 —was omitted when Record of Yoga was published in that journal and appears here for the first time. The publishing history of Yogic Sadhan has been given above in the note on Part Five. “The Seven Suns of the Supermind” and the diagrams in Part Four were included in The Hour of God (Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo Ashram) in 1959 and subsequently; there the diagrams were given the editorial title “The Divine Plan”. A few related pieces that were added to the reorganised 1982 edition of The Hour of God are also included in Part Four. In 1973, Sri Aurobindo’s manuscript version of “Sapta Chatusthaya” was published, with much editorial normalisation of the spelling of Sanskrit words and other details, in volume 27 (Supplement) of the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library. The text of this first edition of Record of Yoga has been reproduced verbatim, as far as possible, from the manuscripts of the diary entries and related materials. |