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Note on the Texts The texts in this book were written or spoken between 1973 and 1983. The first piece was written in November 1973 on the day after the Mother's passing; the last piece was written at the end of 1983, shortly before the author's own passing in February 1984. Almost all these pieces were first published in The Advent, a quarterly journal in English edited by Nolini Kanta Gupta and published by P. Counouma, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry. Most of them were subsequently published in the eight-volume Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta (English edition), published by the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry. A few pieces in the present book were published only in the Collected Works. One piece, "What Is to Be Done?", is being published here for the first time. In The Advent, the pieces appeared in the quarterly issues between 1973 and 1984. In the Collected Works, they appeared between 1974 and 1979 in one of the final four volumes of the series: Volume 5. Light of Lights, 1974 Volume 6. Sweet Mother, 1977 Volume 7. Sweet Mother (New Talks), 1978 Volume 8. Vedic Hymns, 1979 With one exception (the first piece), the pieces in Part 5, "The Integral Yoga", were published in The Advent but not in the Collected Works, because they came out after the last volume of that collection had been issued. In Part 4, "Talks to Page-117 the Students", almost all the talks were given to the students of the Higher Course of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education; they were intended especially for the final-year students who were leaving the school. The passages introducing the five parts of this book are taken from Nolini's "Observations", published in volume 6 of his Collected Works. Page-118
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