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... may leave Mr. Archer's monstrous and unwholesome dance of disparagement and turn to disengage the temperamental sources of his dislike and anger. Two things especially distinguish the normal European mind,—for we must leave aside some great souls and some great thinkers or some moments or epochs of abnormal religiosity and look at the dominant strain. Its two significant characters are the cult of... modern age with its two colossal idols, Industrialism and physical Science, have come to the West on the strong ascending urge of this double force. Whenever the tide of these powers has ebbed, the European mind has entered into much confusion, darkness and weakness. Christianity failed to spiritualise Page 137 Europe, whatever it may have done towards humanising it in certain ethical directions... Each Godhead is a form or derivation or dependent power of the supreme Trinity, Page 146 each Goddess a form of the universal Energy, Conscious-Force or Shakti. But to the logical European mind monotheism, polytheism, pantheism are irreconcilable warring dogmas; oneness, many-ness, all-ness are not and cannot be different but concordant aspects of the eternal Infinite. A belief in one ...

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... that the religious spirit here is something Page 272 quite different from the sense of European religions; and even mediaeval Christianity, especially as now looked at by the modern European mind which has gone through the two great crises of the Renascence and recent secularism, will not in spite of its oriental origin and affinities be of much real help. To bring in into the artistic look... them something much nearer to the Indian mentality, is to intrude a fatally foreign and disturbing element or standard in the mind. But this consciously or else subconsciously is what almost every European mind does to a greater or less degree,—and it is here a pernicious immixture, for it subjects the work of a vision that saw the immeasurable to the tests of an eye that dwells only on measure. Indian... vision of the world and existence was vaster and fuller than Shakespeare's, because it embraced not merely life, but all being, not merely humanity, but all the worlds and all Nature and cosmos. The European mind not having arrived except in individuals at any close, direct, insistent realisation of the unity of the infinite self or the cosmic consciousness peopled with its infinite multiplicity, is not ...

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... of this sense and spirit of Indian religion that we can come to an understanding of the true sense and spirit of Indian culture. Now just here is the first baffling difficulty over which the European mind stumbles; for it finds itself unable to make out what Hindu religion is. Where, it asks, is its soul? where is its mind and fixed thought? where is the form of its body? How can there be a religion... turn to the highest realities is the sign and fruit of an age-long, a real and a still living and supremely spiritual culture. The endless variety of Indian philosophy and religion seems to the European mind interminable, bewildering, wearisome, useless; it is unable to see the forest because of the richness and luxuriance of its vegetation; it misses the common spiritual life in the multitude of its... Indian cult and spiritual experience is the native sign of its truth, its living reality, the unfettered sincerity of its search and finding; but this plasticity is a constant stumbling block to the European mind. The religious thinking of Europe is accustomed to rigid impoverishing definitions, to strict exclusions, to a constant preoccupation with the outward idea, the organisation, the form. A precise ...

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... average man bound by his customary first notions and the competent critic trained to appreciate different forms of culture. The gulf was too wide for any bridge of culture then built to span. To the European mind Indian art was a thing barbarous, immature, monstrous, an arrested growth from humanity's primitive savagery and incompetent childhood. If there has been now some change, it is due to the remarkably... different kind of mind to appreciate. The Indian mind in its natural poise finds it almost or quite as difficult really, that is to say, spiritually to understand the arts of Europe, as the ordinary European mind to enter into the spirit of Indian painting and sculpture. I have seen a comparison made between a feminine Indian figure and a Greek Aphrodite which illustrates the difficulty in an extreme form... experience and acquired a more catholic and universal aesthesis. I lay stress on this psychological misunderstanding or want of understanding, because it explains the attitude of the natural European mind to the great works of Indian art and puts on it its right value. This mind catches only what is kin to European effort and regards that too as inferior, naturally and quite rightly since the same ...

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... philosophies. To the Western writer philosophy means only European philosophy—they begin with the Greek Thales and Anaximander, as if human thinking began with them. That is the old style European mind. It used to be the same in Art and other matters. Now Chinese and Japanese art is recognised and to a less degree the art of India, Persia and the former Indian colonies in the Far-East, but in... Academic definition of 'man' " is "Soul using a body" and that "the soul is the man". 2 But it is not clear whether the soul is the mental being or something which uses the mind also. The European mind, for the most part, has never been able to go beyond the formula of soul + body—usually including mind in soul and everything except body in mind. Some occultists make a distinction between spirit... of any real thought-value. And yet the questions raised are interesting enough if treated with true philosophic insight or from the standpoint of true spiritual experience. It is queer that the European mind, capable enough in other directions, should sink to so much puerility when it begins to deal with religion and spiritual experience. All the same I shall see if there is anything that can be said ...

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... Chinese or a Japanese piece of artistic creation is more of a study in character than in form; but it is a study in character in a deeper sense than the meaning which the term usually bears to an European mind or when it is used in reference to Europe's art-creations. Character in the European sense means that part of nature which is dynamically expressed in conduct, in behaviour, in external movements... measure of creation, nor human motives the highest or the deepest of nature's movements: at best, man is but a symbol of truths beyond his humanity. It is this characteristic that struck the European mind in its first contact with the Indian artistic world and called forth the criticism that Indian culture lacks in humanism. It is true, a very sublimated humanism finds remarkable expression in Ajanta... experiences embodied there and the method of expression become more Page 179 and more "anonymous"; they have not, that is to say, the local colour of humanity, which alone makes the European mind feel entirely at home. Europe's revulsion of feeling against Indian art came chiefly from her first meeting with the multiple-headed, multiple-armed, expressionless, strangely poised Hindu gods ...

... It is necessary for reasons I shall presently touch on to cast a cursory glance at the most important of these attempts. The first thought that would naturally suggest itself to an average European mind in search of an origin for Hindu drama is a Greek parentage. The one great body of original drama prior to the Hindu is the Greek; from Greece Europe derives the beginnings of her civilization in... there was the alluring fact that Alexander of Macedon had entered India and the Bactrians established a kingdom on the banks of the Indus before the time of the earliest extant Hindu play. To the European mind the temptation to build upon this coincidence a theory was irresistible, more especially as it has always been Page 187 incurably loath to believe that the Asiatic genius can be original ...

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... poet on a throne has been the theme of Shakespeare in his Richard II and of Renan in his Antéchrist; and from these two great studies we can realise the European view of the phenomenon. To the European mind the meeting of poet & king in one man wears always the appearance of an anomaly, a misplacement, the very qualities which have fitted him to be a poet unfit him to rule. A mastering egotism ... phenomenal & illusory existence, on the other we materialise the spiritual in the most definite & realistic forms; this is the secret of the high philosophic idealism which to the less capable European mind seems so impossible an intellectual atmosphere and of the prolific idolatry which to the dogmatic & formalising Christian reason seems so gross. Page 212 In any other race-temperament ...

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... almost opposite directions. Will-power and personality have not been wanting in India, but the direction preferably given to them and the type most admired are of a different kind. The average European mind is prone to value or at least to be more interested in the egoistic or self-asserting will which insists upon itself with a strong or a bold, an aggressive, sometimes a fierce insistence; the Indian... than Constantine or Charlemagne. It is interested in Chanakya, but much more interested in Chaitanya. Page 252 And in literature also just as in actual life it has the same turn. This European mind finds Rama and Sita uninteresting and unreal, because they are too virtuous, too ideal, too white in colour; but to the Indian mind even apart from all religious sentiment they are figures of an ...

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... lived with and perhaps loved, were agonizing. Divine love, divine pity, the nature of the Buddha, that was the message which India sent to Europe through the lips of Jesus, and this is how the European mind interpreted divine love & divine pity! The fires of Hell aptly and piously anticipated on earth by the fires of Smithfield, the glowing splendours of the Auto-da-fé, the unspeakable reek of agony... precariously living at the present day. One trembles to think of the day when that coin shall be exhausted—already we see some signs of growing moral vulgarity, coarseness, almost savagery in the European mind, which, if it increases, if the open worship of brutal force & unscrupulous strength which is rampant in politics & in commerce taint, as it must eventually do, the deeper heart of society, may ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Isha Upanishad
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... when it came. Disciple : What do you mean by saying that the European mind is materialistic ? Sri Aurobindo : We mean by the European materialism the attitude that takes matter as the fundamental basis of evolution and the impossibility of accepting what it is not accustomed to. I am not running down the European mind. It is fine in its own way, but we are trying to effect a decisive ...

... We see the movement accepted and advanced (if not even initiated) more in the West than in the East. That the world is a progressive and progressing phenomenon comes easily and naturally to the European mind. The East has been habituated to a static view of things: if there is dynamism, it is mostly considered as a movement in a circle. The spiritual East with its obsessing experience of the Infinite... about. The surpassing of man is a miracle and only the supreme magician as an Avatara can do it. Others, again, are not prone to believe in a physical Incarnation – somewhat difficult usually for a European mind – but would accept subtler forces or even superior beings, other than the human category, as aids and agents in the working out of the great future. It 'is India's great achievement and speciality ...

... not superior to the Greek mind with its more limited field and material. PURANI: Emerson writing about Plato, says that he has been the epitome of the European mind for the last two thousand years or more. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, the European mind got everything from the Greeks and owes everything to them. Every branch of knowledge in which human curiosity could be interested has been, given to Europe ...

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... and a hundred strange and irregular channels. One can open few books now at all in the latest stream of thought without seeing the old Vedantism busy at its work of moulding and broadening the European mind, sometimes by direct and conscious impact as a force, more often by an unacknowledged and impalpable pressure as an atmosphere. This potent influence [in] modern times of a way of thinking many... becomes possible,—the One becomes the Many. (But this one fundamental postulate is not easily conceded. The question which will at once spring up armed and gigantic in Page 372 the European mind is the teleological objection, Why? All action implies a purpose; with what purpose did Brahman regard Himself as qualified? All Evolution is prompted by a desire, implies development, moves to ...

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... Christianity and his prejudice against the infidel and paynim, yet resembled his opponent in many characteristic ways of seeing and feeling to an extent which is no longer possible to an average European mind, unless it has been imbued with the new ideas which are once more lessening the gulf between the continents. It was the rationalising of the occidental mind, the rationalising even of its religious... show of acumen questions of economy and politics or, for that matter, art, literature and drama, is not "necessarily" proof of a great mental capacity; but it does show a great development of the European mind in general, a wide-spread information and normal capacity in these fields of its action. The crudity of his opinions and his treatment of his subjects may sometimes seem a little "barbaric" to an ...

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... sense was unable to save its religion; it tended towards that sharp division between philosophy and science on one side and religion on the other which has been so peculiar a characteristic of the European mind”, wrote Sri Aurobindo in his essay on Heraclitus. 13 “… Heraclitus prepares the way for the destruction of the old religion [by the sophists], the reign of pure philosophy and reason and the... material and political irruption as opposed to a peaceful invasion by ideas – may be regarded as a third attempt. The result of its meeting with Graecised Christianity was the reawakening of the European mind in feudal and Catholic Europe and the obscure beginnings of modern thought and science. “The fourth and last attempt, which is as yet only in its slow initial stage is the quiet entry of Eastern ...

... psychology. Sri Aurobindo's great work "On Yoga" achieves the purpose mentioned above and is an outstanding contribution to the proper study of the subject. But the modern mind-which means European mind-is not prepared to accept the scientific nature of Indian psychology. To it all the Indian systems are empirical at their best. Modern psychology on the contrary claims to be scientific, it is supposed... inspired by a genuine spirit of search for the truth of human consciousness. A vast literature has been created during a relatively short period of about 50 years. Since the rise of natural sciences European mind has been principally occupied in investigating the nature of the physical world and later on in the 18th century it took up the field of biology. In these investigations the attitude of the inquiring ...

... superior to the Greek mind in its handling of its limited material. Disciple : Writing about Plato, Emerson says that he is the epitome of the European mind for the last 2000 years. Sri Aurobindo : It is true; – the European mind got every- thing and owes everything to the Greeks. Every branch of knowledge in which human curiosity could be interested has been given to Europe by ...

... of many subjects after the modern plan, but the thorough mastery of all. The original achievement of a Kalidasa accomplishing the highest in every line of poetic creation is so incredible to the European mind that it has been sought to cleave that mighty master of harmonies into a committee of three. Yet it is paralleled by the accomplishment Page 376 in philosophy of Shankara in a short ...

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... unexceptionable, but the line of thought leading to it stumbles needlessly in pursuit of a false clue. The article is interesting chiefly as an indication of the perplexity of a certain type of European mind hesitating and held back in the grasp of the old that is dying and yet feeling the call of things that draw towards the future. The superstition of the perfect excellence of the Graeco-Roman tradition ...

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... contain the kernel of the matter in the least technical and most poetical form; the one exception is the Upanishad of the Questions which will be necessarily strange and not quite penetrable to the European mind. It was, however, necessary to include it for the sake of a due presentation of Upanishad philosophy in some of its details as well as in its main ideas, and its technical element has a more universal ...

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... confront. Finally, we cannot avoid dealing with the great governing ideas and problems of the modern world. The modern world is still Page 51 mainly European, a world dominated by the European mind and Western civilisation. We claim to set right this undue preponderance, to reassert the Asiatic and, for ourselves, the Indian mind and to preserve and develop the great values of Asiatic and ...

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... of the world and as a sacrifice to Him who stands behind man and Nature. In other words, the Gita is not a book of practical ethics, but of the spiritual life. The modern mind is just now the European mind, such as it has become after having abandoned not only the philosophic idealism of the highest Graeco-Roman culture from which it started, but the Christian devotionalism of the Middle Ages; these ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita
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... and self-finding, it had some right to speak of itself by the only name it knew, the eternal religion, sanatana dharma____ Now just here is the first baffling difficulty over which the European mind stumbles; for it finds itself unable to make out what Hindu religion is.... How can there be a religion Page 145 which has no rigid dogmas demanding belief on pain of eternal damnation ...

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... it is strange to find him basing his opinion of the inferiority of the Vedantic style on its appeal not being universal. This merely means that the Vedantic motive and conventions are new to the European mind, and the average eye, enslaved to old associations, cannot immediately welcome what is new and ill-understood. Every new step forward in artistic tradition within Europe itself has been met by the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Karmayogin
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... that the genius of Mazzini rediscovered the heart of Christianity and sought to remodel European ideas; the French Revolution had become the starting point of European democracy and coloured the European mind. Now that democracy has returned to Asia, its cradle and home, it will be purged of its foreign elements and restored to its original purity. The movements of the nineteenth century in India were ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Bande Mataram
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... Indian sadhak has his own difficulties in his approach to the Yoga—at least to this Yoga—which a Westerner has in less measure. Those of the occidental nature are born of the dominant trend of the European mind in the immediate past. A greater readiness of essential doubt and sceptical reserve; a habit of mental activity as a necessity of the nature which makes it more difficult to achieve a complete mental ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - II
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... inherited force of spirituality. Asia may well preserve its ancient spirituality; even in its hour of greatest weakness it has been able to impose its prestige increasingly even on the positive European mind. But whatever turn that spirituality takes, it will be determined by the mentality of this new intelligentsia and will certainly flow into other channels than the old ideas and symbols. The old ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Human Cycle
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... some part of it at least a stamp only less profound; French prose and poetry—but the latter in a much less degree,—have helped more than any other literary influence to form the modern turn of the European mind and its mode of expression; the shortlived outbursts of creative power in the Spain of Calderón and the Germany of Goethe exercised an immediate, a strong, though not an enduring influence; the ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Future Poetry
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... dissatisfaction with the ideals of the past or the present, with all mental or vital or material solutions of the problem of life has increased and only the spiritual path is left. It is true that the European mind having little light on these things dallies with vital will-o'-the wisps like spiritism or theosophy or falls back upon the old religionism; but the deeper minds of which I speak either pass by ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I
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... Himself in various names and forms of His infinite godhead to satisfy the desire and need of the individual soul according to its own nature and personality. It is for this reason that the normal European mind finds it so difficult to understand Indian religion as distinct from Vedantic or Sankhya philosophy, because it cannot easily conceive of a personal God with infinite qualities, a personal God who ...

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... English language: To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare. Nothing of paramount importance seems said here, though "Athe- Page 92 nian" has considerable associations in the European mind. What confers poetic immortality on the line is its pattern of assonances and long vowels. There is no Poetic Diction present, unless we count the inversion "ruin bare" to be constituting it. Nor ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Talks on Poetry
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... material and political irruption as opposed to a peaceful invasion by ideas—may be regarded as a third attempt. The result of its meeting with Graecised Christianity was the reawakening of the European mind in feudal and Catholic Europe and the obscure beginnings of modern thought and science. The fourth and last attempt which is as yet only in its slow initial stage is the quiet entry of Eastern ...

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... sense was unable to save its religion; it tended towards that sharp division between philosophy and science on one side and religion on the other which has been so peculiar a characteristic of the European mind. Here too Heraclitus was, as in so many other directions, a forerunner, an indicator of the natural bent of occidental thought. Equally striking is his condemnation of idol-worship, one of the ...

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... larger destinies; but it is still Achilles, it is the same personality that is reborn, only the bodily circumstances are different. It is this survival of the identical personality that attracts the European mind today in the theory of reincarnation. For it is the extinction or dissolution of the personality, of this mental, nervous and physical composite which I call myself that is hard to bear for the ...

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... material and political irruption as opposed to a peaceful invasion by ideas — may be regarded as a third attempt. The result of its meeting with Graecised Christianity was the awakening of the European mind in feudal and Catholic Europe and the obscure beginnings of modern thought and science,’ 27 which would lead up to the Renaissance. The fourth attempt at spiritualization of the West by the ...

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... where. I suppose if Baron communicates to you books on the subject or more precise information, we shall know more clearly now. In any case surrealism is part of an increasing attempt of the European mind to escape from the surface consciousness (in poetry as well as in painting and in thought) and grope after a deeper truth of things which is not on the surface. The Dream consciousness as it is ...

... worship — if anything, till then he was averse to it. Now when he went to the temple he found a presence in the image. He got a direct proof of the truth that can be behind image-worship. With my European mind I had at that time no faith in the Gods. I had gone to Karnali (near Chandod) and there are several temples there. There is one Kali temple and when I looked at the image I saw the living presence ...

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... ideals of the past or the present, with all mental or vital or Page 149 material solutions of the problem of life has increased and only the spiritual path is left. It is true that the European mind having little light on these things dallies with vital will-o-the-wisps like spiritism or theosophy or falls back upon the old religionism; but the deeper minds of which I speak either pass by them ...

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... the world and as a sacrifice to Him who stands behind man and Nature. In other words, the Gita is not a book of practical ethics, but of the spiritual life. The modern mind is just now the European mind, such as it has become after having abandoned not only the philosophic idealism of the highest Graeco-Roman culture from which it started, but the Christian devotionals of the Middle Ages; these ...

... allowing us to better access deeper layers of their psyche. Sri Aurobindo, in his preface on the philosophy of the Upanishads, beautifully describes the differences he sees between the Asiatic and European mind. Digging into the rich soil of the epics which are at the roots of these two main lines of development, he writes: "The mind of the European is an Iliad and an Odyssey,³ fighting rudely but heroically ...

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... in where. I suppose if Baron communicates to you books on the subject or more precise information, we shall know more clearly now. In any case, surrealism is part of an increasing attempt of the European mind to escape from the surface consciousness (in poetry as well as in painting and in thought) and grope after a deeper truth of things which is not on the surface. The Dream-Consciousness as it is ...

... truly spiritual. As I have said, Far Eastern art expresses the Spirit as Nature, as Prakrid, while Indian art expresses the Spirit as Self, the spiritual being, Purusha. That is too subtle for the European mind to understand. × Wood-carvings which stood on a table in Sri Aurobindo's room. ...

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... and add whatever knowledge one wants to one's original line of sadhana. It is not at all necessary to give up Bhakti for Knowledge. After all that ground gained, one can add more and more. The European mind is much taken up with Buddhism. Magre was first a Buddhist. Blavatsky was much influenced by it. Next, when the Europeans understood Shankara they considered that there was nothing more in India ...

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... public. SATYENDRA: He says he has given up his search for Yoga as he has plumbed its depths. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, he wants to include Yoga in the educational curriculum. A queer affair, this European mind! SATYENDRA: He himself has gone in for several superficial things, magic, occult phenomena, etc. His book on Egypt has a lot of that stuff. He speaks of an Egyptian he met on the top of a hill ...

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... be revelation of undiscovered harmony and unity. Cezanne refused to copy nature. He was not satisfied even with impressionism. Q. What is Impressionism ? A. The whole outlook of European mind in those days—as even now—was strongly influenced by scientific ideas. The stress was on finding out of objective truth of the world—to banish as completely as possible the subjective element from ...

... first. It is here & here only that the keenest eye becomes confused & the most confident explorer begins to lose heart & self-reliance. But the Iliad is all battles and it therefore follows in the European mind that the original Mahabharata must have been all battles. Another method is that of ingenious, if forced argument from stray slokas of the poem or equally stray & obscure remarks in Buddhist co ...

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... first. It is here & here only that the keenest eye becomes confused & the most confident explorer begins to lose heart & self-reliance. But the Iliad is all battles and it therefore follows in the European mind that the original Mahabharata must have been all battles. Another method is Page 338 that of ingenious, if forced argument from stray slokas of the poem or equally stray & obscure remarks ...

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... About Astrology The subject of this book is one which stands nowadays put away under a sort of intellectual ban, placed on it some centuries ago by the scientific and rationalistic European mind and not yet lifted. Mr. N. P. Subramania Iyer has undertaken an astrological series which will deal with the various parts of astrology, and the present volume contains the text and translation ...

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... find it one of the luxuries that are necessities. Page 594 × The attitude and regard of the cultured European mind on Indian and Eastern art has immensely changed since this was written and there has been a great progress towards sympathy and understanding and even developments due to an oriental influence. ...

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... despotisms like Turkey and Russia. But by the time that England had fastened its hold on India, a change had come over the modern world. The Greek ideas of freedom and democracy had penetrated the European mind and created the great impulse of democratic Nationalism which dominated Europe in the nineteenth century. The idea that despotism of any kind was an offence against humanity, had crystallised into ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Bande Mataram
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... teachings are too visionary for the average Indian mind is to forget that this is the country of Vedanta where the most ignorant have some idea of abstract Page 1000 truths which the European mind is too weak to cope with. If the movement is to be vitalised, it will not be by preoccupation with details but by the execution of details in the light of the living truths for which they merely ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Bande Mataram
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... was preparing to open for itself the new views, new paths and new instruments of discovery which have led to the astonishing results of the nineteenth century, an opportunity was offered to the European mind for a similar mastery of sciences other than physical. The Sanscrit language was discovered. It was at first imagined & expected that this discovery would lead to results as important as those which ...

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... admits to the most profound and hidden mystery of the universe; for him the heart has the key of the last secret. The work of a great Bengali poet has recently reintroduced this idea to the European mind, which has so much lost the memory of its old religious traditions as to welcome and wonder at it as a novel form of mystic self-expression. On the contrary it is ancient enough, like all things ...

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... civilisation of India, can see that this is a bitter misrepresentation, a violent caricature, an absurd falsehood. But it is an extreme and unscrupulous way of putting an impression often given to the European mind and, as before, we must see why different eyes see the same object in such different colours. It is the same primary misunderstanding that is at the root. India has lived and lived richly, splendidly ...

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... sombre emphasis, after a manner which I suppose Mr. Archer has learned from the modern masters of realism. But in substance and spirit it is a fairly correct statement of the notions which the European mind has formed in the past about the character of Indian thought and culture, sometimes in ignorance, sometimes in defiance of the evidence. For a time even it managed to impress some strong shadow ...

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... only a stray observation or two less inconsequent and opaque than the others perhaps demands a passing notice. But although these futilities do not at all represent the genuine view of the general European mind on the subject of Indian poetry and literature, still one finds a frequent inability to appreciate the spirit or the form or the aesthetic value of Indian writing and especially its perfection and ...

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... nce. Let us see then what is the value of the objections made to the spirit and style of Indian sculpture. This is the burden of the objurgations of the devil's advocate that his self-bound European mind finds the whole thing barbaric, meaningless, uncouth, strange, bizarre, the work of a distorted imagination Page 292 labouring mid a nightmare of unlovely unrealities. Now there is in ...

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... it has its obstacles and difficulties, is at any rate not an unduly exalted aim and ought to be more easy of accomplishment than the arduous spiritual ideal of ancient India. But how much of the European mind and life is really governed by reason and what does this practical reason and efficiency come to in the end? To what perfection has it brought the human mind and soul and life? The aggressive ugliness ...

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... considerable work by Mr. William Archer criticising and attacking Indian civilisation and culture in all its domains: at that time this critic's views were typical of a very general attitude of the European mind towards the Indian civilisation and its special character, forms and creations and to combat the self-depreciation awakened in the Indian mind by this hostile impact and to explain to it the meaning ...

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... born, all the rest must perish or go under. But the real and perfect civilisation yet waits to be discovered; for the life of mankind is still nine tenths of barbarism to one tenth of culture. The European mind gives the first place to the principle of growth by struggle; it is by struggle that it arrives at some kind of concert. But this concert is itself hardly more than an organisation for growth by ...

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... A.N. Wilson: God’s Funeral , p. 241-42. × Owen Chadwick: The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century, p. 174. × Iain McCalman: Darwin’s Armada, p. 307. ...

... (brahmin), the nobility ( kshatriya ), the merchants (vaishya) and the common workers (shudra), most of whom had been serfs, in other words, slaves. Thanks to the philosophical evolution of the European mind during the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, the dominant classes of the clergy and the nobility had lost most of their privileges and the bourgeois class had taken over ...

... of any real thought-value. And yet the questions raised are interesting enough if treated with true philosophic insight or from the standpoint of true spiritual experience. It is queer that the European mind, capable enough in other directions should sink to so much puerility when it begins to deal with religion and spiritual experience. All the same I shall see if there is anything that can be said ...

... Wars , Touchstone, 1999 Capra, Fritjof: Uncommon Wisdom , Flamingo, 1983 Carey, John (ed.): The Faber Book of Science , Faber and Faber, 1995 Chadwick, Owen: The Secularization of the European Mind in the 19th Century , Cambridge University Press, 1975 Chown, Marcus: Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You , Faber and Faber, 2007 Cobb, Matthew: The Egg & Sperm Race , Pocket Books, 2006 Collins ...

... in where. I suppose if Baron communicates to you books on the subject or more precise information, we shall know more clearly now. In any case surrealism is part of an increasing attempt of the European mind to escape from the surface consciousness (in poetry as well as in painting and in thought) and grope after a deeper truth of things which is not on the surface. The Dream Consciousness as it is ...

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... descend and be manifested in you—for until this is done, this conscious linking and relation with the psychic centre, there can be no supramental descent. The Words "Soul" and "Psychic" The European mind, for the most part, has never been able to go beyond the formula of soul + body—usually including mind in soul and everything except body in mind. Some occultists make a distinction between spirit ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I
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... seal of finality on the old misunderstanding which could not be broken for many centuries. And its suggestions, when another civilisation discovered and set itself to study the Veda, became in the European mind the parent of fresh errors. Nevertheless, if Sayana's work has been a key turned with double lock on the inner sense of the Veda, it is yet indispensable for opening the antechambers of Vedic ...

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... sacrificial bards; so by speculations sometimes entirely sublime, sometimes grievously silly & childish, they developed Vedanta. This theory, simple, trenchant and attractive, supported to the European mind by parallels from the history of Western religions, is neither so convincing nor, on a broad survey of the facts, so conclusive as it at first appears. It is certainly inconsistent with what the ...

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... rather than logical, but still reposing for its material verity on a method of strenuous experiment & searching observation. This aspect of Vedantic thinking is not likely to be grasped by the European mind to which our Indian experiences seem foreign, fantastic and inadmissible; but to those of us in India who know anything of the ancient practice and experiment upon which the truths preserved in ...

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... idea of humanity as a single race of beings with a common life and a common general interest is among the most characteristic and significant products of modern thought. It is an outcome of the European mind which proceeds characteristically from life-experience to the idea and, without going deeper, returns from the idea upon life in an attempt to change its outward forms and institutions, its order ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Human Cycle
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... dissatisfaction with the ideals of the past or the present, with all mental or vital or material solutions of the problem of life has increased and only the spiritual path is left. It is true that the European mind having little light on these things dallies with vital will-o'-the-wisps like spiritism or theosophy or falls back upon the old religionist; but the deeper minds of which I speak either pass by ...

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... be. All this is playing with words, you understand, but it turns out that in one case the world is reprehensible and in the other it is adorable! And that makes all the difference. To the whole European mind, the whole Christian spirit, the world is reprehensible. And when THAT is pointed out to them, they can't stand it. So the very normal, natural reaction against this attitude is to negate the ...

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... with a natural ease befitting what was written by way of a letter to a disciple: "Yoga and Occident: The difficulties of the occidental nature are born of the dominant trend of the European mind in the immediate past. A greater readiness of essential doubt and sceptical reserve; a habit of mental activity as a necessity of the nature which makes it more difficult to achieve a complete ...

... admits to the most profound and hidden mystery of the universe; for him the heart has the key of the last secret. The work of a great Bengali poet has recently reintroduced this idea to the European mind which has so much lost the memory of its old religious traditions as to welcome and wonder at it as a novel form of mystic self-expression. On the contrary it is ancient enough, like all things ...

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... comes with the same force, Meher Baba accepts that too so that his prophecies go wrong, become contradictory and his planning and behaviour erratic. This sort of thing I know by experience. But European mind can't understand it. It calls it all a fraud. SATYENDRA: He doesn't reject anything. He even goes to cinemas and says that one can act there more easily where people are concentrated on one purpose ...

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... year Sri Aurobindo visited a temple of Kali on the banks of the Narmada. This he did on the persuasion of his friends, as he himself had at the time no faith in idols or image-worship. 'With my European mind,' he wrote, 'I had no faith in them and I hardly believed in the presence of God.' But when he looked at the image of the goddess, he found 'a living Presence deathless and divine, / A form that ...

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... of many subjects after the modern plan, but the thorough mastery of all. The original achievement of a Kalidasa accomplishing the highest in every line of poetic creation is so incredible to the European mind that it has been sought to cleave that mighty master of harmonies into a committee of three. Yet it is paralleled by the accomplishment in philosophy of Shankara in a short life of thirty-two years ...

... the vital plane ? Sri Aurobindo : No ; they are worshipped in the vital way, but their conception is much larger than that and they generally go up to the higher mental plane. When the European mind leaves materialism, it takes the vital gods as the true gods. Disciple : Do the laws of Matter change ? Sri Aurobindo : Physical cells change and the same thing that gives pain gives ...

... in an inspired art which is the wonder and admiration of mankind for all time. The art of the Renaissance was mainly religious and spiritual, like the ancient art of the East. But when European mind turned to Rationalism and science then all secular arts— especially painting, found their centre in Paris. France, notably Paris, has remained the dynamic centre of European Page 49 ...

... SRI AUROBINDO: Then everybody is his "agent". SATYENDRA: But these are special agents. The trouble is that he is not at all dependable. The Europeans complain, as I have already said that he changes plans so often. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, European minds can't tolerate that. They want arrangement, method, a fixed system. NIRODBARAN: In that case Meher Baba is like Hitler. By the way, this is the... Baltic and the Balkans, Germany will be in danger and Stalin will be all-powerful in Europe. NIRODBARAN: Besides, there is fear of an internal revolution in Germany and then of the spread of Communism. SRI AUROBINDO: That is what Stalin hopes for. And after that Communism may spread over the whole of Europe. SATYENDRA: But Stalin is not making much headway in Finland. SRI AUROBINDO: No... had an unexpected visit from his patient Sh. We said that it must have been the result of the previous day's talk. We were all amused by the information from Sh that his nerves and stomach, not his mind, were the seats of the trouble: the hostile forces attacked him there. Sri Aurobindo asked: "But why the stomach?" After this, the talk moved on to Meher Baba, the Yogi from Western India. SATYENDRA: ...

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... "kill", of securing Indian freedom. I used to repeat it but it did not give any results. Once I visited Ganganath (Chandod) after Brahmananda's death when Keshwananda was there. With my Europeanized mind I had no faith in image-worship and I hardly believed in the presence of God. I went to Kernali where there are several temples. There is one of Kali and when I looked at the image I saw the living ...

... still admitting, not so much the British, as the modern ideals and methods in politics and in the trend to a greater social equality; and it is becoming clear now, even to the more well-informed European minds that the Anglicisation of India would have been a wrong not only to India itself but to humanity. Still it may be said that, if the old principle of the association was wrong, yet the association... elimination of war and the recognition of the equal rights of all peoples are intimately bound up with each other. That interdependence, admitted for a moment, even though imperfectly, during the European conflict, will have to be permanently accepted if there is to be any unification of the race. The economic question remains, and it is the sole important problem of a vital and physical order... regional, national mind and power in the firm frame of a united humanity. What precise form the framework might take, it is impossible to forecast and useless to speculate; only certain now current ideas would have to be modified or abandoned. The idea of a Page 545 world-parliament is attractive at first sight, because the parliamentary form is that to which our minds are accustomed; but ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Human Cycle
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... reality beyond somewhat as it acutally is, in its native rhythm and figure and not diffracted and diffused through a hazy atmosphere. European thought, European philosophy particularly, moves under the aegis of the Mind. It takes its stand within the Mind and from there tries to reach out to truths and realities; and therefore, however far it goes, its highest flights of perception, its most intimate... so much imbedded behind, covered so much with the mist of mind's struggle and tension and imaginative construction that it is not always easy to disengage the pure metal from the ore. We shall take the case of one such philosopher and try to illustrate our point. We are thinking of Whitehead. The character of European philosophical mind is well exemplified in this remarkable modern philosopher... The procedure of European philosophy is different. There the reason or the mental light is the starting-point. That light is cast about: one collects facts, one observes things and happenings and then proceeds to find out a general truth—a law, a hypothesis—justified by such observations. But as a matter of fact this is the ostensible method: it is only a make- believe. For mind and reason are not ...

... reality beyond somewhat as it actually is, in its native rhythm and figure and not diffracted and diffused through a hazy atmosphere. European thought, European philosophy particularly, moves under the aegis of the Mind. It takes its stand within the Mind and from there tries to reach out to truths and realities; and therefore, however far it goes, its highest flights of perception, its most intimate... so much imbedded behind, covered so much with the mist of mind's struggle and tension and imaginative construction that it is not always easy to disengage the pure metal from the ore. We shall take the case of one such philosopher and try to illustrate our point. We are thinking of Whitehead. The character of European philosophical mind is well exemplified in this remarkable modern philosopher... The procedure of European philosophy is different. There the reason or the mental light is the starting-point. That light is cast about: one collects facts, one observes things and happenings and then proceeds to find out a general truth – a law, a hypothesis – justified by such observations. But as a matter of fact this is the ostensible method: it is only a make-believe. For mind and reason are not ...

... vision, the seeing mind which he had, but I thought that it was due to his turning towards Knowledge. His attraction towards Buddhism is understandable, because to the European rational mind its rationalism has an appeal. It was first through Buddhism that Europe came to and began to know India. Blavatsky founded Theosophy on Buddhism. Next they understand Shanker in Europe and for many years... years the Europeans thought there was nothing in India except Shanker’s Adwaita. But if X has taken to Buddhism his sex abhoration is not justifiable. Buddhism is the most exacting path. It is most unindulgent, severe and dry; it is a path of Tapasya. Disciple : He had perhaps great mental pride. Sri Aurobindo : May be also vital over-confidence. Disciple : He said to ...

... means Europe. What Europe has been and still is for the world and humanity one knows only too much. And yet, the Hellenic genius has not been the sole motive power and constituent element; there has been another leaven which worked constantly within, if intermittently without. If Europe represented mind and man and this side of existence, Asia always reflected that which transcends the mind—the spirit... of Intuition. Since existence is a continuum of Mind-Energy, the only way to know it is to be in harmony or unison with it, to move along its current. The conception of knowledge as a fixing and delimiting of things is necessarily an anomaly in this scheme. But the question is, is matter the only static and separative reality? Is the flux of vital Mind-Energy the ultimate truth ? Matter forms... on the conscious and dynamic levels, in the outer world, the truth which has thus already been seized in some secret core of our being. The intuition may not, of course, be present to the conscious mind, it may not be ostensibly sought for, one may even deny the existence of such a preconceived notion and proceed to establish truth on a tabula rasa; none the less it is this hidden bias that judges ...

... means Europe. What Europe has been and still is for the world and humanity one knows only too much. And yet, the Hellenic genius has not been the sole motive power and constituent element; there has been another leaven' which worked constantly within, if intermittently without. If Europe represented mind and man and this side of existence, Asia always reflected that which transcends the mind-the spirit... of Intuition. Since existence is a continuum of Mind-Energy, the only way to know it is to be in harmony or unison with it, to move along its current. The conception of knowledge as a fixing and delimiting of things is necessarily an anomaly in this scheme. But the question is, is matter the only static and separative reality? Is the flux of vital Mind-Energy the ultimate truth?   Matter... on the conscious and dynamic levels, in the outer world, the truth which has thus already been seized in some secret core of our being. The intuition may not, of course, be present to the conscious mind, it may not be ostensibly sought for, one may even deny the existence of such a preconceived notion and proceed to establish truth on a tabula rasa; none the less it is this hidden bias that judges ...

... unity. What has a Yogi to do with these things ? It is likely that his two books on the subjects of collective life, The Human Cycle and The ideal of Human Unity will appeal more easily to European minds. Sri Aurobindo tackles the problem of man's destiny on earth and the nature of perfection man can attain. He finds that all the problems, difficulties, imperfections in man's life arise out... pleasure. " Collective life has come into being from the dynamic character of Life."³ It has brought into play two contradictory tendencies : mutual strife and assistance, competition and co-operation. European culture has given to the world the practical, dynamic man, the vital man. Life in a society consists of three kinds of activities: ( 1 ) Domestic and social life, ( 2 ) Economic activity... kti ' or ' Bharat-Mata 'when the national movement started in India. The collective life of nations has been dominated by the vital-ego of the collectivity, not by its deeper soul. It is in Europe that the nation-units were first organised and all of them were dominated by economic greed and political ambition. The organisation of the nation-unit took place round the vital-ego of the collective ...

... suppressed sensuous vitality of Europe. The mind of the time was stirred also in its own proper nature by the mind of Hellas, but the Renaissance was so drunk with life, with the glory of the senses and emotions and passions expanding themselves in an opulent freedom, that it could not easily recover the lucid orderly intellect of the Classics. No doubt, the awakening of the mind of the time showed itself... "Crystalline Sphere" above as over the orbis terrarum, .impelled the scientific mind. This mind as a power on its own, together with other intellectual powers that are sometimes associated with it but often separated from it, had already had * Nothing human is alien to me. Page 48 its initiation in Europe in the figure of Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo was not only an artist but a supreme... supreme intellectual and he stands at the head of the Renaissance for the rebirth of the Graeco-Roman civilisation in its intellectual aspects: he sum-marised the seeds of a new European intellectuality taking up the work of that civilisation in new life-moulds. But the vitalistic energy set free from the grip of the Middle Ages assumed the lead in the Renaissance and brought it to its full flush, and ...

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