... individuals and between nations. Do we find these among men and nations of the world to-day save a few thousands here and there ? But a few thousand people do not constitute a nation ; they are to be considered rather as exceptions than rules to the all-round deterioration of moral and spiritual conduct which has unfortunately overwhelmed the bulk of humanity. In international Page 37 relations... breach of faith should vitiate individual and collective life. Mentally, humanity has progressed beyond imagination from the beginnings of our ancestors, the cavemen, hunters and nomads who lived more or less animal lives though they were far superior to the animals in intelligence. But having once settled to agricultural life, men developed various arts and sciences. A fairly civilised existence commenced... and civilised humanity. The rest are only ancillary and secondary to this principal object of our life which is to discover the divine Reality in us in place of the Ego. A new orient tation of our life from the ignorant mental to spiritual and supramental consciousness is the call of the Spirit in us and to ignore this call is to invite certain defeat, death and disaster both for men and nations. It ...
... selfless divinity. A man capable of self-sacrifice, whatever his other sins, has left the animal behind him; he has the stuff in him of a future and higher humanity. A nation capable of a national act of self-sacrifice ensures its future. Self-sacrifice involuntary or veiled by forms of selfishness is, however, the condition of our existence. It has been a gradual growth in humanity. The first sacrifices... makes social life possible. But the real development of the god in man does not begin until the family becomes so much dearer than the life of the body that a man is ready to sacrifice himself for it and give up his ease or even his life for its welfare or its protection. To give up one's ease for the family, that is a state which most men have attained; to give up one's life for the honour of the wife... outrage and from insolence and outrage to that ate , that blind infatuation, which is God's instrument for the destruction of men and nations. There is only one remedy for this pursuing evil and it is to regard the nation as a necessary unit but no more in a common humanity. There are two stages in the life of a nation, first, when it is forming itself or new-forming itself, secondly, when it is ...
... come with such an overwhelming and irresistible force that all humanity will be changed forthwith, that is to say, all men whether they wanted it or not, sought for it or not, would be automatically transformed? It cannot be so: it is a comfortable doctrine putting a premium on laziness and inertia. There is no necessity of all men turning supermen, the normal human race disappearing altogether... smooth and harmonious, there exist people who are by nature so obscure, quarrelsome and turbulent that they are not touched at all and go on in their way finding always occasions to quarrel and fight and create trouble. They will be in the midst of the new humanity as Hottentots or Head-hunters—aborigines and savages—are today in the eye of civilised humanity. Page 93 ... earth's atmosphere and mankind is Page 92 likely to be benefited by it. The conditions of life will be changed and will affect man's life too. An element of light and joy and tranquillity will enter into humanity's normal dealings. And man, on his side, may offer his services as the recruiting ground of the super-race. Furthermore, the whole of Nature being a unified movement, no ...
... come with such an overwhelming and irresistible force that all humanity will be changed forthwith, that is to say, all men whether they wanted it or not, sought for it or not, would be automatically transformed? It cannot be so: it is a comfortable doctrine putting a premium on laziness and inertia. There is no necessity for all men turning into supermen, the normal human race disappearing altogether... smooth and harmonious, there exist people who are by nature so obscure, quarrelsome and turbulent that they are not touched at all and go on in their way finding always occasions to quarrel and fight and create trouble. They will be in the midst of the new humanity as Hottentots or Head-hunters – aborigines and savages – are today in the eyes of civilised humanity. Page 278 ... happiness and goodwill into the earth's atmosphere and mankind is likely to be benefited by it. The conditions of life will be changed and will affect man's life too. An element of light and joy and tranquillity will enter into humanity's normal dealings. And man, on his side, may offer his services as the recruiting ground of the super-race. Furthermore, the whole of Nature being a unified movement, no level ...
... harmonious a life (so long as men do not intervene), and all that was in its right place; then of the true humanity as humanity, that is to say, the maximum of what a mental poise could create of beauty, harmony, charm, elegance of life, taste of living-a taste of living in beauty, and, naturally, suppressing all that is ugly and low and vulgar. It was a fine humanity-humanity at its maximum, but nice.... mind's influence, has become another thing, which is, naturally, something mixed, because the mind was incomplete. In the same way there are examples of a harmonious humanity among well-balanced people, and this seemed to be what humanity could become under the supramental influence. Only, it is very far ahead. You must not expect that it will be immediately-it is very far ahead... must develop more and more, in the midst of the ordinary human mass, a superior humanity which has towards the supramental being of the future or in the making the same attitude as animality, for example, has towards man. There must be, besides those who work for the transformation and who are ready for it, a superior humanity, intermediary, which has found in itself or in life this harmony with Life-this ...
... almost radically from making any effort for transformation. Source Serving Humanity Why do you want to serve humanity, what is your idea? It is ambition, it is in order to become a great man among men. It is difficult to understand?... I can see that! The Divine is everywhere. So if one serves humanity, one serves the Divine, isn't that so? That's marvellous! The clearest thing in... and widening of your inner soul. But if you look at religion from another angle, it need not always be an obstacle to all men. If you regard it as one of the higher activities of humanity and if you can see in it the aspirations of man without ignoring the imperfection of all man-made things, it may well be a kind of help for you to approach the spiritual life. Taking it up in a serious and earnest... consciousness to see this. What do you want to do to serve humanity? Give food to the poor?—You can feed millions of them. That will not be a solution, this problem will remain the same. Give new and better living conditions to men?—The Divine is in them, how is it that things don't change? The Divine must know better than you the condition of humanity. What are you? You represent only a little bit of co ...
... be moved to the most elementary feeling of humanity when the accused were overwhelmed by the most painful domestic calamities. One man was not allowed to see his dying son till he actually expired and was past all help or need of help. This ferocity on the part of a tribunal, whose special study should be to abstain from writing the least punishment on a man till his guilt has been fairly established... reveal their true nature if the people were to enter on a real struggle for self-improvement and the repression that is being resorted to in the Punjab under the pretext of trial has caused no surprise to those with whom the work for the nation's future is a duty demanding enormous self-sacrifice. But the series of episodes connected with the Rawalpindi trial in which humanity has been outraged and decency... whetted against the alleged offenders. The refusal of bail to the accused amongst whom Page 644 there are men of unquestioned respectability and integrity testifies to the petty vindictiveness of the judiciary which ostensibly exists to diminish crimes and not to exasperate people into their perpetration. The ill-treatment of the accused can without the least exaggeration be characterised as ...
... develop into opposite directions. The one will sink below humanity, the other will rise above the present humanity. I might call the former ‘god-man’ and the latter ‘mass animal’ … Yes, man is something that has to be overcome. Nietzsche knew already something about this in his own way … Man becomes God, this is what it all means in simple words. Man is the becoming God …” And it was here that he spoke... A New Man Hitler was convinced that humanity had the potential of transformation into a higher species. According to him “man was subject to an enormous change. In the course of the millennia a transformative process, literally speaking, took place in him.” Thus reports Rauschning, who asserts: “For Hitler was much more than a politician: he was the prophet of a new humanity.” And Rauschning... religion: it is the will to create a new humanity.” 808 We remember that in the decennia around 1900 the idea of “a new man” was put forward by thinkers of the most diverse tendencies. The longing for a more satisfactory human existence arose not only because of dissatisfaction with the present state of the human condition and a nostalgia for the past; man was now also seen by many as a transitory ...
... higher wants of humanity broke down in the mediaeval ages, because the heart began to develop too powerfully in humanity and under the influence of philosophy, ethics and religion began to spread its claim beyond the person, the class, the family, the clan to the nation and to humanity or to all creation. A temporary makeshift was invented to replace slavery, called free labour, by which men were paid and... once the privilege of the few, the higher classes, of prince, burgess and noble are now claimed by all humanity. Political, social and economic liberty and equality, two things difficult to harmonise, must now be conceded to all men and harmonised as well as the present development of humanity will allow. It is this claim that arose, red with fury and blinded with blood, in the French Revolution.... use to the mass of humanity by ministering to the luxury, comfort and convenience which all men desire and arming them with justification in the confused struggle of passions, interests, cravings and aspirations which are now working with solvent and corrosive effect throughout the world. The value of the other side, more subtle and profound, has been clouded to the mass of men by the less visible ...
... the ideal by which humanity is moved all over the world, the ideal which is the dharma of the Kaliyuga, and it is the ideal of love and service which the young men of Bengal so thoroughly realised, love and service to your brothers, love and service to your Mother and this is the association we are forming, the great association of the people of Bengal and of the whole people of India. It increases... forward and forward until we have achieved the ultimate emancipation, that utter freedom of the soul, of the body, of the whole man, that utter freedom from all bondage towards which humanity is always aspiring. We in India have found a mighty freedom within ourselves, our brother-men in Europe have worked towards freedom without. We have been moving on parallel lines towards the same end. They have found... fulfil itself. Therefore the people prize these rights, consider them a valuable asset, cling to and cherish and will not easily sacrifice them. Therefore they resent the arbitrary interference which takes from them what they consider indispensable for the preparation of national life. Association is the mightiest thing in humanity; it is the instrument by which humanity moves, it is the means by which ...
... become operative in the life of men and nations ; but that is no reason why it should be relegated to the back-ground in the hope that a future humanity will take up the task of our redemption. No, it is high time that each one of us and specially the elites made a sincere and strenuous effort to recover our lost spiritual heritage and became truly enlightened and civilised men and women. The cost in monetary... major disaster is evident to any discerning intellect ; it does not require a prophet or seer to forecast the calamitous end to which men and nations are heading with such amazing rapidity. Is there no remedy to arrest this dangerous trend in the affairs of humanity at large ,? Lust, anger and greed like other evils such as jealousy, ill-will, fear and hatred etc. are inherent in human nature... increasing commercialism and politics becomes a power-hunt' for men and nations disregarding all the cherished moral and spiritual values of the past, it only indicates the extent and enormity of the degeneration. We have probably touched the bed-rock of moral and spiritual degradation. Now a powerful lever is needed to raise humanity from the level of beasts to which it has sunk (except in a few rare ...
... that when great human movements are being suppressed by the sword and the prison, it is done in the interests of humanity; that when a people struggling to live is trampled down by repression, pushed back by the use of the Goorkha and the hooligan, the warder's lash & the whipping post into the hell of misery & famine & starvation, of insult & ignominy & bondage from which it dared to hope for an escape... heel on the people's throat for their own good; that the ruthless exploitation and starvation of a country by foreign leeches is one of the best services that can be done to mankind; the international crimes of the great captains of finance a work of civilisation and the brutal & selfish immolation of nations to Mammon an acceptable offering on the altar of the indwelling God in humanity. But these... foulest crimes against the future of humanity which any statesman in recent times could possibly have committed have been engineered under the name and by the advocacy of Mr. John Morley. Truly, Satan knows his own and sees to it that they do not their great work negligently. Mr. Morley is a great bookman, a great democrat, a great exponent of principles. No man better fitted than he to prove that ...
... commonest forms of ambition is the idea of service to humanity. All attachment to such service or work is a sign of personal ambition." Questions and Answers 1929-1931 ( 14 April 1929 ) Why do you say that this is ambition? Why do you want to serve humanity, what is your idea? It is ambition, it is in order to become a great man among men. It is difficult to understand?... I can see that... exactly the seed of that in people who want to serve humanity. What are they going to give to humanity? Nothing at all! Even if they gave every drop of their blood, all the ideas in their head, all the money in their pocket, that could not change one individual, who is but a second of time in eternity. They believe they can serve eternity? There are even beings higher than man who have come, have brought... right and much closer to the Divine than one who is wise and full of his wisdom and vanity. He sees himself as he is. The generous and wise man who has done much for humanity is too self-satisfied to have the least idea of changing. It is usually these people who say: "If indeed I had created the world, I wouldn't have made it like this, I would have created it much better than that", and they try ...
... among yourselves. 19 February 1966 The unity of humanity is an underlying and existing fact. But the external union of mankind depends on man's goodwill and sincerity. 12 August 1967 The power of division is unsteady and impermanent. Union works for a steady power and a harmonious future. 25 April 1969 When men will be disgusted with the falsehood in which they live... earth of a higher Force, a purer Light, a more total Truth. August 1964 Nothing but a radical change of consciousness can save humanity from the terrible plight into which it is plunged. All the so-called "practical" means are a childishness by which men blind themselves so as not to see the true need and sole remedy. What is the right way of achieving lasting world unity? To realise... realise the Consciousness of the ONE. 13 October 1965 Nothing but a radical change of consciousness can save humanity from the terrible plight into which it is plunged. All the so-called "practical" means are a childishness by which men blind themselves so as not to see the true need and sole remedy. What is the right way of achieving lasting world unity? To realise the ...
... nature. Humanitarianism The idea of usefulness to humanity is the old confusion due Page 441 to secondhand ideas imported from the West. Obviously, to be "useful" to humanity there is no need of Yoga; everyone who leads the human life is useful to humanity in one way or another. Yoga is directed towards God, not towards man. If a divine supramental consciousness and power can be... Divine. I suppose each man makes or tries to make his own organisation of life out of the mass of possibilities the forces present to him. Self (physical self) and family are the building most make—to earn, to create a family and maintain it, perhaps to get some position in the present means of life one chooses, in business, the profession etc., etc. Country or humanity are usually added to that... spiritual greatness and courage—but for living people with living relatives a similar action is monstrous. They ought to be satisfied with praising Buddha and take care not to follow his example. The tendency you speak of, to leave the family and social life for the spiritual life, has been traditional in India for the last 2000 years and more—chiefly among men, it touches only a very small number of ...
... in his book Man the Measure seeks to strike a balance, but as the title indicates, evidently leans more to the second, the reactionary, than to the original ideal. He posits that man's humanity is to be preserved and fostered, that is to say, his true humanity, that which distinguishes him from mere animality. The Greek ideal, according to Kahler, was an advance upon the animal man; it brought in... individualistic either. Yes, man's true humanity, says Kahler, almost echoing Nietzcshe, consists precisely in his capacity to surpass himself. The animal is wholly engrossed in its natural nature and Page 358 activities; but man is capable of standing back, can separate from his biological self, observe, control and direct. For him "existence" truly means (as the Existentialist declares... in the ideal of the rational man. And yet the Greek ideal, in spite of its acceptance of the whole man – mens sana in corpore sano – embracing as it did his physical, ethical and æ sthetic development, laid on the whole a greater emphasis upon reason, upon ration-alising, that is, ordering life according to a rational pattern. And then the Greek ideal was more for the individual; it was for the culture ...
... group of people who saw him as someone special. This man clearly was peculiar, this man clearly made a mark, left an impression, someone you did not forget. Somebody who had power in a social sense. Someone who -actually was able to somehow attract, enchant, and hold a large group of followers within the three years of his ministry. So what pattern do we see? He is a holy man, a miracle man, someone... "Father" for God. He is called by no other name. The Sermon on the Mount often asks humanity to interact with Our Page 56 Father who art in heaven. Therefore, if God is pleased to become the Father of his people, this must mean that He is willing to enter into such a deep personal relationship with humanity that no name will be in any way needed to distinguish Him from His children. The command... is, God incarnated Himself as Jesus. This was made necessary because of the sinful nature of man, which made it impossible for man to obey the Law of Moses as he should. Since we fail to keep the Law perfectly, we fall under its curse. Jesus (God) redeemed us from the curse of the Law by bearing humanity's curse as a substitute for us. He was made sin for us so that we might not receive the punishment ...
... of belching shot and men missioned to murder like hostile tanks in a modern battlefield. It would regard the peoples as group-souls, the Divinity concealed and to be self-discovered in its human collectivities, group-souls meant like the individual to grow according to their own nature and by that growth to help each other, to help the whole race in the one common work of humanity. And that work would... whole life of the human being to the lead of the spirit. The ascent of man into heaven is not the key, but rather his ascent here into the spirit and the descent also of the spirit into his normal humanity and the transformation of this earthly nature. For that and not some post mortem salvation is the real new birth for which humanity waits as the crowning movement of its long obscure and painful course... age will be ready to set in when the common mind of man begins to be alive to these truths and to be moved or desire to be moved by this triple or triune Spirit (God, freedom, unity)." Page 46 The individuals who will most help the future of humanity "Therefore, the individuals who will most help the future of humanity in the new age will be those who will recognise a spiritual ...
... s manifested upon earth, it was very natural for men of the epoch to have the impression that it was the final definitive realisation, at least a very great progress. Still we must note that even for an animal, say an elephant or a dog, human capacities appear as marvellous; they feel, the dogs do, that man possesses almost divine powers. So men too from the stage where they are have a hint of things... cycles of enlightenment and obscurity that something like a collective consciousness in humanity awakes to the need of such a higher existence. And today this necessity seems evidently very general, cutting across all turmoils and stupidities of mankind: that shows that the time is near. Yes, for a very long time, men were told, "It will be, it will be," were given the promise. It was promised, thousands... upon earth. The start may be poor, very incomplete, very partial, but after all there was the start. Why should not the same thing occur now? The people who were announcing the good news from the beginning of time must have been the best informed of men. And I tell you that since the beginning of earth history, Sri Aurobindo has always presided over the great earthly transformations, under one form ...
... here; it will enable the conquest of death. That is another story; that will be the humanity of the future, perhaps after hundreds of years, perhaps sooner. It will depend on men, on nations. Auroville is the first step towards this goal. + Feb.. 1968 * Page 18 In modern civilisation, men work on the surface. The mind is the surface of existence; they work on the surface... sufferings of men are the result of their own mistakes, both physical and moral. 8.11.1969 * Q: How can you believe that in Auroville there will be no more suffering so long as the people who come to live there are men from the same world, born with the same weaknesses and faults? I have never thought that there would no more be suffering in Auroville, because men, as they are... world. Auroville is the first attempt in this experiment. A new world will be born; if men are willing to make an effort for transformation, to seek sincerity, it is possible. From animal to man, thousands of years were needed; today, with his mind, man can will and hasten a transformation towards a man who shall be God. This transformation by the help of the mind—by self-analysis —is a ...
... outlook, in the- broadest sense: it is the threshold of the modern epoch of humanity. All the modern European languages leaped into maturity, as it were, each attaining its definitive form and full-blooded individuality. Art and literature flooded in their magnificent creativeness all nations Page 206 and peoples of the whole continent. The Romantic Revival, starting somewhere about the... day) by the infiltrating light. That is how in modern times all movements are practically world-wide, encompassing all nations and peoples: there seems to be nothing left that is merely local or parochial. It is a single wave, as it were, that heaves up the whole of humanity. Political, social, economic and even spiritual movements, although not exactly of the same type or pattern, all are interrelated... thought, and acted simultaneously by others at the farthest corner. Very evidently it is the age of radiography and electronics. In the early stages of humanity its history consists of the isolated histories of various peoples and lands: intercommunication was difficult, therefore all communion was of the nature of infiltration and indirect influence. The difference between countries far ...
... outlook, in the broadest sense: it is the threshold of the modern epoch of humanity. All the modern European languages leaped into maturity, as it were, each attaining its definitive form and full-blooded individuality. Art and literature flooded in their magnificent creativeness all nations Page 96 and peoples of the whole continent. The Romantic Revival, starting somewhere about the... day) by the infiltrating light. That is how in modern times all movements are practically world-wide, encompassing all nations and peoples: there seems to be nothing left that is merely local or parochial. It is a single wave, as it were, that heaves up the whole of humanity. Political, social, economic and even spiritual movements, although not exactly of the same type or pattern, all are interrelated... globe is thought and acted simultaneously by others at the farthest corner. Very evidently it is the age of radiography and electronics. In the early stages of humanity its history consists of the isolated histories of various peoples and lands: intercommunication was difficult, therefore all communion was of the nature of infiltration and indirect influence. The difference between countries far ...
... that man has conceived to be the most beautiful, most noble, most true, and to live that integrally, to let all one's actions be guided by that, all the movements, all the reactions, all the feelings, all... That is living a moral ideal of perfection. It is the summit of man's mental evolution. Not many people do it... but still... there have been some and there still are. This is what men usually... this so called freedom is not an indulgence and a contempt for all rules. One must go higher, always higher, higher; nothing less than what the highest of humanity has achieved. One must be capable of being spontaneously all that humanity has conceived to be the highest, the most beautiful, the most perfect, the most disinterested, the most comprehensive, the best, before opening one's spiritual... mental being—even the most perfect and most remarkable—to the true spiritual life without having realised this ideal of moral perfection for a certain period of time, however brief it may be. Many people try to take a short-cut and want to assert their inner freedom before having overcome all the weaknesses of the outer nature; they are in great danger of deluding themselves. The true spiritual life ...
... What is your idea of divinisation,—to be a virtuous man, a good husband, son, father, a good citizen etc.? In that case I myself am most undivine,—for I have never been these things. Men like X or Y would then be the great Transformed Divine Men. Many sinners are people who are preparing to turn to the Divine and many virtuous people have a long run of lives yet to go through before they... must not only consider the temporary good to humanity, but certain inner laws. He thinks the harm, violence or cruelty to other beings is not compensated and can not be justified by some physical good to a section of humanity or even to humanity as a whole; such methods awake, in his opinion, a sort of Karmic reaction apart from the moral harm to the men who do these things. He is also of the opinion... as such has nothing to do with the spiritual life. If the spiritual man does anything for his country, it is in order to do the will of the Divine and as part of a divinely appointed work and not from any other common human motive. In none of his acts does he proceed from the common mental and vital motives which move ordinary men but acts out of the truth of the Spirit and from an inner command of ...
... is a thing common to all men in its conclusions, open to all in its methods, available to all in its results: it is international in its very nature; there can be no such thing as a national science, but only the nations' contributions to the work and growth of Page 550 science which are the indivisible inheritance of all humanity. Therefore it is easier for men of science or those strongly... s and peoples. But we cannot rely too greatly on ideas and resolutions formed in a moment of abnormal crisis under the violent stress of exceptional circumstances. Some effect there may be in the end, some first recognition of juster principles in international dealings, some attempt at a better, more rational or at least a more convenient international order. But until the idea of humanity has grown... reason was destined to destroy. It is founded on a view of things which looks at man in his manhood only and casts away all those physical and social accidents of birth, rank, class, colour, creed, nationality, which have been erected into so many walls and screens behind which man has hidden himself from his fellow-man; he has turned them into sympathy-proof shelters and trenches from which he wages ...
... life (so long as men do not intervene), and all Page 25 that was in its right place; then of the true humanity as humanity, that is to say, the maximum of what a mental poise could create of beauty, harmony, charm, elegance of life, taste of living—a taste of living in beauty, and, naturally, suppressing all that is ugly and low and vulgar. It was a fine humanity—humanity at its maximum,... mind's influence, has become another thing, which is, naturally, something mixed because the mind was incomplete. In the same way there are examples of a harmonious humanity among well—balanced people, and this seemed to be what humanity could become under the supramental influence. Only, it is very far ahead. You must not expect that it will be immediately—it is very far ahead. It is clearly... must develop more and more, in the midst of the ordinary human mass, a superior humanity which has towards the supramental being of the future or in the making the same attitude as animality, for example, has towards man. There must be, besides those who work for the transformation and who are ready for it, a superior humanity, intermediary, which has found in itself or in life this harmony with Life—this ...
... must proceed. But the higher hope of humanity lies in the growing number of men who will realise this truth and seek to develop it in themselves, so that when the mind of man is ready to escape from its mechanical bent,—perhaps when it finds that its mechanical solutions are all temporary and disappointing,—the truth of the Spirit may step in and lead humanity to the path of its highest possible happiness... individual, the free variation of the peoples. It must end, if it becomes permanent and fulfils all its tendencies, either in a death in Page 575 life, a stagnation, or by the insurgence of some new saving but revolutionary force or principle which would shatter the whole fabric into pieces. The mechanical tendency is one to which the logical reason of man, itself a precise machine, is easily... the end a similar force against it and might well terminate in a crumbling up and disintegration, even in the necessity for a repetition of the cycle of humanity ending in a better attempt to solve the problem. It could be kept in being only if humanity agreed to allow all the rest of its life to be regularised for it for the sake of peace and stability and took refuge for its individual freedom in the ...
... COMMUNISM cannot save humanity. For if it means the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, well, a healthy normal society will not bear or tolerate it long – no Dictatorship, whether of one or of many, is likely to endure or bring in the millennium. In that sense communism is only a fascismo of small people fighting against a fascismo of big people. A society is not normally made up... conduce to the greater enrichment and perfection of humanity. Taken by itself and in its absolute sense, it cannot be a practical success. The fact is being proved every moment these days. Internationalism in the economic sphere, however, seems to have a greater probability and utility than in the merely political sphere. Economics is forcing peoples and nations to live together and move together: it... nee plus ultra. For, man does not stop with man; in the tremendous phrase carved by Nietzsche, "Man is a thing that shall be surpassed." Until and unless man surpasses himself, finds a focus and fulcrum outside and beyond his normal human – too human – self, he cannot entirely and radically change his nature and rebuild his society on an altogether different pattern. Man has to reach his divine ...
... only for the nation but for the whole human people. The immediate object of this action will be a new creation, a spiritual education and culture, an enlarged social spirit founded not on division but on unity, on the perfect growth and freedom of the individual, but also on his unity with others and his dedication to a larger self in the people and in humanity, and the beginning of an endeavour towards... truth and labour for a greater ideal. They must be men who will dedicate themselves not to the past or the present but to the future. They will need to consecrate their lives to an exceeding of their lower self, to the realisation of God in themselves and in all human beings and to a whole-minded and indefatigable labour for the nation and for humanity. This ideal can be as yet only a little seed and... but the conquest of life by the power of the spirit. It is to accept the world as an effort of manifestation of the Divine, but also to transform humanity by a greater effort of manifestation than has yet been accomplished, one in which the veil between man and God shall be removed, the divine manhood of which we are capable shall come to birth and our life shall be remoulded in the truth and light and ...
... would soon banish all ideals from the world. Certainly a great herd could thus be formed. One can breed a herd of animals; but from a mixture of this kind men such as have created and founded civilizations would not be produced. The mission of humanity might then be considered at an end.” 434 The most dangerous contamination in Hitler’s eyes was, of course, the Jew. (“He poisons the blood of others... nudity. That humanity will “devolve” into a uniform miscellany of animal-like imbeciles and finally die out was, according to Gobineau, certain. What then about the German Herrenmenschen and the future glories of the Third Reich – the aspirations of a country in which a French count was honoured as a pioneer of racist thought? Honoured perhaps, but probably little studied. People’s movements thrive... Kampf , one of the most often quoted, one again hears an unmistakable echo from Gobineau: “If with the help of his Marxist faith the Jew is victorious against the peoples of this world, then his crown will be a dance of death of humanity and this planet, empty of human beings, will again wander through space for millions of years. Eternal Nature avenges inexorably the trespassing of her laws. This ...
... come down so low as it has now. It looks as if a small number of violent men are the arbiters of humanity and the rest of the world is ready to bow down before one man. PURANI: It is the lowest depth of Kaliyuga, I suppose. 1 Take O take those lips away, That so sweetly were foresworn: And those eyes break of day. Light that do misled the morn. But my kisses bring again, Bring again, Seals... that man's homosexuality. PURANI: Schomberg was telling me, "Mr. Purani, we say but we can't act." SRI AUROBINDO: Because it is only a mental idea. That is what humanitarianism comes to. It can't act. It seems strange that the destiny of the whole world should depend on one man and yet it is so—for everybody looks up to him. From one point of view there never was a time when humanity had come... Power that the voice, as he calls it, comes. Have you noted that people who at one time were inimical to him come into contact with him and leave as his admirers? It is a sign of that Power. It is from this Power that he has constantly received suggestions and the constant repetition of the suggestions has taken hold of the German people. You will also mark that in his speeches he goes on stressing the ...
... even today among religious Jewish, Moslem and Christian people. However, Jesus said that mercy and compassion were more important than rules and regulations. Once when he cured a man's withered hand in the synagogue*- on the Sabbath, the Pharisees were furious and "egan to plot to kill him. But Jesus insisted "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." ________ *synagogue: the... pregnant even though Joseph never slept with her. He being a man of great faith accepts Mary in her pregnant condition as his wife and protects her. In fact, after the birth of Jesus, he is told to run away to Egypt with her for a time because the king Herod attempted to murder all newborn boys in his kingdom because of a prediction by Three Wise men that the King of the Jews has been born. In Chapter II... Saviour-to be, Jesus, that one sees everywhere in the Christian world. The Star and the Three Wise men described in Matthew are often also incorporated into scenes of the Nativity as this scene is called in paintings. The Gospels offer very little about the growing-up of Jesus, or his life as a young man. One exception is found at the end of Chapter II of Luke, and tells of the visit of the 12-year-old ...
... godhead of humanity. Peoples and races in Page 236 the past were the scattered limbs of the godhead-scattered and isolated from one another, because of the original unconsciousness and sharp egocentricity out of which Nature started its course of evolution. The disjecta membra are being collected together by a growing consciousness. Such then is the destiny of man and mankind-man... and kinship. The birth of the modern nation out of regional and local groupings is a triumph of the emerging consciousness in humanity pointing to another signal and supreme triumph, the emergence of the global sense hi man that is to bind humanity as a single indissoluble indivisible unity in actual life. The aggregates are meant to express, apart from the growing unity, a diversity of achievements... the same line. Man's attempt to surpass himself and establish a superhuman race is a conscious and deliberate process and the attempt can be successful only through such an willed discipline, s ā dhan ā . In the same way, a supranational human unity will be possible as a parallel eventuality to the same process of individual discipline. Humanity is evolving and developing ...
... when they came into contact with the misery of men. Both devoted their whole lives to finding the remedy for the suffering of their fellow-men, and both believed they had found it. But because their solutions, which may be described as contraries, were each in its own domain incomplete and partial, both of them failed to relieve the suffering of humanity. One in the East, Prince Siddhartha, later... beings upon earth would be like. They are immortal in their nature and much more powerful than man in their capacities, but they are also incurably anti-divine in their will, and their mission in the universe seems to be to delay the divine realisation until the instruments of this realisation, that is to say, men, become pure and strong and perfect enough to overcome all obstacles. It might not perhaps... superman can come in person to show man what his true nature is, it might be wise for every human being of Page 100 goodwill to become conscious of what he can conceive as the most beautiful, the most noble, the truest and purest, the most luminous and best, and to aspire that this conception may be realised in himself for the greatest good of the world and men. Bulletin, November 1954 ...
... Moreover, people perform these ceremonies most of the time for that very reason, for they are almost always in the habit of trying to forget. The fact is that one of the two principal occupations of man is to try to forget what is painful to him, and the other is to try to seek amusement in order to escape boredom. These are the two principal occupations of humanity, that is, humanity spends half... round and round and does not know why. Then, is it a universal play? No, not very universal; it exists in humanity, it is very human. How many human beings have a thought of their own? I am pretty sure there are none in ordinary humanity with its ordinary mental make-up. How many people have a thought as a result of reflection? Very few, and if they have it, they are considered terribly hard or... and get along. In Nature's economy, moments of respite are given to men to rediscover themselves but they do not know how to make use of them. When going over the conclusion of this talk, Mother made the following remark ( 10 March 1965 ): I would say many things now.... For instance, when the Lord draws closest to men, to establish a conscious contact with them, it is then that in their ...
... Doctors can compel people to take injections even against their will and thus benefit them. Can spiritual Force give such benefits? The Yogis have been busy with their own salvation while the world has remained just the same. SRI AUROBINDO: Evolution has proceeded from matter through animal to physical man, vital man, mental man and spiritual man. When mental man or spiritual man appears, the others... because the Scotch have beaten the English in commercial affairs. There was a famous story in Punch. Two people were talking. One said, "Bill, who is that man?" And Bill answered, "Let us strike at him, he is a foreigner." And then in Bengal the West Bengal people used to call the East Bengal people "Bangal and composed a satire, "Bangal manush noy, oi ek jantu"3 Once I used to wear socks at all... others don't disappear. The tigers and serpents don't become men. In this upward growth of the human consciousness you can't say that Buddha, Christ and others have played no part. I consider the Supramental the culmination of the spiritual man. In the supramental evolution one is not required to flee from life. It is something dynamic that changes life and nature. It will open the mental, the vital ...
... fulfilment. Man may help or man may resist, but the Zeitgeist works, shapes, overbears, insists. The great and memorable vision of Kurukshetra when Sri Krishna manifesting his world-form declared himself as destroying Time, is significant of this deep perception of humanity. When Arjuna wished to cast aside his bow and quiver, when he said, "This is a sin we do and a great destruction of men and brothers... sure fulfilment of God's decree. "Even without thee all they shall not be, the men of war who stand arrayed in the opposing squadrons." For these men are only alive in the body; in that which stands behind and fulfils itself they are dead men. Whom God protects who shall slay? Whom God has slain who shall protect? The man who slays is only the occasion, the instrument by which the thing done behind... India Kala, who expresses himself. The very names are deeply significant. Kali, the Mother of all and destroyer of all, is the Shakti that works in secret in the heart of humanity manifesting herself in the perpetual surge of men, institutions and movements, Mahakala the Spirit within whose energy goes abroad in her and moulds the progress of the world and the destiny of the nations. His is the impetus ...
... of our body should become conscious. This is the work I am doing here; it will permit the conquest of death. That is another story; that will be the humanity of the future, perhaps in centuries, perhaps more rapidly. It will depend on men, on peoples. Auroville is the first step towards this goal. (February 1968) In the meantime I am sending another letters of yours, with my English translation... Auroville is the first attempt of the experiment. A new world will be born if men are willing to make the effort of a transformation and of a quest for sincerity; it is possible. From animal to man thousands of years were necessary; today man, thanks to his mind, can speed up and will a transformation towards a man who shall be Divine. This transformation with the help of the mind (by analysing... ) There should be an absolutely transparent sincerity. Lack of sincerity is the cause of the difficulties we meet with at present. Insincerity is in all men. There are perhaps a hundred men on the earth who may be totally sincere. It is man’s very nature that makes him insincere — it is very complicated, for he is constantly tricking himself, hiding truth from himself, excusing himself. Yoga is the ...
... individuals who will most help the future of humanity in the new age, will be those who will recognise a spiritual evolution as the destiny and therefore the great need of the human being, an evolution or conversion of the present type of humanity into a spiritualised humanity, even as the animal man has been largely converted into a highly mentalised humanity. Page 165 They will be comparatively... with man it is the life of mind, of intellect which appeared on earth. Man is essentially a mental being; and if his possibilities do not stop there, if he feels in himself other worlds, other faculties, other planes of consciousness beyond his mental life, they are only as promises for the future, in the same way as the mental possibilities are latent in the monkey. It is true that some men, very... idea of the superman, before he exists, penetrate into the brain of man? And yet, in every child of man which comes into the world, in every growing intelligence, in every effort of the emerging generations, in every attempt of human genius, Nature seeks the way which, once again, will lead her further. Fifteen hundred million men since perhaps fifteen hundred centuries wander without finding this ...
... the sufferings of men are the result of their own mistakes, both physical and moral. 8 November 1969 How can you believe that in Auroville there will be no more suffering so long as the people who come to live there are men from the same world, born with the same weaknesses and faults? I have never thought that there would no more be suffering in Auroville, because men, as they are, love... for the Inauguration of Auroville ) Greetings from Auroville to all men of good will. Are invited to Auroville all those who thirst for progress and aspire to a higher and truer life. 28 February 1968 AUROVILLE CHARTER 1) Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville one must be the willing servitor of the... of the Divine. Page 203 But the people in the Ashram are considered to have consecrated their lives to Yoga (except, of course, the students who are here only for their studies and who are not expected to have made their choice in life). Whereas in Auroville simply the good will to make a collective experiment for the progress of humanity is sufficient to gain admittance. 10 November ...
... keenly the troubles of our brothers in humanity if we remain in the individual consciousness. But I may be mistaken and ask only to be enlightened by you on this point. Is it certain that such people are living in the universal consciousness? or, if they are, is it certain that they are really less humane and compassionate? May they not be exercising their humanity in another fashion than the obvious... troubles of her children in order to love, understand and soothe. Page 454 Nor is detailed sympathy and alleviation of particular sufferings the only help that can be given to men. To cut down branches of a man's tree of suffering is good, but they grow again; to aid him to remove its roots is a still more divine helpfulness. The gift of joy, peace or perfection is a greater giving than the effusion... (1914-1921) Other Writings from the Arya Essays in Philosophy and Yoga The Universal Consciousness I have encountered in my life several examples of people living or trying to live in the universal consciousness and it seemed to me that it rendered them less compassionate, less humane, less tender to the sufferings of others. It seems to me that if it ...
... helping humanity; for many years I have tried all known and possible methods, but none has given me satisfactory results and I am now convinced that I must find the Truth if I want to succeed in my endeavour. Yes, unless one has found the true meaning of life, how can one help men effectively? All the remedies we use are mere palliatives, not cures. Only the consciousness of Truth can save humanity. ... In the Artist's Studio Evening, at night-fall; the end of a meeting held by a small group of people united in a common aspiration to find the Truth. Present: The man of goodwill, the philanthropist. The disillusioned man who no longer believes in the possibility of happiness on earth. The scientist who seeks to solve the problems of Nature. ... suffered too much in life. I have experienced too many disillusionments, borne too much injustice, seen too much misery. I no longer believe in anything, I no longer expect anything from the world or from men. My last remaining hope is to find the Truth—always supposing that it is possible to find it. FIRST ASPIRANT You see us together here because a common aspiration has linked our lives; but we are ...
... COMMUNISM Communism cannot save humanity. For if it means the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, well, a healthy normal society will not bear or tolerate it long—no Dictatorship, whether of one or of many, is likely to endure or bring in the millennium. In that sense communism is only a fascismo of small people fighting against a fascismo of big people. A society is not normally made up of... the nec plus ultra. For, man does not stop with man; in the tremendous phrase carved by Nietzsche, "Man is a thing that shall be surpassed." Until and unless man surpasses himself, finds a focus and fulcrum outside and beyond his normal human—too human—self, he cannot entirely and radically change his nature and rebuild his society on an altogether different pattern. Man has to reach his divine status... cry of humanity itself to transcend the modem barriers of nationhood and rise to a higher status of solidarity and collective consciousness. INTERNATIONALISM And yet internationalism is not the one thing needful either. If it means the obliteration of all national values, of all cultural diversity, it will not certainly conduce to the greater enrichment and perfection of humanity. Taken ...
... the Ashram, for instance, in order for it to function really well, members of that higher humanity would have to be formed who had towards the future or promised supramental being the same attitude as animality (like the dog, for instance) has towards man. For the Ashram to function well, there should be people who had found in themselves or in their life this harmony with life—this human harmony—and... harmonious life (when men don't interfere), and all that was quite in its own place. Then true humanity seen as such, that is to say, the summit of what a balanced mind can produce in beauty, in harmony, in charm, in elegance in life, in taste for life—taste to live in beauty—while eliminating, naturally, all that is ugly and low and vulgar. That was a lovely humanity. Humanity at its highest, but lovely... under the mental influence has become something else, which naturally has been mixed because the mind is incomplete; similarly there are examples of a harmonious humanity among the well-balanced people, and it appeared to be what humanity could become under the supramental influence. Only, it's very far ahead; we shouldn't expect it to come about immediately—it's very far ahead. There is clearly ...
... and widening of your inner soul. But if you look at religion from another angle, it need not always be an obstacle to all men. If you regard it as one of the higher activities of humanity and if you can see in it the aspirations of man without ignoring the imperfection of all man-made things, it may well be a kind of help for you to approach the spiritual life. Taking it up in a serious and earnest... What is exactly the nature of religion? Is it an obstacle in the way of the spiritual life? Religion belongs to the higher mind of humanity. It is the effort of man's higher mind to approach, as far as lies in its power, something beyond it, something to which humanity gives the name God or Spirit or Truth or Faith or Knowledge or the Infinite, some kind of Absolute, which the human mind cannot reach... and has not to be imposed upon the world. It does not feel the need of being accepted by men. For it is self-existent; it does not live by what people say of it or on their adherence. But one who is founding a religion needs to have many followers. The strength and greatness of a religion is adjudged by men according to the number of those that follow it, although the real greatness is not there. ...
... thought, all the various commerce of man with man may fall in his range; but the spirit in which he does them must be very different, and it is that spirit which by its influence shall be the great attraction drawing men upwards to his own level, the great lever lifting the mass of men higher in their ascent." The giving of the example of God himself to the liberated man is profoundly significant; for... who make the path in which men tread; I am the way and the goal. But I do all this largely, universally, visibly in part, but far more invisibly; and men do not really know the way of my workings. Thou, when thou knowest and seest, when thou hast become the divinised man, must be the individual power of God, the human yet divine example, even as I am in my avatars. Most men dwell in the ignorance, the... in Page 135 the paths of action, men follow in every way my path, these peoples would sink to destruction if I did not work and I should be the creator of confusion and slay these creatures. As those who know not act with attachment to the action, he who knows should act without attachment, having for his motive to hold together the peoples. He should not create a division of their u ...
... relations of the peoples away from aggressive nationalism and balances of power to some closer international comity. But these are only symptoms, feelings out, mechanical tendencies, not likely by themselves, whatever changes they bring, to satisfy for long the soul of humanity. Behind them lies a greater question of the spirit and ideal which are to govern the relations of man with man and people with people... memory of the earth's peoples. This is record enough for a single year and it looks as if there were already sufficient to give this date an undisputed pre-eminence in the twentieth century. But it is possible that things are not quite what they look to the contemporary eye and that posterity may see them in a very different focus. 1815 must have seemed the date of dates to the men of the day whose minds... first struggle, the commencement of a breathing-time, the year of a makeshift, the Page 664 temporary halt of a flood in motion. That is so because it has not realised the deeper mind of humanity nor answered to the far-reaching intention of the Time-Spirit. In the enthusiasm of the struggle a hope arose that it would sweep away all the piled-up obstacles to human progress and usher in ...
... Hypocrisy cannot go farther. In a world where the whole outlook of men and nations is purely materialistic, where the needs of the body are considered more important than the needs of the soul, one cannot expect anything better than pure self-interest for survival and exploitation and domination over the weaker sections of humanity. This had been carried on openly and unashamedly by the colonial powers... crisis in the life of humanity. There is no region of earth which is free from the turmoil and upheaval social, economic and political. From one corner o£ the earth to the other the scene is the same everywhere, disenchantment with the present ways of life in all countries whether large or small, rich or poor. The same malaise has more or less equally affected all the peoples of the earth. There is... steam, the use of gunpowder and mass destructive devices. People were Page 19 ruthlessly killed, their lands seized and they were reduced to slaves where wholesale genocide was not feasible. Thus the whole of Africa and Asia was brought under foreign domination for ruthless exploitation of their resources in men and materials. The process still continues under various subterfuges ...
... They say that they can compel people to take injections even against their will, can spiritual force do that? The Yogis have been busy with their own salvation while the world has remained just the same. Sri Aurobindo : Evolution has proceeded from matter through animal to physical man, vital man, mental man and spiritual man. When mental man or spiritual man appears the others do not disappear... the Scottish have beaten the English in commercial affairs. There was a famous story in the Punch : two people asking themselves. "Bill, who is that man?", and Bill answered, "Let us strike at him, he is a stranger." And then in Bengal the West Bengal people used to call East Bengal people "Bangale" and composed a satire "Bangale Manush nohe oe ekta jantu" At one time I used to wear socks at all... used for the purposes of destruction. Now they are trying to kill men by throwing germs of small-pox from aeroplanes; they at least end the suffering by death but by bombing you mutilate for Page 63 life. Politics, science, even socialism have not succeeded in finding a way out of suffering. They have killed people; they kill each other and involve the state into a peril unless you ...
... have made it spread and people seem to begin to understand. So there. ADDENDUM ( From a conversation between Mother and a disciple about Auroville. ) One needs to have an absolutely transparent sincerity. Lack of sincerity is at present the cause of difficulties. Insincerity is in all men. There are perhaps a hundred totally sincere men on earth. Man's very nature is what makes... is the first attempt in the experiment. A new world will Page 69 be born if men consent to strive for transformation and the search for sincerity—it can be done. It took millennia to evolve from animal to man; today man, thanks to his mind, can accelerate things and will a transformation towards a man who will be God. This transformation with the help of the mind, through self-analysis... before; what prevents it from descending and being felt is men's insincerity. The world is steeped in falsehood, all relationships between men have so far been based only on falsehood and deceit. Diplomacy between nations is based on falsehood. They claim they want peace and on the other hand arm themselves. A transparent sincerity in man and between nations will alone permit the coming of a transformed ...
... manifested upon earth, it was very natural for men of the epoch to have the impression that it was the final definitive realisation, at least a very great progress. Still we must note that even for an animal, say an elephant or a dog, human capacities appear as marvellous; they feel, the dogs do, that man possesses almost divine powers. So men too from the stage where they are have a hint of... of enlightenment and obscurity that something like a collective consciousness in humanity awakes to the need of such a higher existence. And today this necessity seems evidently very general, cutting across all turmoils and stupidities of mankind: that shows that the time is near. Yes, for a very long time, men were told, "It will be, it will be", were given the promise. It was promised, thousands... manifest itself upon earth; it was always in the future, somewhere in the revolution of the ages. One had not this feeling, this sensation that it is here and now. By far the larger part of humanity, in fact, most of it, need to make a very great effort to imagine what the future may be like. Its consciousness is so much tied Page 58 down to what is that it finds it difficult ...
... the Indian Social Reformer when it ridiculed Sj. Aurobindo Ghose's Uttarpara speech. God does not speak to men through their inner selves in Yoga or otherwise, there is no way of communion between Him and humanity, there is no special action of His power or grace anywhere. He speaks to men only through His laws; in other words, He does not speak to them at all. He does not act personally, He acts... even then, it was not one man or a dozen but the whole self-conscious part of the country which took part in these mature deliberations. The facts do not square with this modified assertion. The majority even of the particular steps taken in pursuance of the ideas which swept over the country were not taken in pursuance of mature deliberation but were the result in some men of a faith which defied ... evolved out of the Bengalee 's imagination that God is everywhere except in the conscious and deliberate activities of men. What we say and hold to is that the Divine force manifests itself specially when it effects mighty and irresistible movements which even the ignorance and egoism of man is obliged to recognise as exceeding and baffling his limited wisdom and his limited strength. Our "Inconsistencies" ...
... being all-powerful, can lift people up without bothering to come down on earth. It is only if it is part of the world arrangement that he should take upon himself the burden of humanity and open the Way that avatarhood has any meaning. 6 March 1935 Men tolerate the presence of the Divine upon earth only on condition that He suffers there. Only when men depende xclusively on the Divine... Divine and on nothing else, will it no longer be necessary for the incarnate god to die for them. 2 August 1952 The chief purpose of the "avatar" is to give to man a concrete proof that the Divine can manifest upon earth. 12 July 1954 Page 18 Unless your aim is the Divine Realisation upon earth, at any cost, take good care not to draw too close to the divine messengers: for ...
... every time there was a disaster this story was repeated. Naturally many people protested and said, "Here's a God whom we won't have!" But these ideas are quite typical of ordinary humanity. "Sinning" humanity is altogether a Christian idea, which falsifies our idea of the Divine—a Divine who punishes poor Page 176 people because it is their misfortune to be born "sinners" would not be very... world, and man and Nature resist it. This is partly true. But I don't think Nature has this feeling. When there is an earthquake, for instance, or a volcano erupts, if there are men staying nearby and these events cause their death, obviously it is for these men a catastrophe, but we could very well imagine that for Nature it is good fun! We say, "What a terrible wind!" Naturally, for men it is "terrible"... physical forms and humanity upon earth are like ants. You yourself, when you walk, you do not find it necessary to move out of the way to avoid crushing the ants! unless you are a stubborn "non-violent" fellow. You walk, and if you crush a few hundred ants, it can't be helped! Well, it is the same with Nature. She goes on, and if in the course of her march she destroys a few thousand men, it is not of much ...
... It is that Man must not rest content with his humanity, however brilliant or many-splendored. He has to win through to a new vision and follow it up to reach a peak his predecessors never dared to assault. Nietzsche had indeed heard the call- the call to transcend humanity .... But the mistake he made, as Aurobindo has pointed out, is that one who is going to fulfil humanity is Page 48... environment through radiation from these illumined centres of realisation. It is not man as he is, this bundle of ego-stuff and of ironies of circumstance, this wailing heir to desire, death and incapacity, but man as he might be - man who has recovered the veiled divinity within - who will then contact other men who have been likewise emancipated, and strive to achieve a perfect and integral u... aspirations, one of the Nivedita type". In a later letter, Sri Aurobindo authorised Motilal Roy to make it known that "Richard is a Hindu in faith, a Hindu in heart and a man whose whole life is devoted to the ideal of lifting up humanity and specially Asia and India and supporting the oppressed against the strong, the cause of the future which is our cause against all that hampers and resists it." 11 ...
... being translated if they are written by people who know how to write. Disciple : Unfortunately your books are like no man's land. This writer believes the refrain or burden of the book to be "Yoga is for humanity". Sri Aurobindo : Yes, I think many people would be sorely disappointed if they came to know that I had already outgrown that "humanity-stage". It is one of the great illusions... is to man. Disciple : It would mean that Supermind would work for humanity. Sri Aurobindo : It is not exactly for humanity, it is for something which is more than humanity. It is bringing about a change from humanity to super-humanity. Of course, that change is to come in, and from humanity, it is not to drop from heaven. But it would create something quite different from man. ... because the vital being in man lends itself easily to such deceptions. The second reason is that they satisfy, or promise to satisfy, desires of the vital being of man, or if there is vanity they pander to it. Disciple : In that case it seems that many of the gods worshipped by men are vital gods. Page 86 Sri Aurobindo : I think so; many of the people who get possessed by ...
... be understood and till then all interpretations of present happening and forecast of man's future are vain things. For its nature, power, event are that which will determine the next cycle of our humanity. 56 * * * December, 1917 Each language is the sign and power of the soul of the people which naturally speaks it. Each develops therefore its own peculiar spirit, thought-... the method, the approach which humanity has been forced by its own nature to adopt, is a monstrous mutual massacre unparalleled in history; a universal war, full of bitterness and irreconcilable hatred, is the straight way and the triumphant means modern man has found for the establishment of universal peace!.... A day may come, must surely come, we will say, when humanity will be ready spiritually, morally... within. 64 Page 135 July, 1918 The ascent of man into heaven is not the key, but rather his ascent here into the spirit and the descent also of the Spirit into his normal humanity and the transformation of this earthly nature. For that and not some post mortem salvation is the real new birth for which humanity waits as the crowning movement of its long obscure and painful course ...
... fight the crusade for the future of humanity. The reality of their Work, even of the little we know of it, is much more epochal than any of the religious myths. “Krishna calls upon Arjuna to carry on war of the most terrible kind and by his example encourage men to do every kind of human work, sarvakármani . Do you contend that Krishna was an unspiritual man and that his advice to Arjuna was mistaken... Avatar. In Sri Aurobindo’s words: “The Avatar is one who comes to open the Way for humanity to a higher consciousness. … The Divine being all-powerful can lift people up without bothering to come down on earth. It is only if it is a part of the world-arrangement that he should take upon himself the burden of humanity and open the Way that Avatarhood has any meaning… The Avatar is not bound to do ex... earth in the life of humanity, for a Truth that has yet to realize itself fully and against a darkness and falsehood that are trying to overwhelm the earth and mankind in the immediate future. It is the forces behind the battle that have to be seen and not this or that superficial circumstance … “It is a struggle for the liberty of mankind to develop, for conditions in which men have freedom and room ...
... light that Buddha carried to suffering humanity, the love and sacrifice of Christ showing and embleming the way of redemption, the saints and sages in our own epoch who have visioned the ideal of human unity in a divine humanity, even secular leaders who labour for "one world", "a brave new world"-all point to the other line of growth and development that man can follow and must and shall follow. The... For it can be either way, for good or for evil. There are elements that belong to the light, and there are elements that belong to darkness. There are mixtures in men no doubt, but on the whole there are these two types: one helps humanity's progress, the other retards and sometimes blocks completely. If the mass of mankind is tamas - inertia -there is a kind of rajas-dynamism -that drives towards... because of grievances or injustices done, but because of the urge of ideals and purposes, ideas and designs. The subordinate man - postman, railwayman, clerk, school master, daily labourer - has no ambitions, is not tortured by nostalgic notions: left to themselves, these people accommodate themselves to circumstances and take things as they come without worrying too much. But the point is that they ...
... beauty of expression, such a passion of earnestness and pathos, such a sublimity of feeling as at Uttarpara on Sunday when he addressed a meeting of the people in the compound of the Uttarpara Library. The ideal is that of humanity in God, of God in humanity, the ancient ideal of the sanatana dharma but applied as it has never been applied before to the problem of politics and the work of national revival... the mission of India. She has evolved a religion which embraces all that the heart, the brain, the practical faculty of man can desire but she has not yet applied it to the problems of modern politics. This therefore is the work which she has still to do before she can help humanity; the necessity of this mission is the justification for her resurgence, the great incentive of saving herself to save mankind... only the vehemence of an effort which transcends all that man has done and approaches divinity. Where will she find that strength, that force, that vehemence? In herself. We have seen Ramamurti, the modern Bhimasen, lie motionless, resistant, with a superhuman force of will power acting through the muscles while two carts loaded with men are driven over his body. India must undergo an ordeal of passive ...
... formations which make up the ordinary mental and material man and create a new centre of vision, a new universe of activities in ourselves, which will form a divine humanity or a superhuman nature." This is not an "idea" but an experience to be lived , which Sri Aurobindo has minutely described in his extensive body of works. It is what some thousand men and women from all over the world are trying to do... Manichaeism." That is also why religions will never be able to unite humanity, because they have remained Manichaean in their principle, because they are founded on morality, on a sense of good and evil, necessarily varying from one country to the next. Religions will not reconcile men with one another any more than they have reconciled men with themselves, or reconciled their aspiration to "be" with their... magazine, Malraux had said, "For the last fifty years, psychology has been reinstating the demons in man. Such is the real result of psychoanalysis. Faced as we are with the most frightening threat humanity has ever known, I believe that the task of the next century will be to reinstate the gods in man." ) Page 103 August 2, 1955 Dear Mr. Malraux, Your reply to the questions of a Swedish ...
... a greater humanity. Otherwise, all this vast clash Page 613 and onset of peoples and world-wide bloodshed would be only a fortuitous nightmare, and the happiest known age of nation or mankind only the pleasant dream of a moment. Then the old-world gospel which bade us look upon human life as a vanity of vanities, would be the only wisdom. But with that creed the soul of man has never... anguish and travail of humanity. It is surely the kingdom of another and higher dharma that is in preparation. What that dharma is we can only know if we know this Power whose being and whose thought are at work behind all that we attempt and suffer, conceive and strive for. A former humanity conceived of it as a creative Divinity or almighty Power Page 617 high above man and his being and... in the return to more spiritual notions and in the idea of a kingdom of God to be built in the life of humanity. On the old sense of a Power in the universe of which the world that we live in is the field, is supervening the nearer perception of a Godhead in man, the unseen king of whom the outer man is the veil and of whom our mind and life can be the servants and living instruments and our perfected ...
... way—men need not be extraordinary beings to follow Yoga. That is the mistake you are making—to harp on greatness as if only the great can be spiritual. Regarding the divinity in man—what is the use of this divinity if it is coated layer after layer with Maya? How many can Page 418 really become conscious of it? Exactly! Why admit any divinity then at all, if their humanity is an... make nothing of the Divine in man. If there is no divinity in man, then there is no possibility of Avatarhood; also spirituality can just as well pass away into silence—it has no foundation here. If the divinity is there in man, it can break through its coatings. You admit that it can do it in debauchees and moral insolvents—that it can manifest in ignorant and uncultured men and women is a proved fact;... admission? The manifestation of the Divinity in the Avatar is of help to man because it helps him to discover his own divinity, find the way to realise it. If the difference is so great that the humanity by its very nature prevents all possibility of following the way opened by the Avatar, it merely means that there is no divinity in man that can respond to the divinity in the Avatar. You make a flourish ...
... bad, beings who are born wicked and love to do harm; and logically, if one is quite natural, not perverted, natural as animals are—for from this point of view they are far superior to men; perversion begins with humanity—then one keeps out of the way, as one would stand aside from something fundamentally harmful. But happily these cases are not very Page 181 frequent; what one meets in life... explode, and it is like that. There are some vital vibrations which harmonise, and harmonise to such an extent that ninety-nine times out of a hundred these sympathies are taken for what men call love, and suddenly people feel, "Oh! He is the one I was waiting for", "Oh! She is the one I was seeking!" ( laughing ), and they rush towards each other, till they find out that it was something very superficial... Aurobindo's books! But take any man in the street and ask him what the intention of the universe and the evolution is; you will see what reply he gives you! That he knows nothing about it. Naturally, those who have read and studied Sri Aurobindo's books at least think they know something about it. When Sri Aurobindo wrote this, he wrote it quite obviously for people who were not interested in yoga ...
... few those nearest to him do not seem to have counted – it was less prominent people like Vidura etc. … Those who were with Krishna were in all appearance men like other men. They spoke and acted with each other as men with men and were not thought of by those around them as gods. Krishna himself was known by most as a man – only a few worshipped him as the Divine.” 73 The same could now be said... of Avatarhood; there is then no reason in it, no necessity in it, no meaning in it. The Divine being all-powerful can lift people up without bothering to come down to earth. It is only if it is part of the world-arrangement that he should take upon himself the burden of humanity and open the Way that Avatarhood has any meaning.” 13 “If the Avatars are shams, they have no value for others nor... Christianity its founder is seen – mostly unawares – as an Avatar, for Christ is at the same time the Son of God and the Son of Man. The fundamental difference with Hinduism is that in Christianity Christ is held to be the only Avatar, the one and only Redeemer of a fallen humanity. From a human teacher and miracle worker the theologians gradually exalted him into a divine being, one in essence with God ...
... of men who had newly risen out of degradation. When I came out of jail I listened for that Page 3 cry, but there was instead a silence. A hush had fallen on the country and men seemed bewildered; for instead of God's bright heaven full of the vision of the future that had been before us, there seemed to be overhead a leaden sky from which human thunders and lightnings rained. No man seemed... kindness, the humanity triumphant over such adverse circumstances. One I saw among them especially who seemed to me a saint, a peasant of my nation who did not know how to read and write, an alleged dacoit sentenced to ten years' rigorous imprisonment, one of those whom we look down upon in our Pharisaical pride of class as chhotalok . Once more He spoke to me and said, "Behold the people among whom... a mission to work for the people of my country and until that work was done, I should have Thy protection. Why then am I here and on such a charge?" A day passed and a second day and a third, when a voice came to me from within, "Wait and see." Then I grew calm and waited. I was taken from Lal Bazar to Alipore and was placed for one month in a solitary cell apart from men. There I waited day and night ...
... , and carry out in the fulness of time a radical three-part programme: (1) for each man as an individual to change himself into the future type of divine humanity, the men of the new Satyayuga which is striving to be born; (2) to evolve a race of such men to lead humanity, and (3) to call an humanity to the path under the lead of these pioneers and this chosen race. And, of course, ... the Yoga of the Life Divine for the Earth and Man. And by shifting to France, Mirra would be in a position to safeguard the interests of Sri Aurobindo at Pondicherry so that his work - the Arya, the 'Yoga of "divine man-making" - could continue without the chronic threats of dislocation or suppression. With his little group of dedicated young men, Sri Aurobindo would be enabled to prepare at... seizes on the lines of that new Page 127 evolution and fulfils it, will be the leader of humanity. In the Arya I state the thought upon which this new evolution will be based as I see it, and the method of Yoga by which it can be accomplished. 18 The opportunity before Man - especially in India - was to respond adequately to the challenge of the new philosophy ("in reality ...
... and destroy character. So first of all it hurts the body. It hurts the children of parents who drink to excess. It hurts the intelligence of man and enslaves those who should be the servitors of humanity. For every one of us should be a servant of humanity; and if by our food or our drink we weaken our minds or bodies, we are then only bad servants unable to perform their task. What happens to... danger for men. Foremost among them are those which contain alcohol. The Prophet Mohammed taught that there was sin in wine and gambling; and therefore all who respect the words of the Koran abstain from wine and gambling to their profit. But on the other hand there are many good people all over the world who find it right to take spirits. We respect their opinions. But these same people cannot assert... the poetess returned to her tribe, happy to see no more of the rich dwelling that made her sad. In all countries, many people are beginning to understand that a simple life is more desirable than a life of extravagance, vanity and show. There are more and more men and women who though they can afford to buy costly things for themselves, feel that their money can be put to a better use. They ...
... FEDERATED HUMANITY The last great war, out of its bloody welter, threw up a mantra for the human consciousness to contemplate and seize and realise: it was self-determination. The present world-war has likewise cast up a mantra that is complementary. The problem of the unification of the whole human race has engaged the attention of seers and sages, idealists and men of action, since... secret and justified its advent and reign is a truth that has still its day. The drive of Nature, of the inner consciousness of humanity was always to find a greater and larger unit for the collective life of mankind. That unit today has to be a federation of free peoples and nations. In the place of nations, several such commonwealths must now form the broad systems of the body politic of human c... is in travail to bring forth and establish. That is the inner meaning of the mighty convulsions shaking and tearing humanity today. The empire of the past—an empire of the Roman type and pattern—was indeed in its own way an attempt in the direction of a closely unified larger humanity; but it was a crude and abortive attempt, as Nature's Page 32 first attempts mostly are. For the term ...
... with the Inner Guide and Teacher. All men are potentially capable of it, for there is no Page 11 man who has not strength or faith or love developed or latent in his nature, and any one of these is a sufficient staff for the Yogin. All cannot, indeed, reach in a single life the highest in this path, but all can go forward; and in proportion as a man advances he gets peace, strength and joy... life of men in the strength of the Yoga and under the law of the Vedanta. It is by such a union of the inner life and the outer that mankind will eventually be lifted up and become mighty and divine. It is a delusion to suppose that Vedanta contains no inspiration to life, no rule of conduct, and is purely metaphysical and quietistic. On the contrary, the highest morality of which humanity is capable... need of them was over, lest the people, following, as they always do, the example of their best, turn away from their dharma and bastard confusion reign. The ideal Yogin is no withdrawn and pent-up force, but ever engaged in doing good to all creatures, either by the flood of the divine energy that he pours on the world or by himself standing in the front of humanity, its leader in the march and the ...
... (i.e., to attain to the Supermind). It would create an atomosphere in the world. But in general humanity it would not introduce a sudden break. It would make it more easy for a larger number of men to attain to the Intuitive plane, – at present there are very few who can do it. The influence of the man who brings down the Supramental Truth would be more effective on those who came in contact with... work to do than that. Disciple : You said that man's life on the physical plane is not so important. But there are so many good things in man ; how can we compare him to an ant ? Sri Aurobindo : In what way is the physical man superior to an ant ? Disciple : There is art, there is literature. Sri Aurobindo : Humanity is not organised for art ! Disciple : And even... themselves. There are disturbances in the atmosphere due to-wrong ways. Some can pull the Power with impunity. There will be some effect on humanity but humanity is not the only consideration in creation. Supermind is not yet a part of manifestation. Its effect on man will depend upon what is thrown away and what is retained when it is established in our midst. Above the movement of forces it is already ...
... hands with thousands of people and got an ache in the hand! I have heard that Maharshi complained of stomach trouble from eating the prasad of various people and that the pile of prasad was one of the causes of his trying to fly away from the world! SATYENDRA: But destiny brought him back. People give a lot of money to Maharshi but, curiously enough, we don't get any. A man actually told me we don't... AUROBINDO (laughing) : That must be him. It is very characteristic of him. He was my first friend in Baroda. He took me to his house and I stayed there for some time. He was a nice man, but what people call volatile and mercurial. ... of service to humanity. SRI AUROBINDO: But was that Ramakrishna's idea which Vivekananda followed? Did Ramakrishna ask him to do service to humanity and did Vivekananda bring into this work what was not intended by his Master? NIRODBARAN: As far as I remember, Ramakrishna spoke of loka hita, "the good of the world". SRI AUROBINDO: But that is not the same as service of humanity. The Gita also ...
... higher or deeper ideal. Otherwise a dangerous vacuum may be created leading to disruption and chaos. From all this, two facts emerge almost with a certitude: 1. Humanity has definitely turned its face towards the future. Man knows that he can change his lot. He knows that more and more he will have the power to influence his Page 17 destiny. An elimination of poverty and ... a biological mutation. We stand before an imminent explosion (in the biological sense) of humanity. This foreseeable, may be calculable, phenomenon, seems to carry with it the appearance of a new human type. Undoubtedly, we have to abandon the old cradle-song of humanism, "the eternal common fund of man", shake up our routine-bound imaginations, put away in a drawer the antiquated pieces of the... final liberation from this apparently aimless chain of lives. There is no doubt however that the ancient civilizations of India, China, Egypt, Greece, Rome, still shining in the memories of men, produced people of the highest character and ability. In the field of pure reasoning, the works of Greek mathematicians indicate a level not below that of the modern mind. Also the monuments of the past bear ...
... way. The earlier vision gives us a happy picture of humanity. The world moves, it was said, from delight to delight, it was born in delight and it consummates in delight. One sang of immortality, of the solar light, of men being children of Heaven and Beatitude. That this material structure on which man leads his precarious existence is a texture of age and disease and death, that misery and undelight... illumination meant and for which he has become one of the great divine leaders of humanity. First, he has discovered man's rationality, and second, he has discovered man's humanity. Since his advent two thousand and five hundred years ago till the present day, in this what may pertinently be called the Buddhist age of humanity, the entire growth, development and preoccupation of mankind was centred upon... it. It was also an urge of the spirit to encompass in its fold a larger and larger circle of humanity: it meant that the spiritual consciousness is no more an aristocratic or hermetic virtue, but a need in which the people, the large mass, have also their share, maybe in varying degrees. A new humanity broad-based to encompass the whole earth, expressing and embodying the light and power and joy ...
... God and Brotherhood of man " was the inspiring ideal of his life. More than Dayananda and Rammohan Roy, Ramakrishna Paramahansa represents the neo-spirituality of modern India and marks a stage in the evolution of Indian spirituality. Sri Aurobindo paid a tribute to Sri Ramakrishna in 1908 : " In Bengal there came a flood of religious truth. Certain men were born, men whom the educated world... if that God within them, had not been there to open their eyes, men whose lives were very different from what our education, our Western education, taught us to admire. One of them, the man who had the greatest influence and has done the Page 37 most to regenerate Bengal, could not read and write a single word. He was a man who had been what they call absolutely useless to the world. But... perfect or final or complete ; for that can be alleged, of no past or present cultural idea or system... These structures in which he (man ) lives are incomplete and provisional "7 Still he says : " Each ( culture ) has achieved something of special value to humanity ". Further he observes: " Mankind is no more than semi-civilised and it was never anything else in the recorded history of its present ...
... Page 518 terms of humanity he was a vibhuti or superman and one of the same order of beings as Napoleon. The Rakshasa is the supreme and thoroughgoing individualist, who believes life to be meant for his own untrammelled self-fulfilment and self-assertion. A necessary element in humanity, he is particularly useful in revolutions. As a pure type in man he is ordinarily a thing of the... political opinions, men have loved or hated, panegyrised or decried the Corsican. To blame Napoleon is like criticising Mont Blanc or throwing mud at Kinchinjunga. This phenomenon has to be understood and known, not blamed or praised. Admire we must, but as minds, not as moralists. It has not been sufficiently perceived by his panegyrists and critics that Bonaparte was not a man at all, he was a force... his foreign policy failed, because he left France smaller than he found it. That is true. But it was not Napoleon's mission to aggrandise France geographically. He did not come for France, but for humanity, and even in his failure he served God and prepared the future. The balance of Europe had to be disturbed in order to prepare new combinations and his gigantic operations disturbed it fatally. He ...
... second volume 1 let me again bring those men to the memory of the adherents and champions of our ideals, as heroes who, in the full consciousness of what they were doing, sacrificed their lives for us all … Together with those, and as one of the best of all, I should like to mention the name of a man who devoted his life to reawakening his and our people, through his writing and his ideas, and finally... Divinity in man”, and that nobility was not a matter of birth but of the spirit. In his hierarchical view of humanity he was strongly anti-materialistic, and therefore against the ideals of the Enlightenment, modernity, industrialization and progress. (Plewnia defined him in the title of her book as “a völkisch publicist”.) The more spiritual and the greater the portion of the Divine in man, the higher... prominent people throughout Germany which could be contacted by Eckart. Nor would a cultured man-of-the-world like Ernst Hanfstängl have written: “[Eckart] was a man of education, a poet, whose German version of Peer Gynt remains the standard translation … He it was who had first taken Hitler under his wing in the Party … Eckart has always been one of my favourites, a big bear of a man with sparkling ...
... them and when they are removed, can still work in the hearts of the people. When they pass away others will arise or even if no great men stand forth to lead, still the soul of this people will be great with the force of God within and do the work. This it is that He seeks to teach us by these separations—by these calamities. The men are gone. The movement has not ceased. The National School at Jhalakati... endure. We are no ordinary race. We are a people ancient as our hills and rivers and we have behind us a history of manifold greatness, not surpassed by any other race. We are the descendants of those who performed tapasya and underwent unheard-of austerities for the sake of spiritual gain and of their own will submitted to all the sufferings of which humanity is capable. We are the children of those... be no growth. It is not in vain that Aswini Kumar has been taken from his people. It is not in vain that Krishna Kumar Mitra has been taken from us and is rotting in Agra Jail. It is not in vain that all Maharashtra mourns for Tilak at Mandalay. It is He, not any other, who has taken them and His ways are not the ways of men, but He is all-wise. He knows better than we do what is needful for us. He ...
... acts varying according to various consciences and codes. And even if the elementary acts were all, they could not bring the end of humanity's toil and tribulation. What is wrong at the root of things is the lack of the divine consciousness in the inward and outward man. Without the divine consciousness in toto there will always be the poor, the naked, the sick, the stricken, no matter how much... aside greed and lust and ambition as well as social attachments, facing the lure and the danger of the undiscovered Infinite, helping humanity not with an ego assuming altruistic colour but as a selfless medium of the Supreme Will that wants to evolve man into Superman. When he does blossom into a real God-lover, it is the sleeping God in himself that has stirred and the failure or disappointment... swimming up-stream and against the current of common desires a-flow in the human constitution for centuries. Millions of men suffer from at least one of these defects: several perhaps from all, and yet how few plunge into the unknown abysses of the Divine! Social anxieties set a man nosing for a better job, personal inferiority makes him vindictive or assertive, childlessness sends him to a long ...
... these parts the proportion is different in each individual. There are people, primitive men, people like the yet undeveloped races or the degenerated ones whose combinations are fairly simple; they are still complicated, but comparatively simple. And there are people absolutely at the top of the human ladder, the ‘elite of humanity; their combinations become so complicated that a very special discernment... Letters on Yoga - I: The Parts of the Being … man is not made up of one piece but of many pieces and each part of him has a personality of its own. That is a thing which people yet have not sufficiently realised—the psychologists have begun to glimpse it, but recognise only when there is a marked case of double or multiple personality. But all men are like that, in reality. Sri Aurobindo Letters... as much as our own and is constantly exercising an occult influence upon us,—for a great part of our thoughts and feelings come into us from outside, from our fellow-men, both from individuals and from the collective mind of humanity; and for the same reason that we are not aware of the greater part of our own being which is subconscient or subliminal to our waking mind and is always influencing and ...
... Sri Aurobindo If there is some truth in all this, humanity will very probably develop into the following species: Animal-man. By far the greatest part of present animal-humanity, which has not kept the pace in the ongoing evolution and to which the fact of a possible evolutionary change is not even a concrete notion, animal-man will drop back to the level on which the greatest part... ‘a higher order of mental human beings’ and the Mother saw them as ‘a very happy humanity.’ One will remember that gross matter can become supramental only when the Augean stables of the Subconscient and the Inconscient will be cleaned. This liberation will completely change the way of existence of animal-man and man-man from the endless road of suffering which is our lot into ‘a happy pilgrimage.’ The... Vesalius, Christiaan Huygens and Galileo Galilei the coming was foreseen of the being that would be the fulfillment and at the same time the surpassing of man. None can tell why this had to happen now, as our notions of the development of humanity and of her true past are much too limited. We situate the origin of civilization 12,000 years ago while most probably civilizations were already there ...
... hand was laid. Not only the old leaders but any of the new men whom the tide has tossed up for a moment on the crest of its surges, must pay the penalty of imagining that he can control the ocean and impose on it his personal likes and desires. These are times of revolution when tomorrow casts aside the fame, popularity and pomp of today. The man whose carriage is today dragged through great cities by... in its native character of personal feeling. The authority of a political leader depends on his capacity to feel and express the sentiments of the people who follow him; it does not reside in himself. He holds his position because he is a representative man, not because he is such-and-such an individual. To take the position that because he has led in the past therefore his word must be law so long as... stand aside; but to demand that because he is there and wishes to remain, the march of the world shall wait upon his fears and hesitations is to make a claim against which the reason and conscience of humanity rebels. Page 867 What the Moderate leaders ask is that the immense revolution which has begun in India, shall ask for their permission before it chooses its course or rolls forward to ...
... freedom is therefore the only issue. All other issues are merely delusion and Maya, all other talk is the talk of men that sleep or are in intellectual and moral bondage. We Nationalists declare that man is for ever and inalienably free and that we too are, both individually as Indian men and collectively as an Indian nation, for ever and inalienably Page 617 free. As freemen we will speak... as an Indian free or a serf bound to the service, the behest or the forced guidance of something outside and alien to myself and mine, something which is anatman, not myself? Am I, are my people part of humanity, the select and chosen temple of the Brahman, and entitled therefore to grow straight in the strength of our own spirit, free and with head erect before mankind, or are we a herd of cattle... the face of persecution of the sheer uncompromising spirit of Swarajism. For the first time a man has been found who can say to the power of alien Imperialism, "With all thy pomp of empire and splendour and dominion, with all thy boast of invincibility and mastery irresistible, with all thy wealth of men and money and guns and cannon, with all thy strength of the law and strength of the sword, with ...
... and spiritual experience. Then the culture spreads down to the people and in so doing it depreciates. Then a general levelling down takes place and there comes democracy. Then a hierarchy comes in and the circle starts again. Disciple : But is there a goal for humanity ? Sri Aurobindo : Yes, there is a goal, and humanity is not going towards it but round and round in a circle below... Is the old classification of men in four orders, according to the peculiar Dharma of each, tenable now ? Can each human being have the characteristics of the four orders ? Sri Aurobindo : There is infinite possibility. So the potentiality of all the four castes is in every man, but that does not exist as a fact. No classification can be perfect so long as man is living in the mental con... Interest of the communities or .classes. 3. Machinery of Government. Now, in Europe people believe and think that if they succeed in bringing about a definite form of Government on the lines of certain ideals such as Democracy, Monarchy, Socialism, Communism etc, then all the problems of humanity will be solved. They follow a mental ideal which they think to be the only truth and they create ...
... for it is hating God; yet he who commits it, glories in his superior virtue. Page 428 52) When I hear of a righteous wrath, I wonder at man's capacity for self-deception. 53) This is a miracle that men can love God, yet fail to love humanity. With whom are they in love then? 54) The quarrels of religious sects are like the disputing of pots, which shall be alone allowed to hold the... perfect cosmic vision & cosmic sentiment is the cure of all error & suffering; but most men succeed only in enlarging the range of their ego. 178) Men say & think "For my country!" "For humanity!" Page 445 "For the world!" but they really mean "For myself seen in my country!" "For myself seen in humanity!" "For myself imaged to my fancy as the world!" That may be an enlargement, but it is... were not over-good for humanity. Modern knowledge says to the race, "Man, thou art an ephemeral animal and no more to Nature than the ant & the earthworm,—a transitory speck only in the universe. Live then for the State & submit thyself antlike to the trained administrator & the scientific expert." Will this gospel succeed any better than the other? 201) Vedanta says rather, "Man, thou art of one nature ...
... unity were the goal towards which humanity aspired and advanced. In the poet's dream it figured as the emergence of the universal man, in the mind of the spiritual seeker it meant the attainment of Swarajya, and in the vision of the Rishi it was the Integral Yoga destined to transform half-animal man into a dynamic divinity. "In Indian politics there were three men embodying in various degrees... banner which God has given you." — Mazzini (The Duties of Man) "Your Country is the token of the mission which God has given you to fulfil in Humanity." — Ibid. Page 259 (Bankim Chandra), who might be called an inspired Rishi. He criticised the so-called patriots of the time who might be well-wishers of India, but not men who loved her. He who loved his mother never looked to... forward until we have achieved the ultimate emancipation, that utter freedom of the soul, of the body or the whole man, that utter freedom from all bondage towards which humanity is always aspiring. We in India have found a mighty freedom within ourselves, our brother-men in Europe have worked Page 314 towards freedom without. We have been moving on parallel lines towards the ...
... stature, which is more important after all. Man attains his fulfilment not by money nor by possessions, but by growth of consciousness, an inner growth. You can say, England has done good things out of enlightened interest. But even behind the enlightened self-interest, the drive is that of oneness of humanity. Even when America wants to give aid to other people because of her economic interest,—that is... because each nation is still seeking somewhere in terms of its own interest and in terms of its own separate existence, and yet the world is one and humanity is one. It is already one. The difficulty is how to convince most people that it is one. Very often man does not see the things before Page 200 his very eyes. The very acts that he is doing show that the world is one. Still he would... many human qualities developed in them; they become very, very humanized when they come in contact with men, especially the tame animals or the animals that are domesticated. Some of the qualities of the animals are to be recommended to men,—e.g. the faithfulness of the dog. It is difficult for man to surpass the dog in faithfulness. Not that we do not meet it in some human beings, but it is very rare; ...
... a nation before we can live in humanity. It is for this reason that Nationalist thinkers have always urged the necessity of realising our separateness from other nations and living to ourselves for the present, not in order to shut out humanity, but that we may get that individual strength, unity and wholeness which will help us to live as a nation for humanity. A man must be strong and free in himself... organism. In times of stress or revolution the replacement is more rapid, that is all. Whatever the importance of particular individuals,—and the importance of men like Sj. Aswini Kumar Dutta or Sj. Krishna Kumar Mitra is not denied by any man in his senses and was not denied but dwelt upon by the speaker at Jhalakati,—they are not necessary, in the sense that God does not depend upon them for the execution... attempted to arrive at a higher synthesis, the synthesis of humanity; and Socialism and philosophical Anarchism, the Anarchism of Tolstoy and Spencer, have even envisaged the application of the higher intellectual synthesis to life. In India we do not recognise the nation as the highest synthesis to which we can rise. There is a higher synthesis, humanity; beyond that there is a still higher synthesis, this ...
... The gods are approaching to change humanity but perhaps humanity also will bring about a new change in the status of the gods themselves. They may lose something of their typal stability or fixity and attain a new human flexibility. The Gita speaks, of course in its own way, of man increasing the gods and the gods also increasing man. Perhaps the divinity that man attains will increase the value ... of them appear as presiding deities or Ishta-devata and establish individual relations with men. Now this process of devolution has gone on; from the supreme Consciousness, it has entered into the Supramental, then into the Overmental and then into the mental regions, Page 16 and peopled all of them with gods and divinities. In the lower regions – lower, that is to say, denser, obscurer... Specially with man at the top of this new creation, the terrestrial situation has changed considerably and is being changed continually. I have said, human consciousness has arrived at a stage when it has to leap over and attain a new dimension of earthly existence; just over him the gods of the age have gathered and are preparing themselves to take the field in. the new creation: the gods that men have to ...
... progressive, Hitler’s view and initiatives were retrograde, intending to lead humanity back to an era of barbarism which it was supposed to have left definitively behind. Hitler’s “new man” was educated to be blindly obedient and no longer subject to feelings or emotions; he was trained to behave in a superior, ruthless way towards people not of his kind, and to consider hardship and war as his element, death... the Enlightenment to sustain the impetus of the forward movement in humanity. The new values – the “democratic trinity” of liberty, equality and fraternity – had to be made permanent fixtures in the psychological structure of humanity. The ways of “the forward evolution” had to be kept open. “What we have to see is on which side men and nations put themselves; if they put themselves on the right side... who belittle the individual and would like to lose him in the mass or think of him chiefly as a cell, an atom, have got hold only of the obscurer side of the truth of Nature’s workings in humanity. It is because man is not like the material formations of Nature or like the animal, because she intends in him a more and more conscious evolution, that individuality is so much developed in him and so absolutely ...
... firmly discountenanced the only too common tendency of women to overemphasise their femineity and men their masculinity. For the Mother, as for Sri Aurobindo, men and women alike, boys and girls alike, were but vessels of the immortal spirit, and the whole aim of education - and of Yoga - should be to get people to grow more and more conscious of this potentiality and progressively to realise it in their... with the working woman in the countryside) is something that "cannot occur in a civilised world with all the so-called progress that humanity has achieved", well, so much the worse for civilisation! In the age now unfolding it should be woman's privilege as also man's to try to become a fit instrument for the Divine Work, and, as children of the same infinite Mother to be "aspirants to the one Eternal... found and the right men would turn up to translate her ideas into realities. V The opening of the Tennis Ground fringing the sea was an invitation to the sadhaks to participate in a number of games and a variety of sports and athletics including swimming. The Mother herself played tennis in the Page 436 evenings daily for about an hour with the younger people by turns, and even ...
... rhythm. This one understands. But what is important is to practise it. Here one has the impression that these things were told to people who had never thought of them before and so they had the full power of an active force. After all, in spite of all appearances, humanity progresses; it has progressed particularly in the mind. There are things that no longer need to be said.... Or else one must go... of a man for a woman, the mind is captive, as dependent as a suckling on its mother." And finally: "Root out self-love, as one plucks with his hand an autumn lotus." These are good subjects for meditation. These recommendations seem to have been meant for people who are just at the beginning of the Path from the intellectual point of view. We can easily imagine a gathering of country people, people... the two paths of progress and decline, a man should choose the Path which will increase his wisdom. Cut down all the forest (of desires) and not one tree alone; for from this forest springs fear. Cut down this forest of trees and undergrowth, O Bhikkhus. Be free from desire. As long as one has not rooted out of oneself entirely the desire of a man for a woman, the mind is captive, as dependent ...
... fuller, higher and vaster luminous life ? Will man come down to live the life of a blind helpless slave under the clutches of the Asura or even altogether lose his soul and become the legendary demon who carries no head but only a decapitated trunk? We believe that the war of today is a war between the Asura and men, human instruments of the gods. Man certainly is a weaker vessel in comparison with... It can land humanity into a catastrophe; it can also raise it to levels which would not have been within its reach but for the occasion. The Forces of Darkness have Page 17 precipitated themselves with all their might upon the world, but by their very downrush have called upon the higher Forces of Light also to descend. The true use of the opportunity offered to man would be to bring... the Asura in a way sufficient to open men's eyes to the realities involved. Thus they have declared that the present war is a conflict between two ideals, to be sure, but also that the two ideals are so different that they do not belong to the same plane or order; they belong to different planes and different orders. On one side the whole endeavour is to bring man down from the level to which he has ...
... Federated Humanity THE last great war, out of its bloody welter, threw up a mantra for the human consciousness to contemplate and seize and realise: it was self-determination. The present world-war has likewise cast up a mantra that is complementary. The problem of the unification of the whole human race has engaged the attention of seers and sages, idealists and men of action... secret and justified its advent and reign is a truth that has still its day. The drive of Nature, of the inner consciousness of humanity was always to find a greater and larger unit for the collective life of mankind. That unit today has to be a federation of free peoples and nations. In the place of nations, several such commonwealths must now form the broad systems of the body politic of human c... is in travail to bring forth and establish. That is the inner meaning of the mighty convulsions shaking and tearing humanity today. The empire of the past—an empire of the Roman type and pattern—was indeed in its own way an attempt in the direction of a closely unified larger humanity; but it was a crude and abortive attempt, as Nature's first attempts mostly are. For the term that was omitted in that ...
... millions of men who had newly risen out of degradation. When I came out of jail I listened for that cry, but there was instead a silence. A hush had fallen on the country and men seemed bewildered; for instead of God's bright heaven full of the vision of the future that had been before us, there seemed to be overhead a leaden sky from which human thunders and lightnings rained. No man seemed to know... that for the salvation of humanity was cherished in the seclusion of this Page 509 peninsula from of old. It is to give this religion that India is rising. She does not rise as other countries do, for self or when she is strong, to trample on the weak. She is rising to shed the eternal light entrusted to her over the world. India has always existed for humanity and not for herself and... and it is for humanity and not for herself that she must be great." India had to be great ... for the sake of the world. This became his recurring theme-song. In his speeches, in his writings, he spoke over and over again of the need for India's freedom which was the first condition for India to recover her spiritual freedom. For, on the spiritual life of India depended the world's destiny. "So ...
... Teacher of the Gita is therefore not only the God in man who unveils himself in the word of knowledge, but the God in man who moves our whole world of action, by and for whom all our humanity exists and struggles and labours, towards whom all human life travels and progresses. He is the secret Master of works and sacrifice and the Friend of the human peoples. Page 19 ... Law by that atonement of man with God of which the crucifixion is the symbol? If the Christ, God made man, lives within our spiritual being, it would seem to matter little whether or not a son of Mary physically lived and suffered and died in Judea. So too the Krishna who matters to us is the eternal incarnation of the Divine and not the historical teacher and leader of men. In seeking the kernel... divine personality of the Teacher, his characteristic relations with his disciple and the occasion of his teaching. The teacher is God himself descended into humanity; the disciple is the first, as we might say in modern language, the representative man of his age, closest friend and chosen instrument of the Avatar, his protagonist in an immense work and struggle the secret purpose of which is unknown to ...
... prove that when the noblest human movements are being suppressed by imprisonment and the sword, it is done in the interests of humanity; that when a people struggling to live is trampled down by repression, pushed back by the use of the Gurkha and the hooligan, the prison walls and the whipping-post into the hell of misery, famine and starvation, the black pit of insult, ignominy and bonds from which... crimes against the future of humanity of which any statesman in recent times could possibly have been guilty, have been engineered under the name and by the advocacy of honest John Morley. Truly, Satan knows his own and sees to it that they do not their great work negligently. Mr. Morley is a great bookman, a great democrat, a great exponent of principles. No man better fitted than he to prove... devil in the name of God with signal success on two occasions. The first was when he championed the cause Page 752 of the financiers in Egypt, the men who gamble with the destinies of nations, who make money out of the groans of the people and coin into gold the blood of patriots and the tears of widows and orphans,—when abusing his influence as a journalist, he lied to the British public about ...
... thing. People who gather or are gathered round a man and ding to him through the tie of a personal relation must fall off and scatter when the man passes away and the personal tie loses its hold. What remains is a memory, a gradually fading memory. But memory is hardly a creative force, it is a dead, at best, a moribund thing; the real creative power is Presence'. So when the great man's presence... stands are in the open forum and men have the full and free opportunity of testing and assimilating them, it is only when individuals thus become living embodiments of those principles and realities that we do create a thing universal and permanent, as universal and permanent as earthly things may be. Principles only can embrace and unify the whole of humanity; a particular personality shall always... always create division and limitation. By placing the man in front, we erect a wall between the Principle and men at large. It is the principles, on the contrary, that should be given the place of honour: our attempt should be to keep back personalities and make as little use of them as possible. Let the principles work and create in their freedom and power, untrammelled by the limitations of any mere ...
... plain in a letter which has been made public that we did not consider the war as a fight between nations or governments (still less between good people and bad people) but between two forces, the Divine and the Asuric. What we have to see is on which side men and nations put themselves; if they put themselves on the right side, they at once make themselves instruments of the Divine purpose in spite of... special form of sacrifice. We should remember that conquest and rule over subject peoples were not regarded as wrong either in ancient or medieval times and even quite recently but as something great and glorious; men did not see any special wickedness in conquerors or conquering nations. Just government of subject peoples was envisaged, but nothing more—exploitation was not excluded. No doubt, many nations... impossible; there would be a reign of falsehood and darkness, a cruel oppression and degradation for most of the human race such as people in this country do not dream of and cannot yet at all realise. If the other side that has declared itself for the free future of humanity triumphs, this terrible danger will have been averted and conditions will have been created in which there will be a chance for ...
... be to begin by serving yourself. Is there then no need for service to humanity? Hospitals, nursing organisations, charitable institutions have not been useful to humanity? Has not the spirit of philanthropy mended and improved the conditions of human life? Has it, I ask? You have tried to help a few people here and there. But what does it amount to compared to what needs to be done... work and continue. But do not imagine that you are doing any real or effective service to humanity; particularly do not imagine that by that you are serving God, leading a spiritual life or doing Yoga. Just an illustration of the quality of the spirit that animates humanitarianism. A charitable man will give generously for a thing that is known, recognised, appreciated; Page 165 ... To wish to serve humanity, to do good to it shows ambition and egoism? How? Why do you wish to serve humanity? What is your purpose? What is your motive? Do you know in what consists the good to humanity? And do you know better than humanity itself what is good for it? Or do you know it better than the Divine? You say the Divine is everywhere, so if you serve humanity, it is the Divine ...
... might have to be made in the midst of the chaos and ruin after perhaps an extermination on a large scale, and a more successful creation could be predicted only if a way was found to develop a better humanity or perhaps a greater, superhuman race." Revolutions of the Future "...it is questions, not of taxation, but... of the proper organisation and administration of the economic life of the... no real and permanent good of all, - it immolates the individual to a communal egoism and prevents so much free room and initiative as is necessary for the flowering of a more perfectly developed humanity." The ultimate allegiance of the individual is to the Divine "The individual does not owe his ultimate allegiance either to the State which is a machine or to the community which is a... Truth, the Self, the Spirit, the Divine which is in him and in all; not to subordinate or lose himself in the mass, but to find and express that truth of being in himself and help the community and humanity in its seeking for its own truth and fullness of being must be his real object of existence." Unity, not uniformity, is the law of life "Absolute uniformity would mean the cessation of ...
... less than the life of humanity. “The Jew is the enemy of human existence. His ultimate aim is the breaking up of the nations, the intermingling and bastardization of the other peoples, the lowering of the level of the highest races and the lordship over the ensuing racial mixture through elimination of the peoples’ intellectuals and their replacement with members of his own people … If the Jew, with the... is victorious over the peoples of this earth, then his crown will be the death-dance of the world; then this planet will again, just like millions of years ago, drift through the ether empty of human beings.” 327 “Though bubbling over with ‘enlightenment’, ‘progress’, ‘liberty’, ‘humanity’, etc. [the Jew’s] first care was to preserve the racial integrity of his own people. He occasionally bestowed... deathly delusion. Hitler’s apocalyptic view of the final global war between the deceitful and the true “chosen people” was in certain of its aspects still indebted to Dietrich Eckart, who had conceived of a struggle between good (the Aryan side) and evil (the Jewish side) in humanity as a whole and in each of its members in particular. But Hitler had now recast these principles in the Darwinian-racist ...
... that ye also love one another; 29 when man takes to heart Sri Aurobindo's admonition: This is a miracle that men can love God, yet fail to love humanity. Page 479 With whom are they in love then?" 30 then "religion" can be passive no more in the face of antagonism of interests, clash of egos, man becoming wolf to man, but will fight all evil with the infallible... all human life for their province and strive to regenerate the life of humanity as a whole to fit the conditions of the spiritual age. If the number of these spiritual men - these samurai in the service of the Divine, these Rishis and Mahapurushas - is sufficiently large to make a critical mass, "then the Spirit who is here in man, now a concealed divinity, a developing light and power, will descend... impulsion provided by the desire for a religion of humanity - would nevertheless not be strong enough to ensure human unity so long as man or collective man refused to see the spiritual reality behind the brilliant and bewildering facades of material life: A spiritual religion of humanity is the hope of the future.... A religion of humanity means the growing realisation that there is a secret ...
... "What is to become of our boys if we leave the management of India in your hands?" The man from the Continent or America asks plainly, "How can the whole three hundred million of you be kept under by 70,000 tommies?" Ought not all this to give our Moderate friends furiously to think? We can appreciate the humanity of their desire to emancipate the country without dragging her through the red horror... a country of three hundred million men can consent to be governed by a handful of foreigners he simply cannot understand. He thinks of the Indian as a member of a sub-human race, outside the pale of his privileges, his code of morality, his civilisation. And that new-fangled specimen of the Indian race, the educated Indian, only intensifies his contempt. That a man who has been nurtured on the literature... country. And the opinion of Mr. Morley only too truly represents that of the general body of the Europeans who have ever come into contact with India or thought about the problem she presents before humanity. The question is why should they all have arrived at this poor estimate of the Indian's political capability? The answer, however, is not far to seek; we have only ourselves to thank for this cosmopolitan ...
... manifested, greatness is claimed by humanity as something that reveals the possibility of the race. The highest utility of greatness is not merely to attract us but to inspire us to follow it and rise to our own highest spiritual stature. To the majority of men Truth remains abstract, impersonal and far unless it is seen and felt concretely in a human personality. A man never knows a truth actively except... devoted his energies to the task of saving humanity from the threatened reign of Nazism. It was a practical lesson of solid work done for humanity without any thought of return or reward, without even letting humanity know what he was doing for it! Thus he lived the Divine and showed us how the Divine cares for the world, how he comes down and works for man. I shall never forget how he who was at... Talks—with the larger public. III EVENING SITTINGS Sri Aurobindo was never a social man in the current sense of the term and definitely he was not a man of the crowd, This was due to his grave temperament, not to any feeling of superiority or to repulsion for men. At Baroda there was an Officer's Club which was patronised by the Maharajah and though Sri Aurobindo enrolled ...
... the very keenness of this appreciation makes it utterly impossible for Mr. Morley and men like him to understand and sympathise with Asiatics. To them Asia is a home of monstrous religions, barbarous despotisms, grotesque superstitions and a primitive morality. That this half-civilised continent contains peoples as capable of self-government as any European race is a thing which they cannot persuade... therefore she will learn to love and respect the Indian people, forget that Europe adopted a modified Judaism as her religion, yet hated, despised and horribly persecuted the Jews. European prejudice will always refuse to regard Asiatics as anything but an inferior race and European selfishness will always deny their fitness to enjoy the rights of men until the inevitable happens and Asia once more spews... its strength, but in his secret heart he chafes and rages against it as a thing intolerable and out of nature. He is prepared to use any and every means to crush Asiatic aspirations. Morality and humanity are meant to be employed in dealing with Asiatics just as much but no more than in dealing with the animal creation. There can be no European respect for Asiatics, no sympathy between them except ...
... supremacist white Americans, far superior to all those strange and suspect people who came to live on what they considered their soil, were of course the dark-skinned people, the Negroes, now called Blacks or African-Americans. “The cross between a white man and an [American-] Indian is an Indian, the cross between a white man and a Negro is a Negro.” American-Indians there were few and they lived mainly... quotes some of their enunciations: “The principles of heredity are the same in man and hogs and sun-flowers. – Every race-horse, every straight-backed bull, every premium pig tells us what we can do and what we must do for man. – The result of suppressing the poorest and breeding from the best would be the same for men as for cattle and sheep.” 21 The problem lay in the fact that eugenics was... they had proved to be not superior people but weaklings, and were therefore unworthy of him. As André Pichot remarked: humanism then was not what it is today. ‘Humanism’ should be human, and in the course of history, as well as in our own time, it has proved to be many things which are the exact opposite of what the dictionaries, the philosophers and the holy men tell us that is human. In any anthology ...
... n of the Page 477 Divinity in the Avatar is of help to man because it helps him to discover his own divinity, find the way to realise it. If the difference is so great that the humanity by its very nature prevents all possibility of following the way opened by the Avatar, it merely means that there is no divinity in man that can respond to the Divinity in the Avatar. I repeat, the... what matters in a spiritual man's life is not what he did or what he was outside to the view of the men of his time (that is what historicity or biography comes to, does it not?) but what he was and did within; it is only that that gives any value to his outer life at all. It is the inner life that gives to the outer any power it may have, and the inner life of a spiritual man is something vast and full... of Avatarhood—there is then no reason in it, no necessity for it, no meaning in it. The Divine being all-powerful can lift people up without bothering to come down on earth. It is only if it is part of the world-arrangement that he should take upon himself the burden of humanity and open the Way that Avatarhood has any meaning. If the Divine were not in essence omnipotent, he could not be omnipotent ...
... that is naked and unashamed, can be pure and innocent, even as Adam was in the primal garden of humanity. 351) Boast not thy riches, neither seek men's praise for thy poverty and self-denial; both these things are the coarse or the fine food of egoism. Page 469 352) Altruism is good for man, but less good when it is a form of supreme self-indulgence & lives by pampering the selfishness... labour. But neither priest, king, merchant nor labourer is the true governor of humanity; the despotism of the tool and the mattock will fail like all the preceding despotisms. Only when egoism dies & God in man governs his own human universality, can this earth support a happy and contented race of beings. 357) Men run after pleasure and clasp feverishly that burning bride to their tormented bosoms;... 233) Let not thy virtues be such as men praise or reward, but such as make for thy perfection and God in thy nature demands of thee. 234) Altruism, duty, family, country, humanity are the prisons of the soul when they are not its instruments. 235) Our country is God the Mother; speak not evil of her unless thou canst do it with love and tenderness. 236) Men are false to their country for their ...
... with a complex corporate personality, great masses of men themselves too organised, representing the vital interests, claims, passions of millions of men divided by corporate, powerful and persistent exclusivenesses, hatreds, jealousies, antipathies which the Page 655 founding of this would-be all-healing League and new society of peoples finds much acerbated, much more pronounced than in... universe and could only then work out in its mould some figure of the spirit. Therefore the sign of great hope, the good tidings of peace and good will unto men is not that a new and diviner or simply a more human spirit has been born into humanity, seized upon its leaders and extended itself among its ego-ridden, passion-driven, interest-governed millions, but that an institution has been begotten at... not merely to dominate mankind, if it is to raise and free, as it claims and professes, and not to bind and depress humanity, it must be cast in another mould and animated by another spirit. This age is not like that in which the reign of law was established in individual nations; men are no longer inclined, as then they were, to submit to existing conditions in the idea that they are an inevitable ...
... was not to their liking. Humanity being what it is, Hitler was right in concluding from History that a revolutionary idea needs a revolutionary movement to make its physical appearance and growth possible in society. He wrote: “Any ideology, though a thousand times right and supremely beneficial to humanity, will be of no practical service for the maintenance of a people as long as its principles... them if necessary, and when, on the other hand, the central organization, the movement itself, is in the hands of only those few men who are absolutely indispensable to form the nerve-centres of the coming State.” 315 The man foresaw all essentials of his future reign of terror, and they were written there for all to read. “Since the first day of our foundation we were resolved to secure the future... – in his own head; so many of the people more or less close to him have testified to the fixity of his leading ideas, and to their secrecy. About his new gospel he wrote the following dreadful but revealing words: “A revolutionary conception of the world and human existence will always achieve decisive success when the new ideology has been taught to a whole people, or subsequently forced upon them ...
... of her body and rising up above the house and the town, with a magnificent robe covering the town like an immense roof: Then I would see coming out from all sides men, women, children, old men, sick men, unhappy men; they gathered under the outspread robe, imploring help, recounting their miseries, their sufferings, their pains. In reply, the robe, supple and living, stretched... life of the slave, the highest life is the life of the saint, and just as all art is said to aspire to the condition of music, all humanity must aspire to the condition of utter freedom which is the saint's prerogative. 131 Since it is the privilege of civilised humanity to retain the memories of the race, it is often possible to achieve in a short time what took thousands of years for our ancestors... And shall travail still Till man be the image of God... And this I believe is God's will. 129 Beast to man, man to God; or average ordinary man to the evolved spiritually awakened saint: how is this progression started, how achieved? "Spiritual evolution as distinct from revolution", says Hugh I' Anson Fausset, "consists of this gradual dying to the old life of the divided ...
... fuller, higher and vaster luminous life? Will man come down to live the life of a blind helpless slave under the clutches of the Asura or even altogether lose his soul and become the legendary demon who carries no head but only a decapitated trunk? We believe that the war of today is a war between the Asura and men, human instruments of the gods. Man certainly is a weaker vessel in comparison with... opportunity. It can land humanity into a catastrophe; it can also raise it to levels which would not have been within its reach but for the occasion. The Forces of Darkness have precipitated themselves with all their might upon the world, but by their very down rush have called upon the higher Forces of Light also to descend. The true use of the opportunity offered to man would be to bring about... Asura in a way sufficient to open men's eyes to the realities involved. Thus they have declared that the present war is a conflict between two ideals, to be sure, but also that the two ideals, are so different that they do not belong to the same plane or order; they belong to different planes and different orders. On one side the whole endeavour is to bring man down from the level to which he has ...
... higher and vaster luminous life? Will man come down' to live the life of a blind helpless slave under the clutches of I the Asura or even altogether lose his soul and become the legendary demon who carries no head but only a decapitated trunk? We believe that the war of today is a war between the Asura and men, human instruments of the gods. Man certainly is a weaker vessel in comparison... opportunity. It can land humanity into a catastrophe; it can also raise it to levels which would not have been within its reach but for the occasion. The Forces of Darkness have precipitated themselves with all their might upon the world, but by their very downrush have called upon the higher Forces of Light also to descend. The true' use of the opportunity offered to man would be to bring about a... the Asura in a way sufficient to open men's eyes to the realities involved. Thus they have declared that the present war is a conflict between two ideals, to be sure, but also that the two ideals are so different that they do not belong to the same plane or order; they belong to different planes and different orders. On one side the whole endeavour is to bring man down from the level to which he has ...
... understand, they are ready to declare war, kill millions of people in order to save the world, to save the nations and help the fate of humanity! I do not understand their intentions. They have no respect for others, no regard for their words, and the promises vanish into the past. They do what they like — what their fantasies dictate. And ordinary men and the poor earth suffer, agonise, torn by the cont... of the animals and even of Nature. With this, the earth would be uninhabitable. On what an insecure plank humanity is balancing; almost on the brink of a disaster, — one false step… he is skirting the abyss! This is the fate of humanity which remains suspended in the hands of a dozen men who govern the world. The destiny of the world sealed with the caprices and the fantasy of those who govern — perhaps... and baseless human holocaust, which moreover, could drag man to commit the ultimate and grave mistake — which in appearance is nothing but a petty quarrel over acquiring a piece of land, or the predominance of ego, or the superiority of power or wealth, or to avenge a war which could furthermore lead to the end of this distressed humanity, the annihilation of the human race as well as… of most of ...
... helpless in face of this state of affairs, because any disruption in Page 487 the production line would only result in more hardship for the workers. And what have I contributed to humanity? Men travel more easily. Do they understand each other any better? Following my example, all sorts of labour-saving gadgets have been mass- produced and made available to an increasing number of customers... greater than mine to wage war and to triumph by unscrupulous means and uncharitable decisions. And yet I am considered a great statesman, I am overwhelmed with honours and praise and people call me "a friend of humanity". But I feel my own weakness and I know that I have lacked the true knowledge and power which would have enabled me to fulfil the beautiful hopes of my childhood. And now that... do not have any certitude about the world, only probabilities, leaves a ray of hope—that the fate of humanity is not finally sealed. The Artist Born into a thoroughly respectable bourgeois family where art was considered as a pastime rather than a career and artists as rather unreliable people, prone to debauchery and with a dangerous disregard for money, I felt, perhaps out of contrariness, a ...
... the worst forms of strife. And towards this consummation the method, the approach which humanity has been forced by its own nature to adopt, is a monstrous mutual massacre unparalleled in history; a universal war, full of bitterness and irreconcilable hatred, is the straight way and the triumphant means modern man has found for the establishment of universal peace! That consummation, too, founded not... s, gives no very certain promise of firm foundation and long duration. A day may come, must surely come, we will say, when humanity will be ready spiritually, morally, socially for the reign of universal peace; meanwhile the aspect of battle and the nature and function of man as a fighter have to be accepted and accounted for by any practical philosophy and religion. The Gita, taking life as it is... have to accept its aspect of a struggle and a battle mounting into supreme crises such as that of Kurukshetra. The Gita, as we have seen, takes for its frame such a period of transition and crisis as humanity periodically experiences in its history, in which great forces clash together for a huge destruction and reconstruction, intellectual, social, moral, religious, political, and these in the actual ...
... art born out of a hope of Humanity; thou art born as a hope for the birth of Humanity!’ Then the tone turns exhortative and bellicose: ‘Each day all thy warriors, from lowest to highest, already fight in their hearts and joyously die for thee in their dreams … Thou hast the quivering of the steed who hears his master’s step. Already dost thou feel his hand on thee. People ready for the fight, this... the perpetual oppositions between men and women has been at once made clearly apparent, and behind the conflict of the sexes, only relating to exterior facts, the gravity of the circumstances allowed the discovery of the always existent, if not always outwardly manifested fact, of the real collaboration, of the true union of these two complementary halves of humanity.’ 13 She goes on to show... of the point in world history at which humanity has arrived: ‘We are living in an exceptional time at an exceptional turning point of the world’s history. Never before, perhaps, did mankind pass through such a dark period of hatred, bloodshed and confusion. And, at the same time, never has such a strong, such an ardent hope awakened in the hearts of the people … Never is the night so dark as before ...
... manifested, greatness is claimed by humanity as something that reveals the possibility of the race. The highest quality of greatness is not merely to attract us but to inspire us to follow it and rise to our own highest spiritual stature. To the majority of men Truth remains abstract, impersonal and far unless it is seen and felt concretely in a human personality. A man never knows a truth actively except... devoted his energies to the task of saving humanity from the threatened reign of Nazism. It was a practical lesson of solid work done for humanity without any thought of return or reward, without even letting humanity know what he was doing for it! Thus he lived the Divine and showed us how the Divine cares for the world, how he comes down and works for man. I shall never forget how he who was at one... Talks – with a larger public. III EVENING SITTINGS Sri Aurobindo was never a social man in the current sense of the term and definitely he was not a man of the crowd. This was due to his grave temperament, not to any feeling of superiority or to repulsion for men. At Baroda there was an Officer's Club which was patronized by the Maharajah and though Sri Aurobindo enrolled ...
... Consciousness Does not the "earth consciousness" include all humanity? And also animals, the vegetable and mineral kingdoms, etc.? Will the higher consciousness be established only in a few people? Yes, all that is the earth consciousness—mineral = matter, vegetable = the vital-physical creation, animal = the vital creation, man = the mental creation. Into the earth consciousness so limited to... replace eventually the Falsehood that has governed the minds and hearts of men for so long. The liberation of a few Page 289 individuals is a thing that is always possible and has always been done—but, to my seeing, it cannot be the sole aim of existence. Whatever the struggles and sufferings and blunders of humanity, there is still in it an urge towards the Light, an impulse towards a greater... more possible or not. Let all men jeer at me if they will or all Hell fall upon me if it will for my presumption,—I go on till I conquer or perish. This is the spirit in which I seek the supermind, no hunting for greatness for myself or others. (This is not to be circulated.) 10 February 1935 Your "superman" reminds me of an interesting debate we had. Some people ridicule us for our aspiration ...
... was the deed’. Only the man of action becomes conscious of the true being of the world. Man abuses his intellect. It is not the seat of a special human dignity: it is no more than an expedient in the struggle for life. Man is there to do things. It is only as a being in action that he fulfils his national destiny. Contemplative natures, retrospective like all religious people, are dead beings who miss... only political and social: we stand before an enormous change in the moral concepts and the intellectual orientation of the people. It is only now, with our movement, that the middle period, the Middle Ages, are brought to a conclusion. We put an end to a wrong path taken by humanity. The tables of Mount Sinai have lost their validity … A new era of a magical interpretation of the world is commencing,... into disrepute and replacing it by intuition, blood, instinct, to which it gave a status that inevitably raised stupidity to the level of an authority and produced a moral indigence, a ‘defeatism of humanity’ such as had never been seen before … “This vehement anti-enlightenment, fed by romantic impulses, was a phenomenon common to the whole of Europe; names like Carlyle, Sorel and Bergson underline ...
... of the people of a region. plight: a condition of extreme hardship or danger. pogrom: an organized attack, often murderous, against a Jewish population. prodigal: wasteful, uncontrolled spending. rabbi: a Jew trained for professional religious leadership of a Jewish congregation. ravenous: ferocious and greedy. redeem: (by Jesus as Saviour or Redeemer) to free (men) from... Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one Being with the Father: Through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven; by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance... regain fertility for a crop. ;. gentile: non-Jewish person (see also heathen). grace: the divine assistance and power given to man by God; harlot : a prostitute. hallowed: some thing, place or words taken to be sacred or holy. heathen: a people or nation that does not recognize the God of the Bible or Quran. heretical (heresy): unorthodox opinions or dogma strongly u ...
... and attempts to apply the most absolute and integral realisation to the outer actualities of man's life and action. The relevance of the Gita has been in a sense perennial right from the time it first appeared or was written into the frame of the Mahabharata. But Page 31 considering that humanity is passing today through a grim and unprecedented crisis, we are bound to look into this great... which seeks enjoyment and happiness. Secondly, he declared that he would reject the aim which seeks to attain victory and rule and power and government of men, — the aim that was described in the Indian dharma for the kshatriya, the man of power and action. Thirdly, he rejected the ethical element that was the main spring of the entire preparation for the war. His arguments in this connection... what direction and how we should move forward. Time has come when it is perfectly possible for humanity to develop a comprehensive and integral culture where both spirit and matter can join together and create a spiritualised society that can at last answer to the perennial aspiration of humanity expressed in terms of a new earth and a new heaven, of the City of God and of the Kingdom of God on ...
... their ideal rule or creed, are crimes against the religion of humanity, abominable to its ethical mind, forbidden by its primary tenets, to be fought against always, in no degree to be tolerated. Man must be sacred to man regardless of all distinctions of race, creed, colour, nationality, status, political or social advancement. The body of man is to be respected, made immune from violence and outrage... self-development and organised in the play of its powers for the service of humanity. And all this too is not to be held as an abstract or pious sentiment, but given full and practical recognition in the persons of men and nations and mankind. This, speaking largely, is the idea and spirit of the intellectual religion of humanity. One has only to compare human life and thought and feeling a century... progress the religion of humanity. War, capital punishment, the taking of human life, cruelty of all kinds whether committed by the individual, the State or society, not only physical cruelty, but moral cruelty, the degradation of any human being or any class of human beings under whatever specious plea or in whatever interest, the oppression and exploitation of man by man, of class by class, of nation ...
... should be to begin by serving yourself. Is there then no need for service to humanity? Hospitals, nursing organisations, charitable institutions have not been useful to humanity? Has not the spirit of philanthropy mended and improved the conditions of human life? Has it, I ask? You have tried to help a few people here and there. But what does it amount to compared to what needs to be done? The... the work and continue. But do not imagine that you are doing any real or effective service to humanity; particularly do not imagine that by that you are serving God, leading a spiritual life or doing Yoga. Just an illustration of the quality of the spirit that animates humanitarianism. A charitable man will give generously for a thing that is known, recognised, appreciated; he will be liberal if... To wish to serve humanity, to do good to it shows ambition and egoism? How? Why do you wish to serve humanity? What is your purpose? What is your motive? Do you know in what consists the good of humanity? And do you know better than humanity itself what is good for it? Or do you know it better than the Divine? You say the Divine is everywhere, so if you serve humanity, it is the Divine whom ...
... divine light.” Page 105 In the last hymn, the Rigveda enjoins a gospel for a harmonious collective life, a life in which people would work together, would think together, would speak together, would agree together, — all in harmony. Even today, humanity can hear those great and inspiring words: "May you move together, may you speak together in one voice; may your thoughts be of one accord... the Gita is not the last word of the Vedic tradition and the Vedic tradition has continuously striven to grow more and more on those lines by which larger and larger sections of people, more and more gradations of humanity can be embraced and uplifted. If we examine the tradition with deeper insight, we shall find that there were three distinct stages in the development of that tradition. The first... cannot discover that light by which humanity can meet the invasion of the forces of the unreason and of the subconscient and the inconscient and build a world of peace and harmony. A stage has been reached where boundaries of human faculties have to be broken so that a new humanity or super-humanity can be built. The present crisis of humanity is, therefore, termed by Sri Aurobindo as "ev ...
... the brain reels, the body sinks, the heart is sick and hopeless and the man is ready to say anything his torturers believe or want to be the truth. It is a true Inquisition; the mediaeval name fits these modern refinements. The English people have often been accused as a brutal or a stupid nation; but they have a rugged humanity when their Page 46 interests are not touched and enjoy glimpses... admire, in whatever climes, the elusiveness and fine casualness of Indian perjury or the robust manly cheery downrightness of Saxon cross-swearing. If the Courts convince us of our common humanity by making all men liars, they yet preserve a relishable unlikeness in likeness. And I think that even theology or metaphysics does not give such admirable chances for subtlety as the Law, nor even Asiatic... not roused and bribery does not enter, the Page 48 poor muddled magistrate does his honest best, and where there is a system of trial by jury, the blunders, whims and passions of twelve men may decide your fate less insanely than the caprices of a Kazi,—though even that is hardly certain. At any rate, if the dice are apt to be loaded, it is, with the exceptions noted, not on one but on ...
... living unity of the Shaktis of three hundred million people; but She is inactive, imprisoned in the magic circle of Tamas, the self-indulgent inertia and ignorance of her sons. * Our aim will therefore be to help in building up India for the sake of humanity — this is the spirit of Nationalism which we profess and follow. We say to humanity: “The time has come when you must take the great step... spirit that inspires us that we take our place among the standard bearers of the new humanity that is struggling to be born amidst the chaos of a world in dissolution, and of the future India, the greater India of the rebirth that is to rejuvenate the mighty outworn body of the ancient Mother. * The young men of Bengal who had rushed forward in the frenzy of the moment, in the inspiration of the... existence into the higher, deeper and wider life towards which humanity moves. The problems which have troubled mankind can only be solved by conquering the kingdom within, not by harnessing the forces of Nature to the service of comfort and luxury, but by mastering the forces of the intellect and the spirit, by vindicating the freedom of man within as well as without and by conquering from within external ...
... Therefore, do not follow after sorrow nor be a wanderer without a goal. The man who is full of faith and goodness, who possesses glory and wealth, is revered wherever he goes. Men of goodness shine afar like the snowy peaks of the Himalayas. Whereas wicked men are no more visible than arrows shot in the night. The man who eats alone, sleeps alone, walks alone untiring in his self-mastery, will... in the solitude of the forest that it seizes you, it happens when something in you is ready, when the time has come, when the true need is there, when the Grace is with you. It seems to me that humanity has made some progress and the true victory must be won in life itself. You must know how to live alone with the Eternal and Infinite in the midst of all circumstances. You must know how to be... facts, because it is quite certain that eating alone, sleeping alone, living in the forest all alone is not enough to give you freedom of spirit. Page 275 It has been noticed that most people who live alone in the forest become friendly with all the animals and plants around them; but it is not at all the fact of being all alone that gives you the power of entering into an inner contemplation ...
... therefore of individual spirituality to the Hebrews, the People of the Law. His legacy would be an important contribution to the development of individualism in the West. The soul is a part of the Divine – the Son of Man is also the Son of God. As each human being has a soul, Christ declared that he had come to show a new way to the whole of humanity, low as well as high. This doubly offended the Hebraic... ancient Asia, is surrounded or neighboured by enormous masses of the old infrarational humanity and endangered by this menacing proximity; for until a developed science comes in to redress the balance, the barbarian has always a greater physical force and unexhausted native power of aggression than the cultured peoples. At this stage the light and power of civilisation always collapses in the end before... centred on man alone” (de Romilly). In other words, the humanism and individualism for which the culture of ancient Greece is so highly praised and which would run as a golden thread through the subsequent stages of the West originated with the sophists. It should however be stressed that all this concerns the Western civilisation. The irreversible acquisition of the rational mind by humanity in Greece ...
... belching shot and men missioned to murder like war-planes or hostile tanks in a modern battlefield. It would regard the peoples as group-souls, the Divinity concealed and to be self-discovered in its human collectivities, group-souls meant like the individual to grow according to their own nature and by that growth to help each other, to help the whole race in the one common work of humanity. And that work... kind, but to give to men—not only to some but to all men each in his highest possible measure—the joy of work according to their own nature and free leisure to grow inwardly, as well as a simply rich and beautiful life for all. In its politics it would not regard the nations within the scope of their own internal life as enormous State machines regulated and armoured with man living for the sake of... of material Science. A development of this kind is far enough away from the dreams of the mass of men, but there are certain pale hints and presages of such a possibility and ideas which lead to it are already held by a great number who are perhaps in this respect the yet unrecognised vanguard of humanity. It is not impossible that behind the confused morning voices of the hour a light of this kind, ...
... influential man among the Hindus to declare for him. No such man is forthcoming. All are either bought by Bluysen or wish to be on the winning side. Under these circumstances the danger is that the people will not vote at all and the electoral committee will be forced to manufacture in their names bogus votes for Bluysen. On the other hand an impression has been made at Karikal, where the young men are working... his letter Sri Aurobindo gave some other pieces of news. "Meanwhile Richard intends to remain in India for 2 years and work for the people. He is trying to start an Association of the young men of Pondicherry and Karikal as a sort of training ground from which men can be chosen for the Vedantic Yoga. Everything is a little nebulous as yet. I shall write to you about it when things are more definite... Anglophil.... Let these facts be widely known in Chandernagore both about Bluysen and Lemaire, let it be known that Richard is a Hindu in faith, a Hindu in heart and a man whose whole life is devoted to the ideal of lifting up humanity and specially Asia and India and supporting the oppressed against the strong, the cause of the future which is our cause against all that hampers and resists it. If after ...
... whom Barin acted as medium was his own father Dr. Krishnadhan. Once when Tilak was present, and Dr. Krishnadhan's spirit was asked what kind of man the Lokamanya was, the answer came: "When all your work will be ruined and many men bow their heads down, this man will keep his head erect." This was an anticipation of the greatness of Tilak's compelling eminence after the first suppression of the nationalist... the community, the country, or future humanity. To be able to serve others, not solely oneself, one must acquire the larger vision and the capacity for self-abnegation that makes one ready to sacrifice one's personal happiness, one's very life even, at he altar of a noble cause. Pururavas failed; Rum failed; Sunjoy was weak and miserable. They failed their people, they failed Bharat; and Sunjoy wished... practise is not for ourselves alone, but for the humanity. Its object is not personal mukti [salvation]... but the liberation of the human race." 9 * At about the same time, recapitulating his political days he wrote to a friend: I entered into political action and continued it from 1903 to 1910 with one aim and one alone, to get into the mind of the people a settled will for freedom and the necessity ...
... is to be secured, the peoples of humanity must be allowed to group themselves according to their free-will and their natural affinities; no constraint or force could be allowed to compel an unwilling nation or distinct grouping of peoples to enter into another system or join itself or remain joined to it for the convenience, aggrandisement or political necessity of another people or even for the general... living idea or religion of humanity; for only so could there come the psychological modification of life and feeling and outlook which would accustom both individual and group to live in their common humanity first and most, subduing their individual and group egoism, yet losing nothing of their individual or group power to develop and express in its own way the divinity in man which, once the race was... removal of war and the recognition of the right of self-determination of the peoples the arrangement of the economic life of the world in its new order by mutual and common agreement would have to be added as the third condition of a free union. There remains the psychological question of the advantage to the soul of humanity, to its culture, to its intellectual, moral, aesthetic, spiritual growth. ...
... of 1964. “The only hope for the future is a change of man’s consciousness and the change is bound to come. But it is left to men to decide if they will collaborate for this change or if it will have to be enforced upon them by the power of crushing circumstances.” 16 She also said: “Nothing but a radical change of consciousness can save humanity from the terrible plight into which it is plunged.”... said the Mother in October 1956, “is that the time has come when some beings among the élite 36 of humanity, who fulfil the conditions necessary for spiritualization, will be able to transform their bodies with the help of the supramental Force, Consciousness and Light, so as no longer to be animal-men but overmen. 37 Sri Aurobindo has made this promise, and he based it on the knowledge he had that... earth in the life of humanity, for a Truth that has yet to realise itself fully and against a darkness and falsehood that are trying to overwhelm the earth and mankind in the immediate future. It is the forces behind the battle that have to be seen and not this or that superficial circumstance … It is a struggle for the liberty of mankind to develop, for conditions in which men have freedom and room ...
... manifested, greatness is claimed by humanity as something that reveals the possibility of the race. The highest utility of greatness is not merely to attract us but to inspire us to follow it and rise to our own highest spiritual stature. To the majority of men Truth remains abstract, impersonal and far unless it is seen and felt concretely in a human personality. A man never knows a truth actively except... devoted his energies to the task of saving humanity from the threatened reign of Nazism. It was a practical lesson of solid work done for humanity without any thought of return or reward, without even letting humanity know what he was doing for it! Thus he lived the Divine and showed us how the Divine cares for the world, how he comes down and works for man. I shall never forget how he who was at... the larger public. Page 9 III EVENING SITTINGS Sri Aurobindo was never a social man in the current sense of the term and definitely he was not a man of the crowd, This was due to his grave temperament, not to any feeling of superiority or to repulsion for men. At Baroda there was an Officer's Club which was patronised by the Maharajah and though Sri Aurobindo enrolled ...
... in a fighting movement … Any Weltanschauung, though a thousand times right and supremely beneficial to humanity, will be of no practical service for the maintenance of a people as long as its principles have not yet become the rallying point of a militant movement”. 175 From the beginning this man was convinced that he was bringing a new “Weltanschauung”, a new world vision, and still more a new Faith... of an elite Free Corps brigade, refused, just like Röhm, to give in to a man who in his eyes was an amateurish and pretentious, if not lunatic, ex-corporal. (At that time Adolf Hitler’s name was in the ranks of his own people often mockingly abbreviated to “Ahi”.) According to Höhne’s sources, Ehrhardt not only withdrew his men from the SA, he turned against Hitler and his Party. “In close cooperation... Höhne. 189 Of this fact we have an eyewitness, Ernst Hanfstängl: “Hitler worked more or less openly with the Ehrhardt Brigade people … When I first started going to the Beobachter offices, which was the headquarters of the plot, the two men on guard at Hitler’s door were not SA men at all, but members of the Organization Consul, that section of the Ehrhardt group which had been behind the murders of Erzberger ...
... force of the infrarational man, as he develops, is an inferior intuition, an instinctively intuitional sight arising out of the force of life in him, and the transition from this to an intensity of inner life and the growth of a deeper spiritual intuition which outleaps the intellect and seems to dispense with it, is an easy passage in the individual man. But for humanity at large this movement cannot... ancient Asia, is surrounded or neighboured by enormous masses of the old infrarational humanity and endangered by this menacing proximity; for until a developed science comes in to redress the balance, the barbarian has always a greater physical force and unexhausted native power of aggression than the cultured peoples. At this stage the light and power of civilisation always collapses in the end before... work for their own ends; they are bond-slaves of his infrarational nature. At a higher stage of development or of a return towards a fuller evolution,—for the actual savage in humanity is perhaps not the original primitive man, but a relapse and reversion towards primitiveness,—the infrarational stage of society may arrive at a very lofty order of civilisation. It may have great intuitions of the meaning ...
... as yet rather the last twilight which divides the dying from the unborn age than the real dawning. For a time, since the mind of man is not yet ready, the old spirit and method may yet be strong and seem for a short while to prosper; but the future lies with the men and nations who first see beyond both the glare and the dusk the gods of the morning and prepare themselves to be fit instruments... of the Power that is pressing towards the light of a greater ideal. Sri Aurobindo Only when man has developed not merely a fellow-feeling with all men, but a dominant sense of unity and commonalty, only when he is aware of them not merely as brothers, — that is a fragile bond, — but as parts of himself, only when he has learned to live not in his separate... activities. Therefore it will hold sacred all the different parts of man's life which correspond to the parts of his being, all his physical, vital, dynamic, emotional, aesthetic, ethical, intellectual, psychic evolution, and see in them instruments for a growth towards a diviner living. It will regard every human society, nation, people or other organic aggregate from Page 20 ...
... in the omniscient Silence, or My soul unhorizoned widens to measureless sight. Poetry has its obligations to men but it has also its obligations to the Gods: it is not altogether a man-made thing and so other planes than that on which man is normally at home have their rights of expression — and expression in their own modes and not just in the modes of the human intelligence... important methods is to expose, through poetry, humanity as much as possible to them in their own original form instead of "mentalising" them. The responses called forth by such exposure are dynamic in a manner that nothing else can equal. Mental explanation and elucidation and interpretation of the mystical Beyond by poetry can be helpful in preparing humanity for a step inward and upward; yet we cannot... that according to you the communication by this speech to the bulk of readers is nil Page 24 and hence this speech must be eschewed, no matter how deep and high it may be, until humanity has evolved beyond its present level by means of the poetry which converts mysticism into terms mentally understandable. But is it true that here general communication is nil? What I declared ...
... be to cultivate, sharpen and transform the faculties and powers of personality leading towards an unprecedented perfection that would enhance man's capacities to collaborate consciously with the upward march of evolution. It is imperative that humanity rises in maturity so as to make the right use of scientific discoveries and inventions in order that they are not utilised in the service of lower... of the amounts that are going to be spent in 1967 on arms could finance economic, social, national and world programmes to an extent so far unimaginable is a notion within the grasp of the man in the street. Men, if they unite, are now capable of foreseeing and, to a certain point, determining the future of human development. This, however, is possible if we stop fearing and harassing one another and... what must surely change is certain political attitudes and habits man has."* As a matter of fact, almost from the beginning of our present century, themes of the ideal of human unity and of the necessity of change of human nature, had seized the movements of the resurgence of Asia and intellectual idealism of Europe. Asiatic peoples had begun to make bold and clear claims to equality and independence ...
... Page 394 of their consciousness) than to people having a religion—much easier! But naturally, from the intellectual point of view, all human convictions have an explanation and a place. There is nothing men have thought which is not the deformation of a truth. The difficulty is not there, but rather in the fact that for religious people there are things which it is their duty to believe... that generally. For them, all the experiences that men have are the result of a mental phenomenon—it is that. We have attained a progressive mental development. They would be quite unable to say why or how!—but in brief, it is Matter that has developed Life, and Life that has developed Mind, and all the so-called spiritual experiences of man are mental constructions—they use other words, but I believe... repeat, I do not know where they stand now, but I was faced with a conviction like that. And so I said: "But it is very simple I accept your point of view. There is nothing else except what we see, humanity as it is, and all the so-called inner phenomena are due to a mental, a cerebral action; and when you die, you die—that is to say, when the phenomenon of agglomeration reaches the end of its life and ...
... into account in a true and living education, the man, the individual in his commonness and in his uniqueness, the nation or people and universal humanity. It follows that that alone will be a true and living education which helps to bring out to full advantage, makes ready for the full purpose and scope of human life all that is in the individual man, and which at the same time helps him to enter into... one great need, to find and rebuild her true self in individual and in people and to take again, thus repossessed of her inner greatness, her due and natural portion and station in the life of the human race. There are however very different conceptions possible of man and his life, of the nation and its life and of humanity and the life of the human race, and our idea and endeavour in education... into his right relation with the life, mind and soul of the people to which he belongs and with that great total life, mind and soul of humanity of which he himself is a unit and his people or nation a living, a separate and yet inseparable member. It is by considering the whole question in the light of this large and entire principle that we can best arrive at a clear idea of what we would have our ...
... in a true and living education, the man, the individual in his commonness and in his uniqueness, the nation or people and universal humanity. It follows that that alone will be a true and living education which helps to bring out to full advantage, makes ready for the full purpose and scope of human life all that is in the in- Page 13 dividual man, and which at the same time helps him... one great need, to find and rebuild her true self in individual and in people and to take again, thus repossessed of her inner greatness, her due and natural portion and station in the life of the human race. There are however very different conceptions possible of man and his life, of the nation and its life and of humanity and the life of the human race, and our idea and endeavour in education... him to enter into his right relation with the life, mind and soul of the people to which he belongs and with that great total life, mind and soul of humanity of which he himself is a unit and his people or nation a living, a separate and yet inseparable member. It is by considering the whole question in the light of this large and entire principle that we can best arrive at a clear idea of what we would ...
... dynastic and aristocratic; greedy kings and martial nobles driven by earth-hunger and battle-hunger, diplomatists playing at chess with the lives of men and the fortunes of nations, these were the guilty causes of war who drove the unfortunate peoples to the battle-field like sheep to the shambles. These proletariates, mere food for powder, who had no interest, no desire, no battle-hunger driving them... them. Man's illusions are of all sorts and kinds, some of them petty though not unimportant,—for nothing in the world is unimportant,—others vast and grandiose. The greatest of them all are those which cluster round the hope of a perfected society, a perfected race, a terrestrial millennium. Each new idea religious or social which takes possession of the epoch and seizes on large masses of men, is in... hope and confident prediction should be answered as soon as may well be by the irony of the gods; for only so can we be driven to the perception of the real remedy. Only when man has developed not merely a fellow-feeling with all men, but a dominant sense of unity and commonalty, only when he is aware of them not merely as brothers,—that is a fragile bond,—but as parts of himself, only when he has learned ...
... force, whatever man Desires, whatever the wild beast enjoys, Bodies of women and the lives of men, I claim to be my kingdom. I have force My title to substantiate, and I seek No crown unearned, no lordship undeserved. Ask what austerity Thou wilt, Maker of man, Expense of blood or labour or long years Spent in tremendous meditations, lives Upon Thy altar spent of brutes or men, Or if with gold... shall rule the peopled earth. He takes the brute into himself for man, Yielding it offerings, while with grandiose thoughts And violent aspirations he controls; He purifies the demon in the race, Slaying in wrath, not cruelty. Awhile He puts the Vánara out of the world, Accustoming to grandeur all mankind; Page 322 The Ifrit 1 he rejects. Were he denied His period, man could not... priests. I have a heart, A hand for any mighty sacrifice, A fiery patience in my vehement mood; I will submit. But ask not this of me, Meek silence and a pale imprisoned soul Made colourless of its humanity; Ask not the heart that quakes, the hand that spares. What strength can give, not weakness, that demand. O Rudra, O eternal Mahádev, Thou too art fierce and mighty, wrathful, bold, Snuffing Thy ...
... and to pour itself out as a force for growth and perfection on humanity. The law for humanity is to pursue its upward evolution towards the finding and expression of the Divine in the type of mankind, taking full advantage of the free development Page 123 and gains of all individuals and nations and groupings of men, to work towards the day when mankind may be really and not only... Aurobindo, therefore, speaks of a union of free people which could open the prospect of a sound and lasting order. In this context, the emergence of a religion of humanity is of a greater significance, although he finds its present intellectual form hardly sufficient. Sri Aurobindo, therefore, advocates the emergence of a spiritual religion of humanity and explains that he does not mean by it what... that a rational satisfaction cannot give to humanity safety from the pull from below nor deliver it from the attraction Page 126 from above. It is true that the more the outer law is replaced by the inner law, the nearer will man be to his natural perfection, and the perfect State must be one in which governmental compulsion is abolished and man is able to live with his fellowmen by a free ...
... it seems, has cured a blind man ; and St. Xavier at Goa still cures many people of their diseases . Sri Aurobindo : That is a very common thing. In France at the Notre Dame several lame people were immediately cured. These cases can be seen by anybody who wants to be convinced about their existence. Only the forces, in such case, work very irregularly. Some people get cured absolutely, while... understand why, if Truth is one, men should get .different visions. All must get the same experience if the thing is true. Sri Aurobindo : As if the world was so poor as not to be able to give different visions on the same plane. Disciple : Whenever the Avatar – the incarnation – comes, does he not undergo a period of Sadhana to make it possible for humanity to attain a higher consciousness... his daughter's marriage and suggested certain names. Brahma said all those people had already died ! While he was listening to the song some ten thousand human years had passed and all was changed ! The father asked Brahma what was to be done. He said : "Well, Krishna and Balaram, and others have gone down – to humanity – you may go and give your daughter to Balaram." So, Revati was married to ...
... country, but this sordid appeal to the lowest motives in humanity, selfishness and cowardice, makes one's gorge rise. And this is the man who claims, we hear, to have preceded the Nationalists as a prophet of self-sacrifice and the cult of the motherland. Well may we echo the cry of the Israelite malcontents, "These be thy gods, O Israel!" The People's Proclamation In our last issue we commented on... hardly seems to know what discretion means. In the same way he tried to teach the young men of India, among whom he admits that the gospel of independence has gained immense ground, that violence was the only road to the realisation of their cherished ideal. Finally, we find Mr. Gokhale appealing to the people of this country to give up their ideals from personal self-interest and the danger of harassment... are curious to Page 282 know how the people will take it. Their attitude will be some sign of the present altitude of the political thermometer. The tone and temper of the movement showed a distinct rise till the Hughly Conference, subsequently it seems to have been sinking. And no wonder, with such leadership. Even a nation of strong men led by the weak, blind or selfish, becomes easily ...
... his identity with it. He on himself takes vicariously all the suffering of mankind. He may not have any personal suffering as people speak of it, but the grief is there by his identity with the cosmic self: he receives all the grief of the human being, all the grief of humanity into himself, so vicariously there is always suffering within him, even if there is no personal cause for grief. The battle... grow wider with each fall. Its splendid failures sum to victory. And then Narada addresses the human being. He is talking to the Queen, but suddenly he addresses humanity rather than replying to her directly: Oh man, the events that meet thee in thy road, Though they smite thy body and soul with joy and grief. Are not thy fate; they touch thee awhile and pass; ... to me for earth and men. Now perhaps it is good that I give you two passages which are very important in the sense that they are the height of inspiration: first, when Aswapathy stands before the supreme Mother and later when he prays to her for a boon. These passages are preceded by a long argument by the supreme Mother persuading Aswapathy not to bother about solving man's problem. When Aswapathy ...
... plain in a letter which has been made public that we did not consider the war as a fight between nations and governments (still less between good people and bad people) but between two forces, the Divine and the Asuric. What we have to see is on which side men and nations put themselves; if they put themselves on the right side, they at once make themselves Page 26 ... Pandavas that these Virtuous men (including Krishna) brought about a huge slaughter that they might become supreme rulers over all the numerous free and independent peoples of India? That would be the result of weighing old happenings in the scales of modern ideals. As a matter of fact such an empire was a step in the right direction then, just as world-union of free peoples would be a step in the right... We should remember that conquest and rule over subject peoples were not regarded as wrong either in ancient or mediaeval or Page 27 quite recent times but as something great and glorious; men did not see special wickedness in conquerors or conquering nations. Just government of subject peoples was envisaged but nothing more-exploitation was not excluded. ...
... and attempts to apply the most absolute and integral realisation to the outer actualities of man's life and action. The relevance of the a has been in a sense perennial right from the time it Page 157 first appeared or was written into the frame of the Mahabharata. But considering that humanity is passing today through a grim and unprecedented crisis, we are bound to look into this great... which seeks enjoyment and happiness. Secondly, he declared that he would reject the aim which seeks to attain victory and rule and power and government of men, — the aim that was described in the Indian dharma for the kshatriya, the man of power and action. Thirdly, he rejected the ethical element that was the main spring of the entire preparation for the war. His arguments in this connection... what direction and how we should move forward. Time has come when it is perfectly possible for humanity to develop a comprehensive and integral culture where both spirit and matter can join together and create a spiritualised society that can at last answer to the perennial aspiration of humanity expressed in Page 169 terms of a new earth and a new heaven, of the City God and of ...
... lived here before him with the human face, in the mortal body, the divine Man, the embodied Godhead, the Avatar, and till now he has not known him. He has seen the humanity only and has treated the Divine as Page 388 a mere human creature. He has not pierced through the earthly mask to the Godhead of which the humanity was a vessel and a symbol, and he prays now for that Godhead's forgiveness... long evolutions of Time; of the original Godhead of whom Gods and men and all living creatures are the children, the powers, the souls, spiritually justified in their being by his truth of existence; of the Knower who develops in man the knowledge of himself and world and God; of the one Object of all knowing who reveals himself to man's heart and mind and soul, so that every new opening form of our knowledge... treatment of this Divine as the mere outward man, his seeing of only the mental and physical relation seems to him a sin against the Mightiness that was there. For the being whom he called Krishna, Yadava, comrade, was this immeasurable Greatness, this incomparable Might, this Spirit one in all of whom all are the creations. That and not the veiling outward humanity, avajānan mānuṣīṁ tanum āśritam , was ...
... delight in them, is not a spiritual man (one following the true law). This is a sign of error and narrowness. Buddha did not indulge in hymns and prayers but who would declare that Buddha is unspiritual? Hymns and prayers have developed for the practice of devotion. Men of devotion are also of many kinds and hymns and prayers are used in different ways. A man becoming a devotee because of distress... Many wise and learned people ask what is the use of worrying over the problem of self-knowledge. To waste one's time in such abstruse discussion is madness, better to engage oneself in the more important subjects of worldly life and try to do good to the world. But the problem as to what are the things important in worldly life and in what way good will come to humanity, needs for its solution... necessity, merges itself in God's self-enjoyment. And yet there is hardly a man of devotion who can do without hymns and prayers. When there is no need of the process and practice (sadhana) even then the heart wells out in hymns and prayers. Only one has to remember that the way is not the objective and my way may not be another's. Many men of devotion have this notion that one who does not take to hymns and ...
... capacity seems to have grown, mental power seems to have developed, men seem to be much more capable of playing Page 235 with ideas, of having mental command over all principles, but at the same time they have lost the simple and healthy candour of people who lived closer to Nature and knew less how to play with ideas. Thus humanity as a whole seems to have reached a very dangerous turning-point... written for rather Page 234 primitive people. The series of calamities that will befall you if you do harm is quite amusing. It would seem—provided of course that this is an exact record of the words that the Buddha spoke—that he must have changed the terms of his talks according to his audience and if he had to do with rustic people without education, he would speak a very material... can purify the mortal who has not cast away all doubt. However richly he is dressed, if a man cultivates tranquillity of mind, if he is calm, resigned, master of himself, pure, if he does no harm to any creature, he is a Brahmin, he is an ascetic, he is a Bhikkhu. Is there in this world a man beyond reproach that merits no blame, as a thoroughbred needs no blow from the whip? Like a ...
... an imperfect result; she endeavours to bring out a being who will be to man what man is to the animal, a being who will remain a man in his external form, and yet whose consciousness will rise far above the mental and its slavery to ignorance. Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to teach this truth to men. He told them that man is only a transitional being living in a mental consciousness, but with... supramental consciousness and to grow according to its law. Now, all depends on your will and your sincerity. If you have the will no more to belong to ordinary humanity, no more to be merely evolved animals; if your will is to become men of the new race realising Sri Aurobindo's supramental ideal, living a new and higher life upon a new earth, you will find here all the necessary help to achieve your... present in our midst, and with all the power of his creative genius he presides over the formation of the University Centre which for years he considered as one of the best means of preparing the future humanity to receive the supramental light that will transform the elite of today into a new race manifesting upon earth the new light and force and life. In his name I open today this convention meeting ...
... When you begin the Yoga for reasons of this kind, you are sure to meet great difficulties on the way. And then there is this great virtue in men's eyes: "philanthropy", "love of humanity"; so many people say, "I am going to do Yoga to be able to serve humanity, make the unhappy happy, organise the world in the happiest way for everybody." I say this is not sufficient—I do not say that this is bad in... this connection I could tell you something: long ago there were people who came here because they thought that joining the Ashram was sufficient to make one immortal. And they aspired much for immortality. Naturally, they were old people who did not see a very long road before them and desired to extend it indefinitely—for that is what men understand by "immortality", an indefinite prolongation of what... February Questions and Answers (1950-1951) 3 February 1951 "What do you want the Yoga for? To get power? To attain to peace and calm? To serve humanity? "None of these motives is sufficient to show that you are meant for the Path." Questions and Answers 1929 ( 7 April ) The main trouble is that you think with words, but these words ...
... the idea expressed in the apophthegm. What is stated here is much simpler and transparent. It is this that when the Divine is absent and the divine Knowledge, then comes in man with his human mental knowledge: it is man's humanity that clouds the Divine and to reach the' Divine one must reject the human values, all the moralities, salva dharmān, seek only the Divine. The lesser way lies through the... improved upon. Only with regard to the "ironical ring" of which Huxley speaks, it has just to be pointed out, as he himself seems to understand, that the "we" referred to in the phrase does not mean humanity in general that 'splashes about in the lower ooze' but those who have a sufficiently developed inner spiritual life. There is a quotation from Lao Tzu put under the heading "Grace and Free Will":... Philolaus, "The Universe is a Unity". The Eternal Wisdom has an introduction called "The Song of Wisdom" which begins with this saying from the Book of Wisdom: "We fight to win sublime Wisdom; therefore men call us warriors". Page 131 Huxley gives only one quotation from Sri Aurobindo under the heading "God in the World". Here it is: "The touch of Earth is always reinvigorating to the ...
... eruptions of human passions and emotions, stirred into activity by the ruthless Goddess of Distress or by the torch of the spoken word cast into the midst of the people.” Who, then, was the ideal promulgator of the spoken word? “Among a hundred men who call themselves orators today there are scarcely ten who are capable of speaking with effect before an audience of street-sweepers, locksmiths and navvies... spectacle men paid to see. It was not his fiery oratory, however, that won the crowds to his cause. This was certainly something new, but far more important was the seriousness with which his words were spoken”, writes Langer. He quotes Kurt Lüdecke: “Every one of his words comes out charged with a powerful current of energy; at times it seems as if they are torn from the very heart of the man, causing... . Even an implacable opponent like Otto Strasser had to concede: “This man, like a sensitive membrane, has found the way, thanks to an intuition which could not be replaced by intellectual capacities, to become the mouthpiece of the most secret desires, the darkest instincts, the suffering and the inner restiveness of a people … I have been asked so often what is the secret of Hitler’s extraordinary ...
... There are three things which have to be taken into account in a true and living education: (i) the man, the individual in his commonness and uniqueness, (ii) the nature or people, and (iii) universal humanity. For, as Sri Aurobindo has pointed out, "...within the universal mind and soul of humanity is the mind and soul of the individual with its infinite variation, its commonness and its uniqueness... full purpose and scope of human life all that is in the individual man, and which at the same time helps him to enter into his right relation with the life, mind and soul Page 8 of the people to which he belongs and with that great total life, mind and soul of humanity of which he himself is a unit and his people or nation a living, a separate and yet inseparable member." (SABCL... undeveloped stages of humanity but they are only outward things, parts of the instrumentation, mere accessories and never the fundamentals or the whole of the real man. All these are powers of the soul that manifests through them and grows with their growth, and yet they are not all the soul. These remarks naturally lead us to the question: What then, is man? And what should be the aim ...
... expecting from us and from humanity in general for the accomplishment of Your Work upon earth? Nothing. From Your long experience of over sixty years, have You found that Your expectation from us and from humanity has been sufficiently fulfilled? As I am expecting nothing I cannot answer this question. Does the success of Your Work for us and for humanity depend in any way upon the... be witnessed was the birth of Auroville, the City of Dawn; Auroville where the world's choicest youth could find a safe harbourage; Auroville where humanity could take bold steps to march towards Perfection. Since so much was at stake, awakened humanity should feel young enough to embark upon this massive adventure into the Future. Tamas, inertia, defeatism, lack of faith, failure of nerve would be... concourse of humanity gathered on the 28th morning in exemplary silence in a mood of prayerful expectancy. The dedication ceremony itself was memorably distinctive in its grand simplicity and symbolic sufficiency. There were no speeches, there was no visible presiding dignitary. But many were conscious of an invisible Presence that brooded with outspread protective wings over the mass of humanity as if ...
... kind of divination of this idea that made people speak of 'selling one's soul to the devil for money,' of money being an evil force, which produces this shrinking on the part of all those who want to lead a spiritual life—but as for that, they shrink from everything, not only from money! Perhaps it would not be necessary to have this power over all men, but in any event, it should be great enough... explained, from the moment mind expressed itself in man, it put him into a relationship with Nature very different from the relationship all the lower species have with her. All the lower species right up to man are completely under the rule of Nature; she makes them do whatever she wants, and they can do nothing without her consent. Whereas man begins to act and to live as an equal; not as an equal... power—that is, a power enabling him to control this everywhere, among all men) will have the right to enter.' In other words, these forces would not be able to prevent him from entering. A personal realization is very easy, it is nothing at all; a personal realization is one thing, but the power to control it among all men—that is, to control or master such movements at will, everywhere—is quite ...
... if, when the fury bursts, not a man, woman or child is safe and every man's hand is raised against his neighbour? The Mahatma had been prophetic indeed, and on 15 August and the days following "not a man, woman or child" was safe and every man's hand was raised against his brother and his neighbour. Also, it meant a colossal two-way traffic of uprooted humanity on the run Hindu and Sikh to India... misunderstood and reviled; and on 30 January 1948, he was struck down on his way to a prayer meeting. It was a black day for the people of India, and for all humanity On 4 February, Sri Aurobindo sent a wire in reply to a distracted devotee's call: "Remain firm through the darkness; the light is there and will conquer." 3 The next day he gave the nation a message in answer to a request from the All India... Vice-Chancellor, hailed Sri Aurobindo "in all humility of devotion... as the sole sufficing genius of the age... among the Saviours of Humanity". Dr. Reddy reached Pondicherry on 19 December 1948, and the Mother received him the same evening, and found him a nice man who was quick to understand things. Next morning he had an interview with Sri Aurobindo whom he had known as a senior colleague over forty ...
... their own will submitted to all the sufferings of which humanity is capable. We are the children of those mothers who ascended with a smile the funeral pyre that they might follow their husbands to another world. We are a people to whom suffering is welcome and who have a spiritual strength within them, greater than any physical force, we are a people in whom God has chosen to manifest himself more than... As we were doing so the Scotch warder came and gave me a push. The young men around me became very excited and I did nothing but gave him such a look that he immediately fled and called the jailor. It was a communicative anger and all the young men rallied round to attack him. When the jailor who was rather a religious man arrived, the warder said I had given him an 'insubordinate look'. The jailor... was not blind to them before and when they all rose up against me in seclusion, I felt them utterly. I knew then that I the man was a mass of weakness, a faulty and imperfect instrument, strong only when a higher strength entered into me. Then I found myself among these young men and in many of them I discovered a mighty courage, a power of self-effacement in comparison with which I was simply nothing ...
... right thing. I believe Hitler to be the arch enemy not only of Germany, but indeed of the entire world … A man’s moral worth is established only at the point where he is prepared to give his life for his convictions … Just as God once promised Abraham that he would spare Sodom if only ten just men could be found in the city, I also have reason to hope that, for our sake, he will not destroy Germany.”... leadership. The training and refinement of this cadre was something George regarded as a mission, a sacred duty, a discharging of his own personal responsibility to Germany – and, beyond Germany, to humanity as a whole, to the life of the spirit, to the cosmos and whatever gods or governing principles presided over it.” 718 His also had to be mystical warriors, soldiers of the spirit engaged on a spiritual... 720 Then Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. “George had always decreed that politics were alien to art – and, by extension, inimical to the life of the spirit and to the very essence of humanity itself. His attitude towards the Nazis, however, sometimes appeared inconsistent, and this allowed a few members of his circle to support them … Ultimately, George was hostile to the new regime … ...
... " Those who are poor, ignorant, ill-born or ill-bred are not the common herd; the common herd are all who are satisfied with pettiness and an average humanity. " Help men, but do not pauperise them of their energy; lead and instruct men, but see that their initiative and originally remain intact; take others into thyself, but give them in return the full godhead of their nature. He who can... All that Sri Aurobindo says here is aimed at fighting against human nature with its inertia, its heaviness, laziness, easy satisfactions, hostility to all effort. How many times in life does one meet people who become pacifists because they are afraid Page 65 to fight, who long for rest before they have earned it, who are satisfied with a little progress and in their imagination and desires... it into a marvellous realisation so as to justify their stopping half-way. In ordinary life, already, this happens so much. Indeed, this is the bourgeois ideal, which has deadened mankind and made man into what he is now: "Work while you are young, accumulate wealth, honour, position; be provident, have a little foresight, put something by, lay up a capital, become an official—so that later when you ...
... “The mission of the German people ends – this is my rock-solid conviction – at the last hour of humanity”, for the German people have “to fulfil their destiny which consists in the salvation of the world … The German power and strength and magnificence are needed to cure the world!” 1002 And then follows an odd syllogism: “The soul is by nature Christian”; only the German people have a soul; therefore... leaves very little time for Eckart to coach the man whom he called “my Adolf” and with whom he developed “a very personal and intimate relation” (Bärsch), as it also left little time for a preparation of the resolute way in which Hitler took up the challenge. We know that Hitler had no doubts from the start about his vocation as the Leader of the German people, and that he entered the DAP with the explicit... the scenes. The only explanation covering all these pointers is that Hitler must have been revealed as “the Man” during séances of spiritism. It has been shown elsewhere in our story that shortly after the war spiritism was a very common practice in Germany, not only because so many people wanted to keep the contact with their fallen near and dear ones, but also out of intellectual and spiritual ...
... "Mr. Morley is a great bookman, a great democrat, a great Page 377 exponent of principles. No man better fitted than he to prove that when the noblest human movements are being suppressed by imprisonment and the sword, it is done in the interests of humanity; that when a people struggling to live is trampled down by repression, pushed back by the use of the Goorkha and the hooligan, the... our one and only Asanuddin declared that the evidence of respectable men was not to be believed because they were respectable and graduates of the Calcutta University and partakers in the Conference; the police apparently were the only disinterested and truthful people in Khulna. But the most remarkable dictum of this remarkable man was that when one is charged with sedition it is not necessary to prove... we have a strange companion picture to that dream of a benevolent and angelic Britain, - a city of unarmed men terrorised by the military, the leaders of the people hurried from their daily avocations to prison, siege-guns pointed at the town, police rifles ready to fire on any group of five men or more to be seen in the streets, bail refused to respectable pleaders and barristers from sheer terror of ...
... incubation might have produced results less disastrous to itself, if less violently stimulative to humanity. The real source of this great subjective force which has been so much disfigured in its objective action, was not in Germany's statesmen and soldiers—for the most part poor enough types of men—but came from her great philosophers, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Nietzsche, from her great thinker and poet... soul with all the possibilities and dangers of the soul-life. The objective view of society has reigned throughout the historical period of humanity in the West; it has been sufficiently strong though not absolutely engrossing in the East. Rulers, people and thinkers alike have understood by their national existence a political status, the extent of their borders, their economic well-being and expansion... of the body, though a very living shell indeed and potent in its influences on the nation, when we begin to feel that its more real body is the men and women who compose the nation-unit, a body ever changing, yet always the same like that of the individual man, we are on the way to a truly subjective communal consciousness. For then we have some chance of realising that even the physical being of the ...
... eradicate this plague [i.e. the Jews]’, Hitler had prophesied during the march on Moscow, ‘we shall accomplish something for humanity of which our men at the front cannot have an idea as yet’. This also meant that those men killed and died without knowing why. And the people around him cheered without knowing why. They became excited when Hitler told them what was at stake and believed in his infallibility... as few people as possible to know as little as possible as late as possible.” 627 “On the basis of the structure of the system of authority [in Hitler Germany], one can with certainty accept that an operation so extensive and demanding such great resources in personnel and materiel, as did the murder of millions of people in all parts of Europe, was only possible with the consent of the man at the... ne Befehl (the unwritten order) about the direct responsibility of Hitler. He asserts that this responsibility can be proven by examining Hitler’s many utterances and talks to generals, groups of people belonging to the regime, and personal conversations. It was Hitler’s aim, says Longerich, never to give direct instructions, but to create “a certain climate” in which the executive organs of the regime ...
... result in an ascension of humanity without equal up to now, in “the apparition of a humanity of heroes, of half-gods, of men-gods.”’ 17 Hermann Rauschning quotes Hitler’s own words: ‘When Hitler turned to me, he tried to formulate his vocation as the harbinger of a new humanity in rational and concrete terms. He said: “Creation is not finished. It is clear that man has reached a phase of me... membership of an immortal people — that was the message he would impart to the world when the time came. Hitler would be the first to achieve what Christianity was meant to have been, a joyous message that liberated men from the things that burdened their life. We should no longer have any fear of death and should lose the fear of a so-called bad conscience. Hitler would restore men to the self-confident... earth in the life of humanity, for a Truth that has yet to realise itself fully and against a darkness and falsehood that are trying to overwhelm the earth and mankind in the immediate future. It is the forces behind the battle that have to be seen and not this or that superficial circumstance … It is a struggle for the liberty of mankind to develop, for conditions in which men have freedom and room ...
... kind heart treats all men and even animals as members of one family, one humanity. Do we not meet people every day who know less than we do? It is in our power to tell them things which may be useful on matters such as food, clothing, exercise, work and recreation. It is our duty to give them knowledge as it is our duty to give bread to the hungry. An ignorant man does harm to himself and... 247 Even the greatest people on earth do not know everything. We should learn from one another, man from man, nation from nation, one part of the world from another; each nation, each man should be glad to teach what he knows. The peoples of the West bring to the East their knowledge of science, technology, economics, etc. From all time the peoples of the East have given to the West... rescue him from his torment. But you see how miserable we can be as a result of the bad work, the bad art, the bad music of people around us. If a man is hungry, what is the only thing that will relieve him? Food. If a man is thirsty, what will relieve him? Water. If a man is ignorant, what is the only thing that will help him? Knowledge. It is good to give bread to the hungry, water to the ...
... the revolutionary slogan "Men are born equal", men were carried away in the vehemence of the new spirit and thought that there was absolutely no difference between man and man, all difference must be due to injustice, tyranny and corruption in the social system. Rousseau's was a necessary protest and corrective against the rank inequality that was the order of the day. All men are, however, equal not... same needs and requirements. This does not mean that the needs of the princes, the aristocrats, the magnates are greater than those of the mere commoner. No, it means that there are people, there is a section of humanity found more or less in all these classes, but mostly in less fortunate classes, whose needs are intrinsically greater and they require preferential treatment. There should be none poor... necessary perhaps; for larger, wider, indeed world-wide unities have to be found and established for the unification of the whole of humanity. But in the drive towards that-goal Nature seems to have overlooked for the moment the case of the individual, and naturally, man has been blind and one-sided in his attempts to reform and rebuild society and the world. This neglected thread has to be taken up ...
... the revolutionary slogan "Men are born equal", men were carried away in the vehemence of the new spirit and thought that there was absolutely no difference between man and man, all difference must be due to injustice, tyranny and corruption in the social system. Rousseau's was a necessary protest and corrective against the rank inequality that was the order of the day. All men are, however, equal not... same needs and requirements. This does not mean that the needs of the princes, the aristocrats, the magnates are greater than those of the mere commoner. No, it means that there are people, there is a section of humanity found more or less in all these classes, but mostly in less fortunate classes, whose needs are intrinsically greater and they require preferential treatment. There should be none poor... necessary perhaps; for larger, wider, indeed world-wide unities have to be found and established for the unification of the whole of humanity. But in the drive towards that goal Nature seems to have overlooked for the moment the case of the individual, and naturally, man has been blind and one-sided in his attempts to reform and and rebuild society and the world. This neglected thread has to be taken ...
... Aurobindo 28.May-22.Dec.1907 Bande Mataram Sacrifice and Redemption 14-September-1907 The abiding attributes of humanity, those that have endured through time's changes and have redeemed man's nature from the mortality of the flesh, have behind them a tradition of sacrifice. There is not a single ideal in the world that has been able to secure permanence... immortal spirit that transcends more the agonies of the mortal flesh. The sight of the man who makes light of sufferings, even of death, for the sake of an idea or a faith, turns the thoughts of his fellowmen to that for which he thus suffers. Surely there is something in Page 676 the ideal for which a man can readily suffer and die, is the first prompting of their heart. And provided there... there is truth and reality in the martyr's creed, the future of its cause is assured. That which is true has always exercised a mystic compulsion over men; wedded to sacrifice it has never failed to win their active adherence. He who seeks to fill India with the Nationalist faith must first recognise this supreme necessity of sacrifice. The truth that he inculcates has had its martyrs in every country ...
... sink, then mankind sinks with you, without any hope of resurrection.” 388 “Fichte and other Romantics radicalized the Christian apocalyptic”, writes Michael Ley, “the salvation of humanity is no longer the task of God but of Man, in whom God incarnates himself. The new bringers of salvation and redeemers of the world are the Germans … The Germans will build a worldwide empire of the spirit … The Jews ... like all important changes in history they provoke resistance and often passionate enmity. The existential and ideological growth of humanity was mostly fought out on the battlefield (and so was its spiritual growth). The role of the emotions or life-forces in humanity can be followed, in their dialectical battle with reason, from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance into the Romantic period. The... itself in world history, thereby aiming at a cosmic salvation. The dominant people in the ongoing phase of world history were, taught Hegel, the Germans. “The other peoples have no rights against the absolute right of the Germans to be the carriers of the present phase of the development of the World Spirit”, and the other peoples “do not count any longer in world history”. To the Germans fell the mission ...
... very respectable, because ( Mother laughs ) birth is a 'purge'! And he had said also: observe carefully the children of bad people, because they are often a reaction! And after my experience, when I had seen, I said to myself: 'But this man was quite right! It is a way for men to purge themselves. They throw out of themselves all that they do not want'.... And it is very interesting, because that gives... rest, it is aspirations, conceptions, expectations... it is still the superman, it is not the supramental. It is a higher humanity which tries to draw the whole of its humanity upward, but that... that is of no use, of no use. The picture is very clear, of this whole humanity which clings in order to climb, which seeks to hold like that, but which does Page 215 not give itself—it wants... place. The whole secret is there. For example, all this side of humanity that wants to take things by force and pulls them up there ( gesture indicating as high as the forehead )... it is interesting: it is interesting, but it is not that! It is not that; all these possibilities must be exhausted so that something in humanity is able to understand... that there is only that ( Mother opens her ...
... Camoens's epic is the most rewarding of the three. Like Dante, Camoens too—though with different results —acknowledges Virgil as his master. If Virgil sang of arms and the man, Aeneas, Camoens sang too of arms and the men—the men who carved out the Portuguese Empire and won the gorgeous East for Christ: The deeds I tell of are real, and far outstrip the fabled adventures of any Rodamonte... sovereign destiny. The theme involves the political or religious interests of a people or of mankind; it commands the respect due to popular tradition or to traditional ideals. The poem awakens the sense of the mysterious, the awful, and the sublime; through perilous crises it uplifts and calms the strife of frail humanity." 2 This is the greatest common measure of the epics, for whatever its origin... consciousness partakes of the complexity of a Hamlet and the goodness of a Myishkin. Especially after the release of atomic power, man holds in his grip the means of complete self-annihilation and also the means of forging a new order of peace and plenty. Humanity now seems to be at the cross-roads of its destiny, damnation and salvation being both within the realm of immediate probability. The ...
... noble development of humanity itself … The State should consecrate [matrimony] as an institution which is called upon to produce creatures made in the likeness of the Lord and not create monsters that are a mixture of man and ape.” 461 “Even if it were proved that there never has existed an Aryan race in the past, we want that there be one in the future. This is what matters for men of action.” 462 These... omits to take the past of the glorious Aryan-Nordic-Germanic race into account. What, then, were they according to Hitler, the contemporary Germans, pride and fulcrum of humanity? The answer may surprise: they were an “adulterated” people. “Our völkisch stock has been so much adulterated by the mixture of alien elements that, in its fight for power, Jewry can make use of the more or less ‘cosmopolitan’... is the Dinaric, the Western type intermingling with both, and hybrids among them all.” In due course this situation would lead, as it would for the peoples all over the world, to a complete mongrelization, and ultimately to the extinction of humanity as pictured by Gobineau. Yet the Germans – who would have expected otherwise? – were an exception, which Hitler explains as follows: “Though on the one ...
... sattwic people with a spiritual inclination will seek admission to our Ashram; along with them there may be many more, representing all strands of humanity, who will opt to join the institution. And that is necessary too in a way. For, Sri Aurobindo has clarified: "It is necessary or rather inevitable that in an Ashram which is a 'laboratory' ... for a spiritual and supramental yoga, humanity should... should be variously represented. For the problem of transformation has to deal with all sorts of elements favourable and unfavourable. The same man indeed carries in him a mixture of these two things. If only sattwic and cultured men come for yoga, men without very much of the vital difficulty in them, then, because the difficulty of the vital element in terrestrial nature has not been faced and overcome... is often difficult enough.... When one has the real thing in oneself, one goes through and finally takes the full way of sadhana, but it is only a minority that does so. It is better to receive only people who come of themselves and of these only those in whom the call is genuinely their own and persistent." (Letters on Yoga, pp. 1615-16) So, the call should be persistent and genuinely their ...
... quarrels. You see the results…. The world is tired of the cruelties of men, — blood flows and violence predominates, we have never seen such terrible devastations. Men have become beasts, even worse than beasts! … So long as man does not try to change his consciousness … it is an unsurmountable impasse. No one, neither man, nor individuals endowed with extraordinary faculties can do anything or... and ask something. You can always come to see me on any day. I shall be free to listen to you and give you my advice. You know, earlier, when He was in His body, people used to say that He was very far, remote and inaccessible to men and that He was not concerned about the affairs of the sadhaks here. It is not quite correct, for indeed He used to spend night after night replying to a heap of letters... I am absolutely convinced that the education we give here by far exceeds all other systems of education in the world. Here we prepare men, ādhāras , and above all, souls who can dare to defy ignorance and inconscience, and all that… and all that is perverted in man and which is the cause of all his misfortunes. Still, if I could convince the boy [12] of the importance of our combined effort against ...
... in a spiritual man's life is not what he did or what he was outside to the view of the men of his time (that is what historicity or biography comes to, does it not?) but what he was and did within; it is only that that gives any value to his outer life at all. It is the inner life that gives to the Page IX outer any power it may have and the inner life of a spiritual man is something vast... preferred to remain behind the cur tain, push people without their knowing it and get things done. It was the confounded British Government that spoiled my game by prosecuting me and forcing me to be publicly known as a "leader". October 1934 * Q: What is the truth behind personality? Sri Aurobindo: There are many personalities in man. But the true person is also there; it is the... some idea, in Sri Aurobindo's own words, of the work which he did for others and for the world by using his spiritual power under divine guidance. In this age of the atom bomb, which seems to drive humanity to peace through fear, the possibility and assurance of a dynamic use of spiritual power can open out a new and a more lasting way to peace and harmony. And even with all these materials one can ...
... considered that no man should know the grave of Moses so as to prevent worship there or attach any value to his mortal body. Having seen Egypt, Moses knew how prone men are to such beliefs. Instead, he, as God's messenger, helped to create an enduring image of humanity that loved and obeyed the One God, Who, in turn, would cherish the humanity He created. Moses left his people, not being allowed... of Jesus which furthered the evolution of humanity was based on the previous evolutionary developments found in the history of the Jewish people. Almost all that Jesus taught can be found in the demand God made on the Jewish people to interact ethically, to interact with concern for the other. These Laws are to be found in the Torah given to the Jewish people through Moses after they escaped from the... their collective ideas about God and man. That Moses has never been deified is one of the most significant facts about the ideas of God and man in the Old Testament. Even in death, Moses chose to serve God and the Jewish people true to the letter and spirit of the Law. The Scriptures that Jesus Knew By Jesus' time, the sacred books of the Hebrew people formed the basis of what he apparently ...
... force of the infrarational man, as he develops, is an inferior intuition, an instinctively intuitional sight arising out of the force of life in him, and the transition from this to an intensity of inner life and the growth of a deeper spiritual intuition which outleaps the intellect and seems to dispense with it, is an easy passage in the individual man. But for humanity at large this movement cannot... period of boyhood, — when, be it noted, the development of the body is of the greatest importance, — but to the adult man in civilised humanity it is ceasing to be possible. For, in the first place, by the stress of modern life even the vital attitude of the race is changing. Man is ceasing to be so much of a physical and becoming much more of a vital and economic animal. Not that he excludes or... society are beginning to come into the range of practical possibility which will create perhaps one day that as yet unknown phenomenon, a race of men — not only a class — who have to some extent found and developed their mental selves, a cultured humanity. Social and Political Thought, pp. 78-83 The pursuit of the mental life for its own sake is what we ordinarily mean by culture; but ...
... has material proof that there was one first man or that there were several first men or that there was something which was not yet a man but almost a man. These are speculations. Traditions—which of course are only oral traditions and from the scientific point of view quite questionable, but which are based on individual memories—say that the first man or the first human pair or the first human... 829 Sweet Mother, how did the first man appear? Sri Aurobindo says here, 1 precisely, that if we take the scientific point of view, we see that theories follow one another with great instability, and seem more like a kind of series of imaginations than things which can be proved—if one takes the purely materialist point of view. People believe that because it is a materialist point... certain. And all those who have had a direct contact with the past have the memory of a kind of human prototype, far superior to mankind at present, who came on earth as an example and a promise of what humanity will be when it reaches its acme. ( Silence ) There is in life a certain tendency to imitate, a sort of effort to copy "something". One can find very striking examples of this in animal life—it ...
... the world. I came to know that any man with a sincere aspiration for it can come in contact with that Power. There were people who thought that Sri Aurobindo had retired from life, that he did not take any interest in the world and its affairs. These ideas never troubled me. On the contrary, I felt that his work was of tremendous significance for humanity and its future. In fact, the dynamic... nature. There are certain men who are bound to govern. One must be prepared to face facts. Even in the democracies those men manage to rule and one knows too well the villagers do not. Only, those people govern in their name, and it sometimes makes them more free and reckless. In Russia – one does not know the exact situation – the attempt was for creating real rule of the people, i.e. of the village.... Mind, Life and Body. The object of this yoga is not the service of humanity, nor the ordinary perfection of man but the evolution of the Supramental Power in the cyclic evolution of the Spirit in the material universe. What one has to do is to rend the veil – the thick veil – that divides the Mind from the Supermind. That work a man cannot do by himself. Sadhaka : Then where is the place for ...
... were dead are now alive again, and it may be that in the course of time all the old gods and heroes, that for centuries peopled and pacified the minds of men, will return and resume their symbolic functions. 23 It may be that with too many people talking far too often on far too many inessential or superficial things the edges of myths tend to get blunted, the sharp scent of... symbols belong to the childhood of the human race, that humanity in its supposed present adulthood has no use for them, dies hard. But nothing can be further from the truth. George Santayana rightly points out that, "a good mythology cannot be produced without much culture and intelligence. Stupidity is not poetical...A developed mythology shows that man has taken a deep and active interest both in the world... It should be remembered that myths, legends and symbols shade into one another and they are the creations of man, especially poetic man, awake, alert, inquiring and responsive. A.E. (George Russell) wisely says: The myths were born Out of the spirit of man and drew their meaning From that unplumbed profundity... ...Yet from fleeting voices ...
... be free from bondage? The Gita says that the man who has knowledge has to do exactly what other men do. He has to live as a man in his family, race and nation. But there is a difference which is internal and not external. By the internal difference he acts in communion with God; others act in pursuance of their desires. He knows by experience how a man can act when he is free from desire. This force... because the action is not guided by laws. The man who has communion with God has no reason to be guided by laws, because he knows God is alone and all. He is not troubled by the fruits of his action. "You have the right to action, to work, but not to the fruit. Work and leave the result to me. Those men whom you shrink from slaying are already slain. These men would all perish. Therefore the fruit is already... philosophy with the philosophy of Sankhya. Modern science denies that man has a soul. Science considers only the laws of nature. It regards nature as material, and man as merely a product of nature. It says man is a creation of natural forces. All his actions are results of fixed laws, and he has no freedom. According to the Sankhya, man has a soul and is essentially the Purusha Page 48 and ...
... when Gokhale denounced the ideals and activities of the Nationalists, when he said that "the ideal of independence was an ideal which no sane man could hold ", when he described the people who advocated the peaceful methods of passive resistance as "men who, out of cowardice, do not speak out the thought that is in their hearts", it became then incumbent on Sri Aurobindo to accept the challenge... the experiences he had gained in the year of seclusion should help Sri Aurobindo to take to the people the strength of the Sanatana Dharma. But this eternal religion, this Sanatana Dharma, albeit it had been cherished and preserved by the Aryan people in India, was really the possession of all humanity: the "Hindu" religion was also the universal religion, because it embraced the essence of all... Russia from a Duma, the very thing that the Trepoffs and the rest of the 'offs' "deprecated and detested". 3 * But the "men on the spot" - the bureaucracy in India - had had their way, and the lights had gone out, and a pall and a silence had descended on the people. When Sri Aurobindo had last come to Uttarpara - that was over a year ago - Bepin Pal had made a memorable speech. He had then ...
... Humanity is still very small, very small, very small. Yes, one feels that. But even those who might have a power.... Look how it is: certain people could have a power, they would just have to have the true inspiration—they're afraid of it, mon petit! They reject the true inspiration, because they think that things have to follow their "natural" course—so-called natural. Humanity rejects... possible with these people. Yes. Yes, but... there has to be someone to say it. Yes, there should be a Vivekananda for Sri Aurobindo. ( Mother laughs, very amused ) And their reversal could be effected swiftly and easily, I'm sure. You see, they're not perverted, they're simply... they don't know. ( silence ) That's what you should call for, Mother: a great inspired man. Ah! ... there—those people are there [in the government]. And so things have to follow a certain ( meandering gesture ) path, and it's endless. Well, that means the world is not ready! ( silence ) It will take another few hundred years. Terrible.... ( Mother raises her arms ) Well, it will take a few hundred years. Oh, but in that case, I'd prefer Kali! ( Mother laughs ) People don't ...
... declared to be the result of a revelation. ... Man's right is to pursue the Truth freely and to approach it freely in his own way. But each one ought to know that his discovery is good for him alone and it is not to be imposed upon others. 10 What, then, was to be the place of religion in Auroville? "We want Truth," people say glibly; but "for most men", as the Mother remarked, "it is what they want... pleading. "Are you ready?" the Mother had queried in 1964; now it was more pressing, more urgent: Will you help? A role was reserved for the sadhaks, and for humanity at large. In the developing world drama, in the unfolding cosmic drama, people were suddenly — peremptorily, irresistibly - invited to the stage. We were not to be mere interested spectators; we were actors with a stake in the play. ... and there. Until it comes the sense of the others cannot be understood and till then all interpretations of present happening and forecast of man's future are vain things. For its nature, power, event are that which will determine the next cycle of our humanity. 1 Certainly, the world over there had been changed; yet who would be bold Or foolish enough to claim that those changes - whether in the ...
... at war with all the other species, but it does not itself act foolishly. Stupidities and perversion begin with conscious mind and the human species. It is the wrong use man makes of his mental capacity. Perversion begins with humanity. It is a distortion of the progress of Nature which mental consciousness represents. And, therefore, the first thing which should be taught to every human being as soon... instance, that fire burns and water can drown! People don't need to be told all that, it is something they learn fast as they grow up; but the fact that the control of reason over life is absolutely indispensable even for good health, is not always accepted by the inferior man for whom life has no savour unless he can live out his passions. I remember a man who came here a very long time ago, to stand... way, that is, it gave the men an example of the spontaneous effect of alcohol when the physical nature is not already perverted. It nearly died of poisoning. It recovered. And some time later it was again allowed to come for dinner as it was all right, and somebody placed a glass of wine in front of it. It picked it up in a terrible rage and flung it at the head of the man who had given the glass to ...
... whether the action is moral or not. People hastily conclude that when you ask them to rise above morality, you are asking them to sink below good and evil. That is not at all the case........By morality you become more human, but you do not go beyond humanity. Morality has done much good to man, maybe; it has also done much harm. (A disciple:) But people always confuse morality with spirituality... * July 23, 1923 (A disciple:) The Mahatma believes that non-violence purifies the man who practises it. I believe Gandhi does not know what actually happens to the man's nature when he takes to Satyagraha or non-violence. He thinks that men get purified by it. But when men suffer, or subject themselves to voluntary suffering, what happens is that their vital being gets s... force—by exerting it he advances to a certain extent but in reaction he goes back much farther.... The Satyagraha movement is only meant for Mahatma Gandhi and a few men like him—it ought not to be thrust upon a whole people. People talk of village organization—let them first bring life to the villages and they will organize themselves. In India the students generally have great capacities ...
... the Austrian Pan-Germans explain in part a figure like Guido von List (1848-1919). List was a romantic visionary whose writings glorified a mythic Germanic past. The Ario-Germanic god-man was the highest type humanity had ever produced and would again become “the highest form of life ever to evolve in the universe”. 35 The Ario-Germanics had known an exoteric and an esoteric form of religious practice... and the Necessity of a Superior Morality Based on the Right of Men; The Sexual and the Love Life of the Blonds and the Dark Skinned; Introduction to Sexual Physics; The Blonds as Creators of Language … As these titles tell us, the obsessions of the former monk were more vicious than List’s. He seems to have been a badly frustrated man. No wonder that one of the reasons for his expulsion from the ... liberty, while in other ways it felt dizzy because of the new perspectives and possibilities. It was the time that the coming of one kind of “superman” after another was proclaimed to be the destiny of humanity. Nietzsche’s “re-evaluation of all values” created a euphoria and simultaneously a deep fear, for most customary and trusted beacons seemed to vanish. An important role in this cultural upheaval ...
... strange that the destiny of the whole world should depend on one man and yet it is so, for everybody looks up to him. From one point of view there never was a time when humanity came down so low as it has now. It looks as if a small number of violent men are the arbiters of humanity and the rest of the world is ready to bow down before one man.” 979 “Hitler was quite simply a human being, and as a human... somebody to receive the influence [of the demonic forces] and who then immediately thinks that he is a very superior being. For this gives people the feeling that they are really, exceptionally remarkable … This happens to ambitious people, especially to ambitious people who want power, who want to dominate others, who want to be great masters, great instructors, who want to perform miracles and acquire... ‘Lord of the Nations’ … Of course [that being] did not appear physically. Hitler was a medium, he ‘saw’, he had a certain power of clairvoyance. And it was at such times that he had his fits … The people in his entourage knew that.” 980 Rumours of Hitler’s perplexing crises seeped through to the public and were the reason why his opponents called him the Teppichfresser, the carpet chewer. The ...
... exhausted men in the field, and he did not hesitate to hasten the doomsday of a people which he deemed unworthy of him. “If the German nation is now defeated in this struggle, it has been too weak. That will mean it has not withstood the test of history and was destined for nothing but doom.” 1045 Besides, all had betrayed him. But “I’ll fight this fight alone!” shouted theatrically the man who had become... the earth.” 1053 A Titan Power supports this pigmy man, The crude dwarf instrument of a mighty Force. Hater of the free spirit’s joy and light, Made only of strength and skill and giant might, A will to trample humanity into clay And unify earth beneath one iron sway, Insists upon its fierce enormous plan. Trampling man’s mind and will into one mould Docile and facile in a... hatred”. “Every conversation, however simple, seemed to prove that this man was possessed by boundless hate … He always seemed to need something to hate”, writes Rauschning. 1046 Kubizek agrees: “In his thundering tirades of hate he, feeling abandoned and alone, shouted his rage against the existing world, against the whole of humanity which did not understand him, which did not give him a chance, by which ...
... inalienable leadership is the greater independence which men enjoy in Calcutta, another is the higher organisation of life, resources, activity in this great Page 391 centre of humanity. So long as these causes exist, the supremacy of Calcutta will remain. The object of the electoral rules is to destroy the supremacy of the Calcutta men, whose independence and freedom of speech and action are... mirrors of public opinion and instruments of rapid political development, which the people want. Sir Edward Baker says that no Government can be expected to run the risk of putting itself into a permanent minority,—such a state of things cannot be allowed for a day. We quite agree. That is what we have been telling the people for a very long time. Unfortunately, very different hopes and expectations were... adverse circumstances betrays the uneasiness of a man who knows the force of that power even in a subject country and feels that the ruling class are not going the best way to carry that opinion with them. While all the other provincial Governors have confined their inaugural speeches to the most empty platitudes, he alone has sought to speak as a man would who feels the difficulties of a perplexing ...
... such an imperfect result; she endeavours to bring out a being who will be to man what man is to the animal, a being who will remain a man in its external form, and yet whose consciousness will rise far above the mental and its slavery to ignorance. Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to teach this truth to men. He told them that man is only a transitional being living in a mental consciousness, but with the... consciousness and to grow according to its law. Page 116 Now, all depends on your will and your sincerity. If you have the will no more to belong to ordinary humanity, no more to be merely evolved animals; if your will is to become men of the new race realising Sri Aurobindo's supramental ideal, living a new and higher life upon a new earth, you will find here all the necessary help to achieve your... Aims Why are we here in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram? There is an ascending evolution in nature which goes from the stone to the plant, from the plant to the animal, from the animal to man. Because man is, for the moment, the last rung at the summit of the ascending evolution, he considers himself as the final stage in this ascension and believes there can be nothing on earth superior to him ...
... founded a superior type of humanity; therefore he represents the archetype of what we understand by the term MAN. He is the Prometheus of mankind, from whose shining brow the divine spark of genius has at all times flashed forth, always kindling anew that fire which, in the form of knowledge, illuminated the dark night by drawing aside the veil of mystery and thus showing man how to rise and become master... itself? Through the blood. “What makes a people or, to be more correct, a race is not language but blood.” 288 In the veins of a pure race runs pure blood, or rather if pure blood runs in the veins of a race, this race is pure; the blood is the carrier of its life. For the racists the blood became a mystic concept, surviving from animistic times when humanity had no other idea of the way in which c... supposed to have been the language of a people which was also called ‘Indo-European’, and which was supposed to have lived in former times somewhere between central Asia and eastern Europe. (There were theories about many different locations, from India to northern Scandinavia.) This means that a language was made [illicitly] into a people, and that this people was made [illicitly] into a race.” 281 ...
... world history, men and women have aspired for human unity as ardently and as comprehensively as today. The fact that the combined will of the people of the world has produced the agency of United Nations to prevent war, to maintain peace and to subserve the goal of universal solidarity, is a concrete proof of the fact that we, are living at a very propitious moment. And yet, we find humanity gravitating... human aggregate and to pour itself out as a force for growth and perfection on humanity. The law for humanity is to pursue its upward evolution towards the finding and expression of the Divine in the type of mankind, taking full advantage of the free development and gains of all individuals and nations and groupings of men, to work towards the day when mankind may be really and not only ideally one... the eternal attributes of the Spirit. It is the practical recognition of this truth, it is the awakening of the soul in man and the attempt to get him to live from his soul and not from his ego which is the inner meaning of religion, and it is that to which the religion of humanity also must arrive before it can fulfil itself in the life of the race. 4 Page 496 V We have ...
... What work? Disciple : Say country's work, work for humanity. Sri Aurobindo : It is quite a new objection. Nobody expects an Ashram, a spiritual institution, to do work! Disciple : The Ramkrishna Mission, Gandhi's Ashram and some other institutions do some public work and so people expect an Ashram to work for humanity. Sri Aurobindo : Perhaps, because I did political... difference between material body and a materialized body. This kind of materializing commonly takes place immediately after a man dies. You find that he visits either a relation or a friend. If the fact of his death is not known or if the man is not known to be living far away, people mistake it for an actual physical presence. Page 130 There are many authentic cases of this kind. My... continue doing it all my life. Disciple : Not only that, the objection is that so many young men are being drawn away from the field of work. Page 133 Sri Aurobindo : Oh, I see. Disciple : But Gandhi's Ashram is not a spiritual institution. It is a group of people gathered to be trained to do some work on Mahatma's principles and methods. One can say that service ...
... Poseidon, and the dove of Aphrodite. In other cases, the bestial or repugnant forms have been left to evil spirits, the enemies of gods and men." 4 Man the Measure So much for the theotropic man. But in the historic period of humanity, man has often tried to assert his autonomy in full. He has established himself as the master of the animals, he has felt himself to be the master... chrematon metron anthropos, "Man is the measure of all things", this formula has continued to enthrall a section of humanity as typifying man's mood of perfect autonomy. And this tradition of autonomous man as opposed to the theotropic man has come down even to our day, - or should we not say that this indeed is the prevailing temper of the modern man? For, the problem of man as such has lately become... of man, did not Sir Arthur Keith construct a table to show the intimate kinship of man to the monkeys, more particularly to the anthropoid apes? Out of 1665 anatomical characteristics of men, 312 belong exclusively to man; 396 are common to man and the chimpanzee; 385 are common to man and the gorilla; 354 are common to man and the orang-outang; 117 belong both to man and ...
... its original divinity. Therefore humanity, given its imperfection, cannot be the ultimate step or crown of the evolution. Beyond the human gradation are the higher worlds and beings humans have always intuited or dreamed of, and still further beyond are the infinitudes of the Divine. “The animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out Man. Man himself may well be a thinking... of this episode, of the extended Yogic battle on the verge of life and death of which so much depended for humanity, including ourselves, may lead to reflections of the following kind. Firstly, the surroundings of the Mother, visible and invisible, were rather different from what most people who were present at the time knew or prefer to remember. She, who took everything into herself, had apparently... in the dogmas of a new religion; it should provide the guidance for the adventure of consciousness into which humanity is engaging – the adventure into the miraculous. Thus will the masked Transcendent mount his throne. When darkness deepens strangling the earth’s breast And man’s corporeal mind is the only lamp, As a thief’s in the night shall be the covert tread Of one who steps unseen ...
... Sri Aurobindo, p. 272) "If you want to change things, you will have to change humanity first and I can assure you you will find it a job. Yes, even to change 150 people in an Ashram and get them to surmount their instincts." (Ibid., pp. 564-65) Sri Aurobindo found it difficult "to change 150 people" in the Ashram in 1936. And now we are more than 1200, almost approaching the number... "Heaven's call is rare, rarer the heart that heeds; The doors of light are sealed to common mind, And earth's needs nail to earth the human mass, Only in an uplifting hour of stress Men answer to the touch of greater things: Or, raised by some strong hand to breathe heaven-air, They slide back to the mud from which they climbed; In the mud of which they are made, whose... whose law they know They joy in safe return to a friendly base, And, though something in them weeps for the glory lost And greatness murdered, they accept their fall. To be the common man they think the best, To live as others live is their delight." (Savitri, Book XI Canto 1, p. 689) This risk of progressive fall in consciousness over the years ...
... gradually understand and experience its content. It is not even a question of faith, but only of logic and reason. From mineral to man, is there or is there not an evolution of consciousness? From Neanderthal man to our humanity? From the men of the last century to the men of this? If we answer in the affirmative, we can only conclude that there is an uninterrupted progress in which consciousness expands... is not the appearance of man as god or of god as man which we must expect, but the manifestation of humanity as god. For that is what we bear in ourselves and its embryo has been growing over the centuries. That is what is taking form in us and, in order to grow, nourishes itself on us and increasingly suffuses us. But, we are no more able to view God in the womb of humanity, than the child in the womb... other images of the future than those of our annihilation Page 24 are inscribed in the consciousness of a handful of men for humanity to be saved. It is, in fact, the sign that we are reaching a threshold and that the entire race, from which these men differ not at all, has become capable of living something else. The waiting has come to an end. The eternal Future is at our doors ...
... pleasures, customary, conventional or contingent, the ego may dictate more commendable uses of money, for the service of the society or the country or humanity, for instance, a service which appears so indubitably disinterested and noble. Very few people have the perspicacity to detect the ego even in these acts of obvious selflessness; most of them do not know that the ego's hold is sometimes strongest... so on altruistic or humanistic grounds, and advocates the spending of money for the service of humanity or all sentient creatures. Now, let us try to understand the rightness or wrongness of such uses of money by an analysis of the motives that he behind them. It is a commonplace of psychology that man is a multi-personality,—there are many parts and personalities in him, having different, often... Christ upon the rich that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. The Christ saw the grip of the vital forces on the money-power, and it was not any ascetic loathing of money, but a divine solicitude for the deliverance of men from the dark influence of the hostile powers that inspired the stricture. It can be safely asserted ...
... It was taught essentially in order to fit men for violence in a right cause. The emphasis was always on being right, not on being non-violent. The holiest figures in Indian tradition, Rama and Krishna, were mighty warriors and urged men to battle against the enemies of dharma. To explain away their fights as being allegories of inner struggle between man's higher self and his lower is to forget that... skeletons in many villages, present to the naked eye. I have no doubt whatsoever that both England and the town-dwellers of India will have to answer, if there is a God above, for this crime against humanity which is perhaps unequalled in history." The castigation of the Indian exploiters, and not solely the Page 88 British, is a clue that leads us straight to his most humanitarian... combat. Even Buddha who among India's spiritual personalities put the greatest premium on non-violence did not enjoin it on all and sundry: he restricted it to the class of monks and, while conjuring humanity to return love for hatred, never discouraged violence in defence of a cause that was just. The absolute adherence to ahimsa was derived by Gandhi from Tolstoy: it does not reflect the flexible and ...
... have met with above. He too saw the development of humanity and the history of the world as the history of races in conflict, even on a wider scale than drawn by his predecessors. For him too the Aryan-Nordic-Germanic people were superior to all others and deserving of the others’ homage and submission. Northern Europe was, again, “the cradle of humanity”, “the centre of creation” and the origin of all... between flourished the ‘chaos of peoples’, bastard mixtures of various races.” 442 And Shirer writes: “Chamberlain claimed that the Teutons and the Jews were the only pure races left in the West.” Was he, then, not an anti-Semite? “The Jews, he says, are not inferior to the Teuton, merely different. They have their own grandeur; they realize the sacred duty of man to guard the purity of the race. And... the Thule Society, who acted as the most anti-Semitic promoter of The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion, as well in his contributions to the Völkische Beobachter , the Nazi newspaper of which he succeeded Eckart as the editor in 1923, as in his other prolific writings, e.g. The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion and Jewish World Politics. Though Hitler spoke sometimes scathingly of him in private ...
... sexual impulse is so strong in man making him almost a helpless tool in its hand. Because, as Sri Aurobindo has said, it is there placed by Nature for fulfilling her most primary and primitive purpose, that of reproduction, and it is strong in order to compel man to do it in spite of himself. For ordinary men it is the only principle and in fact the sole impulse, however man may try to cover it with his... Answers to Questions from Velji 1925 An Avatār is not subject to the laws of Karma as ordinary men are. The mind, life and body of the ordinary man are formed as a result of his past Karma. The Avatar having no such past how are his mind, life and body formed? The Avatar gets it as other men do. What has that to do with his being an Avatar ? All that is only a certain movement in nature in... multiply disciples nor can I think of Mother India. When I will get it, it will act in such a way that other people will get it without much trouble. Even at present I can give something worth giving to others but I do not wish to attempt this until the process is completed. Still I must have some men on whom I can make experiments and they will get according to their capacity. The Divine Life lives in unity ...
... was worse than hell—simply to see... just how little we know. ( silence ) And it was a very complete experience, because it wasn't the experience of a person but of all humanity: I saw absolutely concretely that all men who THOUGHT they knew they had Experience [of the Divine], well, it was... ( wavering gesture, just above the head ), it was halfway, so to say. Whenever we rise a little higher... Mission. And the French consul is with them. Yes, of course! Last evening there was a meeting of 2,000 people—with inflammatory speeches against the Ashram, against the university, and against the central government because the government is in favor of the university. Humanity is really petty. Oh, yes! It has descended very, very low. Sri Aurobindo!... For them Sri Aurobindo is... comes from Bengal—it's dismaying! He who did everything for this country. It's dismaying.... Really only the Divine can put up with that. Yes. Because humanly I would say: very well, let this humanity fall into the pit! Let it be crushed, what does it matter! Page 281 There would not remain too many living beings. Yes, Mother, certainly. ( silence ) But one really doesn't ...
... country and humanity or because I who did national work once have left it now? PURANI: Perhaps more because of the latter reason. NIRODBARAN: Subhas Bose also attacked the Ashram on the same plea. He said to Dilip that some of the best people were going away to the Ashram SRI AUROBINDO: Did he include Dilip among the best people? NIRODBARAN: I don't remember whether he said "best people" or just... PURANI: They say we are not doing anything for the country or for humanity. SRI AUROBINDO: Since when has the Ashram been expected to do such things? NIRODBARAN: The Ramakrishna Mission and Gandhi's Ashram are doing social or political work. SRI AUROBINDO: Gandhi's Ashram is not an Ashram for spirituality. It is a group of people gathered to be trained in some work or other. But are we attacked... see why human beings cannot. When materialisation takes place, it is most often immediately before death or after. The man in question visits some friend or relative, and if the dying condition or the death is not known to them or the man is not known to be living far away, people mistake his appearance for actual physical presence. There are many such well-attested cases. My brother Manmohan used ...
... nation. But the higher hope of humanity lies in the growing number of men who will realise this truth and seek to develop it in themselves so that when the mind of man is ready to escape from its mechanical bent,—perhaps when it finds that its mechanical solutions are all temporary and disappointing, —the truth of the Spirit may step in and land humanity to the path of its highest... to solve the problems of humanity. He seems to think that the problem is only external, touching only the economic life of man. I am afraid he oversimplifies the problem. Tracing man's evolution up to now he puts it in three heads: ( 1 )Man Vs. Nature, ( 2 ) Man Vs. Man, ( 3 ) Man divided in his own self, a state of a psychological dichotomy. The first of these, Man Vs. Nature, is only a half... be governed by Reason; in fact, it is not rational in its origin and working. It holds infinite possibilities within itself. Not only is there love of man and woman but also there is maternal and filial love, love of comrades, of country, of humanity. Love seeks only its Absolute in life. Even economics is not merely the seeking for satisfaction of personal desires and comforts but is meant to remove ...
... in which some men prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence. The means used are not important; to alienate men from their own decision-making is to change them into objects. This movement of inquiry must be directed towards humanization — man's historical vocation. The pursuit of full humanity, however, cannot be carried out in isolation or individualism, but only... situation leads men to apprehend that situation as an historical reality susceptible of transformation. Resignation gives way to the drive for transformation and inquiry, over which men feel themselves in control. If men, as historical beings necessarily engaged with other men in a movement of inquiry, did not control that movement, it would be (and is) a violation of men's humanity. Any situation in... and successful educative work. Freire is a great lover of humanity and a seminal thinker whose influence may result in fundamental changes in our educational system. Towards the end of his preface to Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he says: "From these pages I hope at least the following will endure: my trust in the people, and my faith in men and in the creation of a world in which it will be easier ...
... a natural inclination to hero-worship and the great men who have done wonders for human civilisation will always be the inspiration of future ages. We are Hindus and naturally spiritual in our temperament, because the work which we have to do for humanity is a work which no other nation can accomplish, the spiritualisation of the race; so the men whom we worship are those who have helped the spiritual... era dates from his birth, an era in which the peoples of the earth will be lifted for a while into communion with God and spirituality become the dominant note of human life. What Christianity failed to do, what Mahomedanism strove to accomplish in times as yet unripe, what Buddhism half-accomplished for a brief period and among a limited number of men, Hinduism as summed up in the life of Sri Ramakrishna... their quota of experience and returned to the source from which they had come. The immense reservoir of spiritual energy stored up by the self-repression was the condition of this birth of avatars , of men so full of God that they could not be satisfied with silent bliss, but poured it out on the world, not with the idea Page 978 of proselytising but because they wished to communicate their ...
... development as set forth in the last two chapters is correct, we shall have to part with several notions long cherished by humanity. One of these is the pristine perfection of man and his degradation from his perfect state by falling into the domination of sin; God made man perfect but man by his own fault brought sin and death into the world. This Semitic tradition passed from Judaism into Christianity and... his own actions. If conscience be a divine and infallible judge, it must be the same in all men; but we know perfectly well that it is not. The conscience of the Red Indian finds nothing immoral in murder and torture; the conscience of the modern civilised man vehemently condemns them. Even in the same man conscience is an uncertain and capricious quantity changing and deciding inconsistently under... in humanity. Vedanta embraces, harmonizes and yet overtops and exceeds all other moralities; as Vedic religion is the eternal and universal religion, so is Vedic ethics the eternal and universal morality. Esha dharmah sanâtanah. Page 284 II. Ethics in Primitive Society. Every system of ethics must have a sanction to validate its scheme of morals and an aim which will provide man the ...
... intellect, Indian nationhood, Indian spirituality, Indian culture have to fulfil in the general life of humanity. The humanity is bound to grow increasingly on. We must necessarily be in it and of it. Not a spirit of aloofness or a jealous self-defence, but of a generous emulation and brotherhood with all men and all nations, justified by a sense of conscious strength, a great destiny, a large place in the... only for the nation but for the whole human people. The immediate action of this will be a new creation, a spiritual education and culture, an enlarged social spirit founded not on division but on unity, on the perfect growth and freedom of the individual, but also on his unity with others and his dedication to a larger self in the people and in humanity, and the beginning of an endeavour towards the... of an immeasurable spiritual significance. It was an epochal event, a landmark in the spiritual culture of man. It inaugurated a new era of dynamic spirituality. It initiated a movement unknown to history and humanity. It led to an unwearied collaboration in their mission of raising man from the troubled twilight of his mind into the infinite splendour of the Supramental Light-Force. The age-old ...
... panaceas for which men are ready to oppress and be oppressed, to kill and be killed, to impose them somehow or other by immense and too formidable means,' in the belief that this is man's way into something ideal. In the past, science had neither brought about the possibility of the intermingling of people on such a large scale as today, nor hand it put at the disposal of man such formidable powers... supramental consciousness, force and action that can effect the needed evolutionary miracle. If it is said that this insistence on a radical change of nature seems to put off all the hope of humanity to a distant evolutionary future, the answer is that to hope for a true change of human life without a change of human nature is an irrational and unspiritual proposition. At the same time, it is... the whole of evolution had been a preparation and which is brought closer at each crisis of human destiny. It has been further pointed out that what is necessary is that there should be a turn in humanity felt by some or many towards the vision of this change, a feeling of its imperative need, the sense of its possibility, the will to make it possible and to find the way. Page 13 ...
... From this standpoint it is good that for a time humanity should come out of the religious atmosphere, full of fear Page 110 III and blind superstitious submission by which the adverse forces have profited so monstrously. The age of negation, of atheism and positivism is from this view quite indispensable for man's liberation from sheer ignorance. It is only when you... have known people who had such a fear of Kali—their household Kali—that they trembled at the thought of offending her in any way, of committing the least fault that would displease her; for that means Kali's vengeance. I know, I know very well these entities: they are beings of the vital world, they are vital formations—the forms are given by the human mind and what forms! To think that men worship such... within it and absorbed all the energies emanating from the devotion of the people, their prayers and all that. It was not a very pleasant spectacle. But the people who were there and prayed felt the divine contact, they received all kinds of benefit from their prayers. And yet the truth of the matter was what I saw. The people had the faith and their faith changed what was bad into something that was ...
... terrible and demoniac things! From this standpoint it is good that for a time humanity should come out of the religious atmosphere, full of fear and blind superstitious submission by which the adverse forces have profited so monstrously. The age of negation, of atheism and positivism is from this view quite indispensable for man's liberation from sheer ignorance. It is only when you have come out of this... known people who had such a fear of Kali – their household Kali – that they trembled at the thought of offending her in any way, of committing the least fault that would displease her; for that means Kali's vengeance. I know, I know very well these entities: they are beings of the vital world, they are vital formations – the forms are given by the human mind and what forms! To think that men worship... within it and absorbed all the energies emanating from the devotion of the people, their prayers and all that. It was not a very pleasant spectacle. But the people who were there and prayed felt the divine contact, they received all kinds of benefit from their prayers. And yet the truth of the matter was what I saw. The people had the faith and their faith changed what was Page 78 bad ...
... educated were established far from the cities. That is also why the great instructors of men began their apprenticeship in solitude. For if too many things are absent for the thought to be able to express itself in the minds of unrefined men, too many things are also absent from the mind of the cultivated man shaped by the artificial life of human societies. How much silence is needed—not the outer... are so many veritable superstitions that we must overcome. They are different for each person. Some people have the superstition of the book. For an idea Page 81 to merit consideration in their eyes it must have been expressed in some famous book, in one of the bibles of humanity, and any thought coming in any other way will appear suspect to them. There are some who accept an idea... of these divergences, since they had attached themselves to the ideas only for the sake of the man, they will reject both man and ideas together. This is absurd, for ideas are worth what they are worth regardless of the individuals who have expressed them. Finally, there is a whole category of people enamoured of the miraculous, who will recognise a truth only if it has come to them clothed in ...
... "Now is the right man in the right place"! Men are rational idiots. The timber-godown made you make a great progress and you made the timber-godown make a great progress. I only hope it will be maintained by your successor. But I don't know how long the right man will be right for them. They want me to entertain them with "pāyas" 33 to celebrate the occasion. No man ever is the right... in charge of the Dispensary I feel afraid about my prestige. People expect great things from an England-returned doctor (who I may confide in you, hasn't had enough time for experience). If you can't save my prestige, save at least my face. People are exceedingly silly—but I suppose they can't help themselves. The more I observe humanity, the more that forces itself upon me—the abysses of silliness... last questions on women were a prelude to a bigger question on them in general... I will quote the view of a medical man of experience who seems to represent the popular opinion "Women are, as a rule, more intelligent than men, but their intelligence is of a different order. Man's brain is superior to woman's in size and weight... We are told that it can be explained by our keeping all culture as ...
... rapidity, take place which can prepare a real and fundamental change in the life of humanity. 15 But internationalism, according to Sri Aurobindo, is not enough; there is a need of a religion of humanity or an equivalent sentiment which recognises a single soul in humanity of which each human being and each people is Page 39 an incarnation and soul form. This religion has already expressed... Page 26 III The central theme in Sri Aurobindo is that of the contemporary evolutionary crisis of humanity, of the perception that man is a transitional being and that he is a "thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation she (Nature) wills to work out the superman, the god." 4 His magnum opus, The Life Divine, which has been regarded as the greatest... that contemporary humanity needs to arrive at. In contrast to these, Sri Aurobindo explains the meaning of Yoga in the following words: Page 32 [Yoga is] a methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the potentialities latent in the being and a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent Existence we see partially expressed in man and in the Cosmos ...
... now. Europe could not stand the test of the last world war … From one point of view there never was a time when humanity came down so low as it has now. It looks as if a small number of violent men are the arbiters of humanity and the rest of the world is ready to bow down before one man … The setback to the human mind in Europe is amazing … We had thought during the last years of the nineteenth century... shape that the war would be the right occasion to realize, unheeded by the outside world, one of the essential components of his fixed idea: the surgical removal of the Jewish race from the body of humanity. Hardly more than a month after the Munich Conference he used an incident of little importance to launch the Kristallnacht, a euphemism for the biggest pogrom in German history. Soon a series... the Gypsy plague” on 8 December. Whatever the half-measures Hitler had been forced to take not to offend world opinion too much, from now on he indubitably worked towards the genocide of the Jewish people in all territories within his power, with the ultimate aim to eradicate them ( ausmerzen ) in the whole world. Sri Aurobindo read his intentions and signalled the preparations for “the deliberate ...
... the human being. Even there if we take the whole span of human history and the evolution of man in it we find that man has been an ignorant being and has been conscious of it, yet sometimes an individual appears and declares: "I am not ignorant, I have attained knowledge". And people —large sections of humanity—have accepted this affirmation. Those who declared their liberation from Ignorance also promised... and my father are one" humanity accepts the assertion. It is then seen that a humaan being —human in the sense of having a body, life, and mind Page 272 can exist, from whom the veil of Ignorance is lifted. In one Upanishad mankind is addressed thus: "Listen to me all children of Immortality." Man is not called there the degraded mortal. Thus, even among men there are some who have... monism has been accepted by a portion of humanity and is even followed by it. And it must be admitted that there is some truth in that outlook, however exaggerated. An infinite, omnipresent Reality is at the basis of this universe and in that Reality Ignorance does not find a place as it finds in man's consciousness : it does not exist in it as it does in man. Sri Aurobindo starts his whole ...
... life given by that early poetry of humanity. Sāvitrī is the expression of a truth-vision by the greatest seer of the modem age. It is an integral and cosmic truth beginning with the origin of the world and rising towards man's ultimate divine fulfilment on earth. Affirming that "a death-bound littleness is not all we are", it moves with the mounting aspiration of man "to the frontiers of Eternity".... of Sāvitrī as a whole. It shows humanity as a small portion against the enormous background of a vast cosmos,—not merely material but a complex and vast cosmos made of a hierarchy of planes of consciousness. The human being and his whole world stands explained. Man here is not trotting the stage with his vain little mind and his half light or ideals. And yet, man is not relegated to an insignificant... growing soul of humanity. "Logic" and "inventiveness" have their place; then he brings only "imagination" and gives us a picture of its service to man's mental growth. Among the products of imagination is included myth. Now see how myth which has been generally regarded by modern positivist reason as something not only childish and superstitious but even harmful to the growth of man finds its ju ...
... Janārdanāya – " to the average humanity which is God". Thus Janārdana – God – is to be equated to janatā , – humanity – which is ignorant and imperfect. It almost seems that according to these people God outside janatā – average humanity – does not exist! Sri Aurobindo : Quite so. , Disciple : And they don't try to raise the janatā – the common man – to janādanatwa – divinity... you have to give is Amrita – ambrosia – it must be eatable by the ordinary man. Sri Aurobindo : But people also must have capacity to understand and enjoy noble literature. Disciple : Kalelker in a recent article has tried to make Page 238 out that Valmiki wanted to serve janatā , humanity – and so he recited the Ramayana from cottage to cottage! I can never understand... sādhārana. In the Vishwa Manava all the best people, as well as the lowest of humanity, are included. Perhaps in the jana sādhārana only the lowest remain. Disciple : It is the proletarian idea of literature coming with the Socialistic and Communistic ideology. Or, perhaps it is the echo Of Vivekananda's daridra Nārāyana – the divine as the poorest. Sri Aurobindo : I think it is Vivekanada ...
... examine the profound legendary tradition of India, we see that its idea of the Manu is more a symbol than anything else. His name means man the mental being. He is the divine legislator, the mental demi-god in humanity who fixes the lines upon which the race or people has to govern its evolution. In the Purana he or his sons are said to reign in subtle earths or worlds or, as we may say, they reign in... why the supreme political instinct of the English people fixed, in the struggle with the monarchy, upon this question of taxation as the first vital point in a conflict for the power of the purse. Once that was settled in the Parliament by the defeat of the Stuarts, the transformation of the monarchical sovereignty into the sovereignty of the people or, more accurately, the shifting of the organic control... has been no exception to the rule; for man, though in the essence of his nature a mental being, has practically started with a largely mechanical mentality as the conscious living being, Nature's human animal, and only afterwards can he be the self-conscious living being, the self-perfecting Manu. That is the course the individual has had to follow; the group-man follows in the wake of the individual ...
... beginning to come into the range of practical possibility which will create perhaps one day that as yet unknown phenomenon, a race of men—not only a class—who have to some extent found and developed their mental selves, a cultured humanity. Page 91 ... harmonious way, elevated to their highest as well as extended to their widest potential aims by the action of that faculty which man alone of terrestrial creatures clearly possesses, the intelligent will. It is only in this fourth stage of her progress that she arrives at humanity. The atoms and the elements organise brute Matter, the plant develops the living being, the animal prepares and brings to a... from something greater than himself. Man's Page 83 consciousness of the divine within himself and the world is the supreme fact of his existence and to grow into that may very well be the intention of his nature. In any case the fullness of Life is his evident object, the widest life and the highest life possible to him, whether that be a complete humanity or a new and divine race. We must ...
... needed—the necessary, the right rights and all that they involve. It might be objected here, however, that actually in the history of humanity the conception of Duty has been no less pugnacious than that of Right. In certain ages and among certain peoples, for example, it was considered the imperative duty of the faithful to kill or convert by force or otherwise as many as possible belonging to... and a violently competitive society is the result. It is only at this stage that the conception of duty can fruitfully come in to develop in man and his society the mode of sattwa, which is that of light and wisdom, of toleration and harmony. Then only do men seek to mould society on the principle of co-ordination and co-operation. Still, the conception of duty cannot finally and definitively... va-yantah. The division and conflict, the stress and strain that belong to the very nature of the inferior level of being and consciousness will then have been transcended. It is only then that a diviner humanity can be born to replace all the other moulds and types that never lead to anything final and absolutely satisfactory. Page 141 ...
... s into opportunities for progress? On 21 November, two questions were posed: What is the best way of making humanity progress? and What is true freedom and how to attain it? The director of the seminars, Dr. Kishor Gandhi, pointed out that the spiritual way was the right way of man's future progress, and the action of the highest Truth of the Supermind would be crucial for effecting a radical... Mother, it was not a matter of a personal victory isolated from the rest of the world. She was doing what she was doing for the progressive divinisation of humanity and of earth-nature. But because the Mother was weighted with the burden of all humanity, it made the task of her personal transformation very difficult, and even seemingly interminable! As she wrote to Huta on 28 July 1964, But the whole... cultural, international - revolving as it were round the Park of Unity and Matrimandir (or the Sanctuary of Truth) at the centre. It was an expression of the Mother's "Dream", dreamed on divided humanity's behalf; it was the Mother's seed-idea cast on the soil of an awakening human consciousness, Page 726 an opportunity for the Tree of Human Harmony to take root in God's tremendous hour ...
... then in an increasing number of people, the urge to overpass the old limits, to find in themselves or above themselves a new light, a new consciousness, a new guiding principle of knowledge and action, and a decision to abide by it, to let this new consciousness transform their life and nature. Then only can be removed the obstacles that block the way and humanity enter into a new creative age of... work of humanity. And that work is to find the divine Self in the individual and the collectivity and to realize spiritually, mentally, vitally, materially its greatest largest, richest and deepest possibilities in the inner life of all and their outer action and nature, Page 40 The spiritual life is the flower not of a featureless but a conscious and diversified oneness. Each man has to... solitary creed and dogma.8 And as we regard man the individual, we shall regard to man the collectivity. ... as a soul-form of the Infinite, a collective soul myriadly embodied upon earth for a divine fulfilment in its manifold relations and its multitudinous activities.9 We shall regard every human society, nation, people or other organic aggregate from the same standpoint ...
... facilities of defence to a man whose life or liberty, honour or reputation is imperilled by an accusation which may be false or mistaken, the hanging judge whose diseased brain and morbid temperament are consumed with the desire to have the accused convicted, are survivals of mediaeval barbarity. Such men are the lineal descendants of Jeffreys and Torquemada. In England such men are rarities upon the Bench;... has been overpassed and the dues have been denied. We have nothing to say as to the guilt or the innocence of the men under trial. We will assume that they are guilty, we will assume that their conviction is a thing settled. But still until the trial is over, they are in law regarded as men who are possibly innocent and should be allowed ordinary facilities to prove their innocence. One of the principal... police, it was obvious that the whole foundation of the prosecution case was threatened; for the example of recantation might easily be followed. Then ensued a scene which we hope, for the credit of humanity at large, has never had a parallel in recent judicial history. Immediately the prosecuting counsel leaps up and demands that this inconvenient witness be at once prosecuted for perjury and handed ...
... mean that a sane man is more fit for yoga ? Sri Aurobindo : A perfect yoga requires perfect balance. Disciple : I am afraid, the sane men generally are matter-of-fact. Sri Aurobindo : Not necessarily. What do you mean by "sane" ? Disciple : Sane does not mean "dull". Sri Aurobindo : Of course not; when I speak of want of balance in these people, I do not mean they... "educated" stupidity about his Guru ! What people understand by education is some kind of ideas or thoughts and restlessness without any fixity of aim. He can take yoga from Tagore if he wants a good-looking Guru ! The whole thing is that he is not prepared to take trouble. Disciple : His idea of mahāpurusa – great man – is that he can make small men do what they alone cannot do. Sri... Supramental state ? It is also relative, it is not absolute. Disciple : In that way one can say that every man has got infinite possibilities in him, and so all men are equal. Sri Aurobindo : Every man has infinite possibilities in him but what reason is there to suppose that two men at a certain time must manifest, or actualise, the same possibility ? You can say that every one has infinite ...
... remained the same. That is what causes the fiasco .. 36 Love alone, such as Christ preached it, was unable to transform men. Force alone, such as Mohammed preached it, did not transform men—far from it. That is why the Consciousness that is striving to transform humanity unites force with love, and he who is to realize this transformation will come upon earth with the Power of Divine Love. 37... better than they what they should be or do. This is what “serving humanity" means. Do you want to perpetuate all that? It has not brought much change. You can open millions of hospitals, it won't keep people from falling ill. On the contrary, they will be given all the conveniences and encouragement to fall ill ...In fact, the first humanity you should concern yourself with is yourself. You want to alleviate... themselves away from their mothers and literally clung to Mirra; tormented men suddenly relieved; sorrows here and there that seemed to dissolve: Once, in a bus, there was a man who was tense and weeping; you could see he was utterly wretched. Then without stirring, unnoticed, I saw that “Force" going out towards that man, and little by little, his face relaxed, everything calmed down, he grew quiet ...
... Without this God-realisation a man cannot give a new vitality, Page 12 a contemporary life, to India's ancient wisdom - for he will not at all embody that wisdom at its purest and profoundest. This is not to refuse greatness to him, but it is not the greatness ancient India upheld as the top reach of the human soul. If India has anything to give humanity at present, it would be that... is profoundly Asian with yet a strong European colour. In rising victorious over the tide of decadence and debasement now sweeping across the earth she will epitomise in every respect the entire humanity's victory. False Ideas about Spirituality But how shall we defeat this dangerous tide? Or, to put it more positively, how shall we grow in spirituality? Paradoxically the answer is:... multi-mooded idealist, holding something of all national souls, functioning with an assimilative capacity which makes her as diverse in expression as she is single in motive. She can be all things to all men and so her uplifting force will be everywhere the most creative. And today even her inherent omni-effectivity is rendered more concentrated because, as a result of a long and pervasive impress on her ...
... nebulae to humanity the march cannot but be called an advance, a progress, in more senses than one. But the question is about man. Has man advanced, progressed since his advent upon earth? If so, in what manner, to what extent? Man has been upon earth for the last two million years, they say. From what has happened before him in the course of Nature's evolution, it is legitimate to infer that man too, in... identity and agency. The question is now asked how far this self-consciousness – given to man by his progress from stone to steel – has advanced and what is its future. The crucial problem is whether man has progressed in historical times. Granted that man with an iron tool is a more advanced type of humanity than man with a chipped stone tool, it may still be enquired whether he has made any real advance... Self-consciousness, we have seen, is the sine qua non of humanity. It is the faculty or power by and with which man appears on earth and maintains himself as such, as a distinct species. Thanks to this faculty man has become the tool-making animal, the artisan – homo faber. But on emerging from the original mythopoeic to the scientific status man has become doubly self-conscious. Self-consciousness ...
... nebulae to humanity the march cannot but be called an advance, a progress, in more senses than one. But the question is about man. Has man advanced, progressed since his advent upon earth? If so, in what manner, to what extent? Man has been upon earth for the last two million years, they say. From what has happened before him in the course of Nature's evolution, it is legitimate to infer that man too, in... and agency. The question is now asked how far this self-consciousness—given to man by his progress from stone to steel—has advanced and what is its future. The crucial problem is whether man has progressed in historical times. Granted that man with an iron tool is a more advanced type of humanity than man with a chipped stone tool, it may still be inquired whether he has made any real advance... Self-consciousness, we have seen, is the sine qua non of humanity. It is the faculty or power by and with which man appears on earth and maintains himself as such, as a distinct species. Thanks to this faculty man has become the tool-making animal, the artisan— homo faber. But on emerging from the original mythopoeic to the scientific status man has become doubly self-conscious. Self-consciousness means ...
... separate from, but in the future scheme of humanity.... Not a spirit of aloofness or of jealous self-defence, but of generous emulation and brotherhood with all men and all nations, justified by a sense of conscious strength, a great destiny, a large place in the human future - this should be the Indian spirit. If the Vedantic idea of the oneness of all men in God could be realised inwardly and... warfare, of any warfare, and men wanted the reign of peace, of perpetual peace; but there were insuperable obstacles in the way to the realisation of the ideal of human brotherhood. Without freedom - freedom for individual man and also for each nationality - healthy self-expression would be impossible; but without order and unity - a sense of self-discipline in individual man and in the corporate life... culture. For in the Veda the Aryan peoples are those who had accepted a particular type of self-culture, of inward and outward practice, of ideality, of aspiration.... In later times, the word Arya expressed a particular ethical and social ideal, an ideal of well-governed life, candour, courtesy, nobility, straight dealing, courage, gentleness, purity, humanity, compassion, protection of the ...
... for the birth of a new race of humanity, the race of gnostic supermen. This new birth will be an emergence of man, as the culmination of his evolutionary progression, into the supreme Truth-Consciousness, which will admit of a simultaneous realisation of and union with the transcendent Sachchidananda and His universal Immanence—a consummation not yet achieved by man. But in order that this emergence... derived, and that the physical nature of man should, in consequence, be definitively freed from the dark density, inertia and insensibility which are its heritage from its inconscient origin. Physical transformation by means of the authentic supramental Force is, therefore, the crux of the mission of Sri Aurobindo's life, and it presages a future for humanity which is too glorious even for the widest... prelude to and a preparation for her work in India, which is a work for the whole of humanity, and seeing in the identity between her ideal and that of Sri Aurobindo an evidence of the decree of God that East and West must meet as Shiva and Shakti, self-manifesting Light and realising and transforming Force, to raise man from mind to supermind and convert his life of division and discord into the creative ...
... treasury, so you may, merely touching the wealth that comes to you, pour it out for those around you, for the country, for humanity, seeing Brahman in these. Glory again he may conceal with humility, but use the influence it gives him in order to lead men upwards to the divine. Such a man will quickly rise above joy & sorrow, victory & defeat; for in sorrow as in joy he will feel himself to be near God,... these people that they will find a deeper & truer bliss in good moral conduct and altruism than in their present selfish and anti-social career. Where is the proof or even the philosophic justification of what these philosophers allege? Their own experience? That is not valid for the average sensational man; his deepest pleasure is necessarily vital and sensational; it is only valid for the men who... lion. Had he fallen as the leader of humanity,—he could not have fallen then, but yet if he had fallen,—his spirit would have conquered after his death and ruled & guided the nations for centuries to come. Get therefore Jnana, the pure knowledge of Brahman within you and show it forth in nishkam karma, in selfless work for your people, for your country, for humanity, for the world, then will you surely ...
... ethical ideals and a large human action, governed by truth and beauty and self-ruling will. This is the ideal of -a true culture and the beginning of an accomplished humanity. This strategy by which this ideal can be channelised in humanity is not easy to find. Education is often supposed to be the best strategy for the creation of cultural life; and if culture is to be the means of peace, then education... brotherhood can grow and develop only by means of education that fosters mutuality, team spirit and self-discipline. We speak today of education for human rights and people's rights. Unfortunately, we do not speak of human duties and people's duties. It is only when we match rights with duties, and create a new mode of consciousness among learners in which the individual develops collective consciousness... to be discovered by reflecting on the ideal laws of harmony. The primitive conditions in which man finds himself in his relation with his fellow beings and the world is that of struggle for existence. This struggle is often portrayed as a battle between the creature and Mature. But we observe that as man becomes increasingly self-conscious, there grows in him an irresistible tendency to learn the ...
... these Western peoples I can admire more than I admire the immediate past of our Indian nations. It is their present that shocks my aspirations for humanity. Europe is full of the noise and the apparel of life, of its luxurious trappings, of a myriad-footed material clang and tread, but of that which supports life she is growing more and more empty. When they had less information, her people had wiser and... d darkness with the marsh-light and the corpse-light for his guides, straining out of those blind orbs after an image of Power that he cannot seize. Time was when he dreamed of love and prated of humanity, but though he still mouths the words, he has forgotten the things. He groped too after wisdom; he has grasped only Science. By that Science he has multiplied comforts till comfort itself has grown... that Sri Aurobindo wrote this passage with the intention of working it in here: But in this brilliance there is no permanence, in this curiosity there is no depth. Cleverness has replaced wisdom and men are more concerned to be original in minutiae than to secure their hold upon large & permanent truths. New theories chase each other across a confused & distracted field resonant with the clash of hustling ...
... which humanity does not yet know how to form or, even if formed, will not for some time be able or willing perfectly to utilise. And there is no chance of national armies being abolished; for each nation distrusts all the others too much, has too many ambitions and hungers, needs to remain armed, if for nothing else, to guard its markets and keep down its dominions, colonies, subject peoples. Commercial... its close, no such probability emerged; the dynamic period during which in such a crisis the effective ideas and tendencies of men are formed, passed without the creation of any great and profound impulse. There were only two points on which the general mind of the peoples was powerfully affected. First, there was generated a sense of revolt against the possible repetition of this vast catastrophe;... common sense of the average man, that short-sighted common sense of the material mind which consists in a strong feeling for immediate actualities and an entire blindness to the possibilities of the future. But there has as yet been no long intellectual preparation of a more and more dominant thought cast out by the intellectuals of the age to remould the ideas of common men, nor has there been any such ...
... speak to people, at times something seizes me, and I speak bluntly. Well, all of a sudden, it got hold of me; and yet, I really feel affection for this man. What did you tell him? Page 369 It was about the government. You know that he wanted to see people from the Indian government, and I conveyed to him your message saying that there was nothing to be done with those people. Then he... story—what depths humanity has sunk to... it's unbelievable. Have you heard this story of the slaughter of baby seals? When seals are born (a certain species of seals), they're all white, and they remain so for a few weeks, then they lose their hair and turn gray—gray or yellowish, like their fathers and mothers. And as it's the fashion to wear all-white fur coats, some people... It's organized... Indira, in particular: "The value of the man is more important than the party to which he belongs.... The greatness of a country does not depend on the victory of a party, but on the union of all the parties." ) Do you know that there's a passage from Sri Aurobindo that says exactly the same thing?.... Really! I wondered if we couldn't publish it too: "Men of free minds and free habits are too ...
... from all humanity, whom neither conversion nor assimilation could affect because their basic nature was evil and unchangeable. He shared the Wagnerian thesis that Christianity was a product of ‘Hebraic Orientalism’, and that those who clung to the ‘entire’ Christian tradition could not truly oppose Judaism or defend the ‘Nordic tradition’.” 567 “Only the Nordic gods could help the German people to victory... the Jews. Here he claimed that God had created the Jew as a buffer between man and ape. The Nazis assimilated this thought in their own propaganda when, in 1931, one of their speakers asserted that non-Nordic man occupied an intermediary position between Nordic man and the animal world. The non-Nordic man was not a whole man, for he still shared traits with the apes.” 571 The Austrian Antisemitenbund... Wagner, oder Hitlers Bayreuth. Wagner’s art helped spreading his anti-Semitism, which intensified over the years to the point where he declared: “I hold the Jewish race to be the born enemy of pure humanity and everything noble in it. It is certain that it is running us Germans to the ground, and I am perhaps the last German who knows how to hold himself upright in the face of Judaism, which already ...
... atavistic period of boyhood,—when, be it noted, the development of the body is of the greatest importance,—but to the adult man in civilised humanity it is ceasing to be possible. For, in the first place, by the stress of modern life even the vital attitude of the race is changing. Man is ceasing to be so much of a physical and becoming much more of a vital and economic animal. Not that he excludes or is... not yet in sight but inevitable, we shall have all the proper elements for the development of man as a mental being. The old Hellenic or Graeco-Roman civilisation perished, among other reasons, because it only imperfectly generalised culture in its own society and was surrounded by huge masses of humanity who were still possessed by the barbarian habit of mind. Civilisation can never be safe so long... his past, capable of organising intelligently by that knowledge his social and economic life, ordering rightly his bodily habits and physical being, this is the conception that now governs civilised humanity. It is, in essence, a return to and a larger development of the old Hellenic ideal, with a greater stress on capacity and Page 75 utility and a very diminished stress on beauty and refinement ...
... building up of a new humanity. The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the life-long Tapasya of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have for their central aim the transformation of ignorant, imperfect and all-suffering humanity into a race of divine men, and on a far lesser scale the goal set before SAICE, the Mother's dream institution, is to help its students to grow into a new type of humanity freed from many... Principles and Goals of Integral Education XIII SAICE: The Cradle of a New Humanity The preceding chapter may have sounded a rather depressing note. But this is just a passing aberration. The dark clouds are bound to float away after some time. The true destiny of SAICE is great and glorious! It is fixed by divine dispensation and cannot be checkmated... prosperous lives, social renown, lucrative jobs, great scholarship and things of that sort which they are preparing themselves for here in this unique institution, but to be candidates for the new humanity that is sure to emerge in the future. This they should never forget. Mother is there to help them always in fulfilling this task. But they, on their part, have to make a constant and sincere effort ...
... triumphantly to their fulfilment. The men who have led hitherto have been strong men of high gifts and commanding genius, great enough to be the protagonists of any other movement, but even they were not sufficient to fulfil one which is the chief current of a world-wide revolution. Therefore the Nationalist party, custodians of the future, must wait for the man who is to come, calm in the midst of... that the man is not yet released?" Then he ordered the Superintendent of the Presidency Jail to take immediate action and sent the order by a special messenger. As regards the two papers, the Karmayogin and the Dharma, although they bravely carried on for some months after Sri Aurobindo's departure from Calcutta, they had eventually to be closed down. The police were after the young men associated... gold, caused great uneasiness to the Government, and once again there were set afloat rumours of his impending arrest. With the man there free to talk and write as he liked, the Reforms would have no chance at all of achieving their intended aim of hoodwinking the people. As for Sri Aurobindo, he too felt that the times were such that he should speak out. It was in this context that his second letter ...
... adhdra is capable, and the .adhdra itself is trained utterly to bear the inrush and play of the energy, then is a man siddha, the fulfilled or perfect man, his evolution is over and he has completed in the individual that utmost development which the mass of Page 83 humanity is labouring towards through the ages. If this theory be correct, the energy at the basis of the operation... the yet undeveloped faculty of direct knowledge, latent in humanity and now to be evolved, which is above reason and imagination, the faculty which in Sri Rama- krishna, the supreme outcome of the race, dispensed with education and commanded any knowledge he desired easily and divinely. It is a faculty which now works irregularly in humanity, unrecognised and confused by the interference of the imagination... eminently the gifts which are most needed for the new race that has to arise. He has the emotion and imagination which is open to the great inspirations, the mighty heart-stirring ideas that move- humanity when a great step forward has to be taken. He has the invaluable gift of thinking with the heart. He has, too, a subtle brain which is able within certain limits to catch shades of meaning and delicacies ...
... of heaven. The lure of a pleasant Paradise of the rewards of virtue has been rejected by man; the Upanishads belittled it ages ago in India and it is now no longer dominant in the mind of the people; the similar lure in popular Christianity and popular Islam has no meaning for the conscience of modern humanity. The lure of a release from birth and death and withdrawal from the cosmic labour must also... into the infinite heavenly world or status of the Brahman-consciousness is held out as the goal. And this would seem to imply a rejection of the life of the cosmos. Well then may we ask, we the modem humanity more and more conscious of the inner warning of that which created us, be it Nature or God, that there is a work for the race, a divine purpose in its creation which exceeds the salvation of the ... the word of the riddle that has been ignored. The Upanishad alone of extant scriptures gives us without veil or stinting, with plenitude and a noble catholicity the truth of the Brahman; its aid to humanity is therefore indispensable. Only, where anything essential is missing, we must go beyond the Upanishads to seek it,—as for instance, when we add to its emphasis on divine knowledge the indispensable ...
... are merely the outer moulds: they leave man basically the same half-beast and half-angel that he was when the Rig-Veda was composed. And it seems to me undeniable that only what the Rig-Veda aimed at can give us true evolution. There must be progress not horizontally alone: a vertical line must be struck, a movement leading from our present level of humanity to a superhumanhood, a change from the mental... poetry is and should be, then certainly it is not a handmaid of science or of "men among men" with a social-reformist and Marxist penchant. I bear no grudge against such men among men, provided they give us genuine poetry and do not shut their eyes to the possibility of genuine poetry being produced by other kinds of men who too grip life though from a different angle. We must not make a fetish... inspire a man to feel strongly and to see vividly - or else if the feeling were so strong and the seeing so vivid that his faculty Page 47 of expression got quite upset. I do not think anybody who has studied mystical experience, much less anybody who has undergone it, will mark in it a lack of feeling or seeing. Expression, however, depends on the presence of the artist in a man's nature: ...
... Jatin Mukherjee met Sri Aurobindo in 1903, and thereafter he was one of his principal lieutenants in the revolutionary movement. "A wonderful man," Sri Aurobindo described him in his later years, "he was a man who would belong to the front rank of humanity anywhere. Such beauty and strength together I haven't seen, and his stature was like a warrior's." 5 Even the British Commissioner of Police... begun on 19 April 1908: The work now before us is of the sternest kind and requires men of an unflinching sternness to carry it out. The hero, the martyr, the man of iron will and iron heart, the grim fighter whose tough nerves defeat cannot tire out nor danger relax, the born leader in action, the man who cannot sleep or rest while his country is enslaved, the priest of Kali who can tear... India. That is my Diksha to you." 2 The religious background is unmistakable. Although the immediate aim is the liberation of India, the ultimate aim is the liberation of humanity: If India does not become free, man also will not be free! Again, for the neophyte the pass-word is Surrender! Lose all to gain all! Many an Amarendra joined the secret party, but few knew about the exact ...
... transformation, a small nucleus of men who are transforming themselves and setting an example to the world. That is what Auroville hopes to be.’ 16 From this we may conclude that there was a minimal condition to become an Aurovillian, namely a willingness to turn towards the future and to collaborate in the realization of the essential oneness of humanity, and a maximal condition, the pursuit... ed the revelation for itself, and the general level of mankind is still so low (‘humanity is still very little,’ as the Mother said) that it always simplifies the message of the revelation, which it is unable to comprehend mentally, and that it degrades its spiritual content. Moreover, the ego is present, in humanity and in spiritual matters, with its usually masked inclination towards selfishness... direction (and there was always that witty glimmer in her eyes).’ And she wrote in the original French: CHARTER OF AUROVILLE Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville one must be the willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness. Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that ...
... plain in a letter which has been made public that we did not consider the war as a fight between nations and governments (still less between good people and bad people) but between two forces, the Divine and the Asuric. What we have to see is on which side men and nations put themselves; if they put themselves on the right side, they at once make themselves instruments of the Divine purpose in spite of... Pandavas that these virtuous men (including Krishna) brought about a huge slaughter that they might become supreme rulers over all the numerous free and independent peoples of India? That would be the result of weighing old happenings in the scales of modern ideals. As a matter of fact such an empire was a step in the right direction then, just as a world-union of free peoples would be a step in the right... slaughter. . . . We should remember that conquest and rule over subject peoples were not regarded as wrong either in ancient or mediaeval or quite recent times, but as Page 122 something great and glorious; men did not see any special wickedness in conquerors or conquering nations. Just government of subject peoples was envisaged but nothing more—exploitation was not excluded. The ...
... an association of the young men of Pondicherry and Karikal "as a sort of training ground from which men can be chosen for the Page 100 Vedantic Yoga". In a letter written about a month later, Sri Aurobindo informed him that they were starting a monthly philosophical Review giving the foundations of "my theory of the ideal life towards which humanity must move" 32 , and in close ... be filled with an unaccountable purity and joy and self-oblivious we would come back home talking merrily like people living in a happy world. On her part, reminiscing about her first impressions in India Mirra used to say in later years how she thought that not only the young men who approached her but even the lowly and the poor and the uncultured were nearer Divinity in their inner essential... Yogins, not merely men moved intellectually and emotionally by one or two of the central ideas of the Yoga. Spreading of the idea is the second necessity, for that the Review at present offers itself among other means. The other means is to form brotherhoods, not formal but real .. for the practice of the Vedantic yoga .... 38 To sum up, as Sri Aurobindo worked it out, one man at least should ...
... produces a disgust of the action and its material objects and of life itself. He rejects the vital aim pursued by egoistic humanity in its action, —happiness and enjoyment; he rejects the vital aim of the Kshatriya, victory and rule and power and the government of men. What after all is this fight for justice when reduced to its practical terms, but just this, a fight for the interests... setting of such a discourse as the Gita must necessarily be if it is to have any relation at all with that which it frames. Arjuna, as we have seen, is the representative man of a great world-struggle and divinely-guided movement of men and nations; in the Gita he typifies the human soul of action brought face to face through that action in its highest and most violent crisis with the problem of human... under him at a single stroke. That is the nature of the crisis which he undergoes. Arjuna is, in the language of the Gita, a man subject to the action of the three gunas or modes of the Nature-Force and habituated to move unquestioningly in that field, like the generality of men. He justifies his name only in being so far pure and sattwic as to be governed by high and clear principles and impulses and ...
... sincerity of our living. It is not impossible for man to realise his ideals so that he may move on to yet greater undreamed things, but on condition that he makes them totally an inner in order that they may become too an outer reality. The changes which this age of reconstruction portends will certainly come, but the gain they will bring to humanity depends on the spirit which governs us during the... because it looks at process and commodity and production and ignores the spirit in man and the deeper inner law of his being. The elimination of war is one of the cherished ideals and expectations of the age. But what lies at the root of this desire? A greater unity of heart, sympathy, understanding between men and nations, a settled will to get rid of national hatreds, greeds, ambitions, all the... plausibilities of the practical reason which looks at the possibilities of the day and the morrow and shuts its eyes to the consequences of the day after, the habits of pretence and fiction which impel men and nations to pursue and forward their own interest under the camouflage of a specious idealism, a habit made up only partly of the diplomatic hypocrisy of politicians, but much more of a general h ...
... carrying six famous men indifferent spheres of life, and an unknown young man, who are all on their way to attend a World Conference on Human Progress, is wrecked in mid-ocean, and these seven "brought together, apparently by chance", take refuge in a lifeboat. The six famous men are the Statesman, the Writer, the Scientist, the Artist, the Industrialist and the Athlete. The Unknown Man sits at the helm... to that of a man who rides a tiger. Faster and faster must the business grow, farther and farther its tentacles extend, - or there must be a terrific and irretrievable crash! "My business is growing so rapidly," he muses, "that it now looks more like an inflated balloon than a living body moving harmoniously and steadily towards maturity." To what end all his vaunted successes? Are men truly happier... clinch the issue of the proposed assault on the Hill to reach its summit of Truth. The Philanthropist - the man of goodwill and the do-gooder - declares that his labours so far haven't given him satisfying results; and he feels convinced that without the "true meaning of life" he cannot help people effectively. The Pessimist, having failed so often and suffered so much injustice, can now believe in nothing ...
... can serve as examples of men who resorted to what the Mahatma calls "violence". Disciple : But Mahatma says "I am not Krishna". Sri Aurobindo : Any man can say, "I am not Prahlad". 23-7-1923 Disciple : I had a long discussion with X on vegetarian and non-vegetarian diet. His argument was that those who take non-vegetarian diet are people devoid of pity. Life is sacred... 23-7-1923 Disciple : The Mahatma believes that non-violence purifies the man who practises it. Sri Aurobindo . I believe Gandhi does not know what actually happens to the man's nature when he takes to Satyagraha or non-violence. He thinks that men get purified by it. But when men suffer, or subject them- selves to voluntarily suffering, what happens is that their vital being... Disciple : I believe Tagore is partly responsible -for that, as it is he who many times has insisted on the gospel of Buddha – whatever that may be, for various people have different ideas about it – as the only way for the salvation of humanity. Sri Aurobindo : I think partly at least it is Tagore who has Page 65 made the idea current on the continent that Buddha is the beginning ...
... Ibsen, of the social crisis of today, how the people, the masses, are not capable of recognizing their own secular good—not to speak of any higher spiritual welfare—and one who does or tries to do a really good turn to them is dubbed "An Enemy of the People" Page 127 Today the opposition is infinitely greater. The call now to humanity is for an infinitely greater change—an inner... earth moves...towards the Light. Sri Aurobindo founded the Ashram to give a form to the descending light, to make of man an angel, not leaving him to remain an animal or half animal as he now is. The Mother's dream from her childhood was to find a place upon earth where men would be free, happy, wise, pure, one in love, above want, dwelling in the plenitude of prosperity, both inner and outer... open them out for the play of a higher order of consciousness, a superior status of being, a luminous mode of life. Opposition from the stagnant order, opposition from domains that do not want man to be free from his past and present and become a being of the future, is inevitable in the nature of things. Opposition is also meant to be a test and a training for perfection. Through troubles ...
... India was free, thousands of men set their feet in the stairs of heaven, but as the night deepened and the sun of liberty withdrew its rays, the spiritual force inborn in every Indian heart became weaker and weaker until now it burns so faintly that aliens have taken upon themselves the role of spiritual teachers, and the people chosen by God have to sit at the feet of the men from whose ancestry the light... his degradation, not a willing self-devotion. When man is thus degraded, Sri Aurobindo observed, it is idle to think that society can be free. Sri Aurobindo went farther and pointed out that not only social freedom but even spiritual freedom can never be the Page 78 lot of many in the land of slaves. He asked, "If the mass of men around us is miserable, fallen, degraded how can the... the condition of sainthood, and the perfect Yogin is he who is sarvabhutahite ratah, whose mind is full of the will to do good to all creatures. When a man shuts his heart to the cries of sufferings around him, when he is content that his fellow-men should be sorrowful, oppressed, sacrificed to the greed of others, he is making his own way to salvation full of difficulties and stumbling-blocks. He is ...
... point, since what the man in his creative impulse produces is usually a resultant of forces which sway him in his solitude, countered by those that sway him in his social setting. Even the argument of the highbrow, world-aloof scientist, living for his laboratory, cannot be fully valid when he claims that his findings have nothing to do with humanity and its aspirations. For man being bom from others... has no message to deliver to humanity at large. What is contended in this view is something interesting because there is a modicum of truth, as Sri Aurobindo wrote to me once, in every intellectual conviction seriously cherished. What is true in this indictment against the mystic is that his contribution to human culture its not conterminous with that of the social man in his various, more or less... daily with a paradox, namely, that the most abstract and even seemingly impossible of scientific theories (theories which once upon a time men could only gape at) have been fruitful in inventions which have profoundly modified not only the outer life of man but his thoughts and aspirations as well. Tout se tient (things lean upon one another and hold together,) Romain Rolland wrote to me once ...
... of a new race of humanity, the race of gnostic supermen. This new birth will be an emergence of man, as the culmination of his evolutionary progression, into the supreme Truth-Consciousness, which will admit of a simultaneous Page 2 realisation of and union with the transcendent Sachchidananda and His universal Immanence—a consummation not yet achieved by man. But in order that... derived, and that the physical nature of man should, in consequence, be definitively freed from the dark density, inertia and insensibility which are its heritage from its inconscient origin. Physical transformation by means of the authentic supramental Force is, therefore, the crux of the mission of Sri Aurobindo's life, and it presages a future for humanity which is too glorious even for the widest... prelude to and a preparation for her work in India, which is a work for the whole of humanity, and seeing in the identity between her ideal and that of Sri Aurobindo an evidence of the decree of God that East and West must meet as Shiva and Shakti, self-manifesting Light and realising and transforming Force, to raise man Page 5 from mind to supermind and convert his life of division ...
... Purusha in the heart but the spiritual man might live above the head. I never felt like a saint myself – though Maurice Magre calls me ‘a philosopher and a saint.’ Krishna, for instance, was not a saint. A spiritual man may not always behave like a saint, he may have many other things in him like Rishi Durvasa. Disciple : But saints are nearer to humanity; they are not like the Ishwar-Koti... Bhakta-nature. But all spiritual men are not saints, of course, both can go together, sometimes. Disciple : Is there a distinction between saints and spiritual persons? Sri Aurobindo : Of course, there is; saints are limited by their psychic nature, but spiritual men are not. The saint, generally, proceeds from and lives in the heart-centre. The spiritual man might live in other higher... it. Sri Aurobindo : D used to say to Dr. Le Mongnac, “It is impossible for me to fail because I am a God-man.” He said to many people here that he is not afraid because he is Sri Aurobindo’s disciple. He got the power from the Mother and all agree that he is the one man who can do something if he wanted to. Mrs. R used to write : “What has N come to – at Pondicherry? He is writing ...
... past and to the future of humanity. We have to throw away the individualism and materialism and keep the democracy. We have to solve for the human race the problem of harmonising and spiritualising its impulses towards liberty, equality and fraternity. In order that we may fulfil our mission we must be masters in our own home. It is out of no hostility to the English people, no race hatred that we seek... had brought us low and made us weak, low therefore must be our aims and weak our methods. They pointed the mind of the people to a great Page 245 and splendid destiny, not in some distant millennium but in the comparatively near future, and fired the hearts of the young men with a burning desire to realise the apocalyptic vision. As a justification of what might otherwise have seemed a dream... chief uplifting force in the movement, and it cannot be denied that it is bringing back to our young men originality, aspiration and energy. By this force the character, temper and action of the Bengali has been altered beyond recognition in a few years. To raise the mind, character and tastes of the people, to recover the ancient nobility of temper, the strong Aryan character and the high Aryan outlook ...
... and the material world below. The stretching out of the golden robe is a significant gesture of the divine Grace leaniing down to succour suffering humanity. It is interesting to note again that the "men, women, children, old men, sick men, unhappy men" gathered under the robe after it had lengthened, spreading in a circle around the Mother "to form, as it were, an immense roof over the town." It is... thought and plan of man. But for His Force to act freely—it never acts arbitrarily—man has to have an infinite faith in it. "Thou art the sovereign power of transformation, why shouldst Thou not act upon all those who are put in relation with Thee through us as intermediaries ? We lack faith in Thy power. We always think that for this integral transformation to take place, men must will in their... central consciousness of man, once it has travelled beyond the borders of even the spiritual mind, finds a stable base above in the Transcendent, and a tranquil, luminous poise in it, and never spirals back — na punarāvartate — into the whirl of the lower energies. It is the divine nature assumed after the ascent that descends as a vehicle of the divine Grace to help and heal humanity. This movement illustrates ...
... was for the whole world, for all men, for East and West, for everybody. Also it means a cosmic or world-embracing consciousness. She was creating a new type of the mental world, through the highest mental development, to reach a still wider mind – beyond the individual egoistic mind. As I have said, the mind, the head, being the highest part in man, it is easy for man to receive the new light through... you see it, you are conscious of it. France represents today just this mind of humanity at its best, the flowering of its culture and civilisation. She was born there so that the highest mind of the human race may receive that light through her. She passed her life there in the company of the elite, the most cultured people of the time, scientists, artists, poets, all of the highest and most refined... with her the new light that is to re-create, re-shape man and the world. What was the relation between the new man and France? For the new light to come and manifest, you have first to receive it in your mind, that is to say you must see and recognise that it is a new light and ask for it. And mind is the first or the topmost receptacle in man. You may remember here the opening line of Dhammapada ...
... Nor has the world been entirely a gainer by losing these high ancient forms and motives. But whatever the actual practice of men,—and in this respect the normal human being is a singular mixture of the sincere but quite ineffective, the just respectable, would-be ethical man and the self-deceiving or semi-hypocritical Pharisee,—one can always appeal with force to a moralistic prejudice. All religions... if not all the way to it man must rise or he misses his upward curve of strength; but there are different ways of approach to its secret forces. Europe, it would seem, must go through the life and the reason and find spiritual truth by their means as a crown and a revelation; she cannot at once take the kingdom of heaven by violence, as the saying of Christ would have men do. The attempt confuses and... to be a reality for the mass of men and not only for a few saints and thinkers, must address its appeal to the whole of our being, not only to the suprarational and the rational parts, but to all the others. The imagination, the emotions, the aesthetic sense, even the very instincts of the half subconscient parts must be taken into the influence. Religion must lead man towards the suprarational, the ...
... plain in a letter which has been made public that we did not consider the war as a fight between nations and governments (still less between good people and bad people) but between two forces, the Divine and the Asuric. What we have to see is on which side men and nations put themselves; if they put themselves on _______________ messenger. Although Nehru and Rajagopalachari favoured acceptance... and I have supported war and sent men to it, even though politics is not always or often a very clean occupation nor can war be called a spiritual line of action. But Krishna calls upon Arjuna to carry on war of the most terrible kind and by his example encourage men to do every kind of human work, sarvakarmani. Do you contend that Krishna was an unspiritual man and that his advice to Arjuna was... existence and keeping it in being. Such Beings are as real and more permanently real than the men they influence but they belong to a higher plane, are part of the cosmic consciousness and being and act here on earth by shaping the human consciousness on which they exercise their influence. It is natural for man who sees only his own consciousness individual, national or racial at work and does not see ...
... mankind the glorious vistas of the future awaiting the probe of aspiring men; but, what is still more important, it shows to blinded humanity the proper path to tread to reach this goal. The present essay is an attempt to show, although in brief, how all those problems that are troubling most the mind and heart of modern man find their solution in this Philosophy of Integralism. Is there at... epoch of spiritual malady, the Heideggerian Angst has taken possession of the minds of men. Modern man is verily in a state of utter alienation. The Crisis of the Alienated Man The man of our epoch has been described as an alienated man. As Frederick Copleston has aptly remarked, modern man is alienated from the Divine; he is alienated from the world around him; he is alienated... Quoted in Man's Right to Knowledge, p. 14. Page 190 the individual to other individuals and to the community of men? How can he realise his age-old dream of three basic harmonies: cosmical harmony between man and world, social harmony between man and man and biopsychical harmony within man himself? And finally what about Death, that dreadful, ineluctable eventuality? Does it not ...
... making of the art of Page 63 humanity. This will not come about by an artificial process of addition but by an organic growth, by assimilation. Art of humanity will really appear when mankind has learnt to feel the whole humanity as one, i. e. when man outgrows his national egoism, and begins to think and feel in terms of humanity. The main characteristic of that future art... towards subjective expression is in the right direction. In future we might even look beyond the mere human self of man, for, there is within man the possibility of outgrowing his mere humanity. He can widen out and ascend to a universal consciousness. In his inmost being " man is more than man ". The artist discovering his own true self would derive inspiration to create from there. 1 1 To live... Political and economic considerations and also the swift and easy transport are bringing men nearer and nearer. This process is bound to increase with time. More than any other, in the field of art men will begin to feel the need of unity and progress. Future art will move more and more towards the art of humanity. But it will not be the type of modern European art though it seems to dominate almost ...
... ādhāra is capable, and the ādhāra itself is trained utterly to bear the inrush and play of the energy, then is a man siddha , the fulfilled or perfect man, his evolution is over and he has completed in the individual that utmost development which the Page 370 mass of humanity is labouring towards through the ages. If this theory be correct, the energy at the basis of the operation of... the yet undeveloped faculty of direct knowledge, latent in humanity and now to be evolved, which is above reason and imagination, the faculty which in Sri Ramakrishna, the supreme outcome of the race, dispensed with education and commanded any knowledge he desired easily and divinely. It is a faculty which now works irregularly in humanity, unrecognised and confused by the interference of the imagination... eminently the gifts which are most needed for the new race that has to arise. He has the emotion and imagination which is open to the great inspirations, the mighty heart-stirring ideas that move humanity when a great step forward has to be taken. He has the invaluable gift of thinking with the heart. He has, too, a subtle brain which is able within certain limits to catch shades of meaning and delicacies ...
... of the country, having successfully if also purblindly polarised the people into suicidally aggressive attitudes, were now (most of them) only all too eager to leap into the dangled seats of power ignoring the larger interests of the country. They were tired old men, or not so old but very ambitious men, at any rate they were men seized by a sense of fatality; and they had been overtaken by events... and, "finally, a new step in the evolution which, by uplifting the consciousness to a higher level, would begin the solution of the many problems of existence which have perplexed and vexed humanity, since men began to think and to dream of individual perfection and a perfect society." Page 452 India had become free, but because of the Partition, it was only a "fissured and broken freedom"... generally to keep the lines open for a free evolution of humanity towards the next radical phase of self-development and global unity. Nor should it be forgotten that, whenever a message or important letter went forth from Sri Aurobindo or the Mother, it carried the authority and force of the other too, for theirs was a joint spiritual movement for man's and for the earth's ultimate transformation. ...
... that is assigned to you. The Mother Living examples Now, all depends on your will and your sincerity. If you have the will no more to belong to ordinary humanity, no more to be merely evolved animals; if your will is to become men of the new race realising Sri Aurobindo's supramental ideal, living a new and higher life upon a new earth, you will find here all the necessary help to achieve your... None of the present achievements of humanity have Page 19 the power to pull the Ashram out of its difficulties. It is only a total conversion of all its members and an integral opening to the descending Light of Truth that can help it to realise itself. The Mother Preparing for a Divine life People who feel miserable here and find that they... only an animal. One begins to be a man only when one aspires to a higher and truer life and when one accepts a discipline of transformation. For this one must start by mastering one's lower nature and its desires. The Mother A field for the inner opening The work in the Ashram was not meant as a service to humanity or to a section of it called the sadhaks of the Ashram ...
... make the change persist, a religion of humanity or an equivalent sentiment much more powerful, explicit, self-conscious, universal in its appeal than the nationalist's religion of country; the clear recognition by man in all his thought and life of a single soul in humanity of which each man and each people is an incarnation and soul-form; an ascension of man beyond the principle of ego which lives... get on somehow with life, because the vital man in us, who is the dominant element in our instincts and in our actions, cares for none of these things and is quite satisfied with any just tolerable or any precariously or partly agreeable form of living, because that is all to which he is accustomed and all therefore that he feels to be necessary. The men who are not satisfied, the thinkers, the idealists... Unity - II The Human Cycle Chapter XXXIII Internationalism and Human Unity The great necessity, then, and the great difficulty is to help this idea of humanity which is already at work upon our minds and has even begun in a very slight degree to influence from above our actions, and turn it into something more than an idea, however strong, to make it a central ...
... vocable. In later times, the word Arya expressed a particular ethical and social ideal, an ideal of well-governed life, candour, courtesy, nobility, straight dealing, courage, gentleness, purity, humanity, compassion, protection of the weak, liberality, observance of social duty, eagerness for knowledge, respect for the wise and learned, the social accomplishments. It was the combined ideal of the... virtue, signifying, like the Latin virtus , first, physical strength and courage and then moral force and elevation. This sense of the word also we may accept. "We fight to win sublime Wisdom, therefore men call us warriors." For Wisdom implies the choice as well as the knowledge of that which is best, noblest, most luminous, most divine. Certainly, it means also the knowledge of all things and charity... and overcomes all outside him and within him that stands opposed to the human advance. Self-conquest is the first law of his nature. He overcomes earth and the body and does not consent like ordinary men to their dullness, inertia, dead routine and tamasic limitations. He overcomes life and its energies and refuses to be dominated by their hungers and cravings or enslaved by their rajasic passions. He ...
... control and guide the destiny of others, even of peoples and humanity at large. That is the deeper meaning the great phrase of the Gita— lokasamgraha— carries. Indeed, great souls are precisely they who move with the upward current of Nature, in and through whom Nature works out vast changes, prepares the steps of evolution in the world and humanity. But what again is this universal vital energy... success in the world. A man with push and go, as it is termed, is nothing but a person with abundant vital energy. But even of this energy there are gradations. It can be deep, controlled, organised or it can be hectic, effusive, confused: the latter kind expresses and spends itself often in mere external, nervous and muscular movements. Those, however, who are known as great men of action are precisely... The thoughtful people are philosophers at the most, they are ineffectual angels in this workaday world of ours. We need upon earth people of sterner stuff, dynamic people who are not thought bound, but know how to apply and execute their ideas, whatever they may be. Lenin was great, not because he had revolutionary ideas, but because he gave a muscular frame to them. Such people alone are the ...
... control and guide the destiny of others, even of peoples and humanity at large. That is the deeper meaning the great phrase of the Gita – lokasamgraha – carries. Indeed, great souls are precisely they who move with the upward current of Nature, in and through whom Nature works out vast changes, prepares the steps of evolution in the world and humanity. But what again is this universal vital energy... success in the world. A man with push and go, as it is termed, is nothing but a person with abundant vital energy. But even of this energy there are gradations. It can be deep, controlled, organised or it can be hectic, effusive, confused: the latter kind expresses and spends itself often in mere external, nervous and muscular movements. Those, however, who are known as great men of action are precisely... The thoughtful people are philosophers at the most, they are ineffectual angels in this workaday world of ours. We need upon earth people of sterner stuff, dynamic people who are not thought-bound, but know how to apply and execute their ideas, whatever they may be. Lenin was great, not because he had revolutionary ideas, but because he gave a muscular frame to them. Such people alone are the pragmatic ...
... nebulae to humanity the march cannot but be called an advance, a progress, in more senses than one. But the question is about man. Has man advanced, progressed since his advent upon earth ? If so, in what manner, to what extent ? Man has been upon earth for the last two million years, they say. From what has happened before him in the course of Nature's evolution, it is legitimate to infer that man too,... identity and agency. The question is now asked how far this self-consciousness—given to man by his progress from stone to steel—has advanced and what is its future. The crucial problem is whether man has progressed in historical times. Granted that man with an iron tool is a more advanced type of humanity than man with a chipped stone tool, it may still be enquired whether he has made any real advance... Self-consciousness, we have seen, is the sine qua non of humanity. It is the faculty or power by and with which man appears on earth and maintains himself as such, as a distinct species. Thanks to this faculty man has become the tool-making animal, the artisan— homo faber. But on emerging from the original mythopœic to the scientific status man has become doubly self-conscious. Self-consciousness means ...
... by the people living in it? Have considerable parts of humanity ever had it better? Are the glasses of “those whose temperament and imagination dally lovingly with an ideal past” 32 not too rosy-coloured because of a lack of perspective and an insufficient knowledge of the past resulting in an idealisation of it? “Actually, people are never happy … The reason probably is that Western man never... for science is a thing common to all men in its conclusions, open to all in its methods, available to all in its results: it is international in its very nature; there can be no such thing as a national science, but only the nations’ contributions to the work and growth of science which are the indivisible inheritance of all humanity. Therefore it is easier for men of science or those strongly influenced... than once in this and the previous chapters: to direct man’s attention to Matter and to increase his knowledge of Matter, which is his “footing”. Matter is the direct object of the supramental transformation. Reason, science and commercialisation have now focussed humanity on Matter to a degree unknown at any time in the history of humanity. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were of course aware of the ...
... vital thought of the past.’ 10 In the July issue of 1918 he concluded the fourth year with the words: ‘We start from the idea that humanity is moving to a great change in its life which will even lead to a new life of the race — in all countries where men think, there is now in various forms that idea and that hope — and our aim has been to search for the spiritual, religious and other truth... Gupta, one of Aurobindo’s first four companions, writes in his Reminiscences: The British Indian police set up a regular station there, in a rented house with several permanent men. They were of course plainclothes men, for they had no right to wear uniform within French territory. They kept watch both on our visitors and guests. Soon they got into the habit of sitting on the pavement round the corner... perfection, the search after pure Truth and unmixed Bliss, the sense of a secret immortality. The ancient dawns of human knowledge have left us their witness to this constant aspiration; today we see a humanity satiated but not satisfied by victorious analysis of the externalities of Nature preparing to return to its primeval longings. The earliest formula of Wisdom promises to be its last — God, Light, ...
... taste and many regrettable vulgarities. There is only one thing of which I am absolutely sure, and that is who I am. Sri Aurobindo also knew it and declared it. Even the doubts of the whole of humanity would change nothing to this fact. But another fact is not so certain — it is the usefulness of my being here in a body doing the work I am doing. It is not out of any personal urge that I am doing... specially required for the examinations of physical Nature. Aspiration, confidence, idealism, enthusiasm and generosity in self- giving for the spiritual examinations. Vigilance, sincerity and humanity for the examinations set by the adverse forces. And do not think that on one side there are those who pass exams and on the other those who set them. At the same time, according to the circumstances... substance is supramentalised, to be incarnated upon earth will not be a cause of inferiority; on the contrary, one will gain from it a plentitude which could not be had otherwise. The whole of humanity should be organised upon these bases. But the organisation will not be true and viable unless at its centre and at its head there is the supramental Truth-Consciousness manifested in an individual ...
... in the relations of their own inner life, in the actualities and appointments of the life of their own people or of humanity at large. They are, so to say, the chosen of God. They are born leaders of men. Commissioned to serve special ends affecting the life and happiness of large masses of men, they bear a charmed life. They may be hit, but cannot be hurt. They may be struck but are not stricken... eternal ideas which move masses of men in all countries and various ages, Cavour with the temporary needs and circumstances of modem Italy. The one was an acute brain, the other a mighty soul. Cavour belongs to Italy, Mazzini to all humanity. 142 Cavour was the man of the hour, Mazzini the citizen of Eternity. 143 ... Mazzini summed up the soul of all humanity, the idea of its past and the inspiration... action as most men have in the modem time. With me all is different, all is uncommon. 37 You know what the common run of men think of extraordinary ideas, extraordinary endeavours, and extraordinarily high aspirations. They call all that madness. But if the mad man succeeds in his field of action, instead of calling him mad, they call him a great man of genius. But how many of such men succeed? Out ...
... nation is born. To some men it is given to have that vision and reveal it to others. It was thirty-two years ago that Bankim wrote his great song and few listened; but in a sudden moment of awakening from long delusions the people of Bengal looked round for the truth and in a fated moment somebody sang Bande Mataram . The mantra had been given and in a single day a whole people had been converted to... name of the man who gave us the reviving mantra which is creating a new India, the mantra Bande Mataram . The Rishi is different from the saint. His life may not have been distinguished by superior holiness nor his character by an ideal beauty. He is not great by what he was himself but by what he has expressed. A great and vivifying message had to be given to a nation or to humanity; and God has... if the Rishis of old, the inspired creators of thought and civilisation, were a miracle of our heroic age, not to be repeated among degenerate men and in our distressful present. This is an error and thrice an error. Ours is the eternal land, the eternal people, the eternal religion, whose strength, greatness, holiness may be over-clouded but never, even for a moment, utterly cease. The hero, the Rishi ...
... nation is born. To some men it is given to have that vision and reveal it to others. It was thirty-two years ago that Bankim wrote his great song and few listened; but in a sudden moment of awakening from long delusions the people of Bengal looked round for the truth and in a fated moment somebody sang Bande Mataram . The mantra had been given and in a single day a whole people had been converted to... if the Rishis of old, the inspired creators of thought and civilisation, were a miracle of our heroic age, not to be repeated among degenerate men and in our distressful present. This is an error and thrice an error. Ours is the eternal land, the eternal people, the eternal religion, whose strength, greatness, holiness, may be over-clouded but never, even for a moment, utterly cease. The hero, the Rishi... nor his character by an ideal beauty. He is not great by what he was himself but by what Page 315 he has expressed. A great and vivifying message had to be given to a nation or to humanity; and God has chosen this mouth on which to shape the words of the message. A momentous vision has to be revealed; and it is his eyes which the Almighty first unseals. The message which he has received ...
... the art that is not alive, one need not even think about it. Art does not evolve, there is change in 'ideas of men' and consequently, there is change in the method—style of expression. The artist standing between two mirrors sees his own reflection one by one. The reflections in the one people call "past" and those in the other, they call '"future". They do not see that it is one picture in different... self and perceive or see forms on that plane. He can bring them down into his art creation. Or, he can see this world—men, nature, etc.—from that higher plane and it would be a very different view of it! Above the mental level, there are ranges of consciousness attainable by man. The greatest artists are those who either unconsciously or consciously succeed in contacting these levels of consciousness... other than passion in the human consciousness that are fit material for art-expression? He says that the fact of representing two men in the painting is not important because as the picture proceeds the two men have ceased to be men and have become "problems". We can understand this as an explanation of the process in the artist's inner being. But the onlooker will have only the ...
... Avatarhood; there is then no reason for it, no necessity in it, no meaning in it. The Divine being all-powerful can lift people up without bothering to come down on earth. It is only if it is a part of the world-arrangement that he should take upon himself the burden of humanity and open the Way that Avatarhood has any meaning.” 7 “The Avatar is not supposed to act in a non-human way –... are more than 500 million Buddhists. Christ appeared in a Mediterranean world in upheaval, at least as bewildering to the people then as is our turbulent world to us now. The Twentieth Century is the history of the interaction of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s Yoga with humanity. Yet, despite their profound, decisive influence, the Avatars are usually not recognised. “I suppose very few recognised... bourgeoisie, or at least a significant part of its youth and its intellectuals, which plunged willingly, even enthusiastically, into the abyss. Everyone knows of the young men … who hailed the outbreak of the First World War like people who have fallen in love.” 16 A striking testimony to these words are Rupert Brooke’s lines, quoted in Voices of the Great War: Now, God be thanked Who has matched ...
... powerful and dangerous men in the Third Reich. Bormann’s wife Gerda, a fanatical Nazi, wrote: “He [her husband] divided all the people in three groups: peasants, rooted in the soil, nomads roaming through the steppes, and parasites living from trade and commerce. The representatives of the peasants, rooted in the soil, are we [the Germans], the Japanese and the Chinese. Only the people who are rooted in... from the mind; “culture” was related to the land and healthy, “civilization” was an artefact of man’s brain, rootless, and symptomatic of decline. This dualism is again abundantly expounded by Spengler in his utterly negative book. (For Spengler, as for Gobineau, humanity had no purpose.) “The colossus of stone that is the metropolis stands at the end of the lifetime of every culture”, he wrote. “This... 1924 by young men and women whose ideal it was to live on the land and till it with all their dedication and strength in the manner they supposed their forefathers had done in olden times. “This association was already known to me through their publications at the time I was still in prison, and I have given it the best of myself. It was an association of young, völkisch-conscious people, boys and girls ...
... methods of teaching humanity has developed, whether modern or ancient. And all these we must harmonise into a system which will be impregnated with the spirit of self-reliance so as to build up men and not machines." The public interest in national education grew apace. In the second week of February 1908, a special conference was held at Pabna, attended by about ten thousand men. Rabindranath Tagore... system "turned out machines for administrative and professional work, not men." He went on to add that "the Page 328 National system of Education was intended to create a nation. It must produce men with all their faculties trained, full of patriotism, and mentally, morally, physically, the equals of the men of any other nation." Hardly had he finished his speech when a local pleader... the same day, where about two thousand Muslims took the vow of Swadeshi. Meeting after meeting were held by public-spirited men of Bengal. Rabindranath was there, as were B.C. Pal, K.K. Mitra, C. R. Das, Satish Mukherji, Monoranjan Guha Thakurta, and scores of eminent men. It was finally decided to establish a National Council of Education. It was on 11 March 1906 that the National Council of ...
... of spiritual workers whose tapasya will be devoted to the liberation of India for the service of humanity. The few associations already started have taken another turn and devoted themselves to special and fragmentary work. We need an institution in which under the guidance of highly spiritual men workers will be trained for every field, workers for self-defence, workers for arbitration, for sanitation... make it their sole life-work. It cannot Page 939 be done by men whose best energies and time are given up to the work of earning their daily bread and only the feeble remnant to their country. The work is enormous, the time is short, but the workers are few. One institution is required which will train and support men to help those who are now labouring under great disadvantages to organize... conditions are satisfied, nothing more is needed, for all else is detail and will inevitably follow. For the first condition the requisite is a mighty selfless faith and aspiration filling the hearts of men as in the day of Mazzini. For the second India, which has no Piedmont to work out her salvation, requires to organize her scattered strengths into a single and irresistible whole. For both these ...
... human aggregate and to pour itself out as a force for growth and perfection on humanity. The law for humanity is to pursue its upward evolution towards the finding and expression of the Divine in the type of mankind, taking full advantage of the free development and gains of all individuals and nations and groupings of men, to work towards the day when mankind may be really and not only ideally one... to the future of humanity. We may also remember the following prophetic words of Sri Aurobindo, which give us a great inspiration and enthusiasm for the continuance of the work of Indian nationalism for today and tomorrow: India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples. And that which must... activity on account of his total occupation with the future of India and the world and with the integral yoga that he was developing and perfecting as an aid to the solution of the evolutionary crisis of humanity. This theme was developed by him in four of his books that he wrote during 1914 and 1921, namely, The Life Divine, The Foundations of Indian Culture, The Ideal of Human Unity and The Human Cycle ...
... and when he came out a year later, he was hailed as a prophet, as a leader of humanity. What Tagore says about the prophet and his true role now applied to Sri Aurobindo: Then comes the great prophet; and in his life and mind the hidden fire of truth suddenly burns out into flame. The best in the people works for long obscure ages in hints and whispers till it finds its voice which... will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone, his words will be echoed and re- echoed, not only in India, but across distant seas and lands. Page 12 Therefore, I say that the man in his position is not only standing before the bar of this court, but before the bar of the... renunciations of complication, one form of contact with the outer life being dropped after another, to save the purity of the inner tone." 23 Schopenhauer adds that,"the more a man belongs to posterity, in other words to humanity in general, the more of an alien is he to his contemporaries." 2 ' 1 This 'sacrifice' Sri Aurobindo was continually making all his life. Further, to test his power of endurance ...
... 246 mass of action was not accomplished by men without mind and will and vital force, by pale shadows of humanity in whom the vigorous manhood had been crushed out under the burden of a gloomy and all-effacing asceticism, nor does it look like the sign of a metaphysically minded people of dreamers averse to life and action. It was not men of straw or lifeless and will-less dummies or thin-blooded... her great rulers, administrators, soldiers, conquerors, heroes, men with the strong active will, the mind that plans and the seeing force that builds. She has warred and ruled, traded and colonised and spread her civilisation, built polities and organised communities and societies, done all that makes the outward activity of great peoples. A nation tends to throw out its most vivid types in that line... of history and biography, though not entirely neglected, was never brought to perfection in India, never sufficiently practised, nor does any sustained record of the doings of kings and great men and peoples before the Mussulman dynasties survive except in the one solitary instance of Cashmere. This is certainly a defect and leaves a very serious gap. India has lived much, but has not sat down to record ...
... and “what shall it profit a man though he gain the whole world, if he lose his own soul,”’ 33 wrote Sri Aurobindo. He also wrote: ‘The two continents [Asia and Europe, and what they stand for] are two sides of the integral orb of humanity and until they meet and fuse, each must move to whatever progress or culmination the spirit in humanity seeks, by the law of its being … A one-sided world would have... the spectrum of humanity. Anyone who is in some measure knowledgeable about the past of India cannot deny that this country — ‘the Asia of Asia, the heart of the world’s spiritual life’ 32 (Sri Aurobindo) — has been the carrier and treasurer of the authentic spiritual riches since Vedic times. ‘The message of the East to the West is a true message: “Only by finding himself can man be saved,” and... differences of the colour of the skin, of the build of the body, of behaviour, common habits, culture and religion. The process of the unification of humanity, consisting of countless painful but also hopeful episodes, is still going on. In actual fact humanity has always been one, despite its colourful diversity, but it is now becoming aware of that fundamental unity. This awareness is indispensable, said ...
... divine Joy and those of human pleasure cannot live together in the same vital and physical system. 27 Humanity has known how to go in pursuit of sensual pleasures to the point of satiety and sickness, or to run away from life and lose itself in the rigours of ascetic denial. The common run of man has known only mediocre existence, with no possibility of any extraordinary vibration of consciousness... dregs the cup of humiliation and yet not feel humiliated. The contempt of man makes one truly free and ready to belong to Thee alone." And from the other end I would say: "Lord, to be truly near Thee, to be truly worthy of Thee, one must be lifted to the peak of human appreciation and yet not feel glorified. It is when men call one divine that one knows one's inadequacy and the need to be truly... February 1955, she returned to the Ashram, and stayed on; and on the 17th the Mother gave her the name "Huta" (The Offered One). 5 Like Huta, others too - men and women following different professions, men and women of the old world and the new, men and women of various races and climes - heard the call from Pondicherry, found it irresistible, and felt compelled to make their way to the Ashram and the ...
... him whether He was not going to return among them to “make men”—“we need men”— Sri Aurobindo wrote, I have done my share of man-making and it is a thing which now anybody can do; Nature herself is looking after it all over the world ... My business is now not man-making, but divine man-making. 25 Sri Aurobindo called this divine man, who would be only the first stage in the transition to "something... to tell the world that man is not the final creation, that there is another creation. And He said this not because He knew it but because He felt it. And He began to do it. That’s all... And mind you, it can be very beautiful in its simplicity, a beauty sorrowful people can feel, people who are tired of life, people whose heads are sick of all these arguments and dogmas—people who are tired of thinking... interests, Sri Aurobindo was working on a whole youth. How? We will not understand unless we understand that each man is a summary of the world and when one point of the whole is touched all the points in the same category throughout the world are touched: Each one represents a type of humanity and if one type is conquered that means a great victory for the work. 13 Everything is linked; we shall never ...
... being at its service, not its master. ... It is only the minority of men who live in the mind or in the psychic 19 or try to live in the spiritual plane. 20 ... most men live in their physical mind 21 and vital, except a few saints and a rather larger number of intellectuals. That is why, as it is now discovered, humanity has made little progress in the last three thousand years, except... have evolved beyond mind. According to Sri Aurobindo, even mind itself has not yet, except in a small minority of humanity, fully emerged; most human beings are still governed by the vital consciousness that is characteristic of the animal stage of evolution. As he states: Most people live in the vital. That means that they live in their desires, sensations, emotional feelings, vital imaginations... inspirations, false voices into which hundreds of yogin's enter and some never get out of it in my letter about the intermediate zone. 34 If a man has a strong clear head and a certain kind of spiritual scepticism, he can go through and does—but people without discrimination like Y or Z get lost. 35 Thus, Sri Aurobindo points to the need for using one's mind ("discriminating brain," "clear ...
... in this splendid effort to help himself and humanity. An immeasurable pathos was reflected in his voice: I am the mind of God's great ignorant world Ascending to knowledge by the steps he made; I am the all-discovering Thought of man. I am a god fettered by Matter and sense... A smith tied to his anvil and his forge. 41 Man has succeeded in mapping the heavens and... to live with his evil thoughts and quarrelsome nature against both God and man. I was made for evil, evil is my lot; Evil I must be and by evil live... What Nature made me, that I must remain. 28 It is the voice of an angry fatalist, symbolic of the sluggish, tamasic and demoniac nature of humanity in respect of any radical change of consciousness, the voice that grows and... tive, God's delegate in our humanity, Comrade of the universe, the Transcendent's ray, She had come into the mortal body's room To play at ball with Time and Circumstance. 56 Moved by her infinite love for her children, the mother-being of Savitri puts forth a small portion of herself, A being no bigger than the thumb of man Into a hidden region of the heart ...
... mad, earth-quakes, etc. “[Fourthly,] the rise of persons who wield a tremendous vital influence over large numbers of men. “These are some of the signs to show that the universal condition may be more ready now.” 5 Science and technology were not only integrating humanity into one world, they were also changing the living conditions to a degree which has created our post-modern surroundings... struggle for an ideal that has to establish itself on earth in the life of humanity, for a Truth that has yet to realize itself fully and against a darkness and falsehood that are trying to overwhelm the earth and mankind in the immediate future. … It is a struggle for the liberty of mankind to develop, for conditions in which men have freedom and room to think and act according to the light in them and... no true and radical change in the external nature.” A new spiritual approach with no lasting material effect, leaving the Earth and humanity as they were. Years ago, in his Essays on the Gita , Sri Aurobindo had already written: “Not till the Time-Spirit in man is ready, can the inner and ultimate prevail over the outer and immediate reality. Christ and Buddha have come and gone. But it is Rudra ...
... like wireless and the television, has driven man to the point of insanity. The craze for power and domination over others has been further heightened by radio-operated aeroplanes, guns and the atom bomb. The craze for world conquest has gripped Western politicians who have acquired lethal weapons and devices that can reduce millions of their fellow-men to ashes in a matter of seconds. Have they at... will be devoted to the same pursuit of life. Thus mankind will be linked together with divine ties, and wake up into a millennium of peace and happiness in the quest of which man has been engaged in an eternal odyssey. "All men are brothers" will not then be a mere pedantic quotation but a fact of life. The Ishopanishad says: "All that lives is full of God." In this world He has set up an experiment... unnatural way of present life. Imprisoned within the walls raised by modern scientific conveniences, man is groping in the dark in the fond hope of touching some secret that will open up an escape from this labyrinth. In their despair, the Western people have turned to India in search of a solution to these burning problems of life, and realization of the goal of life. And when they turn to India they ...
... message is there, for those who care to understand. It has really three parts (1) for each man as an individual to change himself into the future type of divine humanity, the men of the new Satyayuga which is striving to be born; (2) to evolve a race of such men to lead humanity and (3) to call all humanity to the path under the lead of these pioneers and this chosen race. India and especially Bengal... influential man among the Hindus to declare for him. No such man is forthcoming. All are either bought by Bluysen or wish to be on the winning side. Under these circumstances the danger is that the people will not vote at all and the electoral committees will be free to manufacture in their names bogus votes for Bluysen. On the other hand an impression has been made at Karikal, where the young men are working... courage that one cannot hope very much from it. Page 202 Meanwhile Richard intends to remain in India for 2 years & work for the people. He is trying to start an Association of the young men of Pondicherry & Karikal as a sort of training ground from which men can be chosen for the Vedantic Yoga. Everything is a little nebulous as yet. I shall write to you about it when things are more definite ...
... Future Man (WO). Page 770 or integration, a social or collective change and global human integration, and a total transformation of man and society and humanity - these were the "goals" towards which man and the human aggregate were urged to fare forward: caraiveti! caraiveti! Homo Sapiens is caught in an evolutionary crisis, which is also a psychological crisis: man has... pioneer spirits and the body of society (or humanity) act and react upon one another, and achieve the periodic lurches towards the future. As Sri Aurobindo wrote towards the end of The Psychology of Social Development ('The Human Cycle') in the Arya of June 1918: The Spirit in humanity discovers, develops, builds into form in the individual man: it is through the progressive and formative... scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his method on the physical plane. The records of Sri Aurobindo's or of the Mother's experiences may seem impossibly distant to average humanity, but even lesser men and women can ask themselves how - and to what extent - they have been able at times to work effortlessly, efficiently, with no sense of struggle or tension, as if the steering had been ...
... pitch of manhood and that is the first aim which is proposed to him by Indian culture. Living no more in the first crude type of an undeveloped humanity to which most men still belong, na yathā prākṛto janaḥ , he can even become a free perfected semi-divine man, mukta, siddha . But he can do more; released into the cosmic consciousness, his spirit can become one with God, one self with the Spirit of... These are at least no sterilising and depressing ideas; they exalt the life of man and make something like godhead its logical outcome. The dignity given to human existence by the Vedantic thought and by the thought of the classical ages of Indian culture exceeded anything conceived by the Western idea of humanity. Man in the West has always been only an ephemeral creature of Nature or a soul ma... India believes, there is a higher spiritual consciousness towards which man can rise, that ascent must be kept throughout in view as the supreme goal of life. The system of Indian culture at once indulged and controlled man's nature; it fitted him for his social role; it stamped on his mind the generous ideal of an accomplished humanity refined, harmonised in all its capacities, ennobled in all its members; ...
... the limitations imposed by material Nature: for his very reason of being is to go beyond her; if he cannot transform her, he must leave her. At the same time the spiritual man has not stood back altogether from the life of humanity; for the sense of unity with all beings, the stress of a universal love and compassion, the will to spend the energies for the good of all creatures, are central to the dynamic... a spiritual life cannot be deceived. An imitation of spiritual life may delude people who still live in the mind, but those who have realised this reversal of consciousness in themselves, whose relation with the outer being is completely different, cannot be deceived and cannot make a mistake. It is these people the mental being does not understand. So long as one is in the mental consciousness... spiritual life is to open to another world Page 413 within oneself. It is to reverse one's consciousness, as it were. The ordinary human consciousness, even in the most developed, even in men of great talent and great realisation, is a movement turned outwards—all the energies are directed outwards, the whole consciousness is spread outwards; and if anything is turned inwards, it is very ...
... to where we have to go—this is what man has called "spirit". It is the atmosphere created by the Divine Grace in the universe to save it from the darkness into which it has fallen. The soul is a kind of individual concentration of this Grace, its individual representative in the human being. The soul is something particular to humanity, it exists only in man. It is like a particular expression of... that is why it is difficult. For if one truly consented to cease to exist, everything would become so easy, so swift, so luminous, so joyful—but perhaps not in the way men understand joy and ease. In truth, there are very few people who do not enjoy fighting. There are very few who could accept the absence of night, few can conceive of light except as the opposite of darkness: "Without shadows there... this is real, this is concrete..." ( Mother laughs ), that means that you have not yet crossed over to the other side, you are not born into the spirit. ( Silence ) In fact, the vast majority of men are like prisoners with all the doors and windows closed, so they suffocate, which is quite natural. But they have with them the key that opens the doors and windows, and they do not use it.... Certainly ...
... for those who will be the pioneers of the new creation. The Mother's reading of the situation was that men, even the best of men, were ordinarily content to be men; but some few were possessed by a divine discontent; they were no longer men, and as yet they were not gods either. Such men were in a rather awkward situation! Still, the Mother found this living vision of beauty and harmony soothing... evening. And for more than an hour he helped her to a clear vision and experience of the present condition of humanity in its different layers in the background of the impending new supramental creation. She had first a panoramic view of earth-evolution: plants, animals, humanity. But civilised humanity that had had a taste of beauty and harmony felt no need for a further change of consciousness; only the... Truth. 14 But without accepting all that, there was no chance of working out the desired transformation. People only too often expected miracles from the divine personalities: "Show your power, change the world." In her conversation of 27 November too, the Mother deplored that people should ask for quick results, that they should mistake some vital individuality that played with them for a spiritual ...
... those nearest him do not seem to have counted—it was less prominent people like Vidura etc. Page 499 Those who were with Krishna were in all appearance men like other men. They spoke and acted with each other as men with men and were not thought of by those around them as gods. Krishna himself was known by most as a man—only a few worshipped him as the Divine. Yuge yuge 3 may... All this however by the way—I shall try to develop later. P. S. The trait of Rama which you give as that of an undeveloped man, viz., his decisive spontaneous action according to the will and the idea that came to him, is a trait of the cosmic man and many Vibhutis, men of action of the large Caesarian or Napoleonic type. That also I hope to develop sometime. Page 495 Why should... less, one point. Is Captain John Higgins of S.S. Mauretania a greater man than Christopher Columbus be cause he can reach America without trouble in a few days? Is a university graduate in philosophy greater than Plato because he can reason about problems and systems which had never even occurred to Plato? No, only humanity has acquired greater scientific power which any good navigator can use or ...
... most of the modern educationists, politicians, sociologists—all men of light and leading —competing with each other in the fruitful arts of lying and hypocrisy, and pursuing a career of unbridled power-lust and vile self-seeking; and above all, when he thinks of the inhuman brutalities that are being perpetrated by responsible men from day to day in cold blood and even in the very name of peace... precondition for the accomplishment of their work. These two pioneer personalities, belonging to two opposite ends of the earth, met on the soil of resurgent India to sow the seeds of a new, a divine humanity and weave a luminous pattern of life for it. They did not meet to swell the traditional cry of world-renunciation and create a parked-up spiritual atmosphere for preparing a few souls to cross over... of them, with an astonishing equipollence of intuitive knowledge, for the complete illumination of the material life and an unflawed manifestation of the Divine on earth—an Epiphany in transfigured humanity. Page 362 Human reason understands moral self-discipline, which is, to quote William James's apt words, "but as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure". It understands too something ...
... existence of Rome? Page 77 I did not mean that you or the Mother needed to cast off your veil. It is those Great Men who should have recognized you in spite of the veil. One can be a great man without knowing such things as that. Great Men or even great Vibhutis need not be omniscient or know things which it was not useful for them to know. You said, "But why can't... All that is wrong. The Avatar takes upon himself the nature of humanity in his instrumental parts, though the consciousness acting behind is divine. When the Divine descends here (as the Avatar), he has to veil himself and deal with the world and its movements like an Page 75 ordinary man of the cosmic product [Sri Aurobindo's marginal remark: "Exactly"]. ... But behind he is perfectly conscious of what happens. The universal forces cannot make him their tool as they make us. That does not prevent the Avatar from acting as men act and using the movements of Nature for his life and work. Does your above answer mean that the Avatars too satisfy the vital desires, cravings, lust, etc. as a layman? What do you mean by lust? Avatars can ...
... Yoga-Ashram. The seven hundred and fifty inmates were drawn from different parts of India, with a noticeable sprinkling of Europeans and Americans as well; there were young people and there were old people, there were men, women, children; and there were poets, painters, musicians, retired civilians, ex-professors and ex-revolutionaries, * Atque inter silvas Academi quaerere verum. (Horace... receptivity of the earth and men", said the Mother on the 8th, "is mostly responsible for the decision Sri Aurobindo has taken regarding the body": Hard is it to persuade earth-nature's change; Mortality bears ill the eternal's touch.. , 77 But the world-redeemer must redeem the world even in spite of the world, in spite of recalcitrant humanity: The poison of the... coming to know that some people were glad of the fall of Holland, Sri Aurobindo spoke out with a touch of exasperation: Very strange, and yet they want freedom for India! That is one thing I can't swallow. How can they have sympathy with Hitler who is destroying other nations, taking away their liberty? It is not only pro-Ally sympathy but sympathy for humanity that they are jeering at ...
... should be just the opposite. People should know that coming to Auroville means an almost superhuman effort for progress. It is the sincerity of our attitude and effort which makes a difference. People should feel that insincerity and falsehood have no place here — they just don't work, you can't fool people who have devoted their entire life to go beyond humanity. There is only one way to... of Sri Aurobindo Society and Sri Aurobindo's Action.] I will tell you that we are preaching unity - unity of humanity - and we are all quarreling - horrible quarrels, resentments and all sorts of urgings that we condemn in the others. We are giving a nice example, and people laugh! Voilà. It has come to me from many quarters. Begin with yourself, they say, and they are right. ... to be convincing - it is to BE that. Then we'll stand strong, we'll have all the divine force on our side. We are here to prepare a super humanity, not to fall back into desires and easy life - no. People must feel it; it should be so strong that the sheer force of our sincerity would drive them out - that's what they have to feel. At that point, we will be what we should be. The power ...
... Historians concur that the eruption of the First World War was generally experienced as the sudden relief from a tension that had built up in humanity in the course of the last decennia, and become unbearable. Documentaries still show the smiling faces of the young men proudly marching to their fate with flowers in the barrel of their rifles, and the hysterical behaviour of the women sending them off. Nobody... it, suffered from its consequences. The whole world, the whole Earth suffered from its consequences … Naturally, men do not know what happened to them; all that they have said is that everything had become worse since the war. That was all they could assert.’ 40 The German people, not for the first time and neither for the last, put themselves at the service of those dark forces. ‘Germans knew... Matteo, occupied at the time a senior post in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. ‘He [Matteo] did a great deal in Africa [where he became Governor-General of the French Congo], but other people got the benefit. It is men like him who built up France and also made it possible for the Ashram to continue here. Otherwise I might have had to go to France, or else to America … When the Mother came here and I ...
... living unity of the Shaktis of three hundred million people, * but she is inactive, imprisoned in the magic circle of Tamas, the self-indulgent inertia and ignorance of her sons.... We have to create strength where it did not exist before; we have to change our natures, and become new men with new hearts, to be born again.... We need a nucleus of men in whom the Shakti is developed to its uttermost... assimilate it to her own peculiar type of national temperament. We must introduce the best methods of teaching humanity has developed, whether modern or ancient. And all these we must harmonise into a system which will be impregnated with the spirit of self-reliance so as to build up men and not machines.......... * * * March 5, 1908 India is the guru of the nations, the physician... the fountain of human light, the apex of human civilisation, the exemplar of courage and humanity, the perfection of good Government and settled society, the mother of all religions, the teacher of all wisdom and philosophy. It has suffered much at the hands of inferior civilisations and more savage peoples; it has gone down into the shadow of night and tasted often of the bitterness of death. Its ...
... rose of humanity the canker of tragedy finds a place and reduces the human flower to nought. A grisly company of maladies Come, licensed lodgers, into man's bodily house, Purveyors of death and torturers of life. 230 And the result? Life is a marvel missed, an art gone wry;.. . 231 God's gift of this bright and pleasant world to man is itself... mind, the workings of destiny come as an unnatural shock. In her throat rises the desperate cry of all humanity that groans under the load of a freakish destiny. Mankind is essentially ignorant of the cause that produces the effect of human pain. Forced into a tragic condition man cries out why there should be all this grief and pain. Savitri's mother too questions the sage: ... he go in search of the Devil's tools, but he also destroys the good in the world. Some wise men create something beautiful, but there are others to destroy the work: War making nought the sweet smiling calm of life, Battle and rapine, ruin and massacre Are still the fierce pastimes of man's warring tribes; An idiot hour destroys what centuries made, His wanton rage or frenzied ...
... control and guide the destiny of others, even of peoples and humanity at large. That is the deeper meaning the great phrase of the Gita— lokasangraha —carries. Indeed, great souls are precisely they who move with the upward current of Nature, in and through whom Nature works out vast changes, prepares the steps of evolution in the world and humanity. But what again is this universal vital energy... world. A man with push and go, as it is termed, is nothing but a person with abundant vital energy. But even of this energy there are gradations. It can be deep, controlled, organised or it can be hectic, effusive, confused: the latter kind expresses and spends itself often in mere external, nervous and muscular movements. Those, however, who are known as great men of action are precisely... thoughtful people are philo-sophers at the most, they are ineffectual angels in this workaday world of ours. We need Page 33 upon earth people of sterner stuff, dynamic people who are not thought-bound, but know how to apply and execute their ideas, whatever they may be. Lenin was great, not because he had revolutionary ideas, but because he gave a muscular frame to them. Such people alone ...
... really are the problem of man. The solution lies not in their suppression, nor rejection. One has to widen one's consciousness. Man can possess the All, even the delight of 'possessing the All'. It can be done only by widening the consciousness, not by dealing with the superficial consciousness which only takes the surface play as if it were the true movement in men. The Upanishad says in... overcome by quantity. Vast numbers of people are subject to ego, desire, dualities, suffering, pain, ignorance, selfishness, death, etc. but they forget that at least several hundred people have risen above this consciousness and declared that this is not the final experience possible to human beings; that there is another line of experience possible to man; that it is possible to rise to a universal... difficult for a man with strong personality to surrender himself. But even a great personality has not much precious stuff to give up. What man has to surrender is his petty human nature, his ego, his desires, ambitions etc. He may even feel, on a closer introspection, that what he is and what he has is not something wonderful—it is often the ordinary trash of human weakness. Q : People have fears ...
... road to the true harmony, the consummated felicity, the ultimate fulfilment of love in the divine Delight. Therefore, only when the Will in man becomes divine and possessed of the Truth, amṛto ṛtāvā , can the perfection towards which we move be realised in humanity. Agni, then, is the god who has to become conscient in the mortal. Him the inspired Word has to express, to confirm in this gated mansion... , ā bhū , used of the gods when they approach the mortal with the contact of Immortality and, divine form of godhead falling on form of humanity, "become", take shape, as it were, in him. The Page 281 cosmic Powers act and exist in the universe; man takes them upon himself, makes an image of them in his own consciousness and endows that image with the life and power that the Supreme Being... Law, and therefore perfectly regulative of a divine action. Agni fulfilled becomes mighty in his own home—in the Truth, the Right, the Vast. It is thither that he is leading upward the aspiration in humanity, the soul of the Aryan, the head of the cosmic sacrifice. It is at the point where there is the first possibility of the great passage, the transition from mind to supermind, the trans figuration ...
... sharpness and perfect temper of a fine sword hidden in a sober scabbard. As he emerged on the political field, his people saw more and more clearly in him their representative man, themselves in large, the genius of their type. They felt him to be of one spirit and make with the great men who had made their past history, almost believed him to be a reincarnation of one of them returned to carry out his... to the mass of men, that unpretentious openness of intercourse with them, that faculty of plain and direct speech which interprets their feelings and shows them how to think out what they feel, which are pre-eminently the democratic qualities. For this reason he has always been able to unite all classes of men behind him, to be the leader not only of the educated, but of the people, the merchant, the... the beginning of a greater India reborn for self-fulfilment and the service of humanity,—come tomorrow or after a little delay, its accomplishment is now safe, and Mr. Tilak's name stands already for history as a nation-builder, one of the half-dozen greatest political personalities, memorable figures, representative men of the nation in this most critical period of India's destinies, a name to be ...
... and all these divergences seem absolutely ridiculous to you. Sweet Mother, what is the difference between the supreme man and the divine man? In one case it is the peak of humanity. "Supreme" means the human being who is at the peak of humanity, that is, the perfect man. In the other case, it is God who has entered a human body. What is human is only the body, the outer form, not the co... is only one reality and all that is is only a multiple expression of a single reality. Therefore, all the divine manifestations, all the forms it has taken in the course of time, all the names which men have given it, are only manifestations, forms and names of one sole, unique Godhead. As human beings are very limited, it is usually easier for them to follow one path rather than another. But that... example, electric light, or that it is enough to press a button to start a car. You can explain it, you have been told why, and so it seems absolutely natural to you. But I had instances of people who did not know, who were completely ignorant, who came from a place where these things had not yet penetrated, and who were suddenly shown a statue being lighted up by rays of light; they fell on ...
... remarkably few ideas : Take for example Hitler. He believes that : I The Germans are the best people in the world. II. Hitler should be the leader. III. All the Jews are wicked persons. IV. All the people in the world must be Nazis. I do not understand how humanity can progress under such conditions. Disciple : The tendency of all governments is to increase taxes... outward humility. There are many people who profess and show the Page 98 utmost outward humility, but in their hearts think : "I am the man!" Disciple : "X" when he came for a short day, he found that you lacked the virtue of humility or modesty. Sri Aurobindo : How does he know? Perhaps I did not profess like some other people that I was nothing. I could not do... It may have a very fine constitution on paper, but it is quite different in practice. In such a system all men are made to think alike. Religion is a different affair, it is voluntary; but country is quite different from the church. You can't choose your country. If you make all people think alike there can't be any human progress. If you were to differ from Stalin or Lenin you would be liquidated ...
... the Veda, "is One ; sages call it by different names." Physically, vitally and mentally men are distinct and different from one another. This is the case all over the world ; no two beings and things are the same. Page 67 But what lies at the base of all these differences in humanity is the one, immutable and eternal Spirit of which mind, life and body are the ever-changing and... spite of the differences of race, religion, climate, culture, tradition and history of the various peoples that inhabit the earth,—the life of the Spirit pure, true and perfect in its knowledge, will and workings, that we have to discover if we are to survive as a race. Real spiritual light comes to man when he is able to stand completely detached from his mental, vital and physical existence and... knowledge but they have left the fundamental problems of life untouched. That is why although scientific achievement has culminated in landing man on the moon, a feat deemed impossible even in early sixties, science has done nothing to change the basic nature of man, his possessive, acquisitive and domineering instincts, his predatory habits, his bellicosity and distrust of fellowmen and, last but not least ...
... created Auroville...." It's the same thing as with that photo. 3 Page 209 There, you'll keep this. A note on Auroville by Mother: "Humanity is not the last rung of terrestrial creation. Evolution continues and man will be surpassed. It is for each one to know whether he wants to participate in the advent of the new species. For those who are satisfied with the world as it... support (!) I, of course, knew beforehand that those [UNESCO] people couldn't understand, but... they are trying. Because everywhere people (it's a sort of superstition), everywhere people say, "No, I'll open my purse strings only with UNESCO's approval and encouragement"—I am talking about those whose contribution matters, lots of people, so... Only, to me, all this is the crust, the quite superficial... the sorry state in which all countries find themselves, the truly painful and dangerous conditions of the earth, and there was a sort of all-embracing vision Page 204 showing how nations (men taken as nations) have acted and are increasingly acting in a growing Falsehood, and how they have used all their creative power to create such formidable means of destruction, with, at the back of their ...
... sympathy as ordinarily understood by man. It proceeds on the basis of knowledge, — it is an act of divine compassion, an act of grace. The greatest saviours of men do not have to deal directly with outwardly great or critical events in the life of humanity. For, when properly understood, man's problems are all inner, psychological and spiritual. The roots of man's conflicts are within him and it... does so. In reality, his divinity does everything. An Avatar, thus, is in humanity but not of it; his experiences are not like those of other men. Sri Aurobindo for the first time has brought out clearly the necessity of complete identification by the Avatar in his nature-part with the nature of man in order to save humanity. This identification, be it noted, is not an ignorant subjection on his... and envisages the supreme fulfilment of man by his ascent to the Divine and the open reign of the Divinity over life to the most external aspect. It is a creative vision that calls upon the soul of man to rise to its highest. It synthesises all the spiritual gains of humanity in a living and organic unity. It is like a vast cosmic temple built for humanity. It unrolls, unfolds its structure of ...
... order of nature, whether or not created by a God. (Eugenics – and ultimately the eradication of a people that was supposed to be harmful, like the Jews – was therefore a development in the logical order of things.) Such reasoning left no longer any possibility open for an upward evolution beyond animal man, into a future where the human being might rise above his animal characteristics. In a materialistic... that their sacrifice has been made for the future of their people.” For he reasoned as follows: “If some reproach me that one hundred thousand or two hundred thousand people have died because I wage this war, then I can answer them: because of what I have done until now the German nation has increased by more than two and a half million people. If I demand ten percent of them to be sacrificed, then I... vegetable and animal; he classified man in the animal kingdom, in the order of primates, together with the apes. This idea was extremely controversial in a world still dominated by the Christian religion, and some biologists proposed a fourth kingdom reserved specifically for man. It was not Darwin but Lamarck who, in 1809, following the way shown by Linnaeus, made man descend from the ape. Darwin, shocked ...
... be good provided one sincerely keeps to it. For instance, in that school in France, people who enter there know what they want and so keep to the regulations that are meant to help them in achieving their aim. The world has to change; – people here are epitomes of the world. Each one represents a type of humanity and if one type is conquered that means a great victory for the work. And for this... Grace is grace, but one need not sit with folded hands. What is achieved is by the divine grace. Sri Aurobindo : Grace is of course unconditional, but it is for men to fulfil the conditions. It is as if man was continually spilling from a cup in which something was being poured. Page 7 ... as before? Sri Aurobindo : Both; the physical mind has these things, doubt, etc. and they come up at one time or the other. And by contact with other people also faith gets obscured. I knew a shocking instance in the Ashram. A truthful man came here. A Sadhak told him that speaking of the truth always is a superstition. One must be free to say what one likes. And then there is another instance ...
... expect as yet rather the last twilight which divides the dying from the unborn age than the real dawning. For a time, since the mind of man is not yet ready, the old spirit and method may yet be strong and seem for a short while to prosper; but the future lies with the men and nations who first see beyond both the glare and the dusk the gods of the morning and prepare themselves to be fit instruments of... things which we now only speak with our lips and form into outward intellectual constructions, and to apply their truth sincerely to all our outward living. If we are to found the kingdom of God in humanity, we must first know God and see and live the diviner truth of our being in ourselves; otherwise how shall a new manipulation of the constructions of the reason and scientific systems of efficiency... example, I've had these last few days an interesting experience concerning a question: "What will the form of the superman be like?"... All the conceptions speak of a man with a more perfect form; but that's only an improvement. And man does represent a radical change from the ape Page 126 —but from what point of view? Not so much because of the form of his body as because of his POWER OVER ...
... of the self of man and the large soul of humanity". 2 There is already seen a significant change in the creative thinking of our times; a subtle elevation of feeling, a psycho-spiritual touch of an inner dimension, the aroma of a near intuitive intelligence and the amplitude of human sensitivity are the outcome of such inner movement towards Truth. The life-soul of humanity is certainty moving... the Divine in humanity, for then. it encourages the growth of the inner being. The new age in literature is moving steadily from a fully realised and utilised intellectuality towards the fullness of experience of the intuitive mind. It is in need of the experience of the harmonious integration of man's nature and being. It is imperceptibly closing upon a new birth of humanity, - the birth... sense of things, the inmost consciousness of Nature, the movement of the deepest soul of man, the truth that reveals the meaning of existence and the universal delight and beauty and the power of a greater life and the infinite potentialities of our experience and self-creation". 4 The humanity of the future will certainly give utterance to the ever-manifesting Light of the Spirit ...
... the world, humanity will gradually turn towards it. It was because of the difficulty of changing human nature—the crooked human nature which Vivekananda called "the dog's curled tail"—that the ascetic path advocated flying from the world as the only remedy. No one thought it possible to change human nature and so everybody said, "Drop it." SATYENDRA: There is an idea among some people here that... long as men worship Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly rise and make them miserable." SRI AUROBINDO: All that is shallow, it is mere moralising. If Caesar and Napoleon are not to be admired, then it means that human capacity and attainment are not to be admired. Caesar and Napoleon have been admired not merely because they were successful: plenty of successful people are not... doubt, no doubt! But how are you to get them? And when you have got them how are the attached people to accept the non-attached? And how will the non-attached men get their decisions accepted and carried out by the attached? It is all a solution by the mind. The mind has not been able to change human nature fundamentally. It cannot succeed so long as it works on its own principles. It accepts an ideal ...
... something living and dynamic which is pressing forward to manifest and embody itself, some supreme truth and reality of the future which she is fostering within her to deliver to nature and humanity-a new humanity with a new nature. Page 223 ... their gods from a more ancient Pantheon, but they have, after the manner of their sculptor Phidias, remoulded them, shaped and polished them, made them more luminous and nearer and closer to earth and men. ¹ Was it not said of Socrates that he brought down the gods from heaven upon earth? The intermediary faculty – the Paraclete, which the Greeks brought to play is a corner-stone in the edifice... legend of Athena being born straight out of the head of Zeus is a pointer as to the nature and character of the gods. The Roman name for Athena, Minerva, is significantly derived by scholars from Latin mens, which means, as we all know, mind. The Greek Mind, as I said, is the bridge thrown across the gulf existing between the spiritual, the occult, the intuitive and the sensuous, the physical, ...
... you: if you could become master of the sex impulse in man, if you succeeded in conquering that in humanity, I could no longer resist, I would allow you to pass." Page 189 It has not yet allowed me to pass. I must admit that I have not fulfilled the condition, I have not been able to obtain such a mastery of it as to conquer it in all men. That is quite difficult. Before cutting one's... that it was never ordinary people who were mummified, these were beings who had attained an appreciable inner power or who were of royal birth, people more or less initiated. There is a mummy which has been the cause of a large number of catastrophes; she was a princess, daughter of a Pharaoh, and secretly at the head of a college of initiation at Thebes. Well, men are like that.... Page... certain number of elements to form a living and conscious entity in the vital world. If this man has in his lifetime hidden a treasure somewhere, that entity goes and installs itself just above the place where the treasure is, as if to guard it and stop people from coming near it. But there are sensitive people who, when they know that a treasure is hidden somewhere, feel the presence and say, "The treasure ...
... you see it, you are conscious of it. France represents today just this mind of humanity at its best, the flowering of its culture and civilisation. She was born there so that the highest mind of the human race may receive that light through her. She passed her life there in the company of the elite, the most cultured people of the time, scientists, artists, poets, all of the highest and most refined... giving, was for the whole world, for all men, for East and West, for everybody. Also it means a cosmic or world-embracing consciousness. She was creating a new type of mental world, through the highest mental development, to reach a still wider mind—beyond the individual egoistic mind. As I have said, the mind, the head, being the highest part in man, it is easy for him to receive the new light... new light that is to re-create, re-shape man and the world. What was the relation between the new man and France? For the new light to come and manifest, you have first to receive it in your mind; that is to say, you must see and recognise that it is a new light and ask for it. And mind is the Page 24 first or the topmost receptacle in man. You may remember here the opening line of ...
... Nazism. In which way better? Formerly people were unconscious slaves, now under Communism they are conscious slaves---- They are bound to the State, the dictator and the party. They can't even choose the dictator. And whoever differs from them is mercilessly suppressed The whole thing—whatever its name—is a fraud. It is impossible to change humanity by political machinery—it can't be done. ... disciple:) Has European civilization nothing good in it? It has lowered the moral tone of humanity.... The ancients tried to keep to their ideals and made an effort to raise them higher, while Europe lost all her ideals after the [first World] War. People have become cynical, selfish, etc I suppose it is all due to commercialism. Page 216 January 6, 1939 Are not all governments... again, the ease with which the best intellectuals accept psychoanalysis and Freud's ideas is surprising. Throughout the course of history a small minority has been carrying the torch to save humanity in spite of itself. January 16, 1939 (A disciple:) Nana Saheb Sinde of Baroda has spoken to a youth conference emphasizing the need of military training for the defence of the country ...
... of Shakespearae's creation. Valmiki's heroes and heroine are Rama, Ravana and Sita. The characters depicted by Shakespeare are men as men are or would be. But even the human characters of Valmiki contain something of the super-human, they overflow the bounds of humanity. It is not so difficult for us to grasp the clashes of sentiments that go to make up the character of Hamlet, for we are already... circumstances and for the sake of mutual interest they have set up a mode of moral standard, and this they want to impose on all peoples and countries. The utmost contribution of European religion has been a kind of temporising and understanding with the lower propensities of men and somehow presenting a smooth and decorous surface of life. Association, Arbitration, Federation, Co-existence and such other... culture. What was the conception of religion in Greece? Her religion surely consisted in all that is decent, lovely and harmonious. But the Greek people failed to discover or envisage the self-existent truth that reigns supreme within the heart of man. They were solely interested in external expression through rhythm; cadence and harmony of a mental or rational idealism. There was Plato, no doubt ...
... beings are as real and more permanently real than the men they influence, but they belong to a higher plane, are part of the cosmic consciousness and being and act here on earth by shaping the human consciousness on which they exercise their influence. Each nation is a Shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity and lives by the principle, which it embodies. India is... of land nor a collection of people, but a living spiritual entity, a soul. Even as the individual has a soul which is his true self, governing more or less openly his destiny, each nation too has its soul which is its true self, moulding its destiny from behind the veil: it is the soul of the country, the national genius, the spirit of the people, the centre of national aspiration... It is this spirit that has to permeate the whole national life of India. This war has to be fought by every citizen of India, and this war is the war between the higher nature and the lower nature of man. • The officer of the Indian Armed Forces has the ability to lead from the front. This has been demonstrated in the two World wars and later in the Indo-Pak wars and the war against the Chinese ...
... and feeling of the people. Even the so-called henotheism of the Vedic idea was prolonged and heightened in the larger and simpler worship of Vishnu or Shiva as the one universal and highest Godhead of whom all others are living forms and powers. The idea of the Divinity in man was popularised to an extraordinary extent, not only the occasional manifestation of the Divine in humanity which founded the... mind of man. The Vedic Rishis gave a psychic function to the godheads worshipped by the people; they spoke to them of a higher Truth, Right, Law of which the gods were the guardians, of the necessity of a truer knowledge and a larger inner living according to this Truth and Right and of a home of Immortality to which the soul of man could ascend by the power of Truth and of right doing. The people no doubt... There is the discipline of an inward growth of man from the physical through the psychic to the spiritual existence. There is the conquest of death, the secret of immortality, the perception of a realisable divinity of the human spirit. In an age to which in the insolence of our external knowledge we are accustomed to look back as the childhood of humanity or at best a period of vigorous barbarism, this ...
... most of the modern educationists, politicians, sociologists—all men of fight and leading—competing with each other in the fruitful arts of lying and hypocrisy, and pursuing a career of unbridled power-lust and vile self-seeking; and above all, when he thinks of the inhuman brutalities that are being perpetrated by responsible men from day to day in cold blood and even in the very name of peace... precondition for the accomplishment of their work. These two pioneer personalities, belonging to two opposite ends of the earth, met on the soil of resurgent India to sow the seeds of a new, a divine humanity and weave a luminous pattern of life for it. They did not meet to swell the traditional cry of world-renunciation and create a parked-up spiritual atmosphere for preparing a few souls to cross over... them, with an astonishing equipollence of intuitive knowledge, for the complete illumination of the material life and an unflawed manifestation of the Divine on earth —an Epiphany in transfigured humanity. Human reason understands moral self-discipline, which is, to quote William James's apt words, "but as a plaster Page 39 hiding a sore it can never cure". It understands ...
... attitude. It is true also that to look upon all things and all people with a calm and clear vision, to be uninvolved and impartial in one's judgments is a quite proper yogic attitude. A condition of perfect samata [equanimity] can be established in which one sees all as equal, friends and enemies included, and is not disturbed by what men do or by what happens. The question is whether this is all that... of Sri Aurobindo's letters.) Undated Man is a transitional being; he is not final____ The step from man to superman is the next approaching achievement in the earth's evolution. It is inevitable because it is at once the intention of the inner Spirit and the logic of Nature's process____ Superman hood is not man climbed to his own natural zenith, not a superior degree... to read an economic cause, conscious or unconscious, into all phenomena of man's history is part of the Bolshevik gospel born of the fallacy of Karl Marx. Man's nature is not so simple and one-chorded as all that—it has many lines and each line produces a need of his life. The spiritual or mystic line is one of them and man tries to satisfy it in various ways, by superstitions of all kinds, by ignorant ...
... societies developed and men's activities diversified, strength became the goal of specialized members of society such as the manual labourer, the fighter or the athlete. In the modern world where automation has replaced the labourer and sophisticated weaponry the foot soldier, physical strength is no longer a necessity for survival. Yet the desire for strength has not abated in man and sports offers now... thousands of stories and films the hero is strong. With his strength he courageously serves justice and truth and defeats evil ways. Such a strength is highly desirable. In today's world, we can see humanity changing its old views on the body: it is no longer an awkward appendage to the spirit or an unconscious cloak to be left to doctors when it is malfunctioning — it is an integral part of the human... Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body The Greek hero Heracles slaying the Nemean lion Strength Introduction Man, and particularly modern man, is the weakest of the large animals. If he has come to dominate the terrestrial creation it is by the power of his mind rather than the strength of his frame. And yet, at the beginning of his long journey ...
... but who, when not in meditation, were quite ordinary men, even at times ill-natured people, who would become furious if their meditation was disturbed. For they had learnt to master only their mind, not the rest of their being. Concentration is a more active state. You may concentrate mentally, you may concentrate vitally, psychically, physically, and you may concentrate integrally. Concentration... four hours you will be an altogether ordinary man because only the mind has been occupied—the rest of the being, the vital and the physical, is kept under pressure so that it may not disturb. In meditation nothing is directly done for the other parts of the being. Certainly this indirect action can have an effect, but... I have known in my life people whose capacity for meditation was remarkable... terminology, for these Bulletins are meant more for people who lead an ordinary life, though also for students of yoga—I mean people who are primarily interested in a purely physical material life but who try to attain more perfection in their physical life than is usual in ordinary conditions. It is a very difficult task but it is a kind of yoga. These people call themselves "materialists" and they are apt ...
... Perhaps this is no consolation to you, for what do you care after all? Men may come and men may go— But letters go on forever! February 5, 1935 [Evening] Correspondence suspended till after the 21st and resumable only on notice. But under cover of your medical cloak, you can carry on. Only mum about it! Otherwise people might get jealous and give you a headache. Yesterday X and I had... absurdity. There are plenty of examples of particular mental capacities manifesting in men who had them not before—A man makes one magnificent speech in his life, writes one or two splendid poems—all the rest is either silence or twaddle. The eye dull to beauty of painting becomes aware of line and colour; the man who was "no good" at logic or philosophy can develop into a logician or a philosopher... and less, one point. Is Captain John Higgins of S.S. Mauretania a greater man than Christopher Columbus because he can reach America without trouble in a few days? Is a university graduate in philosophy greater than Plato because he can reason about problems and systems which had never even occurred to Plato? No, only humanity has acquired greater scientific power which any good navigator can use or ...
... point to the unexampled national vigour which has preserved the people of this country through centuries of calamity and defeat, to the great actions of our forefathers continued even to the other day, to the many men of intellect and character such as no other nation in a subject condition has been able to produce, and we say that a people capable of such unheard-of vitality is not one which can be put... triumphantly to their fulfilment. The men who have led hitherto have been strong men of high gifts and commanding genius, great enough to be the protagonists of any other movement, but even they were not sufficient to fulfil one which is the chief current of a worldwide revolution. Therefore the Nationalist party, custodians of the future, must wait for the man who is to come, calm in the midst of calamity... devourer and devoured. We demand the realisation of our corporate existence as a distinct race and nation because that is the only way in which the ultimate brotherhood of humanity can be achieved, not by blotting out individual peoples and effacing outward distinctions, but by removing the internal obstacles to unity, the causes of hatred, malice and misunderstanding. A struggle for our rights does not ...
... ideal, the discipline of self-sacrifice, the need of a growing solidarity with our fellows and a growing collective soul in humanity are not in dispute. But the loss of self in the State is not the thing that these high ideals mean, nor is it the way to their fulfilment. Man must learn not to suppress and mutilate but to fulfil himself in the fulfilment of mankind, even as he must learn not to mutilate... and permanent good of all,—it immolates the individual to a communal egoism and prevents so much free room and initiative as is necessary for the flowering of a more perfectly developed humanity. So long as humanity is not full-grown, so long as it needs to grow and is capable of a greater perfectibility, there can be no static good of all; nor can there be any progressive good of all independent of... action which is proper to organic growth. For the State is not an organism; it is a machinery, and it works like a machine, without tact, taste, delicacy or intuition. It tries to manufacture, but what humanity is here to do is to grow and create. We see this flaw in State-governed education. It is right and necessary that education should be provided for all and in providing for it the State is eminently ...
... them from below, with the feelings of Page 316 the ordinary man, you are terrified by the amount of suffering of all those who have preached a new religion or wished to set an example to humanity—they have all suffered, that is, they have all been persecuted by men. Generally speaking, with a very few exceptions, men do not like what is superior to them, and when they meet someone who is... faith and said he would be happy to suffer anything for his faith and his God, people devised the plan of fixing small lighted candle-ends on his body, his arms, his shoulders. Naturally the candles melted with the hot wax all over, till the wick of the candle burnt the skin. It seems Abdul Baha was there when this man was tortured and as they came to the spot where he was to be killed, Abdul Baha... who have come with special abilities, a special grace, and have tried to make men come out of their ordinary rut, have been more or less persecuted, martyred, burnt alive, put on the cross.... The situation now is apparently a little better because now slightly more plausible reasons than those of old are needed to burn men—he habit of doing so is no longer there but the feelings are not very different ...
... infrarational periods of humanity by a sort of ordered conflict. And this conflict ends in the survival not of the spiritually, rationally or physically fittest, but of the most fortunate and vitally successful. It is evident enough that whatever else it may be, this is not a rational order of society; it is not at all the perfection which the individualistic reason of man had contemplated as its ideal... effectively organised only for the indispensable common ends of the society, while in all else men must be left free to govern their own life according to their own reason and will and find freely its best possible natural adjustment with the lives of others. In this way by the practice of the free use of reason men can grow into rational beings and learn to live by common agreement a liberal, a vigorous... without it the generalised faculty of considering and managing with the least possible friction large problems of politics, administration, economics, legislation concerning considerable aggregates of men cannot easily be developed. It has also been the one successful means yet discovered of preventing the State executive from suppressing the liberties of the individual and the nation. Nations emerging ...
... the necessary elements and many of the necessary conditions of progress are there, a tendency towards an enlargement of the human mind and spirit, towards an increasing idealism in the relation of men with men and of nation with nation and a tolerant and humane mentality. Both are, at present, or have been largely materialistic in their thought, but the difference is between a materialism that suppresses... without resigning they had put pressure at the Centre they would have got by now what they want. It is for two reasons I support the British in this war: first in India's own interest and secondly for humanity's sake, and the reasons I have given are external reasons, there are spiritual reasons too. 2 However that be, Rajaji along with the other chief ministers of the Congress-ruled Presidencies... his consciousness of the forces at work, of their significance in the Divine's leading of the world, of the necessary outer conditions for the spiritual development in which he sees the real hope of humanity. It would not serve any purpose to speak here of this view of things: but some outer considerations of a most material kind easily understandable by everyone can be put forward which might help to ...
... You know, for three quarters of humanity, it will be a terrible panic! Someone appears all of a sudden ( Mother laughs ), and just when you want to say something to him, ploff! nobody there! You can picture that.... The brigand about to do his mischief, someone appears... and just when he wants to defend himself, poff! ( Mother laughs ) nobody there. A tre-men-dous means of action! So basically... tomorrow, not a book of yesterday. And this gentleman of yours is probably a man of yesterday. But I am hopeful. ( silence ) I mean, someone who reads this book and doesn't feel anything has to be inwardly com-plete-ly obtuse—it's the mind going round in circles. But the very strange thing is that for those people... all that we find abstract and false, they find concrete and true! Yes... many people—at least open them, open the doors. Yes, yes. ( long silence ) And what about... what's this thing called?... I can't recall the name: you know, cinema at home?... Television. Page 269 Television.... But it would be better as a film than on television. Yes, television is very limited. And its public is generally rather vulgar. It reaches a lot of people too ...
... roots in the deeper parts of human nature. It is as old as man himself, and has been passing through various stages to help him on his way to the Spirit. In its evolved form "it belongs to the higher mind of humanity. It is the effort of man’s higher mind to approach, as far as lies in its power, something beyond it, something to which humanity gives the name of God or Spirit or Truth or Faith or Knowledge... highest power we can avail ourselves of for the cure of the complex malaise which afflicts humanity today. The ideas of the mind or the ardours of the heart, however powerful they may be, can never reach the root of the malaise, and have no compelling hold over the impetous energies of life. But the reason of man fights shy of spirituality, which seems Page 248 to it so immense, impalpable... what it perceives and conceives. The boundaries of man's little consciousness are held to be the boundaries of Reality, of which man, in his present state, is the sole witness, assessor and possessor. This conceit of the human mind pens it in the narrow province of Matter and precludes any excursion into the immeasurable reaches beyond. It deadens man's finer perceptions, atrophies his subtler faculties ...
... preceded it into the idea that the Truth can be found in outsides, dreaming vainly that perfection can be determined by machinery, but still a necessary passage to the subjective period of humanity through which man has to circle back towards the recovery of his deeper self and a new upward line or a new revolving cycle of civilisation. Page 14 ... from his head, arms, thighs and feet. To us this is merely a poetical image and its sense is that the Brahmins were the men of knowledge, the Kshatriyas the men of power, the Vaishyas the producers and support of society, the Shudras its servants. As if that were all, as if the men of those days would have so profound a reverence for mere poetical figures like this of the body of Brahma or that other... mystically symbolic. The theory that there was nothing in the sacrifice except a propitiation of Nature-gods for the gaining of worldly prosperity and of Paradise, is a misunderstanding by a later humanity which had already become profoundly affected by an intellectual and practical bent of mind, practical even in its religion and even in its own mysticism and symbolism, and therefore could no longer ...
... out of dry ground; he had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Page 71 4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed... coming, and the Son of man will be delivered up to be crucified" [Mat 26:3] Then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, [Mat 26:4] and took counsel together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him. [Mat 26:5] But they said, "Not during the feast, lest there be a tumult among the people." The Betrayer... said, "Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?" [Mat 26:63] But Jesus was silent. And the high priest said to him, "I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God." [Mat 26:64] Jesus said to him, "You have said so. But I tell you, hereafter you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds ...
... Revolution was also great in its men filling them all with its vehemence, its passion, its fierce demand on the world, its colossal impetus. Through four of them chiefly it helped itself, through Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre and Napoleon. Mirabeau initiated, Danton inspired, Robespierre slew, Page 513 Napoleon fulfilled. The first three appeared for the moment, the man in the multitude, did their... for the man to go the moment his work is done and not to outstay the Mother's welcome. They are fortunate who get that release or are wise enough, like Garibaldi, to take it. Not altogether happy is their lot who, like Napoleon or Mazzini, outstay the lease of their appointed greatness. Mirabeau ruled the morning twilight, the sandhya of the new age. Aristocratic tribune of the people, unprincipled... because the heart and senses of Mirabeau were unsatisfied, the French Revolution triumphed. So it is that God prepares the man and the moment, using good and evil with a divine impartiality for His mighty ends. Without the man the moment is a lost opportunity; without the moment the man is a force inoperative. The meeting of the two changes the destinies of nations and the poise of the world is altered ...
... instruments". The Pandavas were flawed men, though much less so than the Kauravas; and the War could also be viewed as a clash between rival imperialisms. But the heart of the matter was that the victory of the Pandavas was necessary in the particular historical context for the onward march of the race: The Divine takes men as they are and uses men as His instruments even if they are not... Mother's New Year prayers always had, as we have seen earlier, an urgency of temporal and spiritual relevance in the perspective of the collective Yoga of the Ashram and of the unconscious Yoga of humanity, but the wartime prayers were even more, for each was almost a winged squadron of the spirit and made straight for the intended target. The Mother herself has admitted: "During the war it was wonderful... the Mother's war. You should not think of it as a fight for certain nations against others or even for India; it is a struggle for an ideal that has to establish itself on earth in the life of humanity, for a Truth that has yet to realise itself fully and against a darkness and falsehood that are trying to overwhelm the earth and mankind in the immediate future. The question was not whether ...
... what is now remarkable is that automatically certain things are happening [gesture indicating points scattered everywhere in the world], totally unexpected, here, there, in people who don’t even know anything.’ 12 Humanity is evolving unknowingly. ‘It [her supramental realization in the cells] is contagious, this I know for sure. And it [the contagiousness] is the only hope, because if everyone... ’ 57 This is the reason why she called the city ‘the tower of Babel in reverse.’ The people came together to build that tower but separated during the construction, now their representatives would be uniting during the construction of the City of Dawn. (Auroville has many echoes in the history of humanity.) Nonetheless, the minimum goal is not fully attainable without the realization of the... ‘I can assure you of this,’ but more and more total. ‘The body is not isolated. It is more or less a multitude with degrees of proximity.’ 15 Her body was becoming the body of humanity. And when a certain Catholic man hundreds of miles away sought her presence and support because he was dying, she received the extreme unction as concretely as if she had been that person – who in fact she was. ...
... which produces a disgust of the action and its material objects and of life itself. He rejects the vital aim pursued by egoistic humanity in its action, — happiness and enjoyment; he rejects the vital aim of the Kshatriya, victory and rule and power and the government of men. What after all is this fight for justice when reduced to its practical terms, but just this, a fight for the interests of himself... Krishna, the divine Teacher, is always near us to guide and teach, and that his help is unfailing. The figure of Krishna is the symbol of the Divine's dealing with humanity. Arjuna, as we know him in the Mahabharata, is the rajasic man who governs his rajasic actions by a high sattwic ideal. At the opening of the episode in the Gita, we find him advancing to the field of a gigantic struggle, to... single stroke. That is the nature of the crisis which he undergoes. Arjuna is, in the language of the Gita, a man subject to the action of the three Page 67 Gunas or modes of the Nature-Force and habituated to move unquestioningly in that field, like the generality of men. He justifies his name only in being so far pure and sattwic as to be governed by high and clear principles and impulses ...
... command for humanity, and if we seek to know the universe, it is because that knowledge is necessary to the more important knowledge of ourselves. Science has adopted a different view; looking only at man as a separate bodily organism it fairly enough regards the Universe as more important than man and seeks to study its laws for their own sake. But still it remains true that humanity persists in its... Eternal Being into the province of the reasoning powers, the core & essence of popular religion which is true and necessary to humanity is discredited along with its imperfect coverings; materialism establishes itself for a while as the human creed and the intellect of man holds despotic empire for a while at the expense of his heart and his ethical instincts, until Nature revenges itself and saves... of Justice who created & caused sin, yet punishes man for falling into the traps He has Himself set, is an infinite & huge inconsistency, an insane contradiction in terms; a God of wrath, a jealous God, who favours & punishes according to His caprice, fumes over insults and preens Himself at the sound of praise is much lower than the better sort of men and, as an inferior, unworthy of the adoration of ...
... to prove it. Now, you see, men don't throw stones any more, except at the poor Negroes sometimes in America; they don't burn people alive any more, it is no longer the fashion—but they imprison, that happens. And in fact (I have said this already several times), what saves those who are not altogether men, is that today the world is in such a state of ignorance that people don't even believe any more... they would have a bad time of it... But let us hope that... I should say then as I said for men... that the superman will be quite kind. Well, let us hope for the superman that he will know how to defend himself, that he will have some means of defence, not too visible but sufficient. But Mother, if man cannot see him, he doesn't need to defend himself, does he? Page 330 No. It is... make it something accessible. But it is true, isn't it? Whether it is the truth? Yes... That's all. Mother, the appearance of mental man was gradual, wasn't it, from the animal to man? That... There was all the same a time when it became a man, isn't that so? I told you that, from the standpoint of evolution it seems like that. I indeed am not very well up in all this, you see, I can't ...
... contacts between man and man to such an extent that it would not be surprising if cultural isolation and natural prejudices would give way before long and the conscience of the intelligential—the leaders of every nation—would beat in unison with the whole humanity. The car, the aeroplane, the steamer and factories are—apart from commercialising him—tending to unite man physically. On whether man will use... imperfect rhythm of actual life is related to the perfect rhythm of ideal life, "to be able to suggest the unconquerable Divine force, in men and in the world; to show the Divine nature in its calm, wideness, greatness, attractiveness, to breathe it into man's soul and mould man into an image of the Infinite".— (Sri Aurobindo) That is also a high purpose and spiritual utility of art. Page 23 ... it would not be an easy language. Most people when they speak of a universal language imply that it would be understood correctly by everybody. I am not so optimistic. For I believe that one who would understand such universal language of arts must outgrow the limitations of race, time and country and must have a consciousness capable of unity with humanity in all its stages of development. It would ...
... enduring civilizations. The Vedic Rishis hymned her in exalted terms. For, in this country, people worship rivers as gods and goddesses. Civilizations are normally linked to empires. Like human life, civilizations grew, declined and passed away with the rise and fall of empires. They left some imprint in humanity's consciousness, to be sure, which often remained as legends: such 1 The last... natural order of the life of the people. But the life of a people, Sri Aurobindo reminds us, is like the life of an individual. It has a communal soul, mind and body. And like a human being's life, the life of the society passes through a cycle of birth, growth, youth, ripeness and decline. "If we let it go unchecked, the course towards decadence will make it perish, as a man dies of old age." "But... dharma with a spiritual significance." It was the work of the Rishi—the man of a higher spiritual experience and knowledge, born in any of the classes—"to put this stamp enduringly on the national mind, to prolong and perpetuate it, to discover and interpret the ideal law and its practical meaning, to cast the life of the people into the well-shaped ideals and significant forms of a civilisation founded ...
... sympathy as ordinarily understood by man. It proceeds on the basis of knowledge,—it is an act of divine compassion, an act of grace. The greatest saviours of men do not have to deal directly with outwardly great or critical events in the life of humanity. For, when properly understood, man's problems are all inner, psychological and spiritual. The roots of man's conflicts are within him and it is... does so. In reality, his divinity does everything. An Avatār, thus, is in humanity but not of it; his experiences are not like those of other men. Sri Aurobindo for the first time has brought out clearly the necessity of complete identification in his nature part by the Avatār with the nature of man in order to save humanity. This identification, be it noted, is not an ignorant subjection on his part... prospect and envisages the supreme fulfilment of man by his ascent to the Divine and the open reign of the Divinity over life to the most external aspect. It is a creative vision that calls upon the soul of man to rise to its highest. It synthesises all the spiritual gains of humanity in a living and organic unity. It is like a vast cosmic temple built for humanity. It unrolls, unfolds its structure of immense ...
... known owing to the obstacle of an antique and ill-understood diction, and that the most inadequate interpretations should be made which reduce this great creation of the young and splendid mind of humanity to a botched and defaced scrawl, an incoherent hotch-potch of the absurdities of a primitive imagination perplexing what would be otherwise the quite plain, flat and common record of a naturalistic... visions and experiences of planes of consciousness other than the one with which our normal minds are familiar. He uses or starts with the images taken from his own normal and outward life and that of humanity and from visible Nature, and though they do not of themselves actually express, yet obliges them to express by implication or to figure the spiritual and psychic idea and experience. He takes them... supreme Spirit putting in front one of his aspects. The life of Page 324 man was to these seers a thing of mixed truth and falsehood, a movement from mortality to immortality, from mixed light and darkness to the splendour of a divine Truth whose home is above in the Infinite but which can be built up here in man's soul and life, a battle between the children of light and the sons of Night, a ...
... worlds. All that is wrong. The Avatar takes upon himself the nature of humanity in his instrumental parts, though the consciousness acting behind is divine. When the Divine descends here (as the Avatar), he has to veil himself and deal with the world and its movements like an ordinary man of the cosmic product [Sri Aurobindo's marginal remark: "Exactly"]. But behind he is... is perfectly conscious of what happens. The universal forces cannot make him their tool as they make us. That does not prevent the Avatar from acting as men act and using the movements of Nature for his life and work. Does your above answer mean that the Avatars too satisfy the vital desires, cravings, lust etc. as a layman? What do you mean by lust? Avatars... are under the impression that an Avatar must be a saint or a yogi. The Avatars can of course be married and satisfy the vital movements. But do they really indulge them as ordinary people? While satisfying their outer being do they not remain conscious of their union with the Divine above. There is not necessarily any union above before the practice of yoga. There is a ...
... who is destroying other nations, taking away their liberty? It is not only pro-Ally sympathy but sympathy for humanity that they are jeering at.” 1167 The increasingly complex and threatening situation made Sri Aurobindo, for a time, favour the Japanese. He had long been admiring this people for their samurai qualities. “The power of the Japanese for self-sacrifice, patriotism, self-abnegation and... with the world-domination of Germany and the Nazi system of life, but that it is a defence of civilization and its highest attained social, cultural and spiritual values and of the whole future of humanity. To this cause our support and sympathy will be unswerving whatever may happen; we look forward to the victory of Britain and, as the eventual result, an era of peace and union among the nations and... whole of Pondicherry is against us. They cannot do anything only because Governor Bonvin is friendly towards us. But even he, if he hears that people in the Ashram are pro-Hitler, will be compelled to take steps, at least to expel those who are so. If these people want the Ashram to be dissolved, they can come and tell me and I will dissolve it instead of the police doing it. “They have no idea about ...
... possible earth and a possible humanity. His dream of God and Heaven is really a dream of his own perfection; but he finds the same difficulty in accepting its practical realisation here for his ultimate aim as would the ancestral Ape if called upon to believe in himself as the future Man.” 42 A last reflection on the subject of superman: no sooner have most people heard the word “superman” pronounced... only a laboratory in which Nature seeks for its own concealed secret, makes tentative efforts at what she has been missioned to achieve. As man arose out of the animal, so out of man superman shall come.” 40 The superman has always been living in humanity’s dreams of power, invulnerability, immortality, boundless knowledge, omnipresence, and of a love permanently as exhilarating and pure as first... grandiose, utopian! – was true, then the moment of their meeting was indeed “the matrix of New Time”. 7 “We start from the idea that humanity is moving to a great change of its life which will even lead to a new life of the race, 8 – in all countries where men think, there is now in various forms that idea and that hope, – and our aim has been [in the Arya ] to search for the spiritual, religious ...
... popular notion of "service to humanity" which is lapped up by do-gooders and philanthropists. In fact, such people almost develop a vested interest in human misery, for if such misery were abolished altogether, wouldn't the philanthropists find their occupation gone? She recalled how, in a film Monsieur Vincent, the philanthropist "found out that when he fed ten poor men, a thousand came along"!... says that "for those who practise the Integral Yoga, the welfare of humanity can be only a consequence and a result, it cannot be the aim." She gives two notable examples of people who received the same psychic shock in their contact with human misery, and reacted in two different ways. One was Prince Siddhartha, for whom suffering was the result of life itself, and hence the way out was a release... despair. For there was the Mother's exhortation: "Do not give way, hold tight." In the meantime they came, the seekers, still came the men and women caught in unease and in search of a sanctuary, the sick bruised in body and soul eager for a cure, the people tortured by chronic restlessness hoping for purposeful quietude, all, all, almost from the ends of the world, made a beeline to Pondicherry ...
... is in thee and not otherwise than this; action cleaves not to a man." Isha Upanihad (Translated by Sri Aurobindo) Page 248 top of the society. One has to reach it through the household life fulfilling one's duties as a householder. Quite true. But the ideal of renunciation gained slowly and occupied people's mind to such an inordinate degree that all other ideals fell into... life to bloom and manifest. On the contrary, it is sure to effect a gradual cessation of life. It may be argued however that the ideal of Sannyasa, renunciation, was never meant for the whole of humanity. The Sannyasins neither expect nor wish that all and sundry should give up their respective vocations in life and retire to the mountains and forests and remain absorbed in the sole communion with... an illusion. The highest good consists in escape from life and withdrawal from action. The play of the natural instincts and propensities which comprise the ordinary social life of man is considered the lower nature. If man wants to attain to his highest nature, his true Self, then he will have to control his outgoing tendencies, stop them totally and finally turn them inward. The summum bonum of life ...
... attempt here is not to make a detailed classification of the states of consciousness actual and possible to man. The intention is merely to show that what is considered " abnormal " "magical" "wonderful" " super-sensual" is not something quite remote from the field of everyday experience of men. These experiences pertain to various fields. On the physical level, we see the phenomena of faith-cure, of... in our Ancient Sacred "books. This Cosmic Consciousness and even a supra cosmic-transcendent-Consciousness mentioned in Indian books, are Superconscient to the ordinary man, but they are regarded as capable of being experienced by men if certain psychological conditions are fulfilled.¹ Dr. Harish Chowdhari finds this 'Collective Unconscious a. " blanket term " and says, "It is too inadequate to... dynamic collective consciousness is taking place in humanity. It began with the family, developed through the clan and the tribe and has now reached the nation. This impulse has its roots deep down into the insect and the animal world and even below in the Inconscient. There is, thus, a gradual unfolding of the Soul of human Collectivity of which humanity would be the highest vehicle. Page 122 ...
... coming from in there (the music room, where Mother receives visitors). I saw about twenty people... There was the Prime Minister of Orissa (Orissa is the first state of India to give money for a pavilion in Auroville: they have given a laky of rupees). He's a good man. They're fine people, the people of Orissa; it's they, out of all the states, who seem the most willing to go forward and change... Auroville by the Indian radio:) "Greetings from Auroville to all men of goodwill. Are invited to Auroville all those who thirst for progress and aspire to a higher and truer life." (Then Mother read out the Charter) Auroville Charter 1.Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville one must be the willing... India, which was the symbolic representation of the present state of humanity, and that is why, Sri Aurobindo told me, it is for that that Auroville has been created. [See conversation of 3 February 1968.] Then I understood. Since that moment, it has become very clear — "clear", I mean he went on as if it were well known and people were beginning to understand. There you are. Page 75 ...
... serving all the common interests of the earth's peoples. An original welter and chaos with its jumble of forces forming, wherever it could, larger or smaller masses of civilisation and order which were in danger of crumbling or being shaken to pieces by attacks from the outer chaos was the first attempt at cosmos successfully arrived at by the genius of humanity. This was finally replaced by something like... on a large scale, and a more successful creation could be predicted only if a way Page 586 was found to develop a better humanity or perhaps a greater, a superhuman race. The central question is whether the nation, the largest natural unit which humanity has been able to create and maintain for its collective living, is also its last and ultimate unit or whether a greater aggregate can... tendency to the creation of empire testifies to an urge in Nature towards larger unities of human Page 587 life,—and we can see concealed in it a will to unite the disparate masses of humanity on a larger scale into a single coalescing or combined life-unit,—it must be regarded as an unsuccessful formation without a sequel and unserviceable for any further progress in this direction. In ...
... most needs and must have, – the necessary, the right rights and all. It might be objected here however that actually in the history of humanity the conception of Duty has been no less pugnacious than that of Right. In certain ages and among certain peoples, for example, it was considered the imperative duty of the faithful to kill or convert by force or otherwise as many as possible belonging to... The division and conflict, the stress and strain that belong to the very nature of the inferior level of being and consciousness will then have been transcended. It is only thus that a diviner humanity can be born and replace all the other moulds and types that can never lead to anything final and absolutely satisfactory. Page 63 ... ss. It is' the expression of rajas, the mope of Page 61 dynamism, of strife and struggle, it is the corrective of tamas. In the earliest and primitive society men lived totally in a mass consciousness. Their life was a blind obedience – obe dience to the chief – the patriarch or pater familias –obedience to the laws and customs of the collectivity ...
... resemble “the image of the Lord”, and they peopled the dreams of the League of German Maidens and the nightmares of non-Nazis. Himmler stimulated the elitist character of the SS – “in the SS one found the better type of people”, writes Schellenberg – by trying to allure as many members of the German nobility as possible, and by recruiting educated young men. In the higher SS ranks the number of officers... Sereny writes that these children numbered “possibly a quarter of a million”, most of them East European. The SS men in their “dashing and elegant” black uniforms were very status conscious and conditioned to be so. At the bottom of the pyramid of the Nazi state there were the ordinary people, Jews and Gypsies not included; above them ranked the National Socialist Party members; then came the uniformed... or an ambulant blood bank, which would render the regeneration possible. The documents of racial purity, demanded from every SS man and his marriage partner, were one step in this direction. Another step was the gathering of the best blood from all the Germanic peoples and their descendants (Flemings, Dutch, Scandinavian, Swiss, even French) into the SS. The Waffen-SS divisions Panzerdivision Nederland ...
... off towards the new consciousness, whereas all that is irrevocably in darkness or belongs to an evil will shall be destroyed and vanish from the Universe. And a whole Page 166 part of humanity that has responded to these forces rather too ... zealously will certainly vanish with them. And this is what was expressed in this concept of the Last Judgment. ... becomes more and more conscious and resistant as the being develops. Very primitive, very simple beings, little children will respond first, because they don't have an organized ego. But these big people! People who have worked on themselves, who have mastered themselves, who are organized, who have an ego made of steel, it will be difficult for them. Unless they go beyond all this and have enough spiritual... This morning while I was on the balcony, I had an interesting experience: the experience of man's effort, in all its forms and through all the ages, to approach the Divine. And I seemed to be growing wider and wider so that all the forms and all the ways of approaching the Divine attempted by man would be contained in the present Work. It was represented by a kind of image in which I was as ...
... march, Our will a force of the Eternal's power, And thought the rays of a spiritual sun. A few shall see what none yet understands; God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep; For man shall not know the coming till its hour And belief shall be not till the work is done. Sri Aurobindo's writings are voluminous and they cover an immense variety of subjects... the present subject of discussion—Sri Aurobindo's Message for Today—it is as well to consider briefly the life and work of Sri Aurobindo, the mystic, philosopher, poet, patriot, prophet and lover of humanity as that will give us a right perspective and help in the proper understanding of his Message in today's context. Born in Calcutta on the 15th August, 1872 of Bengali parents, he was educated... with the outside world on account of his pre-occupation with the inner spiritual life which became more and more of absorbing interest to him not only for his own but also for the life of the whole humanity for his life had by now become one with the life of the world. Page 101 A fourth dimension of the aesthetic sense Where all is in ourselves, ourselves in all To the ...
... overborne and Bengal preserves her unity. The credit is due much more to the people themselves than to the leaders on either side, and this itself is the healthiest sign of all and the guarantee of democratic development. When the people are wiser than their leaders and wise men, the democratic future of a country is assured. Men of great gifts and strong character are often carried away by their eager... to views one does not hold is unthinkable to any man of honour and probity. These are the three parties and their views. The election of a free Congress is the only possible way to their final reconciliation, the omission of the creed the only condition of the continuance of a United Congress. It is for Page 201 the good sense of the people at large to decide between these conflicting views... important differences of opinion are anti-democratic and though they do not necessarily show an incapacity for government, do show an incapacity for democratic politics. The democratic tendency in humanity is and has long been pressing forward victoriously to self-fulfilment and the modern attempt of the banded forces of autocracy, bureaucracy, plutocracy and theocracy to turn its march can only result ...
... ruled by forces and the consciousness that come from what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind. Even what men call God is a force, a power coming from the Overmind and the whole universe was under the rule of the Overmind. To get there one has to pass through many intermediate planes and very few people can reach there without getting dazzled. But what Sri Aurobindo Page 282 said is that now... a foolish idea. It is as inept as the expectation from the spiritual man of feats and miracles that would satisfy the vulgar external mind and leave it gaping with wonder." Questions and Answers 1929-1931 ( 23 June 1929 ) × "Men are too easily inclined to believe that they have climbed into regions... ss, because even to reach there one must pass through several planes and in these planes one feels dazzled. There are beings of the vital, if they appeared to men, or to say things more exactly, whenever they have appeared to men, men have taken them for the supreme God—these vital entities! If you like, we shall call that a disguise but it is a very successful disguise, because those who saw it ...
... Ashram which is a "laboratory"... for a spiritual and supramental yoga, humanity should be variously represented. For the problem of transformation has to deal with all sorts of elements favourable and unfavourable. The same man indeed carries in him a mixture of these two things. If only sattwic and cultured men come for yoga, men without very much of the vital difficulty in them, then, because the ... possible for it to take up the whole being into its own native power, instead of the nature of man continuing to remain in half-light, half-darkness. I believe that the descent of this Truth opening the way to a development of divine consciousness here to be the final sense of the earth evolution. If greater men than myself have not had this vision and this idea before them, that is no reason why I should... the disciples, I agree! — Yes, but would the better stuff, supposing it to exist, be typical of humanity? To deal with a few exceptional types would hardly solve the problem. And would they consent to follow my path — that is another question. And if they were put to the test, would not the common humanity suddenly reveal itself — that is still another question.' Sri Aurobindo's decision in 1926, ...
... of the Shaktis of three hundred millions of people; but she is inactive, imprisoned in the magic circle of tamas , the self-indulgent inertia and ignorance of her sons. To get rid of tamas we have but to wake the Brahma within. Page 83 IT IS OUR OWN CHOICE WHETHER WE CREATE A NATION OR PERISH. What is it that so many thousands of holy men, Sadhus and Sannyasis, have preached to us... naturally. In the absence of strength we are like men in a dream who have hands but cannot seize or strike, who have feet but cannot run. INDIA, GROWN OLD AND DECREPIT IN WILL, HAS TO BE REBORN. Whenever we strive to do anything, after the first rush of enthusiasm is spent, a paralysing helplessness seizes upon us. We often see in the cases of old men full of years and experience Page 82 ... which the lionlike heart of Vivekananda sought to shake the world? It is this that in every one of these three hundred millions of men from the Raja on his throne to the coolie at his labour, from the Brahmin absorbed in his sandhya to the Pariah walking shunned of men, GOD LIVETH. We are all gods and creators, because the energy of God is within us and all life is creation; not only the making of ...
... state once again that I have devoted my whole life to helping humanity; for many years I have tried all known and possible methods, but none has given me satisfactory results and I am now convinced that I must find the Truth if I want to succeed in my endeavour. Yes, unless one has found the true meaning of life, how can one help men effectively? All the remedies we use are mere palliatives, not... not cures. Only the consciousness of Truth can save humanity. PESSIMIST I have suffered too much in life. I have experienced too many disillusionments, home too much injustice, seen too much misery. I no longer believe in anything. I no longer expect anything from the world or from men. My last remaining hope is to find the Truth — always supposing that it is possible to find it. ... become steeper and harder and above all, we are going to cross over to the other side of the mountain where we shall no longer be able to see the valley and men. This means that I shall have to give up my work and betray my pledge to help humanity. Do not ask me to stay with you; I must leave you and return to my duty. (He starts back on the downward path. The others look at one another in surprise ...
... few, it was not spread in the whole mass of humanity. The mass of humanity evolves slowly, containing in itself all stages of the evolution from the material and the vital man to the mental man. A small minority has pushed beyond the barriers, opening the doors to occult and spiritual knowledge and preparing the ascent of the evolution beyond mental man into spiritual and supramental being. Sometimes... follow that humanity as a whole will become supramental. What is more likely to happen is that the supramental principle will be established in the evolution by the descent just as the mental principle was established by the appearance of thinking Mind and Man in earthly life. There will be a race of supramental beings on the earth just as now there is a race of mental beings. Man himself will... in one's essential nature and, as a consequence, to be its vessel, channel, instrument in one's active nature. To bring into activity the principle of oneness on the material plane or to work for humanity is a mental mistranslation of the Truth these things cannot be the fist true object of spiritual seeking. We must find the Self, the Divine, then only can we know what is the work the Self or the ...
... conception of man enshrined in the Western democracies, the Marxist conception of an ideal society, and the religious ideal of a transcendental fulfilment of life. Such an exploration will inevitably lead us to an examination of Marx, Freud and Darwin, the dominant intellectual influences of our age. In my opinion, although each one of these thinkers has brought to humanity a great truth... and freedom in fact are preparing humanity for a greater religion than it has had in the past. This brings me to the main point I wish to make here. In the intellectual domain what Sri Aurobindo offers us is not just one more corpus of a logically established theory about some aspect or domain of human life or of Nature but an integral theory of Man, Nature and God which is explanatorily... because they have lost sight of this true aim. What then is the ideal that humanity or the Time Spirit cherishes today, no matter what religion one belongs to? A divine and terrestrial perfection of the human being, not just the perfection of the soul but the harmonious perfection of the whole being of man. Such an integral perfection is the deepest, ineradicable urge of the human co ...
... and when they can get a herd of people to worship them they are quite satisfied. But if you take real divine beings, this is not at all something they value. They do not like to be worshipped. No, it does not give them any special pleasure at all! Don't think they are happy, for they have no pride. It is because of pride that a man likes to be worshipped; if a man has no pride he doesn't like to... knew people who were so frightened of the Kali they had at home that indeed they trembled to make the least mistake, for when catastrophes came they thought it was Kali who sent them! It is a frightful thing, thought. I know them, those entities. I know them very well, but they are vital beings, vital forms which, so to say, are given a form by human thought, and what forms! And to think that men worship... absolute trust in the Grace. Source The Dying Man ...once one has left his body, whether he is conscious or unconscious, whether he is developed or not, one always goes out into the same domain to begin with—unless one is a yogi who can do what he likes with himself, but that, you know, is so rare a case that one can't consider it. All men when they leave their body are flung into a domain ...
... ruled, the exploiters and the exploited, should be eschewed as both immoral and impolitical. And because Boycott certainly is not intended as a soothing potion for the rulers, there are some men of an unctuous humanity who look on it with alarm and distrust. We should love our country, they say, but should not allow that love to generate hatred against other nationalities; we should prefer our own manufactures... going to part with an atom of their arbitrary and absolute power merely because our Page 626 abject and servile condition awakes in our people anger and a settled bitterness and ill-feeling. No, it is only the down-trodden and suffering people of India who are expected to refrain from following the straight line of their national interest and welfare out of a noble and sensitive unwillingness... it. When a just equality is denied, when the possibility of equal opportunities and equal accomplishment is rigidly excluded, there can be no real love and good feeling except such as exists between man and some of the lower animals. If there is insensibility on one side and indulgent masterfulness on the other, there can be an insulting patronage and a degrading loyalty, but these are animal emotions ...
... सर्वे ऋत्विजः. "Agni has risen, let people (priests) speak (hymn him)." Sayana's glosses are always those of the pedant; जंतवः, "creatures, those born", is a most general term and obviously intended to be quite wide in its connotation, not confined to a particular class of men. No one says "let men say", when he means "let the priests chant". The sense is "let all men born see and declare that Agni the... him indeed, O Angiras, son of Force, all men speak of as having good offerings, a good godhead and a good sacrifice. Psychological rendering. When in man's dwelling-place thou art the envoy, thou takest his offerings to be enjoyed by the gods (or thou comest to carry his offerings) and thou makest effective the journey of his sacrifice; him verily men speak of as perfect in his oblations, perfect... I.59.6, यं पूरवो वृत्रहणं सचंते । वैश्वानरो दस्युमग्निर्जधन्वाँ अधुनोत्काष्ठा अव शंबरं भेत्. If, therefore, the कृष्ठयः of the last verse are the assailing peoples who attack on the path & the same battles are referred to here, they cannot be men, but must be Vritra-powers. The Dasyus are called दासीर्विशः, but not thus vaguely कृष्ठयः. उत probably brings in a new idea; not only is the sacrificer to ...
... —No; but I imagine it to be the goal whither all humanity is tending. Keshav —That is a very different question. Do you think that when a man's life is in harmony with his own creed, but not with yours, he is therefore not virtuous, or in your own phrase, deviates from his duty? Wilson —God forbid! Keshav —Then you really do believe that a man does his duty when he lives in harmony with the... Wilson —Yes. Keshav —Then by the virtues of a man we shall have to mean the inborn qualities and powers which are native to his humanity, such as—what shall we say? Wilson —That we can discover afterwards. Keshav —Very well; but at any rate we can see already that some things are not inborn qualities and powers native to our humanity; and we know now why it is not an act of splendid virtue... developing the virtues of a man, but we should be aspiring to the virtues of a kite; or, to use one of our phrases, we should be mad without method. Wilson —That is evident. Keshav —So a man's virtue lies not in turning somersaults without any visible means of support, but in the perfect evolution of the inborn qualities and powers which are native to his humanity. Wilson —Yes, and I believe ...
... either in sincerity or in vision. We want not only a free India, but a great India, India taking worthily her place among the Nations and giving to the life of humanity what she alone can give. The greatest knowledge and the greatest riches man can possess are hers by inheritance; she has that for which all mankind is waiting. But she can only give it if her hands are free, her soul free, full and exalted... sordid pittance; while the new education will open careers which will be at once ways of honourable sufficiency, dignity and affluence to the individual, and paths of service to the country. For the men who come out equipped in every way from its institutions will be those who will give that impetus to the economic life and effort of the country without which it cannot survive in the press of the world... mankind. As we act now, so shall the reward of our karma be meted out to us, and each call of this kind at such an hour is at once an opportunity, a choice, and a test offered to the spirit of our people. Let it be said that it rose in each to the full height of its being and deserved the visible intervention of the Master of Destiny in its favour. Page 413 ...
... think of retirement, a little weary of the heavy responsibilities which he had borne for so many years. He called his young son Meotha to him. The prince was a young man of many and varied accomplishments. He was more handsome than men usually are, his charity was of such perfect equity that it achieved justice, his intelligence shone like a sun and his wisdom was beyond compare; for he had spent part... Thus sheltered from the cares of the struggle for life, these scientists had a single aim: that their experimental research, their sincere and earnest studies should serve to allay the sufferings of humanity, to increase its strength and well-being by making superstition and fear draw back as far as possible before the knowledge that brings solace and enlightenment. The artists, whose whole will was free... their intellectual radiance. Liane is an orphan, alone in life, but her great beauty and rare intelligence have attracted much passionate desire and sincere love. But in a dream she has seen a man, a man who seems, from his garments, to come from a distant land; and the sweet and serious gaze of the stranger has won the heart of the girl—now she can love no other. Since then she has been waiting ...
... new earth. "O men,” said the Vedic Rishis, "follow the shining thread ... weave an inviolate work, become the human being, create the divine race ... Seers of Truth are you, sharpen the shining spears with which you cut the way to that which is Immortal; knowers of the secret planes, form them, the steps by which the gods attained to immortality” (X.53.5,6,10). “Then shall thy humanity become as if... rock” (Rig-Veda 1.130.3), "the Sun dwelling in the darkness” (III.39.5). And this entire cycle was perhaps needed for the whole of humanity to reach the same realization, instead of a few Rishis scattered atop their Himalayas—because, in the end, there is but one Man. One single evolution. We all reach the goal together, or no one reaches it. We are there, we are reaching that point; we have exhausted... forever free, whether here or there? We know only a fraction of Theon, and sometimes the devil and the god are strangely intertwined. "Men are superior to gods,” he said, and he was right— although they are not yet so. And he wanted that divinity for men and the earth: "Men must be freed from the sad chains of habit and be shown life”; and he added, while ceaselessly rolling cigarettes at a disconcerting ...
... fragile empires. This year, we are celebrating Sri Aurobindo's Birth Centenary. He is known to barely a handful of men and yet his name will resound when the great men of today or yesterday are buried under their own debris. His work is discussed by philosophers, praised by poets, people acclaim his sociological vision and his yoga—but Sri Aurobindo is a living ACTION, a Word becoming real, and every... already there, within our hearts, the supreme Source which is the supreme Power—only we must call it into our forest of cement, we must understand the meaning of man, the meaning of ourselves. The amplified cry of the earth, of its millions of men and women who cannot bear it anymore, who no longer accept their prison, must open a crack to let the new vibration in. Then all the apparently ineluctable laws... of Man is not the last word of Nature, but his perfection too is not the last peak of the Spirit." 4 Beyond the mental man we are, there exists the possibility of another being who will be the spearhead of evolution as man was once the spearhead of evolution among the great apes. "If," says Sri Aurobindo, "the animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out man, man himself ...
... one of these dynamic elements of the future life of humanity." 35 Yoga, then, is the technique of bringing out the fullest possibilities of powers already inherent in Nature. It is really a multiform technique, because one or another of the many powers of Nature could be isolated and its fullest potentialities brought out. Man has a body, a mind, a heart—he has a physical, mental... of man, the mental being, by which the Divine himself.. .shall by the light of his presence and guidance perfect the human being in all the force of the Nature for a divine living.. .The liberated individual being, united with the Divine in self and spirit, becomes in his natural being a self-perfecting instrument for the perfect outflowering of the Divine in humanity. 47... Supermind, when it takes place, will naturally mean the possibility of a great extension in the power of the human consciousness, far beyond the present power that men have, and the higher mental power a few have. At first only a handful of people will embody this supramental consciousness, but there will be radiating influences which will gradually encompass all earthly life. While this was ...
... prevent you from doing it, nor any circumstance. For you carry within yourself the problem and the solution. ( Silence ) And to tell the truth, the most common malady humanity suffers from is boredom. Most of the stupidities men commit come from an attempt to escape boredom. Well, I say for certain that no outer means are any good, and that boredom pursues you and will pursue you no matter what you... divine intervention in order to manifest the Divine in the human being. It is under the psychic influence that the Divine manifests in man and thus prepares the coming of super-humanity. The psychic is immortal and it is through the psychic that immortality can be manifested on earth. So the important thing now is to find one’s psychic, unite with it and allow it to replace the ego, which will... secret of Harmony also is there. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - II: The Adwaita of Shankaracharya When humanity was first created, the ego was the unifying element. It was around the ego that the different states of being were grouped; but now that the birth of super-humanity is being prepared, the ego has to disappear and give way to the psychic being, which has slowly been formed by divine ...
... Those people are outdated, oh!... They haven't yet gone beyond the "materialistic, antireligious movement," and they made a derogatory remark about the Auroville brochure, saying it was "mystic," with "religious" tendency. The irony is lovely! (...) A note on Auroville by Mother: "Humanity is not the last rung of terrestrial creation. Evolution continues and man will be... same thing. Page 20 28 February 1968 "Greetings from Auroville to all men of goodwill. Are invited to Auroville all those who thirst for progress and aspire to a higher and truer life." Auroville's Charter 1. Auroville belongs to nobody in particular Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville one must be the willing servitor of the... need to live surrounded with beautiful things, who want to use lovely things. Now, that seems to be the height of humanity, but it's quite... what you could call a "middle region" (gesture hardly above the ground), it's not at all a higher region. But the way the world is organized, people who have no esthetic need return to a very primitive life—that's not good. There should be a place where life. ...
... perhaps an extermination on a large scale, and a more successful creation could be predicted only if a way was found to develop a better humanity or perhaps a greater, a superhuman race. The central question is whether the nation, the largest natural unit which humanity has been able to create and maintain for its collective living, is also its last and ultimate unit or whether a greater aggregate can... masses of civilisation and order which were in danger of crumbling or being shaken to pieces by attacks from the outer chaos was the first attempt at cosmos successfully arrived at by the genius of humanity. This was finally replaced by something like an international system with the elements of what could be called international law of fixed habits of intercommunication and interchange which allowed... aggregate. So, although the tendency to the creation of empire testifies to an urge in Nature towards larger unities of human life, — and we can see concealed in it a will to unite the disparate masses of humanity on a larger scale into a single coalescing or combined life-unit, — it must be regarded as an unsuccessful formation without a sequel and unserviceable for any further progress in this direction. ...
... suggestions, but much more because of the constant practice of Yoga by a large number of typical and central souls who act, overtly or silently, upon the general mass of Indian humanity. The discipline of Yoga renders a man much more sensible to the surrounding mental Page 89 atmosphere, than in his ordinary state. He becomes consciously aware of it, feels intelligently its impacts, stirs... a metaphysical system by itself can never lay powerful hold on a people. We of the present age, who are excessively intellectualised, are apt to attach too great an importance and power to the works of the pure intellect. Systems of pure metaphysics which have no connection with the constant psychological experience and practice of men, are apt to become, like the modern philosophies of Europe and unlike... Greek philosophies, merely noble pastimes for the intellectual few. They influence the generality of men, but by a slight and indirect process, not profoundly, not puissantly, not permanently. The Indian metaphysical systems have influenced Page 90 the whole mentality of the Indian people profoundly, puissantly, permanently, not because of their logical subtleties, not even so much by the ...
... them the stages. Thus, some men have reached higher mental regions and do not need to follow step by step all the gradations of thought; they can jump from one idea to a far distant inference without the intermediary links; this is usually called intuition (it is not altogether an "intuition"; it is that the idea, to begin with, is at a great height and from there these people can see while descending... certainty that people who want to see miracles are people who cherish their ignorance! You understand my logic, don't you? These people love their ignorance, they insist upon seeing miracles and being astounded! And that is why people who have done yoga seriously consider it altogether fatal to encourage this tendency; hence it is forbidden. There is a "miracle" because you do not give people time to... met a man who was a little wiser, who told him, "Take care." He did not listen to him, he was swollen with his power and ambition. And it was then that his "spirit" gave him a last advice, "Now you can become the richest man in the world. Your ambition will be fulfilled. You have only to follow my direction. Do this: put all that you have into this transaction and you will become the richest man in the ...
... early man himself. Myths as to the accidental origin of death are galore in the traditions of various peoples of the earth. And if death has not been an inevitable attribute of life since the very beginning, cannot mankind reasonably expect that somehow or other death may be annulled again and everlasting life gained, if not for all men, at least for some privileged few? Man's mythical... will not like ordinary men Satiate thee with cries, and falsely woo thee, And make my grief thy theatre... O secrecy terrific, darkness vast, At which we shudder! Somewhere, I know not where, Somehow, I know not how, I shall confront Thy gloom, tremendous spirit, and seize with hands And prove what thou art and what man..." (Sri Aurobindo... 327 But man, the rebel child of Nature, has refused in his heart of hearts to believe in the inevitability of death as a cardinal condition of existence. The desire for eternal life felt by every son of man has been almost an instinct with mankind. 'Why must a man suffer death when he has committed no wrong?' — this has been his insistent query. Thus has man risen in revolt against ...
... not been very fair to the man Kennedy called a "statesman of the world", and about whom Francois Valery (the famous poet Paul Valery's son) could say, "Few men have enjoyed so little power and yet exerted so much influence, and one that was so lasting." They realized that they did not know him very well. They started to recognize his role and pay homage to the Frenchman people called "the father of Europe"... Uniting Men Jean Monnet, European Parliament, Strasbourg Courtesy; Media Library Jean Monnet for Europe Foundation, Lausanne, Switzerland Uniting Men — Jean Monnet Introduction Man's finest profession is that of uniting men. — Saim-Exupery France, Bordeaux: World War I, end of September 1914—The French had been just able to stop... creating institutions, thinking that institutions brought people closer — like ECSC, like Euratom. It is true, and it must be the final goal — but this is not the method because institutions for coal and steel become institutions for coal and steel and not for men. In order to go further, one has to touch the life and the interest of the people. 27 Or later, Page 45 One must touch ...
... truth. They say the vital is at the root of everything in humanity, and they seem to idolise it. Sri Aurobindo : How do you mean ? Man is an animal, or rather, there is the animal in man, Page 223 Disciple : These thinkers seem to deny the existence of anything higher in man. They almost seem to say: as man is an animal, it is good for him to be a conscious and an... with his soul ? Occultists speak .of "soulless man". Sri Aurobindo : The question is whether the majority of men have got .connection with the soul at all ? Disciple : It seems, then that the soul of man is not interested in ninety percent of his activity and keeps aloof. Sri Aurobindo : Yes. Generally most of man's activities are dictated from outside influences and not from the... influence, Page 194 its formations and personalities in a man, we say that his psychic being is more developed. Generally, there are certain external signs by which you can find out that the psychic being of a man is more developed. For instance, such a man has greater purity, delicacy in life in dealing with people and refinement of taste. One can hear, also, the voice of the soul which ...
... increasingly positive—positive. And as if the Page 180 problem were drawing closer and closer, growing more and more tight and stifling. ( silence ) It's perfectly obvious that people can live, that men can exist and live BECAUSE they are unconscious. If they were conscious, really conscious of the state they live in, it would be intolerable. And I can see that there is a very difficult period... two or three people. I sat down (some rooms were higher than others and it made a difference in level between the terraces), I sat down on a ledge, questioning intensely within, "What can I do? What can I do? What's the way? What can I do? Where's the lever?" I was trying to find the lever for changing it all. But I was unable to find it. Suddenly, from the room at the end a little old man came out, very... speaking of things of the higher mind, because there the key to the way out was found long ago, a long time ago: I mean down below, in the material world—the material world. That's why all those people, like the old man last night, go somewhere else—it's all the same to them, why should they bother! "Why do you want to change that?... And don't try to give light here, it's no use and in addition it's a nuisance ...
... and waste of money or he must persuade our people to resume the old abandoned policy and carry on a perennial campaign in England for the "education" of the British Public. Only as part of such a campaign had the proposal of a London Congress ever any meaning or justification. But even in its best days the Congress leaders could never produce enough men, money and energy for so stupendous a work,... started Page 180 and progressively increased in the recent stages of the movement. Not by a single word or expression ought any public man to allow the responsibility to be shifted from the right quarter and to rest in the slightest degree on the people who had no part in them, no power to detect and stop the inflamed and resolute secret assassin and no authority given them by which they can... defect of his oratory, an excess of language and rhetoric over substantial force, a defect which also limited Gladstone's oratory and made it the glory of an hour instead of an abiding possession to humanity, was absent from these speeches in England. For the first time the orator rose to the full height of a great and sound eloquence strong in matter as in style. With the statesman's part in the speeches ...
... have been used profusely by men from the earliest times to convey their meaning. To men in those times everything seemed symbolic. Mr. H. W. Garrod is right when he says, "Once upon a time the world was fresh, to speak was to be a poet, to name objects an inspiration; and metaphor dropped from the inventive mouths like some natural exudation of the vivified senses". Before man began to think he perceived... "The eye of Dawn has come into being in front. The path of man is that of his journey to the Supreme plane. There is a divine law of the life into which soul has to grow". The Dawn leads to the "level wideness" Samāne ūrvé. This is the vast Truth and the infinite being of Aditi. The error, the crookedness, falsehood by which men violate the workings of the Gods and by which different principles... Aswapathy's penances are here the trials and tribulations of the evolving Soul of Humanity and his gains are the gains of the human race during its long struggles for attainment of the Truth. Savitri also ceases to be a mere accomplished princess and becomes the manifestation of the Grace of the Supreme coming down to humanity to share in its burden of suffering and ignorance in order to enable it to ...
... insight into human nature and constitution, and this will determine the attitude that the teacher should take towards the growing child. The second concerns the future of man, of man the individual and humanity the collective man. Modern education, on the whole, takes the child as an undeveloped body endowed with a young life, untrained sensibilities, acute but often unrestrained emotions, an... or for a group - class or nation. Even the goodwill of men and their spirit of sacrifice have been exploited in this way. It is this apparent obduracy of human nature which is the radical obstacle to a wholesome and harmonious progress. The notion of an all-embracing progress of society was therefore questioned. There was no sign that people were really "happier" than in the past. The prospect appeared... their unflinching devotion, their sovereign detachment, but it becomes increasingly difficult for our young people to believe that their example is applicable to present-day life. From all this we see that the advent of progress has really cut the course of history in two: one epoch in which men Page 170 were looking at the past, another in which they turn their look to the future. ...
... of the earth are inscribed." She also indicated that there are people who can make contact with this region. Page 89 After pondering some more, she said: "Theon also used to say that man was born perfect, but had taken a tumble. Evidently, these things can always be explained symbolically. Take the explanation of man's 'exile' from Paradise, Theon explained it like this: When the Being... the manifestation and expression. And all those who have had a direct contact with the past, had the memory of a kind of human prototype — far superior to the present humanity —who came on earth as an example and a promise of what humanity will be like when it reaches its acme." Mother switched the focus to another point on the canvas. "How long did it last? It's hard to say. My memory is of a life... Being, the hostile Being, assumed the status of the Supreme Lord vis-á-vis the terrestrial realization, it wasn't to his liking that humanity should progress mentally, thus gaining a knowledge which would enable it to stop obeying him! That is Théon's occult explanation." "And what does the serpent represent physically?" Satprem asked, thinking no doubt of the original sin! "Why," exclaimed ...
... and forces into the life of humanity is a necessary part of its evolution”, wrote Sri Aurobindo. “Science itself is in its own way an occultism; for it brings to light the formulas which Nature has hidden and it uses its knowledge to set free operations of her energies which she has not included in her ordinary operations and to organize and place at the service of man her occult powers and processes... used as the part of the matter of humanity which would serve as the representative centre of descent. From his Correspondence with Nirodbaran, his frequent written exchanges with the Ashram doctor, we know that after all those years of uninterrupted effort this descent was imminent. But it was at that moment that forces adverse to his effort and the progress of humanity attacked him personally (he fell... the duration. Even when the Second World War, or the second act of “the Twentieth Century World War”, was finished, Sri Aurobindo declared the global situation to be as grim as ever, if not more. Humanity had now acquired unprecedented destructive powers, and the attempts at world conquest by the communist block raised the fear of a third and final act of the Twentieth Century World War: Armageddon ...
... manifested is not inferior to that of any ancient or modern people, and there is a gravity, a unified clarity and nobility of conception which balances at least in any true idea of culture the greater suppleness, more well-informed experience and science and eager flexibility of experimental hardihood which are the gains that distinguish our later humanity. At any rate it was no barbaric mind that was thus... of life consciously expressive of the mind and spirit of the people, the erection of a strong and successful structure of society shaped so as to fulfil the mundane objects of human existence under the control of a careful religious, ethical and social order and discipline, but also so as to provide for the evolution of the soul of man through these things to a spiritual freedom and perfection. It... a large religious and ethical and social and political teaching, and their effect and hold on the mind and life of the people have been so great that they have been described as the bible of the Indian people. That is not quite an accurate analogy, for the bible of the Indian people contains also the Veda and Upanishads, the Purana and Tantras and the Dharmashastras, not to speak of a large bulk of ...
... atmosphere and people are busy speculating. 1 Some think it would be an event useful to the world if he could see you. I wonder if even half an hour's interview would help our inner work or its outward manifestation. Perhaps people are excited about the possibility that the Truth that is here and is accepted by us will be accepted by a person who is called the world's greatest man. Gandhi has... birth. He [Gandhi] did not know what qualifications determined the birth of one man as Bhangi and another as Brahmin, but from the point of view of benefit to society the one was no whit lower than the other." 6 This seems like nonsense to me. How can he say that through puṇya (righteous acts) in previous births people go to a life in the lowest order of human society? The view taken by the Mahatma... the highest sattwic kind, full of rectitude and a high sense of honour: a man of the finest Brahmin type with what is best in European education added—that is the impression he gives. I must say that Mother was struck by his photograph when she first saw it in the papers, singling it out from the mass of ordinary eminent people. But peace? Peace is never easy to get in the life of the world and never ...
... typical of humanity? To deal with a few exceptional types would hardly solve the problem. And would they consent to follow my path?—that is another question." But the crux of the difficulty as he himself saw it, was expressed rather trenchantly in the very next, the third, query: "And if they (these might-have-been disciples with the better stuff) were put to the test, would not the common humanity reveal... invisible influence, as, for example, the inspiration of woman in her totality. "Woman's function in life", he said, "is not really confined to the physical plane: she is indispensable to man's mental creation as man is to her physical. It is only because on the mental plane she works from behind the screen that we do not visualise her contribution. But that is only because we are unimaginative"* ... flicker of their torch lights—though perhaps one ought to, for half-knowledge is a powerful thing and can be a great obstacle to the coming in front of the true Truth. No doubt, they are very remarkable men in their own field; but this new psychology looks to me very much like children learning some summary and not very adequate alphabet, exulting in putting their a-b-c-d of the subconscient and the mysterious ...
... Sri Aurobindo when She first saw Him. Very spontaneously She laid Her physical being at His Feet by offering all of Herself, mind, body and life. With this gesture, the Mother taught us that day how humanity should offer itself at the feet of the Divine. The Mother told Nirod-da a lot of things about the pranam. Nirod-da and two other teachers from our School often went to see the Mother. The ‘Free... also experienced the presence of different gods. It was during this period that the Vedas and the Upanishads came to be composed. It was also during this time that man learnt consciously to worship and bow before God or the Supreme Purusha. Man learnt spontaneously to offer his obeisance to the Lord and the Divine Mother. The touching of the elders’ feet in our country is part of this same mystery.... yesterday’s discussion. Indians believe (or at least that is their experience) that the Divine resides in man. Westerners don’t believe this. They feel the Divine resides somewhere high above. Only Jesus Christ has come down once. That’s why they do not bow to any human being. But if someone bows to a man in whom one can say with unmistakable confidence that there has been a descent of the Divine consciousness ...
... factories, mills, etc., and a good number of people get employment there. Page 260 Our work We do not believe in the efficacy of social, economic, political, religious or similar effort, devoid of a central Truth of the soul, in helping humanity to get rid of its misery. These approaches cannot permanently solve the problems of man, though they may provide temporary relief... benefit of humanity. Sri Aurobindo's teaching Sri Aurobindo said, "To fulfil God in life is man's manhood." With the teaching, influence, example and guidance of Mother and Sri Aurobindo, we are trying to evoke and establish the Divine Truth in us, change our nature and "bring heaven down on earth". We firmly believe that this is the only way to remove the misery of man from its... her aspiration. The power may not be visible but it is acting and to those whose eyes are open, the results are fully visible, though man in the mass is not conscious of it or perhaps is unwilling to recognise it. Slowly but certainly the Ashram is taking humanity through a process of a silent revolution. Page 262 (64) S ome time ago, Tark, Amit and Anuradha, all 12 or 13 ...
... great peoples and large spiritual movements, a closer acquaintance with the unfamiliar East should at least be worth our interest. But true understanding always requires a long and assiduous effort, something the impatient West is rarely willing to make. Yet, what particular interests are resisting to provide, the trend of history seems to be bringing about in the rapid integration of humanity. The... Neandertals, and the little people whose bones were lately discovered on an island in the Indonesian archipelago, Homo floresiensis . This brief outline of the evolution leading to our species as it is today may illustrate “the appearance in animal being of a type similar in some respects to the ape-kind but already from the beginning endowed with the elements of humanity.” (LD 842) “It is quite... no true knowledge – and it does not account for them.” (EDH 299) Homo sapiens “The animal is a living laboratory in which Nature, it is said, worked out man,” wrote Sri Aurobindo. (LD 4) In spite of the opinion of some learned men who think that they could have done better, the human product from nature’s workshop does not seem too bad. “An Upanishad declares that the Self or Spirit after deciding ...
... their need for expansion, it became the target of the Greek peoples. In Sri Aurobindo's poem, the fall of Troy takes an added dimension for, as he reveals to us, the issue at heart is the direction humanity had to take, for its own progress, in the centuries to come. In his address to the gods, Zeus declares, Twilight thickens over man and he moves to his winter of darkness. Troy that... the Hellenes. Neither shall Helen captive be dragged to the feet of her husband, Nor down the paths of peace revisit her father Eurotas. And Achilles, "musing of fate and the wills of men and the purpose of heaven,” towards battle turns in his soul. To the wearied Greeks he send his herald with the message that, if need be, he is ready to resume the fight alone, with his army of myrmidons... world, the Ionian, the Hellene, But for my mind is unfit which Babylon worshipped and Sidon Palely received from the past in images faint of the gladness Once that was known by the children of men the thrill of their members Was the immortal joy of the spirit overflowing their bodies. And she adds, Once could my godhead surprise all the stars with the seas of itsrapture; ...
... something very personal in the nature of an attraction or repulsion; for these movements are not the same for everybody and depend mostly on the quality of vibration of the vital being in different people. There are men who not only do not feel any repulsion for creatures like snakes, but have even a liking for them, a vital attraction and preference. The world is full of things that are not pleasing or... fear; if there were no fear, it would not exist. This fear is not based on reason, it is instinctive; it is not individual, but racial; it is a general suggestion and belongs to the consciousness of humanity as a whole. When one takes up the human body, one accepts along with it a mass of these general suggestions, race ideas, race feelings of mankind, associations, attractions, repulsions, fears. ... apprehensions or attractions to obscure or bind you. Repulsion is a movement of weakness. It comes because you have been touched and hurt and recoil from what hurts you. The atmosphere of a being or man or animal or its emanations may be harmful for you, although it may not be so felt by Page 101 everybody, and directly it touches you, you shrink back from it. But if you were strong enough ...
... Even if the Absolute Good were a high spiritual or ideal chimera, the pursuit of it is rooted in the very make of humanity and it is one of the main sources of the perennial life of the race. And that it is so would seem to indicate that it is not a chimera—something still beyond man, no doubt, but into which or towards which he is called by Nature to grow. Bertrand Russell About Russell—I have... are common enough in men with some reach of mind, but they do not constitute either a mystic feeling or a mystic experience. 6 May 1932 Was Shaw a Mystic? It is, of course, difficult to manufacture a mystic out of Shaw in the Yogic sense of the word, but in the philosophic sense I think it can be said that his conception of the universal life-force and his vision of man's future are prompted... y different from other men that to read even an ordinary interview with him in a newspaper is always an intellectual pleasure. As for his being one of the most original personalities of the age, there Page 542 can be no doubt of that. All that I deny to him is a constructive and creative mind—but his critical force, in certain fields at least, as a critic of man and life was very great ...
... importance of the stride forward that it makes during these Hours of the Gods in our terrestrial manifestation.” 6 Sri Aurobindo wrote about the cyclic movement of the evolution of humanity: “In the history of man everything seems now to point to alternations of a serious character, ages of progression, ages of recoil, the whole constituting an evolution that is cyclic rather than in one straight... preceded it into the idea that the Truth can be found in outsides, dreaming vainly that perfection can be determined by machinery, but still a necessary passage to the subjective period of humanity through which man has to circle back towards the recovery of his deeper self and a new upward line or a new revolving cycle of civilisation.” 49 “The inherent aim and effort and justification, the p... capacities, suppose. Just as every Avatar takes up the whole past of humanity in order to bring it a step further, now humanity itself must take up its whole past to go beyond itself, at least in some of its representatives: the present overmen and overwomen. The working out of all its capacities may be the reason that humanity had to regress time and again in order to attain “to something higher ...
... he was the missioned “Son of God” to execute a task which Hitler indubitably saw as on a par with his own. “Providence has predestined me to be the greatest liberator of humanity”, Hitler said to Rauschning. “I liberate man from the coercion of a mind which becomes a goal in itself, from the foul and humiliating pangs of a chimera called ‘conscience’ and ‘morality’, and from the demands of a liberty... are crucial quotes which put Hitler’s mission, as he understood it, in focus. Hitler had been sent, and was constantly guided, to change the conscience and morality of man into something like the opposite of Christianity; where humanity made an effort to become step by step more conscious and individualized, Hitler saw the human individual as nothing more than a cell in a body, an ant in a nest. The... this end he wanted to create an empire that would last … “In the introductory passages of his speeches he again and again evoked the myth of ‘the man from the people’, the days when he had been ‘an unknown frontline soldier in the First World War’, ‘a man without a name, without money, without influence, without a following’, but summoned by Providence. He liked to introduce himself as ‘the lonely wanderer ...
... and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! So whatever you wish that men would do to The Descent from the Cross... is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do Page 122 men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven... restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men. "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. "Think ...
... from whom all human Purushas are born; they are Manus only for the purpose of humanity & in themselves are beyond this manifest universe & dwell for ever in the being of the Para Purushas. They are not true Manomaya Purushas. But Manu Prajapati is a true manomaya Purusha. He by mental generation begets on his female Energies men in the mental & vital planes above earth, whence they descend into the material... undergone cannot be estimated by the imaginative & summary methods of the modern geologists,—men who think themselves advanced & Page 1326 masters of knowledge, but are only infants & babblers in their own sciences. It is unnecessary to go at present into the scene or habitat of the incidents & peoples shown in the drishti. The facts are sufficient. 2 The first image was that of a young... Rudra then begins to form life upon earth, first in vegetable, then in animal forms. Man already exists but as a god or demigod in Bhuvarloka of Bhu, not as a man upon earth. There he is Deva, Asura, Rakshasa, Pramatha, Pisacha, Pashu or as Deva he is either Gandharva[,] Yaksha, Vidyadhara or any of the Karmadevas. For Man is a son of the Manu and is assigned his place in Div & Pradiv, in Heaven & in the ...
... interpretations of present happenings and forecast of man's future are vain things. For its nature, power, event are that which will determine the next cycle of our humanity. 18 In starting the Ashram, the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's aim was verily to engineer this spiritual revolution, or this integral transformation of earthlife. If people did not meet it half-way and cooperate with it,... power to help the men who appeal to you at the beneficent hour of death .... O Mother, when this hour comes for me, may my breath have strength enough to pronounce the syllables of your name; may my memory be lively enough to build up your exact image within the shadows of remembrance! May you keep by my side like a seraph of pity and dispel before me the ensnaring people of the shadows! May... had to do before us. For the Leader of the Way in a work like ours has not only to bring down and represent and embody the Divine, but to represent too the ascending element in humanity and to bear the burden of humanity to the full and experience, not in a mere play of Lila but in grim earnest, all the obstruction, difficulty, opposition, baffled and hampered and only slowly victorious labour ...
... its most pressing interests, in comparison with truth justice, humanity and the highest good of the people. The moralist's ideal of the categorical imperative is basically individualistic, and when his ideals are applied to the society, the inadequacies of these ideals come to light. For justice often demands what love abhors. Man's absolute justice easily turns out to be in practice a sovereign... upward impulse of man towards the accordance of yet higher opposite not only rational in itself, but the only logical completion of a rule and an effort that seems to be a fundamental method of Nature and the very sense of our universal strivings. Applied Philosophy can institute a study of this subject and also exploration of methods by which the upward aspiration of humanity can be fulfilled... the ethical and the aesthetic aspirations of humanity are combined here to pull humanity from its downward gravitation and erect a durable civilisation that can continue to spread over larger and larger areas of the world. It perceives quite clearly that even science, if it is not guided by values, can be dangerous and can injure the future of humanity. It is greatly concerned with humanism, it is ...
... that of a constant unfolding without any Pralaya. It is not by a general descent that people come out of the physical mind. If one chooses to remain in the physical mind, one million descents can come down and make no difference to him. The Supermind coming down on earth will change nothing in a man if he clings to the ego. Page 293 ... opposition of the Ignorance that does not want the transformation of the nature. If that can be overcome, then old spiritual ideas will not form an obstacle. It is not intended to supramentalise humanity at large, but to establish the principle of the supramental consciousness in the earth-evolution. If that is done, all that is needed will be evolved by the supramental Power itself. It is not therefore... Page 287 and have to be dealt with before farther progress can be made. The process is a (spiritual) evolutionary process concentrated into a brief period—it could be done otherwise (by what men would regard as a miraculous intervention) only if the human mind were more flexible and less attached to its ignorance than it is. As we envisage it, it must manifest in a few first and then spread ...
... endeavour of the Old Romantics was much learning and a universal humanity, and they animated their knowledge because they tried not only to think out their ideals but also to live them. The same road will be taken by the New Romantics [mainly the völkisch movement], going back to the spontaneity, originality, artistry and joy of living of the people at the time of Paracelsus and Dürer.” (Justus Ulbricht 732)... of the present man? Together with mysticism, that is … Our Protestantism would be very different from what it is now if the theologians after Luther’s death had not been such quarrelsome blockheads … I have the strong feeling that, with my publishing house, I have to steer toward a deepened religion without dogmas, and that the forthcoming period will most probably produce the men needed for this... of a hierarchical society had crumbled and previously unknown social phenomena – especially the human masses – had arisen and were felt as primitive and threatening, in a modern world which uprooted people and assembled them in urban agglomerates, provoking close, direct and often baffling relationships. The “revival of the mystic spirit around the turn of the century [1900]” longed for something ...
... the receptivity of peasants - and his being above common heads does not annul his inward touch with humanity and his contribution to progress. "Humanity," says Rolland, "is always on the march. The intellectual elite are its vanguard, its pioneers, paving the way along which the entire humanity shall pass eventually. It would therefore be wrong to represent the elite as separated from the rank... lulls in his creative inspiration... A man's duty is not done if he thinks only of his contemporaries - his neighbours: he has to take count of his duties to the Eternal Man who, emerging out of the lowest animality, has climbed obstinately through centuries towards the light. And what constitutes the ransom for the liberation of this Eternal Man in bondage is his conquest of the Spirit... breaking ancient taboos agrees with Tagore's conception of man's and woman's offices. Not man's competitor Page 105 but his complement: This is Tagore's formula for woman. "Woman's function,” he says with a poet's flair for simile, "works passively, subterraneously, like the roots of a tree, while man's fulfilment consists in spreading himself out like branches ...
... with humanity and his contribution to progress. "Humanity," says Holland, "is always on the march. The intellectual élite are its vanguard, its pioneers, paving the way along which the entire humanity shall pass eventually. It would therefore be wrong to represent the élite as separated from the rank and file because the latter lags behind. And he would be an indifferent leader of the people who would... wide humanity tends to make even his prejudice against what Rolland terms the world's vanguard a moving limitation. There will, perhaps, be some to doubt if there is actually a limitation here and for them there will be a convincing sentence pronounced on a part of Rollandian, Tagorean and Aurobindonian aims when Gandhi dogmatically declares: "I maintain that the profoundest utterances of man in every... during lulls in his creative inspiration... A man's duty is not done if he thinks only of his contemporaries - his neighbours: he has to take count of his duties to the Eternal Man who, emerging out of the lowest animality, has climbed obstinately through centuries towards the light. And what constitutes the ransom for the liberation of this Eternal Man in bondage is his conquest of the Spirit. All ...
... the spiritual way,—men need not be extraordinary beings to follow Yoga. That is the mistake you are making, to harp on greatness as if only the great can be spiritual. Regarding the divinity in man—what is the use of this divinity if it is coated layer after layer with Maya? How many can really become conscious of it? Exactly! Why admit any divinity then at all, if humanity is an insuperable... nothing of the Divine in man. If there is no divinity in man, then there is no possibility of Avatarhood; also spirituality. can just as well pass away into silence—it has no foundation here. If the divinity is there in man, it can break through its coatings. You admit that it can do it in debauchees and moral insolvents—that it can manifest in ignorant and uncultured men and women is a proved fact;... admission? The manifestation of the Divinity in the Avatar is of help to man because it helps him to discover his own divinity, find the way to realise it. If the difference is so great that the humanity by its very nature prevents all possibility of following the way opened by the Avatar, it merely means that there is no divinity in man that can respond to the divinity in the Avatar. You make a flourish ...
... taste and many regrettable vulgarities. There is only one thing of which I am absolutely sure, and that is who lam. Sri Aurobindo also knew it and declared it. Even the doubts of the whole of humanity would change nothing to this fact. But another fact is not so certain—it is the usefulness of my being here in a body doing the work I am doing. It is not out of any personal urge that I am doing... Supreme. Time will reveal how far earth has benefitted through it. A self-willed man can not be grateful, because when he gets what he wants he gives all the credit for it to his own will, and when he gets what he does not want he resents it badly and throws all the blame on whoever he considers responsible. God, man or nature. Compassion and gratitude are purely psychic virtues. They appear in... gratitude. In the Bible, God calls Cain and asks him: 'What have you done with your brother?' Today I call man and ask him: “What have you done with the earth?” You have brought down upon earth Peace and Freedom. Now Freedom and Wisdom must manifest in the heart of every man. Have you never been mistaken in any of your decisions? Yes, you have been mistaken, haven't you? and many a time ...
... guardian power, there are Hands that save" humanity. Man harbours all possibilities—of good and evil—within him. The past lives in him and the future is preparing in the present. Mind of man goes on working and creating its own moulds but at last it is some other will—a divine power—that works out the "intricate plan". It waits for its time and circumstances. Man is not what he appears to be on the surface... I am the runner who never touched his goal". The eternal toil and effort without success is the character of this Man of Sorrows who is widely prevalent in humanity: "I toil like the animal, like the animal die." This type is also known in History. "I am man the rebel, man the helpless serf". He has thus the double and contradictory aspect. Even when he succeeds in loosening his "servitude's... As she stopped "a voice of wrath took up the refrain". It was the voice of the being in man that complains against the suffering of humanity and yet who at the same time seems almost to enjoy his suffering. He seems to take a perverse delight in his sorrow. The Page 317 voice said: "I am the Man of Sorrows". I am he "who is nailed on the wide cross of the universe". He complains against ...
... on of man and his life, his rebirth into a higher nature is not to be effected by so summary and outward a process. It was an error to suppose that the war was or could be the painful, the terrible, but in the end the salutary crisis by which that great change would be decisively effected,—a change that would mean a complete renovation and purification of the soul, mind and life of humanity. The war... too weak or too exhausted to prevail against each other and unable to separate, a bewildered opportunism incapable of guiding itself or finding an issue is the character of the present situation. Humanity has the figure of a derelict with broken mast and rudder drifting on a sea still upheaved by the after swell of the tempest, the statesmen of the Supreme Council figuring as its impotent captains... might still go otherwise and might turn out to be only an episode; it is rather this fundamental fact affecting future possibilities that a great nation marked out as one of the coming leaders of humanity has taken a bold leap into the hidden gulfs of the future, abolished the past foundations, made and persisted in a radical experiment of communism, replaced middle-class parliamentarism by a new form ...
... where it is necessary. But always man takes upon his shoulders an interminable burden. He does not want to drop anything of the Page 198 past and he stoops more and more under the weight of a useless accumulation. You have a guide for a part of the way but when you have travelled this part leave the road and the guide and go farther! This is something men find difficult to do. When they... that's one question. Now we come to something quite different: Page 196 "In what way can the teaching of the Buddha now be an obstacle or help to humanity on the path of supramentalisation?" Everything that helps humanity to make progress is a help, and all that prevents it from making progress is an obstacle! In fact, you are asking this because we study and meditate on the Dhammapada... forms can endure as a vibration lasts, but their purpose historically, it could be said, was momentary, and one form is replaced by another in order that a new step forward may be taken. The mistake humanity makes is that it always hangs on to what is behind it and wants to perpetuate the past indefinitely. These things must be used at the time when they are useful. For there is a history of each individual ...
... call national freedom; in the process individual liberty would be destroyed both in the parts of humanity coerced and, by inevitable reaction and contagion, in the imperial nation or nations. Relapse in this direction is always easy, because the assertion of his human dignity and freedom is a virtue man has only acquired by long evolution and painful endeavour; to respect the freedom of others he is... unified order will not necessarily involve a considerable overriding of the liberties of mankind, individual and collective, and an oppressive mechanism by which the free development of the soul-life of humanity will be for some time at least seriously hindered or restricted or in danger of an excessive repression. We have seen that a period of loose formation is in such developments usually followed by a... may be given to the new unity. And this has meant in past unifications and is likely to mean here also a suppression of that principle of liberty in human life which is the most precious gain of humanity's past spiritual, political and social struggles. The old circle of progression by retrogression is likely to work itself out again on this new line of advance. Such a development would be not only ...
... where liberty could progress by natural gradations, that was due, no doubt, largely to the strong qualities of the people but still more to its fortunate history and insular circumstances. The monarchical State in this evolution crushed or subordinated the religious liberties of men and made a subservient or conciliated ecclesiastical order the priest of its divine right, Religion the handmaid of... As for the people, they had no liberties to be destroyed. Thus the monarchical State concentrated in its own activities the whole national life. The Church served it with its moral influence, the nobles with their military traditions and ability, the bourgeoisie with the talent or chicane of its lawyers and the literary genius or administrative power of its scholars, thinkers and men of inborn business... The struggle between the Church and the monarchical State is one of the most important and vital features of the history of Europe. Had that conflict ended in an opposite result, the whole future of humanity would have been in jeopardy. As it was, the Church was obliged to renounce its claim to independence and dominance over the temporal power. Even in the nations which remained Catholic, a real independence ...
... Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men. In it he argues that all economic, political, social and moral inequalities are unnatural and arise when men leave the "state of nature". "Man is naturally good, " he declares. This discourse contains the famous line, "If she 1. Ibid., p. 26. 2. Ibid., p. 205. Page 236 [Nature] destines man to be healthy, I venture to declare that... us make haste. Astronomy is good for something." Page 255 (...) Never direct the child's attention to anything which he can not see. While humanity is almost unknown to him, as you are not able to raise him to the state of man, lower man for him to the state of childhood. While thinking of what would be useful to him at another age, speak to him only of that whose utility he sees at present... as the only place where life can be healthy and natural. Men are not made to be crowded together in anthills, but scattered over the earth to till it. The more they are massed together, the more corrupt they become. Disease and vice are the sure results of overcrowded cities. . . . Man s breath is fatal to his fellows. . . . Man is devoured by our towns. In a few generations the race dies out ...
... kinged indeed And regal: Lords, of such desirable Fortune I would possess this mother of men; Then would I be at peace, at last repose Transferring to such shoulders Earth. Pronounce If I have nobly planned, if counselled well; Grant me your high permissive voices; people, But if my narrower pleasure, private hope," Of welfare general the smooth disguise ... fame, high worship and honour are the king's, and he holds the staff of justice and is reverent to all. Of Indra's self he is the fourth part and protects the people. 0 seed of Raghou, therefore he enjoys noble and beautiful pleasures and to him men bow down. Thou shouldst protect us, then, dwellers in thy dominions; for whether the city hold thee or the wilderness, still art thou the king and the master... commons metropolitan? Where stays Thy chariot by four gold-clad horses drawn, Trampling, magnificent, wide-maned? thy huge High-omened elephant, a thunder-cloud Or moving mountain in thy front? thy seat Enriched with curious gold? Such are the high Symbols men lead before anointed kings Through streets flower-crowned. But thou com'st careless, dumb, Alone. Or if ...
... and purpose of human life. The second – a more circumscribed field – is the society to which one belongs, the particular group of humanity in which he functions as a limb. The service to society or good citizenship entails the worship of humanity, of Man as a god. Lastly, man belongs to the family, which is the unit of society; and the backbone of the family is the continuous line of ancestors, who are... energy and the mind the directing knowledge. This triune world forms the humanity of man. But there is another aspect hidden behind this apparent nature, there is another world where man dwells in his submerged, larger and higher consciousness. To that his soul – the Purusha in his heart only has access. It is the world where man's nature is transmuted into another triune reality – Sat, Chit and Ananda... carries men's offering to the Gods and brings their blessing to men. Vasatk ār is the offering to the Gods generally. Hantakār is the offering to mankind, to our kin, an especial form of it being the worship of the guests, sarvadevamay'tithi. Svadhā is the offering to the departed Fathers (Pitris). The duty of life consists, it is said, in the repaying of three debts which every man contracts ...
... heaviness in the balance today because the modern man, even the modern cultured man, is or tends to be to a degree quite unprecedented politikon zōon , a political, economic and social being valuing above all things the efficiency of the outward existence and the things of the mind and spirit mainly, when not exclusively, for their aid to humanity's vital and mechanical progress: he has not that regard... and progress. And although this modern tendency is exaggerated and ugly and degrading in its exaggeration, inimical to humanity's spiritual evolution, it has this much of truth behind it that while the first value of a culture is its power to raise and enlarge the internal man, the mind, the soul, the spirit, its soundness is not complete unless it has shaped also his external existence and made... the king as the head and representative, but long depending even after his position became hereditary on the assent of the people for his formal election or confirmation. The religious institution of the sacrifice developed in time a class of priests and inspired singers, men trained in the ritual or in possession of the mystic knowledge which lay behind the symbols of the sacrifice, the seed of the ...
... had been at work in the secret places of Buddha's heart, he would have done nothing more in those famous scenes with an old man, a sick man and a dead man than get down from his chariot and take the old man to an infirmary and the sick man to a hospital and the dead man to the dissolving mercy of the burning ghat. And, surely, he would never have forsaken, as he did, his young wife with a newly... when they needed him most—a queer kind of philanthropic "selflessness", I must say! Instead of wandering away at night, becoming a beggar and an ascetic and spending six years aloof from suffering humanity, he would have set himself to introduce social reforms and build up charitable institutions and preach Wellsian Utopias. But Buddha wanted to heal the very heart of life's misery and not... Buddhism. It is one of the steps to the goal which is Nirvana. And it is a step which could very well lead nowhere near Nirvana if the various other steps which have little connection with service to humanity as such did not go with it. Further, it is not an equivalent of what Buddha names compassion. Only after the realisation of Nirvana in a mystical and spiritual sense there is born the luminous ...
... Belgian army. NIRODBARAN: Yes, but it's not much use. They can't go to Belgium and fight there. SRI AUROBINDO: Still, it shows the rebellion of the people. PURANI: It will be like the Czech and Polish armies—with only small numbers of men. SRI AUROBINDO: With our Sammer we can start a Czech army (laughter), so that they may realise the situation and learn a lesson. NIRODBARAN: Dilip... also to be generous. SRI AUROBINDO: Generous? When the whole army is going to be destroyed, it is difficult to be generous. No, Roger Keyes doesn't clear the mystery. It seems the whole world of humanity has lost all sense of honour and truth. For the sake of self-interest one is capable of doing anything. PURANI: Street fighting is going on in Dunkirk. SRI AUROBINDO: That means it will fall... deliberately to Arya Samajist. PURANI: Yes, I know of an Arya Samajist who had an altercaation with Ramana Maharshi some time ago. This is probably the same man. It was said that Ramana Maharshi got excited and angry and began to shout. This man also says he became angry. SRI AUROBINDO: Angry? PURANI: Yes, Brunton too has said that he gets angry. SRI AUROBINDO: Ramakrishna also used to get ...
... did not consider the war as a fight between nations and governments (still less between good people and bad people) but between two forces, the Divine and the Asuric … The victory of one side (the Allies) would keep the path open for the evolutionary forces; the victory of the other side would drag back humanity, degrade it horribly and might lead even, at the worst, to its eventual failure as a race... tasks, as the prophet of the rebirth of man in a new form. Humanity, he proclaimed, was in the throes of a vast metamorphosis. A process of change that had lasted literally for thousands of years was approaching its completion … One thing is certain: Hitler has the spirit of the prophet. He is not content to be a mere politician. ‘… “Yes,” Hitler continued, “man has to be passed and surpassed. Nietzsche... (the Allies) would keep the path open for the evolutionary forces; the victory of the other side would drag back humanity, degrade it horribly and might lead even, at the worst, to its eventual failure as a race, as others in the past evolution failed and perished.’ 27 Very few people, even when familiar with the Nazi doctrines and those of the SS, the ‘Order of the Death’s Head,’ are aware of ...
... could not have even dreamed before I entered that area that a creature called man who is usually credited with an amount of intelligence could have made his dwelling into such a maze. I felt certain that this could have had no other object in view than to forestall on that particular day a possible pursuit by the CID men. The houses stood huddled together in compact line, the lanes appeared in quick... towards the end, about eight o'clock one evening, at a house Number 4 on Shyampukur Lane in the Shyam-bazar area in Calcutta, in a room upstairs, there sat a mature young man surrounded by a certain number of younger people. The older person sat on a small wooden bed— that was the only piece of furniture in the room—and of the younger group one or two sat on the same bed and the rest sat on the... and then roll down the stage. Whether in like manner the gods had on this occasion sent the goddess of drink to seize the throat of the CID man, or whether the man had gone somewhere for some fresh air or anything more solid I do not know. Or perhaps the man had been used to temper his sense of duty by his cleverness and skill all these days. Sri Aurobindo used to come to this place about four ...
... m which dominated Europe in the nineteenth century. The idea that despotism of any kind was an offence against humanity, had crystallised into an instinctive feeling, and modern morality and sentiment revolted against the enslavement of nation by nation, of class by class or of man by man. Imperialism had to justify itself to this modern sentiment and could only do so by pretending to be a trustee... three kinds of liberty is essential to the healthy development of national life; or can there be such development without any liberty at all? The object of national existence, of the formation of men into groups and their tacit agreement to allow themselves to be ruled by an organised instrument of administration which is called the Government, is nothing else than human development in the individual... view national independence is a thing of no moment or at least its importance has been grossly exaggerated. Nations can very well do without it; provided they have a good government which keeps the people happy and contented and allows them to develop their economic activities and moral virtues, they need not repine at being ruled by others. For certain nations in certain periods of their development ...
... been a real democracy; it has been everywhere the propertied and professional classes and the bourgeoisie who governed in the name of the people. So too in any international council or control it would be a few great empires that would govern in the name of humanity. At the most, if it were otherwise, it could be only for a short time, unless some new forces came into their own which would arrest... look beyond the narrow horizon of passing events, a fascinating subject of speculation; but unfortunately it can at present be nothing more. The very multitude of the possibilities in a period of humanity so rife with the most varied and potent forces, so fruitful of new subjective developments and objective mutations creates an impenetrable mist in which only vague forms of giants can be half glimpsed... harmonised with respect for the needs, efficiency, solidarity, Page 395 natural growth and organic perfection of the corporate being, the society or nation. In an ideal aggregate of all humanity, in the international society or State, national liberty and free national growth and self-realisation ought in the same way to be progressively harmonised with the solidarity and unified growth and ...
... we begin to regard the community, the nation or any other fixed grouping of men as a living organism with a subjective being of its own and a corresponding growth and natural development which it is its business to bring to perfection and fruition. So far, good; the greater knowledge, the truer depth, the wiser humanity of this new view of things are obvious. But so also are the limitations of our... our evolution preparing to emerge in us; its emergence and satisfaction and not the satisfaction of the mere egoistic will-to-live for the sake of one's lower members is the true object at which a humanity subjectively seeking to know and fulfil its own deepest law and truth should increasingly aim. The second psychic truth the individual has to grasp is this, that he is not only himself, but is... admission as well as in Germany's own self-vision, Germany itself? To fulfil then the collective German ego and secure its growth and domination was at once the right law of reason, the supreme good of humanity and the mission of the great and supreme Teutonic race. 4 From this egoistic self-vision flowed a number of logical consequences, each in itself a separate subjective error. First, since the ...
... kindness, the humanity triumphant over such adverse circumstances. One I saw among them especially, who seemed to me a saint, a peasant of my nation who did not know how to read and write, an alleged dacoit sentenced to ten years rigorous imprisonment, one of those whom we look down upon in our Pharisaical pride of class as chhotalok. Once more He spoke to me and said, "Behold the people among whom... after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone his words will be echoed and reechoed not only in India, but across distant seas and lands. Therefore I say that the man in his position is not only standing before the bar of this Court but before the bar of the High Court of History.' The... found God.' Meanwhile the news of Sri Aurobindo's arrest and of the large-scale rounding up of the revolutionaries had spread all over the country. People were stunned. The Muzzafarpur bomb outrage had itself created a sensation. Of the two young men who were caught, Prafulla Chaki shot himself as he was being arrested and the other, Khudiram, was awaiting his trial. (Later he was hanged and his very ...
... his Dwaraka. Revat lived in Treta Yuga when men mingled freely with gods. Princess Revati accompanied her father. "So he went to the Brahmaloka and he was entertained with a song by an Apsara. After the song was over Brahma asked about the object of his visit. Revat asked about his daughter's marriage and suggested certain names. Brahma said all those people had already died! While he was listening to... subjects on the pretext of collecting taxes. People will be haunted by famine, taxes and sickness. . . . The clouds will bring forth very little water and seeds will grow poorly . . . and every caste will become almost like the Shudra [labourers]. . . . But notwithstanding all these defects, the great virtue of the Kali Yuga is that the spiritual progress man accomplishes with great, ascetic efforts in... new creation emerges. The Puranas state that the duration of each yuga is in direct proportion to the diminishing Truth. 2 As a result, man's life-span diminishes also. In addition, they say that with the declining Truth man's stature too declines. Man's height, which is fourteen cubits in Treta, is reduced to seven cubits in Dwapara, and goes down to four and a half cubits in Kali. Sri Aurobindo ...
... important question we shall now turn next. *The godhead descending into man assumes the veil of humanity. The god is eternally perfect, unborn, fixed in the Truth and Joy; descending, he is born in man, grows, gradually manifests his completeness, attains as if by battle and difficult progress to the Truth and Joy. Man is the thinker, the god is the eternal seer; but the Divine veils his seerhood... s of man is broken by the mighty invasion of Varuna, and Varuna is fulfilled in man, who ceases to be mere mental and consents to be supramental. But this is-not enough. Mitra, the lord of Harmony is also to be fulfilled. The seeker must learn the secret of relations, know the threads that bind each to all and all to each. He must learn to be the friend of all creatures, of all men, of all... ancient Indian system of education developed as a part of the general system of Indian culture. This system at once indulged and controlled man's nature; it fitted him for his social role; it stamped on his mind the generous ideal of an accomplished humanity, refined, harmonious in all its capacities, ennobled in all its members; but it placed before him too the theory and practice of Yoga, the ...
... matter. It would mean for man his transfiguration into Superman. But this supramentalisation was not sought by Sri Aurobindo in any egoistic spirit of self-aggrandisement or even with the larger but still egoistic aim of aggrandising or colossalising all humanity. "It is a higher Truth I seek," wrote Sri Aurobindo once to one of his disciples, "whether it makes men greater or not is not the... devoted his energies to the task of saving humanity from the threatened reign of Nazism. It was a practical lesson of solid work done for humanity without any thought of return or reward, without even letting humanity know what he was doing for it! Thus he lived the Divine and showed us how the Divine cares for the world, how he comes down and works for man. I shall never forget how he who was at... possible for it to take up the whole being into its own native power, instead of the nature of man continuing to remain in half-light, half-darkness. I believe the descent of this Truth opening the way to a development of divine consciousness here to be the final sense of the earth evolution. If greater men than myself have not had this vision and this ideal before them, that is no reason why I should ...
... certain period of time; for no human organisation can change radically unless human consciousness itself changes. Prophets of a new humanity have followed one another; religions, spiritual or social, have been created; their beginnings have sometimes been promising, but as humanity has not been fundamentally transformed, the old errors arising from human nature itself have gradually reappeared and after some... Articles Articles On Education An International University Centre An International University Centre - I The conditions in which men live on earth are the result of their state of consciousness. To seek to change these conditions without changing the consciousness is a vain chimera. Those who have been able to perceive what could and ought to be done... should be effectuated around a central idea that is as wide and as high as possible, in which all tendencies, even the most contradictory, may find their respective places. This higher idea is to give men the conditions of life they need in order to be able to prepare themselves to manifest the new force that will create the race of tomorrow. All impulsions of rivalry, all struggle for precedence and ...
... deadly jabs and cuts capers while slashing at people's follies. The caper-cutting has another aspect too: he acts a bit of a clown while making his antagonists look fools, because he wishes to relieve the duel of overgrimness on either side and to save himself from pompous pretentiousness and the pride that may render him forgetful of his own humanity. Yeats makes no mention of this double-edged... would have dubbed the Shavian laughter lack of seriousness. Yeats's "blind spot" towards Shaw is regrettable. However, we must not conclude he has less valuable things to give us than Shaw. The two men are different and bring us different treasures. Shaw is the analyst mind and the ironic spirit taking art as their instrument; Yeats the mind of insight and the spirit of aristocracy, fused with the... Yeats in his own sphere cannot be equalled by Shaw: there is much more food for our souls in a few "Celtic" or else "Byzantine" poems of Yeats's than in all the forceful argumentation set to drama in Man and Superman or Back to Methuselah. The same Page 75 holds good between Yeats's essays and Shaw's prefaces. But when Yeats impinges on the field of the intellect, with its ...
... or ready-made basis of unity, mutuality and harmony for the common life of the people. If man consisted only of one part, if he were only a material being, if he were only an economic man, if he could live merely by bread, there could, of course, be a simple and straightforward solution. But the essential point is that man is a complex being. He lives simultaneously on the physical plane, vital plane... reason why I read World History, political theory, economics, law and international affairs. My study shows that humanity is passing through unusual times. My question was as to what was the precise nature of this unusualness. I have been discussing this question with a number of people. If you recall, we had spent several hours during our very first meeting in Geneva on this very question. Then during... will solve everything by the magic of the social machine cutting humanity into a better pattern. (iv) There is also a fourth set of advisers who believe that society can achieve cohesion only by means of one common Page 61 religion whose appeal can influence not only reason and will but also vital and physical habits of man. "I have given a great deal of thought over all these four ...
... height. Men murmured in amazement: "Oh, the tower of culture, egregiously high! The end of it lost in the clouds!" The scribes, with light hearts, hurried home, their pockets heavily laden. The nephews were furiously busy keeping the cage in proper trim. As their constant scrubbing and polishing went on, the people said with satisfaction: "This is progress indeed!" Men were employed... . As a result, a large number of people came to know and understand the significance of his educational revolution. Indeed, his revolution was unusual for it involved not war, but peace. The very name of the school, Shantiniketan, means the abode of peace. He also named his school "Vishm Bharati" to emphasize international understanding and the universality of man. And he selected for Vishwa Bharati... richness of the spirit and was not limited to genius. There was the superb charm softening the intellectual blaze; the innate simplicity belying the sophistication, but, above all, the never-failing humanity with which the poet made his forceful impact on all levels of awareness. Based on Bhabani Bhattacharya, Introduction, in Rabindranath Tagore, The Golden Boat (Bombay: Jaico, 1985), pp. vi-ix. ...
... springs? Wasn't Man basically a 'rational animal'? Wasn't reason the one dependable lamp to guide one through the gloom encircling and the deceptive interstices of life's labyrinth? In 1906, Mirra organised the "Idea", her little group of fellow-seekers, and there were papers and discussions. Some of the papers may have achieved a fairly wide private circulation all over Europe, and people in search of... in the evolutionary march that compelled the incarnation brought about the destined breakthrough from Mind to Supermind, and this had to be done in an apparently human way and right in the midst of humanity. Such is the paradox of the Divine - which of course is by very definition without a beginning and an end, and beyond birth and change and passing - taking birth as Aurobindo or Mirra and submitting... have done in the preceding sixty chapters), and take note of the moves and set-backs and new starts and big leaps and triumphant arrivals, for these have lessons Page 832 for average humanity, but it is wiser still to remember the Ground and the underground living streams and the circumambient Presence. IV Looking out, sitting in her small armchair, Mirra the child saw things ...
... practice of violence binds men together as a whole, since each individual forms a violent link in the great chain, a part of the great organism of violence which has surged upward." The book is prefaced by Jean-Paul Sartre, who says even more explicitly, "Irrepressible violence... is man recreating himself." It is "mad fury" through which "the wretched of the earth" can "become men." "To shoot down a European... ) What does it depend on?... ( silence ) According to what others say or write or experience, I have seen that what the vast majority of humanity fears the most is this perception of the Falsehood of it all, and all that leads to it. I know people (they've written to me) who just these last few days have had terrible frights, because all of a sudden they were forcibly seized, something was... all the young) are those of Mao Tse-tung? Of...? Mao Tse-tung. What's that? ...He's the great Chinese, the great Chinese mandarin—Mao Tse-tung. And what does he say, that man? That man... says that "Power flows from the barrel of a gun." ( Mother remains silent ) That's what they read in the West. And the latest bestseller is a book titled something like "The Wretched ...
... serene soul. One who has won inner peace is a herald of deliverance Page 105 wherever he goes, a bearer of hope and joy. Is not this what poor and suffering humanity needs above all things? Yes, there are certain men whose thoughts are all love, who radiate love, and the mere presence of these individuals is a charity more active, more real than any other. Though they utter no word... would result in the establishment of the supreme justice upon earth. Such is the theory, but in practice charity could be considered as the path men ought to follow in their groping advance towards justice. For, in his present state of evolution, man is incapable not only of realising justice in his earthly abode, but also of conceiving it as it is in its absolute essence. Charity is the living... material standpoint, when will the accumulation stop? One who acquires the habit of piling up never finds his pile big enough. I have even been led to make an observation about this: that in most men generosity seems to exist in inverse proportion to their pecuniary resources. From observing the way in which workmen, the needy and all the unfortunate act among themselves, I was forced to conclude ...
... myself.... Then I would see men, women, children, old men, the sick, the unfortunate coming out from every side... as soon as they had touched [the robe] they were comforted or healed.... Often while I was rising up... an old man, silent and still... looked at me with kindly affection and encouraged me by his presence.' Later finds the old man was a personification of the 'Man of Sorrows' or the Lord... Krishna has shown him; 'to establish a yogic sadhana which will not only liberate the soul, but prepare a perfect humanity'; 'as part of the above work' to restore India to her 'proper place in the world' by 'means of Yoga'; to remodel society - to make it 'fit to contain' a perfect humanity. - Nov 2 First entry in the published Prayers and Meditations'. '...I have now a constant and precise ... fight until India and Pakistan have once more become One because that is the truth of their being.' Page 863 - Nov 24 Sri Aurobindo shows her 'the condition of humanity and of the different strata of humanity in relation to the new or supramental creation... the vision of a great universal Rhythm in which each thing takes its place... a vision of a beauty so majestic, so calm, so smiling ...
... humdrum that found a way to India. "They are really very ordinary men," said Sri Aurobindo, "and not only ordinary men but ordinary Englishmen — types of the middle-class or Philistines... with the narrow hearts and commercial habit of mind peculiar to that sort of people." Nor is the Anglicised Babu spared in the least: he is the man of endless perorations in the Congress, he "frolics in the abysmal... democracy? What had such a mere sadhu to offer to the young men steeped in the latest knowledge of the West? But there's a Divinity that shapes our ends still: God knew. what he was doing. He sent that man to Bengal and set him in the temple of Dakshineshwar in Calcutta, and from North and South and East and West, the educated men, men who were the pride of the university, who Page 60 ... some time, I sent an orderly to remind him.... The man came back and informed us that the doctor was very ill. I at once went round, and heard of the telegram and found the doctor very ill and quite unconscious. The other medical men in the station were assiduous in their attentions. I did all I could. But it was all of no avail. The poor man lingered on for a day or two and then passed away. ...
... end and purpose of human life. The second—a more circumscribed field—is the society to which one belongs, the particular group of humanity in which he functions as a limb. The service to society or good citizenship entails the worship of humanity, of Man as a god. Lastly, man belongs to the family, which is the unit of society; and the backbone of the family is the continuous line of ancestors, who are... energy and the mind the directing knowledge. This triune world forms the humanity of man. But there is another aspect hidden behind this apparent nature, there is another world where man dwells in his submerged, larger and higher consciousness. To that his soul—the Purusha in his heart only has access. It is the world where man's nature is transmuted into another triune reality—Sat, Chit and Ananda.... carries men's offering to the Gods and brings their blessing to men. Vasatkar is the offering to the Gods generally. Hantakar is the offering to mankind, to our kin, an especial form of it being the worship of the guests, sarvadevamayo'tithi. Svadha is the offering to the departed Fathers (Pitris). The duty of life consists, it is said, in the repaying of three debts which every man contracts ...
... the human race, engaged in the cultural activity of humanity trying to evolve higher and higher values of life. That is Aswapathy. He is a representative, he is a symbol of the human race, a symbol of humanity, a representative of mankind, and he is making an effort to embody higher and higher values of life so as to find out what is the goal of man -that is what Aswapathy is after. And Savitri is born... divine consciousness, the power of the soul, the power of the spirit in man. The essential divinity in man, an unborn Power, must build reality. If reality is to build something more than just a structure of dreams, then an unborn power must be brought into play. Now you know that in India there is a tradition in which people give you a small sutra, a small epigrammatic expression in which the... possession, that's all. Most of the forces that come into men are not their own. Only the determinism of Nature is at work in the universe. Nature is deciding everything in ninety cases out of a hundred. Man thinks he is free, but he is not free. Now if he is open to lower forces it is the lower forces that decide his movements, and in the lower forces there is definite anti-divinity. That is really ...
... race; finally, a new step in the evolution which, by uplifting the consciousness to a higher level, would begin the solution of the many problems of existence which have perplexed and vexed humanity, since men began to think and to dream of individual perfection and a perfect society. India is free but she has not achieved unity, only a fissured and broken freedom. At one time it almost seemed as... for it signifies the entry into the comity of nations of a new power with untold potentialities which has a great part to play in determining the political, social, cultural and spiritual future of humanity. To me personally it must naturally be gratifying that this date which was notable only for me because it was my own birthday celebrated annually by those who have accepted my gospel of life, should... of a new age. But we can also make it by our life and acts as a free nation an important date in a new age opening for the whole world, for the political, social, cultural and spiritual future of humanity. August 15th is my own birthday and it is naturally gratifying to me that it should have assumed this vast significance. I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous accident, but as the sanction ...
... texts, when interpreted through the right key, that the godhead descending into man assumes the veil of humanity. The god is eternally perfect, unborn, fixed in the Truth, and Joy; descending, he is born in man, grows, and gradually manifests his completeness, as if by battles and difficult progress to the Truth and Joy. Man is a thinker, the god is the eternal seer; but the Divine veils his Page... his ladles go to thee unceasingly, O perfect in thy birth, O presser of the running richness. Thee all the gods with one heart of love made their envoy; O seer, men serve and adore thee in their sacrifices as in the godheads. That mortal man adores the Will, the divine, by sacrifice to the powers divine; but thou, O Brightness, shine out high-kindled; enter into the home of the Truth, enter into the... blissful. The ideal that was pursued by the rishis was that of increasing powers of the. soul of man and attaining unity of the soul of man and the eternal divine fullness of the cosmic godheads in their synthesis and in their highest fulfillment. The Vedic yoga thus aimed at the divine perfectibility of man, and therefore of the divine integration or perfect integrality of human consciousness when it ...
... world and human existence will achieve decisive success only when the new world vision has been taught to a whole people, or subsequently forced upon them if necessary , and when, on the other hand, the control organization, the movement itself, is in the hands of only those few men who are absolutely indispensable to form the nerve centres of the coming state.” 785 Henry Picker, the secret annotator... of every citizen … With his uniformization of the whole nation Hitler had almost formed a new type of man who put the will above the intellect, and toughness and faith above the natural feelings.” The daily life of the nation was “put under Prussian military discipline, the ‘community of the people’ was transformed into ‘a battle-ready fighting community’ in which every male from his youth to an advanced... widespread, and the Nazi intellectuals did their best to make him openly chose their side. Their attempt was not very logical considering Spengler’s pessimistic view of the destiny of the West and of humanity as a whole, while the Nazis foresaw a golden future for the Aryan race. Hitler was quite aware of this incongruity and did not hesitate to put things straight after having given, as the new Chancellor ...
... synthetic philosophy which might be a contribution to the thought of the new age that is coming upon us. We start from the idea that humanity is moving to a great change of its life which will even lead to a new life of the Page 138 race, - in all countries where men think, there is now in various forms that idea and hope, - and our aim has been to search for the spiritual, religious and other... whatever he may have inwardly known himself to be, never quite showed the Divine Consciousness; he was there to establish the dharma of the ethical man and acted out a moral ideal in a manner that suggested to everyone the superhuman. He never asked people to transcend the human consciousness and unite with the Divine. The Divine Consciousness as such formed no direct part of what Rama exemplified or... else had to do before us. For the leader of the way in a work like ours has not only to bring down or represent and embody the Divine, but to represent too the ascending element in humanity and to bear the burden of humanity to the full and experience, not in a mere play or Lila but in grim earnest, all the obstruction, difficulty, opposition, hampered and only slowly victorious labour which are possible ...
... mere might of man," Sri Aurobindo's article concludes, "for nothing but the renovating touch of Divinity can account for the difference between now and then, between the days before and after the Boycott." There were leaders enough thrown up by the times, men of patriotism, idealism, and genius for suffering and sacrifice, men with the birth-mark of the fatality of martyrdom, men capable of swaying... of the community of thirty crores of Indian humanity, and love of God and love of the country, a letter pleading, earnestly pleading, for his wife's total identification with him in his triune adventure of love for Man, God and Country, in this letter Sri Aurobindo has set the whole emotion of love to an orchestration that includes the divers strains of man and wife, the community, God and country, thereby... uncommon efforts, extraordinary high aspirations". What do "ordinary" people think of these "extraordinary" things? Can they possibly understand what is truly beyond them: They label all these as madness, but if the mad man succeeds in the field of 'action, then instead of calling him a lunatic, they call him a great man, a man of genius. But how many succeed in their efforts? Out of a thousand ...
... their truth and forces into the life of humanity is a necessary part of its evolution. Science itself is in its own way an occultism; for it brings to light the formulas which Nature has hidden and it uses its knowledge to set free operations of her energies which she has not included in her ordinary operations and to organize and place at the service of man her occult power and processes, a vast system... ” 53 Behind the constantly proclaimed “progress” by which the nineteenth century was supposed to be driven superficially, he perceived an inner urge which would make humanity evolve thanks to “the inherent perfectibility of man.” This was miles away from Darwin, whose brooding view of life looms over every page of his Origin , except for one upbeat note in the very last paragraph of the book: “There... poor, and on occasion barely survived. “The people here have some peculiar practices,” he wrote. “‘Amok’, as we say ‘running a muck’, is common here. There was one last week; a debt of a few dollars was claimed of a man who could not pay it so he murdered his creditor, and then knowing he could be found out and punished he ‘run a muck’, killed four people, wounded four more and died what the natives ...
... gigantic, living and vigorous personalities of the Mahabharat as an argument to prove that these characters must have been real men and women, copied from the life; since no Hindu poet could have created character with such truth and power. On the other side the Bengali critics, men of no mean literary taste and perception though inferior in pure verbal scholarship, are agreed in regarding the characters... life, sometimes on a keen power of observation and accurate imagination making much matter out of a small circle of experience but in its richest possessors on a boundless sympathy with all kinds of humanity accompanied by a power of imbibing and afterwards of selecting & bringing out from oneself at will impressions received from others. This supreme power, European scholars agree, is wanting in Hindu... Aryan was more civilized & temperate, less crudely enormous than the hard, earthy & material African peoples whom in Europe he only half moralised. If he seeks a Père Goriot or a Madame Bovary, he will still fail in his quest; for though such types doubtless existed at all times among the mass of the people with its large strain of African blood, Hindu Art would have shrunk from poisoning the moral atmosphere ...
... existence, the high fruits of humanity who are the very energy of life to a community, were discouraged and tended to disappear and in their place there was an enormous demand for the bourgeois qualities. The safe, respectable man, satisfied with ease and not ambitions of command, content with contemporary repute and not hankering after immortality, the superficial man who unable to think profoundly... admirably transformed herself? why has the attempt at transformation in India been a failure? The solution of problems of this kind has to be sought not in abstractions, not in machinery, but in men. It is the spirit in man which moulds his fate; it is the spirit of a nation which determines its history Describe the type of human character which prevails in a nation during a given period of its life under... Indian types. These were the Page 1096 ideals into the mould of which the minds of men & women were trained to grow. The sense-conquering thought of the philosopher, the magnificent achievements of the hero, the stupendous renunciations of the Sannyasin, [the] unbounded liberality of the man of wealth, everything was exaggeration, extreme, filled with an epic inspiration, a world-defying ...
... it from outside, people don't understand a thing I say, NOTHING! Therefore, it would seem to cut off a useful contact What would it be like, for instance, to have a small supra-mental creation as a nucleus of action and influence radiating upon earth (to limit it to the earth)? Is it possible? It's easy to conceive of a superhuman nucleus — a creation of supermen, that is, of men who by virtue of... an inferior creation during the transitional period. (silence) All who have considered the problem have always imagined some place like a Himalayan gorge, unknown to the rest of humanity, but this is no solution. No solution at all. No, the only solution is occult power. But that... Before anything at all can be done, it already demands a certain number of individuals who have... sufficient. Page 10 It would all require the utmost perfection in the individuals organizing such a thing. (long silence) It must be similar to what happened when the first men appeared. Have we ever really known how the first humans were formed, the first mental realization? Were they isolated individuals, or were they in groups - did the phenomenon take place in a collective ...
... the ordinary human consciousness, in which man dwells at present. It has plagued humanity with multifarious problems and made man extremely miserable throughout the ages. Wise men tried to find out various solutes. The East approached through inner pursuits and ultimately found out an escape through philosophic and spiritual culture; and Western people, through their practical mind, took the outer... it is under Her direction, administration and help that the physical education department be exemplary. People from India and abroad who have come and seen our organisation have remarked that such doesn't exist in this country and is quite rare even abroad. The work of forming the new humanity is going at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram vigorously. And the limits of this work have gone beyond my town... becomes impossible. This battle for individual freedom and collective control is going on since time immemorial and as a result the progress of humanity is greatly hampered. Sometimes, this disharmony even threatens to destroy the existence of man. Freedom is a very important condition of progress. But freedom must not be confused with license. When more than one person is involved in any ...
... consider everything in relation to themselves and act accordingly. The vast majority of men are like this. Those who give their love to another human being and live for him. As for the result, everything naturally depends on the person one chooses to love. Those who consecrate their life to the service of humanity through some activity done not for personal satisfaction but truly to be useful to others... relatively quite short, and it is now rare to live to be a hundred. When man lived in harmony with Nature, his life was longer. When man lives by and for the Divine, his life will be longer, and one day the Divine will reveal to him the secret of immortality. 6 January 1972 * * * It is the invocation of the people who are celebrating Sri Aurobindo’s centenary which makes his presence more... 6 December 1971 Difficult hours come to the earth to compel men to overcome their small personal egoism and turn exclusively to the Divine for help and light. The wisdom of men is ignorant. Only the Divine knows. 7 December 1971 * * * Our human consciousness has windows that open upon the Infinite, but generally men keep these windows carefully closed. We have to open them wide and ...
... the most subconscious, the very cells of the body. While the unity and interdependence of the different elements in man (body, vital, mind, soul) and of man and Nature provide the basis of a universal harmony, this is often upset and Nature is 'ridden with calamities' and humanity has become a byword for disharmony. While a higher consciousness is pressing down for manifestation, it is also meeting... which is a unity of linked-up relativities, a ladder of divers inter-connected planes of consciousness. And Man himself: isn't he a composite entity - so far as the evolutionary scene is concerned - made up of a psychic being, a mental being, a vital being and a physical being? And men differ widely, in the degree of their self-awakening, in the energy of their faculties, in their assumption of... Words of the Mother makes us a participant in the Divine's commerce with average humanity, and we are at once edified by her wisdom and experience, reassured by her motherly concern and consideration, and sustained and fulfilled by her all-understanding love. The Divine - the Mother as the mediatrix - aspirant Humanity: such is the sequence, such is the three-in-one mystic relationship. The Mother ...
... and with the human progress. Not personal salvation, but the leading of the entire humanity to the surpassing of its limitations for a collective new order and harmony and unity, to fix the supramental consciousness in the earth-consciousness, to lead the evolutionary species of man to a new species, to lead man to the divine superman,- this wide, Page 15 world-embracing and world... itself in an aim, previously only glimpsed, which was world-wide in its bearing and concerned the whole future of humanity. The major realisation that he had here was that of the Universal Presence of the Divine. As he says: 'I looked at the jail that secluded me from men and it was no longer by its high walls that I was imprisoned; no, it was Vasudeva who surrounded me: I walked under... the nation and surcharged the people with a new energy which ultimately led the nation to her freedom. It was .therefore significant that when India attained her liberation in 1947, it was on 15 August, the birthday of Sri Aurobindo. The pioneering work that Sri Aurobindo did for the liberation of India was evidently a part of his larger work for the entire humanity and indeed for the whole earth ...
... the wide universal experiences of a true seer have not yet penetrated there. The great poet exceeds not only his surroundings – his own people and land; he is able to acquaint us with other climes and times, and he succeeds even in expressing .the thoughts of humanity at large; but in the parochial poet who may speak of such things there is still a reflection of narrowness, similar to tall talk In the... transcending the limitations of time and clime. Now, the main reason why man remains confined to a particular time and clime is this that he clings to a particular avocation or religion or institution – his very nature is to live within the confines of time and space. External life (life of the outside world) – that is to say, mixing with men of various countries, acquaintance and intimacy with the experiences... elements. But man's duty and .his fulfilment consist in building up the spiritual life on this basis, and to mould the natural elements into the spiritual and to impart a spiritual meaning to them. Likewise the basic popular is to be re-shaped into the classical and raised to a higher and nobler status. Now, what is meant by popular – "plebeian" – literature? It is the literature of the people, the common ...
... A Schoolgirl's Travel Notes Mirra saw new countries and peoples, observed everything, and wrote in her Meditations: "Those who live for Thee and in Thee ... no longer do they marvel at the novelty, unexpectedness, picturesque ness of things and countries." But so few of us are like Mirra I The greater part of humanity loves to marvel. I confess that not only does the picturesque ness... formed by deep cement tanks in which green water stagnates. Above a well circled with frail shrubs, three bare-chested men pull up a bucket made of cowhide. "On our way back, we meet a troop of British soldiers, as yellow as their khaki uniforms. "A handsome blond young man, a British police officer, is delighted to have an opportunity of airing with us a few French phrases. He is sorry to... ness of things and countries attract me, but there is also in me a curiosity to know about peoples and their customs. In this jet age or supersonic age of the late twentieth century, very few of us can have any real idea of how people lived or travelled in the beginning of this very century. So when I came across the Travel Notes "of a schoolgirl who has just left high school," I heartily thanked Bharatidi ...
... Ashram which is a "laboratory"... for a spiritual and supramental yoga, humanity should be variously represented. For the problem of transformation has to deal with all sorts of elements favourable and unfavourable. The same man indeed carries in him a mixture of these two things. If only sattwic and cultured men come for yoga, men without very much of the vital difficulty in them, then, because the ... Ashram - might set the pace for humanity's evolutionary march. A thousand experiments may fail, yet the next one may be able to open the doors of resistance for a mass-march through the wide-open gates. The intended alchemic change of mentalised egoistic self-divided self-corrupting self-destroying man into spiritualised (or supramentalised) man in unison with all humanity and all Nature and enacting wholeness... ineffable or transcendental bliss, as it meant to numberless people in the past, our everyday life here would be something to be merely suffered, its limitations and obscurations would have to be contained somehow - till physical death gave the necessary release. If, on the contrary, man were verily the advanced scout of the evolutionary adventure, if man were really destined to rise higher still and enact ...
... brought up to be a writer. I feel at home when I have a child in my arms, or when a man who feels for humanity stands before me. And then I forget the poor truths ', fashioned by the pen.... For of everything which does not interest me as being indispensable to mankind I am unconcerned and the most ignorant of men. 1 Furthermore, Pestalozzi felt that the real meaning of his story had been m... The twenty years that Pestalozzi spent as a writer were very frustrating for a t man who wanted so much to do something/or his fellow human beings. He wrote in 1793: It is indeed true that the existence of him who bears the interest of humanity within his breast is blessed. But if, as helpless as a lame man by the road, he must spend his life calling to blind passers-by: "Take me on your shoulders... beneficial to the child. A reputation can be a dangerous thing to have, and that of Pestalozzi's "method" was such that people came to imagine that it was some entirely new magic formula. Yet on examination many of the theories seemed to have been advocated before, and the men who were attempting to put them into practice seemed anything but magicians. And so, not finding what they had expected, critics ...
... centuries, but to replace it by the true one, or to remove the "something" that veils it. Then the operation could be strikingly swift... assuming the rest of humanity is not struck down by the violence of the operation. The rest of humanity that lives in death and by death, because they are death, they are made of it. Can one being really lift the veil without lifting it for the whole world, and... place up to a point without your even being conscious of it! You see, it is said that there is now a great difference, that when man came, the animal didn't have the means of taking notice; well, I say it's exactly the same thing: in spite of all that man has realized, man doesn't have the means; certain things may happen, but he will know they did only much later, when "something" in him is sufficiently... the whole system they engender: the materialistic order. And the third?... Perhaps a mysterious and rapid degeneration of the elements that cannot evolve. An hour of choice. A whole part of humanity, the part that is consciously or unconsciously open to the new forces, is going to be more and more impregnated with the new substance and the new consciousness to the point of rising toward it to ...
... in India has the Divine taken birth over and over again to save the pure in heart, to destroy the evil-doer and to establish the Right Law of life. Other peoples may be the arms and the feet and the head of Page 122 Humanity, but India is its heart, its soul—for she cherishes always within her the Truth that lives for ever, the flaming God-head, the Immortal awake in mortality, as... France and ancient Greece have brought to the heritage of mankind. Again, the Japanese, as a people, have developed to a consummate degree the sense of beauty, especially as applied to life and living. No other people, not even the old-world Greeks, Page 120 possessed almost to a man, as do these children of the Rising Sun, so fine and infallible an aesthetic sensibility,—not... life and aspiration of the people; devotion to God and love of prayer and pilgrimage were as much in the nature of the average European of those times as they are in any Indian of today; every family considered it a duty and an honour to rear up one child at least to be consecrated to the service of God and the Church. The internal as well as the external life of the men of mediaeval Europe was steeped ...
... hypnotism in which the raised arm of a patient could not be pulled down even by four or five men. NIRODBARAN: How can this be explained? SRI AUROBINDO: These are things of a supraphysical state, and the ordinary physical laws bringing about the ordinary reactions are not valid then. There are cases in which people under the influence of hypnotism find sugar tasting bitter. Now the question is whether... is sweet to everybody under normal conditions. Since the sensation of sweetness is a common human reaction, there must be something in the object. SRI AUROBINDO: But is this reaction confined to humanity or is it a common reaction of all living beings? SATYENDRA: What is your conclusion. Sir? SRI AUROBINDO: I don't know. At this point the Mother came in and asked, "What is the subject of... AUROBINDO: Yes. If he was unconscious, something must have come down. I know of a case where the stature of a man increased! NIRODBARAN: Your colour also has changed, they say. SRI AUROBINDO (after some silence) : H said that the change was due to my remaining in the shade. But even an ordinary man, not a Yogi, can have a change of colour. I know a dark lower-middle- class Bengali named Hesh who returned ...
... establishment of a global polity and lasting global harmony was the other alternative. Man could still exceed himself, and having glimpsed the yawning Abyss, he could retrieve the situation and rise to the heights of Truth and Harmony and Love. Certainly, it was the fateful crossroads of human and earth history. If people continued to yoke their old schizophrenic mind and heart, their flawed imperfect... body was saying: "I must aspire, there must be an aspiration so that the Force may descend upon all these people." It was as though something - some Permanent Force - was making use of her body, and this Force was somewhere in a higher - perhaps in an asexual - world where there was neither Man nor Woman, and it was this Force that was inhabiting the Mother and making use of her body. 26 In her... the Presence, the identification. But that lasts a few seconds and then it begins again as it was before. It cannot be expressed. 20 Obviously, the new man couldn't just drop from the sky; he had to grow out of present man, just as man came out of the animal. But the stages, the links? Perhaps, in forming the future child, transformation might be attempted, but it wouldn't be one step but several ...
... individuals who compose France and a considerable amount of scepticism among the American people, the majority of Indians are free from the agnostic attitude no less than the atheistic. Rank atheism is rare in India; agnosticism is confined to only a part of the literate population which is itself a small part of the humanity surging within our subcontinent. This is not to deny that, with a great many of our... to a country's welfare and happiness? The "ought" is a riddle we can never read except by going beyond the world of passing facts. If there is no Law eternal behind the codes and statutes of men, a Law which men strive to embody according to their best lights, then nothing fundamentally bars the right of cunning and selfish opportunism to have full play and the only commandment is - "Thou shalt not... Secular State and the advanced elements in the country are proud of this declaration - but in a rather vague way. Nobody seems to know what are the exact implications of secularity. And quite a number of people even doubt if, except in name, India is any more secular than Pakistan who has declared herself a Muslim State with the name of Allah an integral part of the constitution. The doubt is occasioned by ...
... wild animals don't kill man unless they find that he is dangerous. That's what happen in Africa. Man begins to shoot them down and they turn against him. In Africa the State had to legislate to prevent the extermination of certain animals. Otherwise people would have killed them off for sport. You can't say man kills only when he is compelled. And yet we cannot declare man has made no progress. True... al all that man has inherited from the animal? SRI AUROBINDO: Not only that. Man has accused the animal for nothing. In the infrarational are also included the Rakshasa and the Asura. Man has always been speaking of the animal, the Pashu in a superior way. But take the dog's faithfulness and affection. These qualities are universal among dogs. But even when they are found among men, you can't say... cow in India is so mild and docile. In England, it seems, it may attack men. SRI AUROBINDO: Most animals kill only for food; there are very few that are inherently ferocious. Even snakes don't attack unless they are frightened. There was a variety of maneless lion in America—the Puma—that would have been friendly to man. Of course it had to live and so killed animals. But the Americans have been ...
... either in sincerity or in vision. We want not only a free India, but a great India, India taking worthily her place among the Nations and giving to the life of humanity what she alone can give. The greatest knowledge and the greatest riches man can possess are hers by inheritance; she has that for which all mankind is waiting. But she can only give it if her hands are free, her soul free, full and exalted... sordid pittance; while the new education will open careers which will be at once ways of honourable sufficiency, dignity and affluence to the individual, and paths of service to the country. For the men who come out equipped in every way from its institutions will be those who will give that impetus to the economic life and effort of the country without which it cannot survive in the press of the world... unwise by those who are always ready to take any shadow,—how much more a bulky and imposing shadow like this,—and are careless of the substance. We have still, it appears, a fair number of political wise men of this type among us, but no Home Rule leader surely can stultify himself to that extent. A three days' examination of the scheme,—I have only the analysis to go upon and the whole thing is in the nature ...
... democratic revolution is Jewish … There are higher and lower races. If one attributes the same value to racial bastards, the Chandalas, as one does to the Aryans, the noble people, one commits a crime against humanity. Humanity needs leaders and leading races for its upward evolution …” 72 Sebottendorff’s own proud comment: “This was a language one had not yet heard in Munich until then.” The position... the Aryans, a superhuman race with god-like capacities and knowledge no longer accessible to modern man”. 61 In short, all dreams and frustrations were projected back onto that legendary country in a mythic past, with the deep longing that they might be realized again in the future of the Germanic people. “Thule was concurrently the expression of a spiritual aspiration with which many Germans reacted... conquest of death at the origin of the race.” 62 Thule was inevitably mixed up with the memory of Atlantis, time and again resurgent if not from the waves of the ocean then from the eddies of humanity’s memory. “All Germans stand in the depth of their unconscious with one leg on Atlantis”, according to Chris Amery. And Franz Wegener writes: “The Nordic-racist myth of Atlantis was understood to be ...
... while a young man was running away after killing a police officer in Shambazar, he forgot to throw away his revolver. It remained in his hand. One shop-keeper cried out : "Hide your revolver, hide your revolver." Then you have heard of Jatin Mukerjee's exploit. Disciple : Yes Sir. Sri Aurobindo : A wonderful man. He was a man who would belong to the front rank of humanity. Such beauty... Burmese people show a great respect for their Bikshus. Disciple : Yes. Respect to dress and not to the reality. Sri Aurobindo : Lele used to have the same idea. Once I met a Sanyasi with him. Lele asked me : "You don't bow down to him?" I replied : "I don't believe in the man". Lele said : "But you must respect the yellow robe". The Sanyasi was one of the three people whom Vivekananda... or two million people are Buddhists and there is nothing of Buddhism in what they follow. Mother : Nothing or something of Buddhism? Disciple : Something. Mother : In China and Japan also no Buddhism is left. Only ceremonies remain. In Ceylon they say there is still some authentic Buddhism. Disciple : In Burma also the same is the case. There, people put on ochre clothes ...
... Teutonic Knights deemed themselves a superior breed compared with the barbaric, heathen Pruss and similar vile peoples. (It is ironic that their Prussian descendants would proclaim themselves God’s favourite people, carriers of the highest culture and by right – which right? – lords of humanity.) Fritz Fischer has shown how in more recent times Germany’s “epochal turn against Russia” was initiated by... Germany. Most of these refugees belonged to the nobility and upper bourgeoisie, were therefore right-wing and connected with right-wing extremists in the host country. They were the people who carried The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion in their luggage. Alfred Rosenberg was a typical example, and so was Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, who marched not without reason by Hitler’s side in the Beer Hall Putsch... sacred of all rights in this world is man’s right to the earth which he wishes to cultivate for himself and that the holiest of all sacrifices is that of the blood poured out for it.” 342 Hitler left no doubt where that piece of ground and soil was to be found. The conquest of “the East”, actually the territories belonging to Baltic, Slavonic and other peoples in eastern Europe, had been drawing the ...
... ancient liberty did not realise to the same extent and which has not yet been renounced, a full freedom of speech and thought. And as long as this freedom endures, the fear of a static condition of humanity and subsequent stagnation might seem to be groundless,—especially when it is accompanied by universal education which provides the largest possible human field for producing an effectuating force... even the most organised, have always been peoples rather than nations in the modern sense. Or they were nations only in the sense of having a common soul-life, a common culture, a common social organisation, a common political head, but not nation-States. The State machine existed only for a restricted and superficial action; the real life of the people was determined by other powers with which it... inevitable from the moment that idea began to be hammered out in practice. The work of the Alfreds and Charlemagnes and other premature national or imperial unifiers contained this as a sure result, for men work almost always without knowing for what they have worked. But in modern times the signs are so clear that we need not be deceived or imagine, when we begin to lay a mechanical base for world-unification ...
... Sunday use and erected in His place man as its deity and society as its visible idol. At its best it is practical, ethical, social, pragmatic, altruistic, humanitarian. Now all these things are good, are especially needed at the present day, are part of the divine Will or they would not have become so dominant in humanity. Nor is there any reason why the divine man, the man who lives in the Brahmic consciousness... esteem and love of men and their scorn and persecution and hatred, every happening that would be to others a cause of joy and every happening that would be to others a cause of sorrow. Look with equal eyes on all persons, on the good and the wicked, on the wise and the foolish, on the Brahmin and the outcaste, on man at his highest and every pettiest creature. Meet equally all men whatever their relations... form and expression we can find that will be suitable to the mentality and helpful to the spiritual needs of our present-day humanity. No doubt in this attempt we may mix a good deal of error born of our own individuality and of the ideas in which we live, as did greater men before us, but if we steep ourselves in the spirit of this great Scripture and, above all, if we have tried to live in that spirit ...
... possible evolution of humanity and the Anarchist practice some millenniums behind. But Señor Francisco Ferrer was no mere Anarchist. He was a man of high enthusiasms and ideas, engaged, at great sacrifice and, as it turns out, risk to himself, in freeing the Spanish mind by education from the fetters of that bigoted Clericalism which has been the ruin of Spain. For a man of this kind—a man of eminent culture... a statesman unable to appreciate the forces with which he is dealing, which bear fruit no man expected and least of all the ill-advised Frankenstein who was first responsible for its creation. The common belief among Hindus is that the Government have decided to depress the Hindu element in the Indian people by raising the Mahomedan element, and ensure a perpetual preponderance in their own favour... Patriotism The elevation of Mr. Krishnaswamy Aiyar to the Bench some short time ago was the occasion for some comments from the Moderate Press highly eulogistic of the man and the choice. Mr. Aiyar was a successful lawyer and a capable man and we have no doubt his elevation was justified. But the curious habit of ultra-Moderate politicians gravitating to the Bench is a survival of those idyllic times when ...
... invited my uncle and the other resistance leaders to meet him. They went. They saw a feeble man lying in his bed. Their soft hearts melted at the sight. It was then very easy for Gandhiji to extract a promise from them to stop retaliation. For, said he, he had resolved to withdraw his 'indefinite' fast only when people, 'Muslims and Hindus,' could move about freely in the streets of Calcutta. Instead... a story to his disciples, gave its moral: "You must hiss at wicked people. You must frighten them lest they should do you harm." Who says resistance to evil is 'irreligious'? Swami Vivek-ananda said flatly, "Strength is religion, and nothing is greater than strength." He explained that "before reaching the highest ideal, man's duty is to resist evil; let him work, let him fight, let him strike... Essays on the Gita, almost like an antidote to Gandhi's creed of 'nonviolence,' "for the law of strife and destruction to die out of the world; that which is its root must first disappear out of humanity. Much less will mere immobility and inertia unwilling to use or incapable of using any kind of resistance to evil, abrogate the law; inertia, tamas, indeed, injures much more than can the rajasic ...
... the highest divine law of the nature. Man starts on the long career of his evolution with only the first two of these four to enlighten and lead him; for they constitute the law of his animal and vital existence, and it is as the vital and physical animal man that he begins his progress. The true business of man upon earth is to express in the type of humanity a growing image of the Divine; whether... the stifling of the god in man. And in the present balance of humanity there is seldom any real danger of exaggerated individualism breaking up the social integer. There is continually a danger that the exaggerated pressure of the social mass by its heavy unenlightened mechanical weight may suppress or unduly discourage the free development of the individual spirit. For man in the individual can be more... truth and justice. He demands from the community or nation that it shall hold all things cheap, even its safety and its most pressing interests, in comparison with truth, justice, humanity and the highest good of the peoples. No individual rises to these heights except in intense moments, no society yet created satisfies this ideal. And in the present state of morality and of human development none ...
... much to make a National Socialist kick a Jew, and harassing those “other” people was a lot of fun for a member of the Hitler Youth, as retaliation was out of the question. National Socialism wanted to discard the Jews from German society. Hitler wanted to eradicate them physically, sooner or later, from the body of humanity. Did a National Socialist realize this? Almost certainly not, although he could... stone of the rather ramshackle ideological construction is the idea of the racial superiority of the Aryan-Nordic-Germanic people. Theoretically speaking, the Aryan was, in Hitler’s words, “the Prometheus of mankind”; practically speaking the Germans were the Herrenmenschen , a people above all others, worthy of lording it over them and being served by them. We have seen numerous examples of this fundamental... conquer the “living space” which would provide his people of Herrenmenschen with their rightful possessions and resources. Justifications for such immoral Darwinist actions, be they theories, treaties or conquests, did not really matter. Whether erecting “a wall against communism” or signing a non-aggression pact with the same communists: the people would accept anything as long as they felt that it ...
... psychic being or soul IN MAN, the direct incarnation of the Supreme in man: "This has come with humankind." × Satprem subsequently asked Mother: You almost seem to be saying that during the Vedic era there was no divine presence in man! No, there wasn't! They discovered it. Humanity has undergone a spiritual... rapport with the Supreme could exist ONLY WITH MAN, because man is a special being in universal History—the divine Presence is in him. And several of those great gods have taken human bodies JUST TO HAVE THAT. 11 But not many of them—they were so fully aware of their own perfect independence and their almightiness that they didn't NEED anything (unlike man, you see, struggling to escape his slavery):... with all kinds of lights, torches, lanterns... and then crowds of people walking about... in Louis XIV dress! I was staring at this with my eyes wide open, holding on to the balustrade to keep from falling down (I wasn't too sure of myself!). I was seeing it all, then I saw myself there, engrossed in conversation with some people (I don't remember now, but there were certain "corrections" here too) ...
... possible for it to take up the whole being into its own native power, instead of the nature of man continuing to remain in half-light, half-darkness. I believe the descent of this Truth opening the way to a development of divine consciousness here to be the final sense of the earth evolution. If greater men than myself have not had this vision and this ideal before them, that is no reason why I should... predominantly Moderate. The Bande Mataram was almost unique in journalistic history in the influence it exercised in converting the mind of a people and preparing it for revolution. But its weakness was on the financial side; for the Extremists were still a poor man's party. So long as Sri Aurobindo was there in active control, he managed with great difficulty to secure sufficient public support for... against the Moderate resolution. This caused much amazement and discomfiture in the minds of the Moderate leaders who complained that the people had refused to listen to their old and tried leaders and clamoured against them, but at the bidding of a young man new to politics they had obeyed in disciplined silence as if a single body. About this period Sri Aurobindo had decided to take up ...
... concerning a future state to be incomparably more rational, more pious, and more likely to deter men from vice, than the horrid opinions inculcated by Christians on punishment without end " ( Letters II. 766). Jones died young, relatively speaking, but what is more, he died in India. When a man gives the best portion of his life to another country, whether as a colonial administrator or as a scholar... I intend to do this by invoking the names of some young men who, though separated from us by almost two hundred years, died before reaching their prime. I will then compare their lives with that of some famous makers of modern India who came after them. What is more, I am going to talk of the memorials that have been erected to all these men by those who loved and cared for them. To that extent, what... on the Indian renaissance is, as Page 372 is often the case with his work, in what is yet to be realised. Sri Aurobindo says that the rise of India is necessary for future of humanity itself. The third and most difficult task for the Indian renaissance has been the new creation that will come from a unique fusion of ancient Indian spirituality and modernity. This fusion will be ...
... doesn’t occur, through the overman. It is possible that there are some overmen — there are some — who are carrying out the transition.’ 11 1987: ‘Although we may not know it, the New Man, the divine race of humanity, is already among us. It may be in our next neighbour, in our nearest brother, even in myself. Only a thin veil covers it. It marches just behind the line [between the visible and invisible]... perhaps the overman [le surhomme ], I don’t know, the intermediary between the two [between the human and the supramental being]. Perhaps the overman. It was very human, but of a humanity with divine proportions, you see. A humanity without weaknesses and without darknesses: it was nothing but light. It was all light and smiling and … sweetness at the same time. ‘Yes, perhaps the overman.’ 8 January... of joy, but a joy that was congenial, powerful and, yes, very, very sweet, very much smiling, very benevolent. I don’t know what it is, but it is a kind of benevolence and therefore very close to humanity. And it was so concrete, so concrete! As if one could taste it, so concrete was it … It has not left. One does not have the impression that it came to leave again … ‘My own impression was that ...
... March 14, 1970 ( Regarding the latest Aphorisms commented on by Mother. ) 382—Machinery is necessary to modern humanity because of our incurable barbarism. If we must encase ourselves in a bewildering multitude of comforts and trappings, we must needs do without Art and its methods; for to dispense with simplicity... the latest Aphorisms' ? Yes, on diseases and doctors.... But here in one Aphorisms , Sri Aurobindo has one little sentence which I find admirable; he says, "Machinery is necessary to modern humanity because of our incurable barbarism...." ( Mother nods and remains long silent ) Today I got the news that L.D. had left. 1 She had undergone a very grave operation (there was a cancer),... diseases. With all that, experiences seem to multiply in order to show... in order for one to learn that it's simply a question of attitude—the attitude of going beyond... beyond this mental prison humanity has locked itself in, and of... breathing up above. It's the BODY'S experience. Before, those who had inner experiences would say, "Yes, up above, that's the way it is, but here..." Now the "but ...
... disappeared from the map of Europe until 1919. 1 1 Extract From 'World History' People and Nations by Anatole G. Mazour, John M. Peoples, HBJ Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch Publishers, Orlando, Florida 1990, page 387. Page 78 2) Science laboratory "If the conquests useful for humanity touch your heart, if you are overwhelmed before the astonishing results of electric telegraphy... Pierre Curie 6) A Tribute to Pierre Curie by Marie Curie Pierre, Marie and Irene "I have attempted to evoke the image of a man who, inflexibly devoted to the service of his ideal, honored humanity by an existence lived in silence, in the simple grandeur of his genius and his character. He had the faith of those who open new ways. He knew that he had a high mission... heroes. The inscription above the entrance reads: "Aux grands hommes, la patrie reconnaissante" ("To its great men, the grateful homeland.") The absence of a verb in French emphasizes that the implicit notion of honour is given from the homeland to the great men. By burying its great men in the Pantheon, the nation acknowledges the honor it received from them. Oswald Spencer (1820-1903): ...
... does it mean that a sane man is fit for yoga? Sri Aurobindo : A perfect yoga requires perfect balance. Disciple : I am afraid, the sane men generally are matter-of-fact. Sri Aurobindo : Not necessarily. What do you mean by "sane”? Disciple : Sane does not mean "dull". Sri Aurobindo : Of course not; when I speak of want of balance in these people, I do not mean they are... down on the physical plane through the device, and so people generally think that it is the device which is responsible for the manifestation. As an instance of the change of device I told you about Agamya Guru Paramahamsa. He could stop his heart-beats and go on talking and working like other men. Now, ordinarily, when the heart stops the man dies, or gets into a catalyptic Samadhi. But in his case... One may not know exactly if it is the incapacity of the vital or disagreement. You see' people – men and women – quarrelling violently with each other and yet they can't do without each other; that is because each has a need of the vital force from the other. Of course the need has been imposed on the woman by man. Woman has almost always such a necessity. That is what is called being in love. In all ...
... for the man whose nature does not possess it, is not cast in its mould, to pretend to be the superior man, the master-man or the superman is a folly and an insolence, for he alone is the superman who most manifests the highest nature of the Godhead in humanity. This compassion observes with an eye of love and wisdom and calm strength the battle and the struggle, the strength and weakness of man, his virtues... slaughter, the egoistic emotional shrinking of the heart from the destruction of the Dhritarashtrians because they are "one's own people" and without them life will be empty. This pity is a weakness of the mind and senses,—a weakness which may well be beneficial to men of a lower grade of development, who have to be weak because otherwise they will be hard and cruel; for they have to cure the harsher... is a grief to which wisdom and the true knowledge of life lend no sanction. The enlightened man does not mourn either for the living or the dead, for he knows that suffering and death are merely incidents in the history of the soul. The soul, not the body, is the reality. All these kings of men for whose approaching death he mourns, have lived before, they will live again in the human body; for ...
... extent French, was for some time the common cultural tongue of intercourse between the European nations or Sanskrit for the Indian peoples, no unification which destroyed or overshadowed, dwarfed and discouraged the large and free use of the varying natural languages of humanity, could fail to be detrimental to human life and progress. The legend of the Tower of Babel speaks of the diversity of tongues... soul of the people which naturally speaks it. Each develops therefore its own peculiar spirit, thought-temperament, way of dealing with life and knowledge and experience. If it receives and welcomes the thought, the life-experience, the spiritual impact of other nations, still it transforms them into something new of its own and by that power of transmutation it enriches the life of humanity with its... instrument of self-expression; but under modern conditions this is not easily possible. 2 Ireland had its own tongue when it had its own free nationality and culture and its loss was a loss to humanity as well as to the Irish nation. For what might not this Celtic race with its fine psychic turn and quick intelligence and delicate imagination, which did so much in the beginning for European culture ...
... animating matter and life and mind and as it grows it takes form and expresses itself through these three touching them to beauty and fineness—it works even before humanity in the lower creation leading it up towards the human, in humanity it works more freely though still under a mass of ignorance and weakness and coarseness and hardness leading it up towards the Divine. In Yoga it becomes conscious... the psychic essence too puts forward to represent it a less developed consciousness and experience than is possible in man. All the same, animals have a soul and can respond very readily to the psychic in man. The "ghost" of a man is of course not his soul. It is either the man appearing in his vital body or it is a fragment of his vital structure that is seized on by some force or being of the... are limited, so the psychic essence has a less developed consciousness and experience than is present or at least possible in man. All the same, animals have a soul and can respond very readily to the psychic in man. The ghost is of course not the soul. It is either the man appearing in his vital body or it is a fragment of his vital that is seized on by some vital force or being. The vital part of ...
... do His will? If Lalaji had been taken from his people, men even greater and stronger would take his place. If persecution struck down one worthy representative of a living cause, there would arise, "like the giants from the blood of Raktabij", men of redoubled or quadrupled strength: It was the exiled of Italy, it was the men who languished in Austrian and Bourbon dungeons, it was... natural aspirations of the people (of America) of his own blood; but this erstwhile most liberal statesman of England does not show even any lurking sympathy for the natural hankering after liberty without which a man is no man. The atmosphere of the India House, the debasing responsibility of office, the intoxication of power has brought out the Jingo and killed the man. There was such a... both flattered and warned Dadabhai by placing him in marked juxtaposition with Tilak: Two men of the moment stand conspicuously before the eyes of the public.... Both of them are sincere patriots, both have done what work lay in them for their people and for the land that bore them; both are men of indomitable perseverance and high ability.... Having said so much, Sri Aurobindo adds: ...
... must not only consider the temporary good to humanity, but certain inner laws. He thinks the harm, violence or cruelty to other beings is not compensated and cannot be justified by some physical good to a section of humanity or even to humanity as a whole; such methods awake, in his opinion, a sort of Karmic reaction apart from the moral harm to the men who do these things. He is also of the opinion... in a letter which has been made public that we did not consider the war as a fight between nations and governments (still less between good people and bad people) but between two forces, the Divine and the Asuric. What we have to see is on which side men and nations put themselves; if they put themselves on the right side, they at once make themselves instruments of the Divine purpose in spite... special form of sacrifice. We should remember that conquest and rule over subject peoples were not regarded as wrong either in ancient or mediaeval times and even quite recently but as something great and glorious; men did not see any special wickedness in conquerors or conquering nations. Just government of subject peoples was envisaged, but nothing more – exploitation was not excluded. No doubt, many ...
... ease of a satisfying, durable and steadily mounting concord? Not only are there everywhere positive, ugly, even "hideous" blots on the life of man, but much that we now accept with equanimity, much in which we take pride, may well be regarded by a future humanity as barbarism or at least as semi-barbarous and immature. The achievements that we regard as ideal, will be condemned as a self-satisfied im... our future. That view opens out a prospect beyond the battle of cultures which is the immediate dangerous aspect of the meeting of East and West. The Spirit in man has one aim before it in all mankind; but different continents or peoples approach it from different sides, with different formulations and in a differing spirit. Not recognising the underlying unity of the ultimate divine motive, they... are the farther goals towards which humanity is moving,—and the present is only a crude aspiration towards them and the immediate future we now see in hope and strive to bring about in form, only its crude preparatory stage. There is an unrealised standard of the ideas which to the mind of the moment are figments of Utopia, but may become to a more developed humanity the commonplaces of their daily e ...
... present book and directly related to a crucially important phase in the history of the 20th century and of humanity. In chapter 17 I had written: “Hitler did not invade England [after the surrender of France] and neither did Great Britain collapse, as was generally expected. The reason was one man: Winston Churchill … ‘In Churchill Hitler found something more than an antagonist. To a panic-stricken... a friendship between the pair – never on an equal footing, of course, but a friendship nevertheless.” After all they had gone through, the adieu was “an emotionally charged scene,” in which both men tried to master their feelings. Walter, puzzled that Churchill had not once looked into his face, went to the door, saying “Goodbye.” – “Suddenly Churchill looked up, his head and a finger raised in... for its naval fleet. Moreover, Great Britain suffered defeat after depressing defeat, and was bombed relentlessly by the Luftwaffe, London on seventy-five consecutive nights in which forty-thousand people died. No wonder that Churchill felt an immense relief when, because of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, the United States of America was finally forced to enter the war on its side. Fully realizing ...
... am the Man of Sorrows, I am he Who is nailed on the wide cross of the universe; To enjoy my agony God built the earth, My passion he has made his drama's theme .... Hell tortures me with the edges of my thought, Heaven tortures me with the splendour of my dreams. 24 Mirra knew even at the age of thirteen that she would dedicate herself to the service of humanity, and... Nature ridden with calamities and catastrophes and in a disharmonious humanity. The two things are not cause and effect, but stand on the same level. Above them there is a consciousness which is seeking for manifestation and embodiment upon earth, and in its descent towards matter it meets everywhere the same resistance, in man and in physical Nature. 30 Page 13 ... Often while I was rising up in this way, I used to see at my left an old man, silent and still, who looked at me with kindly affection and encouraged me by his presence. This old man, dressed in a long dark purple robe, was the personification - as I came to know later of him who is called the Man of Sorrows. 23 The Man of Sorrows was also to figure in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri and introduce ...
... the Man yet to be. I saw her toil, heard her moan, listened to her cries, sometimes her despair, her experiences a bit... dizzying, and saw her smile, always, as long as She could. She tried to the very end. Her breath was increasingly short as she gasped for air in the middle of that ashramite jungle which only understood its own little humanity. She cut through it, through those men and... the sea had two eyes. I felt so small. What was I? I was not even a “man”; my humanity had been brutally torn from me. Can one ponder about something that is NOTHING? Something that is just a hole, a cry, and nothing else? A fire, yes. A fiercely burning hole. To be is to be a burning fire. It dates back to before man, to before these ages. The first cry upon the mountains of the earth was... the deaths of all those men, as well as their last question. Were we going to begin again in a cradle only to leave once more with the same question? I had the “chance” to die on the way and go on living with that question. No, not “death,” but countless deaths and the very Sense of our species. I knew that Sense, not in philosophical but in physiological terms. A man about to die is hardly ...
... the Adharma, I loose myself fort h into birth.” — The Gita, Chapt. IV. 7 "There are moments when the Spirit moves among men and the breath of the Lord is abroad upon the waters of our being; there are others when it retires and men are left to act in the strength or the weakness of their own egoism. The first are periods when even a little effort produces great results and... Sri Aurobindo was born on the 15th August, 1872. The world was then in the melting pot. Science had just begun losing its long-held ground. The Promised Land to which it had boasted of leading humanity was receding into the mist of the future, for Matter itself was ceasing to be real and concrete. The supremacy of human reason was being challenged by the development of psychology and the new ... posing a menace to the higher values of human culture. Clouds were gathering in the sky foreboding a disruption of the very bases of materialistic civilisation. Deep down in the heart of suffering humanity, there was a prayer for a change, for the birth of a new age, a new world-order. Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta. His father's name was Krishna Dhan Ghosh, who came of noble parents be- ...
... Lucretius, are but allegories of the torments of needless anxieties in life. Tantalus is the man who lives in fear of the gods; Tityos is the frustrated lover; Sisyphus is the ambitious politician wooing the people for support. Fools create a hell for themselves on earth. One should tell oneself that even the best of men are dead and gone. Among the celebrated poets of the past Homer bore the sceptre without... Mind lay asleep in subconscient life and became active in conscious life. Man became a reasoning animal, measured the universe, opposed his fate, conqured the laws, became master of his environment and now hopes to become a demigod. Savitri tells the dire God: Yes, I am human. Yet shall man by me, Since in humanity waits his hour the God, Trample thee down to reach the immortal heights... Love is the far Transcendent's angel here; Love is man's lien on the Absolute. 24 Lucretius dwells at length on the folly of those who are scared of death. Many of the fears and anxieties in man's life many be traced back to the origin in fear of death, which is often unacknowledged and hidden. It is this fear which urges men to every sin, prompts some to put all shame to rout, others ...
... Nolini's name was Manindranath Roy or Monsieur Roy to his friends and Bijoy continued to be Bankim Bhowmik, the passenger who came by the Dupleix . But, whatever their names, the young men soon won the esteem of the local people and also became very popular because of their prowess as footballers. Nolini, Suresh and Bijoy were all expert players, Nolini being particularly brilliant. They became members of... contingent of CID men at Pondicherry and they spent money liberally in recruiting local spies to obtain information on the activities of the political absconders. Indeed it did not take the India Government long to find out that Sri Aurobindo was in Pondicherry. On April 9, a police detective at Madras, acting on information received from Pondicherry, reported to his superiors that the man they wanted seemed... was then a young man of 28, not yet the most famous Tamil poet of his time, but already well known for his lyrics, impassioned patriotic poems and fearless criticism of the Government. As a result of his provocative writings he was forced to leave Madras and take refuge in Pondicherry where he was helping Srinivasachari to bring out India. Bharati, like so many sensitive young men of his generation ...
... qualifications for entering an Ashram of Integral Yoga? Sri Aurobindo did not doubt his achievements, but he foresaw all the difficulties he would meet with in living with men and women who went about their businesses like ordinary people, made no outer gestures of renunciation, wore normal clothes, had decently furnished quarters, imposed no fasts or even unusual restrictions in food upon themselves. Hence... leave 'now' for dogs and apes! Man has forever. The theme of a hidden eternity is a good one to close with Page 48 on a day of such profound significance as August 15. 1 (15.8.1987) In the lines from Savitri (Centenary Ed., p. 537) you want me to clarify - God must be bom on earth and be as man That man being human may grow even as God - ... certain, none else had to do before us. For the leader of the way in a work like ours has not only to bring down or represent and embody the Divine, but to represent too the ascending element in humanity to the full and experience, not in mere play or Lila but in grim earnest, all the obstruction, difficulty, opposition, baffled, hampered and only slowly victorious labour which are possible on the ...
... inside, when a man has to BE something. Not just a sum of machines + a family + philosophy + religion, but truly his own REAL human heartbeat. If one such second seizes hold of humanity because its machinery breaks down, then, truly, another dimension will be able to take over the human heart. After Marx and Mao, What? Towarnicki: One meets many distinguished people and scholars... on the other side, the people who called themselves "the owners" – he clearly saw that they were crooks. So, in his way, as the generous and very simple man that he is (he is indeed a very simple and straightforward man; Tata is a man who has a heart, a big heart), he said to himself, "I am going to protect these young people from the intrigues and corruption of those people" – who brought false charges... is childlike: there are no more accidents, no more laws.... It falls, and doesn't hurt itself. Towarnicki: Is this what "the man after man" will be, do you think? It is just a GLIMPSE of what the man after man can be – just a glimpse. And I think that some people can have that type of experience in which suddenly the "weight" is off Page 170 us and our reactions. And no accident ...
... in an action relating to large masses of people. Akbar the Great, for example, who was unlettered, filled his deficiency by cultivating the companionship of some. of the most learned and accomplished men of his time. And even Sri Ramakrishna, whose personality was highly integrated, felt the need of the services, for the accomplishment of his work for humanity, of such a brilliant mind as that of Swami... " Narendra had earlier approached other so-called holy men with the same challenging query, and never received a convincing answer. But this time the young man was shaken by the prompt, terse reply: "Yes, I see Him just as I see you here, only in a much intenser sense." "For the first time, " Narendra recounted later, "I found a man who dared to say that he had seen God... As I heard these... story in itself He took the message of Sri Ramakrishna to people throughout India and the world. His favourite theme was: Do not care for doctrines, do not care for dogmas or sects, or churches, or temples; they count for little compared with the essence of existence in each man, which is spirituality; and the more this is developed in a man, the more powerful is he for good. Earn that first, acquire ...
... of neo-barbarism”. As humanity’s master race they had to become heartless, daring and cruel (grausam) , trained for battle and the exertion of pitiless authority over the peoples subjected by them. A tough body came first, a cultured mind was of secondary importance. Their example was Sparta. They found their ideal embodied in a person like Reinhard Heydrich, right-hand man of Himmler and chief... ‘What can I do with a Volk whose men are no longer fighting, even when their women are being raped?’ The Germans deserve their lot, he snarls, they have chosen it themselves … He crosses his arms before his chest and lets his eyes go over those present: ‘I have forced nobody to be my collaborator, and neither have we forced the German people. It is the German people who have chosen us! Why have you... fall of Berlin, and many more. The human ingenuity of finding ways to torture people is so horrifying. In Annus Mundi, a memoir of his five years in Auschwitz, Wieslaw Kielar tells about the Stehbunker, the “standing-up bunker”. This was a shed which contained four cemented cells, each with hardly enough space for four men to stand up pressed against each other; one had to wriggle oneself into the ...
... altered the course of lives of the people concerned. And such is not the case unique to our times. Men have met such saddening events and accidents throughout the recorded history of humanity in all times and climes and have anxiously sought for their satisfactory explanations and from this attempt have arisen many alternative theories and hypotheses. Thus, man has sometimes speculated that... unexpected events and accidents happen in men's lives cannot be denied as a fact and everyone may be painfully aware of such happenings if he looks around with an observant eye. We cite below a few instances which are personally known to the present writer. (1)'A' is a man of sattwic nature - a perfect gentleman and generous to the fingertips. A man of universal goodwill and love, he considers... Destiny of Man". This Vidhata does nothing out of his arbitrary, capricious whim. His every single action and decision is invariably a dispensation of justice. It is this Vidhata who is the sole Judge of men and after every act of judgment decrees appropriate rewards and punishments to a human being. But the question remains: What is the standard of judgment of this Vidhata-Purusha? Men thought ...
... behind its excesses; these driven people, these driven masses—this immense, nameless drive which is like a barbarous prayer: the drugs, the wanderers, the revolts, the desertions, the schisms, anything at all, but SOMETHING ELSE. The body of the world is being pounded, the body of the world in its first primitive aspiration, like a whole herd of pithecanthropus men thrown off balance by the Pressure... would seem we are closing in on the true essence of Death. No, not the hole; true death: unconsciousness. The world is full of dead men. Dark dead men in pin-striped suits who televise their eternal words from the heights of intelligent satellites and hypnotize men by the millions. The web of the Mind has grown almost visible, it furrows the sky in every direction and deafens our consciousness at... verge of locking the movement of the world forever in its implacable straightjacket and making us take its disease for universal salvation: Indeed, it has convinced all humanity! Mother exclaimed. The whole so-called elite of humanity has been convinced that nothing worthwhile can be achieved without this mental organizing power. 6 Well, we are just at the hour of the Physical mind's collapse, including ...
... say all this is simply to say that they are very commonplace men put into a quite unique position... they are really very ordinary men, — not only ordinary men, but ordinary Englishmen — types of the middle class or Philistines, in the graphic English phrase, with the narrow hearts and commercial habit of mind peculiar to that sort of people. It is something very like folly to quarrel with them for not... to Barin when he was a child.' This was confirmed by Barin who had forgotten all about it. When Dr. Krishna Dhan's spirit was asked what kind of a man Tilak was, the answer came: 'When all your work will be ruined and many men bow down their heads, this man will keep his head erect' — a remarkable prediction about Tilak's political greatness. On another occasion Sri Ramakrishna's spirit was invoked.... call India, Bhawani Bharati, is the living unity of the Shaktis of three hundred million people; but she is inactive, imprisoned in the magic circle of Tamas, the self-indulgent inertia and ignorance of her sons.' Three things are necessary: first, a temple for the Mother; secondly, a new Order of Karma Yogis, 'Men in whom the Shakti is developed to the uttermost extent'; and, thirdly, the message of ...
... has the. Divine taken birth over and over again to save the pure in heart, to destroy the evil-doer and to establish the Right Law of life. Other peoples may be the arms and the feet and the head of Page 161 Humanity, but India is its heart, its soul – for she cherishes always within her the Truth that lives for ever, the flaming God-head, the Immortal awake in mortality, as... ancient Greece have brought to the heritage of mankind. Again, the Japanese, as a people, have developed to a consummate degree the sense of beauty, especially as applied to life and living. No other people, not even the old-world Greeks, Page 159 possessed almost to a man, as do these children of the Rising Sun, so fine and infallible an æsthetic sensibility, – not static... life and aspiration of the people; devotion to God and love of prayer and pilgrimage were as much in the nature of the average European of those times as they are in any Indian of today; every family considered it a duty and an honour to rear up one child at least to be consecrated to the service of God and the Church. The internal as well as the external life of the men of mediaeval Europe was steeped ...
... order, neither do they rise above the mind. It is only the minority of men who live in the mind or in the psychic or try to live on the spiritual plane. Of course most men live in their physical mind and vital, except a few saints and a rather larger number of intellectuals. That is why, as it is now discovered, humanity has made little progress in the last three thousand years, except in i... Sadhana Letters on Yoga - IV Chapter I The Nature of the Vital Living in the Vital Man is a mental being and cannot come from the vital, although part of him may live on the vital plane or rather in connection with it. Most men in fact live much in the vital and therefore when they practise sadhana it is first on the vital plane that they find themselves... ego, then it is as harmful as it can otherwise be helpful. Even in ordinary life the vital has to be controlled by the mind and mental will, otherwise it brings disorder or disaster. When people speak of a vital man, they mean one under the domination of vital force not controlled by the mind or the spirit. The vital can be a good instrument, but it is a bad master. The vital has not to be killed ...
... “highest image of the Lord”, fountainhead of all culture and everything worthwhile in the history of humanity, and they were the Chosen People. If the false pretenders to the title of Chosen People were the Jews, if the ultimate aim of the Jews was world dominion, as documented in The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion, and if Hitler’s Aryans had to exterminate them “to do the work of the Lord” and found... in the distant future man may be faced with problems which can be solved only by a superior race of human beings, a race destined to become master of all the other peoples and which will have at its disposal the means and resources of the whole world … We, National Socialists, must stick firmly to the aim that we have set for our foreign policy, namely that the German people must be assured the territorial... conquered countries it will be your task to play the leading role in the name of the German people … As the Jews were able to become the all-encompassing world power from their diaspora, so will we today, as the true people of God, from our dispersion throughout the world become the omnipresent power, the master people of the Earth”. 368 Walter Darré, Hitler’s minister of agriculture and prominent SS ...
... which seems to me to make it harmful to the sane balance and many-sided plasticity necessary for national life. What with Gandhi, Hitler and the rest (very different people but all furiously one-sided and one-ideaed) a large part of humanity seems to have gone off its balance in these times. 21 September 1934 Did you enjoy the article "Fifty Years of Growth" by K. R. Kripalani in the VisvaBharati... for physically our way lay far apart, but that little was very intimate, one of the kind of men whom I used to appreciate most and felt as if they had been my friends and comrades and fellow-warriors in the battle of the ages and could be so for ages more. But curiously enough my physical contact with men of his type—there were two or three others—was always brief. Because I had something else to... Subject, politics,—taboo. Writer Kripalani a "romantic" and "idealistic" visionary without hold on realities, living only in academic ideas—so not worth commenting. All the present Congress lot seem to be men who live in ideas only, mostly secondhand, borrowed from Europe (Socialism, Communism etc.), borrowed from Gandhi, borrowed from tradition or borrowed from anywhere; Kripalani looks down on the old Moderates ...
... scheme of reconstruction of collective life, the need to consider the adequacy of the psychological means, which modern man proposes to employ, remains. " Reason and Science " as psychological means can only help but are not sufficient to solve the problems now facing humanity. This is, perhaps, being granted even by votaries of reason and science now after the experience the world has had during... not enough to create perfect men or a perfect society. Even in societies that have achieved a very high degree of material advance there are signs of satiety, psychological malaise which manifest themselves in increasing nervous disorders. We may ask ourselves whether this scientific advance with its utility to life and its mastery of science-data is leading man towards the Truth. It is true ... intellect; it is a discovery that makes available a new source of knowledge and Power to man. That this assertion is not a speculation unrelated to the so-called ' hard realities ' of life may be seen from a statement of Sri Aurobindo himself: " This ( his retirement from outer activity ) did not mean as most, people supposed, that he had retired into some height of spiritual experience devoid of any ...
... is truly new born and the birth of a new humanity. One who has come near because some of the ways are opened. Page 1411 Not the highest, but still a soul and not a creature of the worlds that once communicated with you. He has no name and innumerable names. Men call him God, therefore I use the word.. I am not a man, but I have been a man. To whom? You would not know the names... there is the influx I speak of, to however limited an extent. There is the seed man. Suppose a progression, more and more effort of progress, more and more result both of mental development and physical change. The lower kinds which are only a bridge, neither animals, nor complete men, disappear; the full basis of man is established. After that the real human progress. May it not so have happened?... know my name. The same thing, the curiosity of my intelligence; I had a mind that liked to inquire into the future of humanity and I had advanced views on the matter. No, you can help yourself much better. It is an excellent form, very effective, that is if you want to wake people up and make them think.. I am certain we must have, but I cannot fix the occasion. I know there is something above ...
... especial heaviness today because modern man, even modern cultured man, is, or tends to be to a degree quite unprecedented, a political, economic and social being valuing above all other things the efficiency of the outward existence and the things of the mind and spirit mainly, if not exclusively, for their aid to humanity's vital and mechanical progress. Modern man has not that regard of the ancients... complete at a very early time and it became the very basis of life of all this great surge of humanity between the Himalayas and the two seas. The peoples of ancient India were not so much distinct nations sharply divided from each other by a separate political and economic life; rather, they were sub-peoples of a great spiritual and cultural nation itself firmly separated physically, from other countries... Such beings are as real and more permanently real than the men they influence, but they belong to a higher plane, are part of the cosmic consciousness and being and act here on earth by shaping the human consciousness on which they exercise their influence". 1 "Each nation is a Shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity and lives by the principle, which it embodies. India is the Bharata ...
... outward political structure may vary. 'There may not be any talk of the Master Race, of discrimination between white man and black or brown or yellow. But there may be an ideological colour that seeks to make all men "Red" and smear out from great slogans like "Equality" and "People's Democracy'' all their true and deep shade of meaning. The face of the same evil can show itself in different ... political, social or cultural issue. He saw an issue beyond the human, the growth of God in man opposed from regions occult to our normal consciousness. And he saw that secret opposition as the most colossal in history and not confined to a brief outbreak. Page 33 Many people believed that Nazism would be a temporary phase and its enormities would pass and the true... precipitate itself upon earth, another doing the same may be pitted side by side with the resistance-movement of evolving man. As soon as that principality has been crushed, those who were comrades because of a common enemy may break up and once again evolving man may confront man acting under the spell of the Titan, the Giant and the Demon. Some element of the anti-Nazism of the past may itself ...
... something even that goes beyond humanity. For our humanity is not the whole of the Reality or its best possible self-formation or self-expression,—the Reality has assumed before man existed an infrahuman formation and self-creation and can assume after him or in him a suprahuman formation and self-creation. The individual as spirit or being is not confined within his humanity; he has been less than human... an extended life infinitely more real and various than the first pettiness of the life constructed for itself by our normal physical humanity, a joy of being which is larger and richer than any delight in existence that the outer vital man or the surface mental man can gain by their dynamic vital force and activity or subtlety and expansion of the mental existence. A silence, an entry into a wide... of the universal existence, a Power of cosmic being, an all-self or world-spirit. Humanity is a formation or manifestation of the Reality in the universe, and there is a truth and self of humanity, a human spirit, a destiny of human life. The community is a formation of the Reality, a manifestation of the spirit of man, and there is a truth, a self, a power of the collective being. The individual is ...
... itself a twofold object: 1. A systematic study of the highest problems of existence; 2. The formation of a vast Synthesis of knowledge, harmonising the diverse religious traditions of humanity occidental as well as oriental. Its method will be that of a realism, at once rational and transcendental, - a realism consisting in the unification of intellectual and scientific discipline with... tend to banish from them in the austerity of their search or the rapture of their ecstasy. ... The integral divine harmony within, but as its result a changed earth and a nobler and happier humanity.³ And in the section on "The Spirit of Synthesis" in The Eternal Wisdom , Paul Richard cited some revealing affirmations: Wouldst thou penetrate the infinite? Advance, then, on all sides... perfection, the search after pure Truth and unmixed Bliss, the sense of a secret immortality. The ancient dawns of human knowledge have left us their witness to this constant aspiration; today we see a humanity satiated but not satisfied by victorious analysis of the externalities of Nature preparing to return to its primeval longings. The earliest formula of Wisdom promises to be its last,- God, Light ...
... the anguish had reached its peak: the sense of the futility of human efforts to understand—to embrace and understand—what isn't human, what's beyond. And I am talking about humanity in its supreme realizations, of course, when man feels himself to be a god.... That was still down below. The experience lasted, oh, I don't know, perhaps a few minutes, but it was... something. Only, with a certainty... its yearning prayer, Peopling with brilliant Gods the formless Void ( X.IV.644 ) Page 96 Why? Were you in the formless Void? I saw that, it was so amusing! I saw it all. Oh, it was an extraordinary experience. All of a sudden I was outside and, I can't say "above" (but it was above), but outside the whole human creation, outside everything, everything man has created in all the... the worlds, even in the most ethereal worlds. And seen from there, it was... I saw that play of all the possible conceptions men have had of God and of the way to approach God (what they call "God"), and also of the invisible worlds and the gods, all that: one thing came upon another, one upon another, it all went by (as it's written in Savitri ), one thing upon another went by ( gesture as if on a ...
... hands took the wheels of Time. Man's soul was again a bright charioteer of days hired by gods impetuous bold, Hurled by One on His storm-winged ways, a shaft aimed at heights sublime. The old tablets clanging fell, ancient slow Nature's dead wall was rent asunder, God renewed himself in a world of young beauty, thought and flame: Divine voices spoke on men's lips, the heart woke to white dawns... of a new age. But we can also make it by our life and acts as a free nation an important date in a new age opening for the whole world, for the political, social, cultural and spiritual future of humanity. August 15th is my own birthday and it is naturally gratifying to me that it should have assumed this vast significance. I take this coincidence not as a fortuitous accident, but as the sanction... means, in whatever way, the division must go; unity must and will be achieved, for it is necessary for the greatness of India's future. Another dream was for the resurgence and liberation of the peoples of Asia and her return to her great role in the progress of human civilisation. Asia has arisen; large parts are now quite free or are at this moment being liberated: its other still subject or partly ...
... By the humanity with which after battles he cared for the wounded, he won the hearts of his soldiers. To his Macedonian officers he preserved to the end the attitude of a comrade. Though not imposing in figure, for he scarcely reached middle height, he dominated everybody by his wonderfully bright eyes. The towering nature of his personality is most clearly exhibited in the fact that the men nearest... travelling court there were also in his camp philosophers and philosophically educated men of the most different schools. (...) The intellectual life at the court of Alexander, which we picture as very animated, was thoroughly Greek. So far as we know, he had no acquaintance with the literatures of the Oriental peoples. (...) Greek art too remained for him the art. We never hear that he caused... divine possession is characteristic of the conduct of the great men of antiquity;" that is true of no one more than Alexander. (...) This firm belief in his mission gave him an absolute confidence in victory, without which his will and actions would be unintelligible. The supernatural in his temperament gave him also control over men. The general and the statesman are indissolubly bound up in ...
... wonder what God might answer to it, supposing he should ever feel inclined to? Anatole France is always amusing whether he is ironising about God and Christianity or about that rational animal, man or Humanity (with a big H), and the follies of his reason and his conduct. But I presume you never heard of God's explanation of his non-interference to Anatole France when they met in some Heaven of Irony... image-forming, activity of the mind is prior to the logical, concept-forming, activity. Man is an artist as soon as he imagines, and long before he reasons. The great artists understood the matter so. "One paints not with the hands but with the brain," said Michelangelo; and Leonardo wrote: "The minds of men of lofty genius are most active in invention when they are doing the least external work... only as they touch his own mind or else concern his own ego? But that I suppose would include 999,999 men out of every million. What are external things? Russell is a mathematician. Are mathematical formulae external things—even though they exist here only in the World-Mind and the mind of Man? If not, is Page 559 Russell as mathematician an introvert? Again, Yajnavalkya says that one ...
... honesty implies to fulfil the rights of Allah as well as of man with utmost sincerity. To advise someone with sincerity is also a kind of honesty and so are thinking about the welfare of or doing good to the people. 6.Forgiveness: To forgive is a major attribute of Allah (SWT) which He also likes to see in men, particularly in those people who believe in His Page 360 oneness and lordship... cure. And yet most people are mad after it and lose in the process such precious things as peace of mind and heart. The greed for government and state is equally insatiable. Man's desire to rule over others has always caused bloodshed, pillage, destruction and rape of women. Further, this greed has been behind most of the bloody wars fought in human history. This encourages men to seek superiority... between a spirituality, which assigns man ultimately to the very source of this primeaval energy and these sciences. It is the separative materialism that is the source of conflict within man and between man. It is the destruction of man's relationship with nature that is the source of the cultural destruction of love, trust and the ethics of sharing and caring between men. So again I return to a plea for ...
... Don't you think that aspiration being equal, a rajasic man will meet with a greater resistance in rejecting his lower impulses than a sattwic man? That is implied in what I said about the sattwic man having the advantage. Somnath's question seemed to be about the approach to spirituality, Yoga, not as to what would happen to the two kinds of people in the course of the sadhana. But obviously the rajasic... mental idealism and other than religion. In literary expression, I think. it is the inner man that counts, But that would be tantamount to saying that an insincere man can't write things which will move the readers with a genuine and concrete something, or even if he does, not so much Plenty of insincere men have written inspiring things. That is because something in them felt it, though they could... to the reading room. Is that permissible? People may get nervous Wile does that. By the way, what do you think of Prof. R and his immortal homeopathic treatment? I had some respect for the man without knowing much about him, but when I saw what you wrote to Sarat—that R doesn't believe in allopathy at all and considers it almost quackery, I said—a man apparently with sense, having such insensible ...
... merely says: I have a thirst for calm obscurity And cottages and happy unambitious talk And simple people. With these I would have rest. Not in the laboured pomp of princely towns Amid pent noise and purple masks of hate. I will drink deep of pure humanity And take the innocent smell of rain-drenched earth, So shall I with a noble untainted mind Rise from... heroic hero of ancient Hellas, is portrayed in this play as a veritable hero indeed, but one who also inaugurates a forward movement in the history of humanity as the result of participating in a monumental clash of mighty opposites. Evolutionary Man is symbolised in him and we are made to see "the first promptings of the deeper and higher psychic and spiritual being which it is * The reader... is puffed up with arrogant self-importance, he is irresistible and invincible in his own and even in the people's eyes. The circumstances that make it possible for such a man as Polydaon to reach such heights of power, and the unexpected turn that suddenly blasts that power and breaks the man, constitute the theme of this drama of terror and pity, of conflict and change, and power and Grace. ...
... here we may ask ourselves if humanity has anything to gain by learning the secrets of nature, if it is ripe enough to profit by them, or if knowledge is not harmful. The example of Nobel's discoveries is characteristic: powerful explosives have permitted men to perform admirable work. They are also a terrible means of destruction in the hands of criminals who lead the peoples towards war. I am among those... both of us, and which are still a handicap for me. Nevertheless, I am still convinced that we were right. Humanity certainly needs practical men, who get the most Page 51 out of their work, and without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes... one. It is an element; it is for all people." Mission accomplished In this period after the war, Marie Curie became the most famous woman in the world. She was known as the "Mother of Modern Physics", the "Pioneer of the Atomic Age." The success of the application of radiotherapy in the treatment of cancer won her the name "benefactress of humanity." She made numerous trips abroad to ...
... s. Elaborating this point, he says: "But all this could only be safely done by a difficult and careful training, discipline, purification of the nature; it could not be done by the ordinary man. If men entered into these things without a severe test and training it would be dangerous to themselves and others; this knowledge, these powers could be misused, misinterpreted, turned from truth to falsehood... are also symbolical, namely, cows, horses, gold, offspring, men, physical strength, victory in battle. Physical light is psychologically a symbol of divine knowledge. Cow and horse symbolise two companion ideas of light and energy consciousness and force, - chit shakti. Offsprings are symbolically flowers of new consciousness, while men and physical strength are symbolical of spiritual valour and... divine doors can swing open to our ascending soul. The human ascension provides significance to the life of man. Man can rise beyond mind and live in the home of the gods, Cosmic Powers who unyoke their horses in the world of the Supermind, the world of the Truth- consciousness. Man, who ascends to that Truth- Consciousness, strives no longer as a thinker but is victoriously the seer. He is no ...
... an intellectual pleasure or the natural dharma of the reason, but in order to know how man may live by the Truth or strive after it; hence its intimate influence on the religion, the social ideas, the daily life of the people, its immense dynamic Page 244 power on the mind and actions of Indian humanity. The Greek thinkers, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, the Stoics and Epicureans, had also... image of human transiency we have that remarkable and cryptic sentence, "the gods are mortals, men immortals", which, taken literally, might mean that the gods are powers that perish and Page 251 replace each other and the soul of man alone is immortal, but must at least mean that there is in man behind his outward transiency an immortal spirit. We have too his saying, "thou canst not find... to him equal to thousands, if he be the best. Power of knowledge, power of character,—character, he says, is man's divine force,—power and excellence generally are the things that prevail in human life and are supremely valuable, and these things in their high and pure degree are rare among men, they are the difficult attainment of the few. From that, true enough so far as it goes, we might deduce a ...
... r and servitude to God, Chaitanya's gospel of the perfect love and joy of God in man, Ramakrishna's gospel of the unity of all religions and the divinity of God in man, and, gathering all these streams into one mighty river, one purifying and redeeming Ganges, pour it over the death-in-life of a materialistic humanity as Bhagirath led down the Ganges and flooded with it the ashes of his fathers, so... . In the old days the Shastra was the Vedic Dharma based upon a profound knowledge of man's psychology and the laws of the world, revealing man to himself and showing him how to live according to his nature; afterwards it was the law of the Smritis which tried to do the same thing more roughly by classifying men according to the general classes of which the Vedas speak, the cāturvarṇya ; today it... Ananda, but to the fulfilment of the divine humanity in ourselves and others. For this purpose the practices of Hatha and Raja Yoga are not sufficient and even the Trimarga will not serve; we must go higher and resort to the Adhyatmayoga. The principle of Adhyatmayoga is, in knowledge, the realisation of all things that we see or do not see but are aware of,—men, things, ourselves, events, gods, titans ...
... can only be done through a new and higher race of men and not through individual salvation of individual men", their respective images of the coming Superman were very different: What Nietzsche means by a Superman is a Titan or Asura and not a god. It is quite otherwise, however, with Sri Aurobindo, whose Superman is the God-Man who excels man not in physical strength or in the power to rule... faults of his own imperfect creation, would be no Divinity.... But if the human soul is a portion of the Divinity, if it is a divine Spirit in man that puts on this imperfection and in the form of humanity consents to bear this suffering, or if the soul in humanity is meant to be drawn to the Divine Spirit and is his associate in the play of imperfection here, in the delight of perfect being otherwhere... As against these differences, both Christianity and Sri Aurobindo firmly believe that "Man is only a step in the development of creation to be superseded, transformed, perfected"; and not Man only, but all creation is to be transformed as well. In Eva Olsson's words: Sri Aurobindo's message calls men back to the life process itself. Christ did the same, but as centuries have passed, we seem ...
... transitory imaginings Came to him secret and vast pleasures more Than frail humanity had dared to feel before. Since too much joy man's heart can hardly bear And all too weak man's narrow senses were For raptures that eternal spirits attain In sensuous heavens ignorant of pain. Yet even such raptures mortal man's could be Wed with the child of the unbounded sea. Page 157 Canto I... the long infinity Of southern floods had steered his shuddering ship Where unknown winds their lonely tumult keep. And he had lived with strong and pitiless men, Nations unhumanized by joy and pain, And he had tasted grain not sown by man And drunk strange milk in weird Mazinderan. Silent he was, as one whom thoughts attend, Distant, whom stiller hearts than ours befriend. He lived with memories... groaned upon their road; then backward swung Whirling and kissed again with clamorous tongue. Nor in the streets was any step of man, Before loud wheels no swift torchbearers ran Setting the night on fire; bright and rare The garlanded highshuttered windows, where Men revelled and sound into the shadows cast: All else was night and silence where they passed. So is the beautiful sea stranger gone ...
... not risen much higher and understand much better, but they are individual cases and not a collective attempt to do something for humanity. I was moved. And then I came to the end of their booklet and to the remedy they in their ignorant goodwill suggested to prevent men Page 3 from killing one another.... It was so poor, so weak, so ignorant, so ineffective, that I was truly moved and—I... best state in the world, and the thing which could help these people or this state of consciousness to draw a little closer to the truth? What was the best state? A few hours later I had a booklet in my hands which had come from America and had been published as a kind of account of a photographic exhibition entitled "The Family of Man". There were quotations in this booklet and the reproduction... n of a number of photographs, classified according to the subject, and all for the purpose of trying to awaken the true sense of fraternity in men. The whole thing represented a sort of effort—immense, pathetic—to prevent a possible war. The quotations had been chosen by a woman-reporter who had come here and whom I had seen. And so, all this came expressing in a really touching way, the best human ...
... for the future - comprising the plea for change, the programme of spiritual evolution (or revolution) and the promise of individual, social and terrestrial transformation, involving man and collective man and global humanity - the grand Manifesto had been broadcast in all its sovereign amplitude and self-sufficiency . While this testament of the Life Divine was unfolding with a leisurely puissance of... journal had its receptive (if limited) audience in whom the seminal ideas took root. Especially, the young men who read it with avidity thought that the Arya really spoke to them, that it tried to deliver a new message to the world, that its supramental manifesto was of immense consequence to humanity's future. They didn't perhaps understand all that the Arya said, but what they understood was enough to... A great mind, a great will, a great pre-eminent leader of men has passed away.... He was one who built much rapidly out of little beginnings, a creator of great things out of an unworked material. The creations he left behind him were a new and strong and self-reliant national spirit, the reawakened political mind and life of a people, a will to freedom and action, a great national purpose.... ...
... god-like man stands as an example to all Greeks —indeed to humanity — as one who subdues his lower nature and puts himself in the hands of the gods to work out a divine purpose. In a way he may be compared to Arjuna who is asked to make a similar surrender. Both offer their capacities as skillful and courageous warriors to be used by a force greater than their own that works in the lives of men to work... brilliant." He furthermore pro-claims that "no man is my equal among the bronze-armed Page 54 Acheans." Homer gives an example of his strength in comparison to normal men: "A single pine beam held the gates [to Achilles' camp] and it took three men to ram it home, three to shoot the immense bolt back and spread the doors — three average men. Achilles alone could ram it home himself."... when he remembers his heroic and now deceased friend, Patroclus: "... he longed for his man-hood, his gallant heart— what rough campaigns they'd fought to an end together, what hardships they had suffered, cleaving their way through wars of men and pounding waves at sea." The Greek hero is fully a man and enters into the activities of ancient manhood — war, plunder, adventure — with a happy ...
... very well. The formation of the body depends entirely on a man and a woman, but is the soul which manifests in the child, in the body which is being formed, compelled to manifest in this body? You mean whether it can choose between different bodies? Yes. Well, it is very exceptional, after all, in the great mass of humanity, that a conscious soul incarnates voluntarily. It is something... Agni in the fifth Mandala of the Rig Veda, "The Divine Will, Priest, Warrior and Leader of Our Journey": "O Knower of the Births, the man perfect in his works for whom thou createst that other blissful world,[The footnote occurs here.] reaches a felicity that is peopled happily with his life's swiftnesses, his herds of Light, the children of his soul, the armies of his energy." The Secret of the... is within the reach of human possibilities. Human beings are developed enough for this not to be something quite exceptional. And yet it is quite exceptional, for very few people think of it, while there are innumerable people who have children without even wanting to. That was what I wanted to say. It is possible to call a soul, but one must be at least a little conscious oneself, and must ...
... in India the great intellectual movement of humanity, we see that it broke up & scattered about in fragments the ancient catholic tradition & knowledge, placed its stamp on much that yet remains, destroyed a great deal which it could not assimilate, left a little surviving under veils & in our remote & secret places. On the mental temperament of our people, the long struggle had a disastrous effect;... either to the unknowable or the non-existent; either the material only exists, or, if there is any other existence, the material only can be known and therefore alone exists for the purview of humanity. As man marches upon the dust and is circumscribed by the pressure of the terrestrial atmosphere, so also his thought moves only in the material ether and is circumscribed within the laws & results of... express it, which, if we can entirely reach & hold to it, makes us one with God, brahmabhúta, can reveal in this material life the perfection of Brahman as it is intended to be manifested in humanity, so that man on the human level, in the human cadre, becomes perfect as God is perfect. The intellect itself cannot reach these heights. It can only discipline, chasten & prepare the lower members to receive ...
... first time, I felt nothing, gave nothing, received nothing. What he says about the avatar and the yogi is logically true. But there may be a secret beyond men's understanding... except and only if they wholly abdicate their humanity. Page 402 Do not be "puzzled" and you will feel the wonderful smile that rules over everything. With you always, Mother ... necessary to demonstrate it through healing?" "Of course you are right, there, when you say that one should seek the Divine for his own sake. For you people, it's easy to understand since you are bathing in this atmosphere here. But for the Western man, a proof is needed, he wants to know what he will gain! The easiest and most striking thing to demonstrate is healing. There. It's really quite simple... physical reality of Christ; I always thought it was some story people told—they took hold of just anybody and built a story around him. But Sri Aurobindo believed in it. He said it was an Avatar—a partial Avatar. ( silence ) But what I'd like to understand is basically the kind of power he has—what kind of realization does this man have? What kind of power—is it a supramental power, or what? ...
... include the truth that independence is the true and normal condition of a nation and all lapse into subjection must be a sin and degeneration, temporary in its nature. No man can deny this great truth. Freedom is the goal of humanity and Aryaism was in its nature a gospel of freedom, individual freedom, social freedom, intellectual freedom, freedom in all things, and the accomplishment of such an al... 1910 Karmayogin Facts and Opinions The Patiala Case The Patiala case has developed a real objective, which is the destruction of the Arya Samaj, the men arrested being merely pawns in the game. The speech of the Counsel for the prosecution, Mr. Grey, in no way sets out an ordinary case against individuals, nor is there any passage in it which gives any... the vehement character of the great reformer's polemics against other religions, the orthodox Hindu included, are pressed into the service of this unique argument. And all this is used to prejudice men under trial on a serious charge. Mr. Norton trifled with the traditions of the British bar by his pressing of trivial and doubtful evidence against the accused in the Alipur case, but it seems to us ...
... December 1953 The formation of the body depends entirely on a man and a woman, but is the soul which manifests in the child, in the body which is being formed, compelled to manifest in this body? You mean whether it can choose between different bodies ? Yes. Well, it is very exceptional, after all, in the great mass of humanity, that a conscious soul incarnates voluntarily. It is something... years. The closer one is to the beginning of the formation, the closer are the reincarnations; and sometimes even, altogether at the lower level, when man is quite near the animal, it goes like this ( gesture ), that is, it is not unusual for people to reincarnate in the children of their children, like that, something like that, or just in the next generation. But this is always on a very primitive... There are people who return in the psychic. You see, I have told you that the outer being is very rarely preserved; so we speak only of the psychic consciousness which, indeed, always persists. And then there are people for whom the psychic returns to the psychic domain to assimilate the experience they have had and to prepare their future life. This may take centuries, it depends on the people. The ...
... appears to demand of man and of individual men and nations that they shall keep within a limit and a measure, while all beyond that brings danger; and therefore the Greeks held moderation in all things to be the greatest part of virtue." Sri Aurobindo 1 explains further: "This is really a resistance of the Infinite acting through life against the claim of the imperfect ego of man to enlarge itself... above. But it can be aligned to this grandeur only if the rational receives full growth: "for humanity at large," says Sri Aurobindo, "the mind and intellect must develop to their fullness so that the spirituality of the race may rise securely upward upon a broad basis of the developed lower nature in man, the intelligent human being." And when the intellect comes into play, it may try to put everything... the Roman. 1 P. 63. 2 Ilion, p. II9. Page 319 Worker and fighter and builder and thinker, light of the reason, Man shall leave all temples to crowd in thy courts, O Athene. Go then and do thy will, prepare man's tribes for their fullness." A little before this speech, Zeus addresses Apollo, and the Sun-god makes an outburst which etches most tellingly ...
... voter—suddenly discovers that his vote is worthless, and he is merely voting for the watchmen of the cage; the rightist, the leftist, the man in the center all discover there is no longer any center or direction and the ship is sinking on every side; people from the East, people from the West, yellow and red, look unbelievingly at those termite walls that imprison them in nonexistent ideologies; the young,... everything is a great mystery, but perhaps, after all, a smiling mystery. There are only those who will not know how to laugh. The men made of plaster. And a divine laughter will take men by surprise. The Substitution of the Vibration But in fact, men are always taken by surprise. They believe they control the destiny of the world or even that of their countries, their households, even... If only a few men on earth understood, not only in their heads and hearts but in their bodies, that this Power can do everything! Nothing is impossible, no law holds. There are no material problems: only the web to traverse. That is all. On the other side is the constant Miracle, at every second. In short, a few men who are willing to learn the lesson of the Miracle. A few clear men. Disencumbered ...
... little book of sutra-like apophthegms. The problem raised by the opening aphorism is the need for the transcendence of the mental man: "Reason was the helper; Reason is the bar". Reason has served well during the childhood and boyhood of humanity, but the time has come when man must race beyond Reason in quest of supermanhood: If you want to attain true knowledge, that is, spiritual knowledge, which... course of a subsequent reference to the Soviet gymnasts, the Mother said: ...we saw with what ease they did exercises which for an ordinary man are impossible.... Well, that mastery is already a great step towards the transformation of the body. And these people who, I could say, are materialists by profession, used no spiritual method in their education.... If they had added to this a spiritual knowledge... order, humility, of a quietude and peace which nothing can disturb, how do you expect to have any influence? This means that, fourthly, a good teacher should be a good man, a man imperturbable with an inner quietude, a man of self-respect and self-control: One must be a saint and a hero to be a good teacher. One must be a great yogi to be a good teacher. One must have a perfect attitude to ...
... else had to do before us. For the Leader of the Way in a work like ours has not only to bring down and represent and embody the Divine, but to represent too the ascending element in humanity and to bear the burden of humanity to the full and experience, not in a mere play or Lila but in grim earnest, all the obstruction, difficulty, opposition, baffled and hampered and only slowly victorious labour which... intellectual man.’ 11 These processes are based on the general psychological characteristics of the human being, and have been found to be realizable and repeatable by others as tried out by generations of practitioners in India. For man the active being there is the yoga of the will or of works, karmayoga; for man the emotional being there is the yoga of devotion or love, bhaktiyoga ; for man the... species can break through its own ceiling all by itself. The Unity-Consciousness, which will be the essence of the supramental being, surpasses man as much ‘as a lizard differs from a man.’ ‘As man is removed from the animal, so will be the Superman from man.’ 53 (Evening Talks) The differences with Nietzsche’s philosophy are evident. For instance, Nietzsche believed in an endless succession ...
... that many people are aware of them. Page 466 POET No, especially in modern times, in an age like ours in which success and the material satisfactions it brings are the only things that matter. And yet an ever-growing number of dissatisfied people are trying to find the purpose and goal of life. On the other hand, there are those who know and strive to help suffering humanity; they are... than merely bearable. But is that happiness? SCHOOLFRIEND For many people that might be happiness. SHE True, but sometimes I feel such an emptiness in my life! It may have been to fill this emptiness that I gave myself entirely and in all sincerity to that marvellous cause which is so dear to me: to relieve suffering humanity, to awaken it to its capacities and its true goal and ultimate tran... will express this tumult and disturbance. It will be like the mist which you say you have seen around certain people. CLAIRVOYANT Yes, I understand. So these auras are very revealing. POET Yes, for those who see auras, deception can no longer exist. For example, however much a man of bad will may try to look like an angel of light, it will be in vain. His aura will reveal that his thoughts ...
... fundamental sorrowfulness in the stuff of earthly life. Wherever the English language is spoken, men think of the Virgilian "tears of things" and regard that small snatch of poetic speech as the truest and loveliest bit of insight into the core of our perishable world. So it would surprise most people to learn that when taken together with the full context the Latin for that snatch loses the absolute... poignant appeal of these words. Again and again the same cry has been let forth by others - yet never with the piercing perfection of the Virgilian phrase. Wordsworth with "The still sad music of humanity" and Wilfred Gibson with "The heartbreak at the heart of things" try to catch the Roman poet's majestic pathos - and fall short despite their fine accents by a world of difference. Virgil has a magical... peaceful orderly society. Indeed a splendid burst are his lines: Page 95 Divine magnificent spirit of man that will face Invincible ever the battle with hopeless odds And cannot but dream ere he falls of a time and a race, Of a day when the world of man maturer grown Will live without law in perfect wisdom and grace, Like the solar system hanging in awful space, ...
... was he who pushed Hitler little by little. And he was doing this as a distraction, he did not take life seriously. For these beings men are very tiny things with whom they play, as a cat plays with a mouse, till finally they eat them up. Are mentally deranged people possessed? Yes, unless there is a physical lesion, a defect in the formation or an accident, a congestion. In all other cases it... knew people who were so frightened of the Kali they had at home that indeed they trembled to make the least mistake, for when catastrophes came they thought it was Kali who sent them! It is a frightful thing, thought. I know them, those entities. I know them very well, but they are vital beings, vital forms which, so to say, are given a form by human thought, and what forms! And to think that men worship... monstrous things… From this point of view, it is good that for some time men get out of this religious atmosphere, so full of fear, and this sort of blind, superstitious submission of which the hostile forces have taken a dreadful advantage. The period of denial, positivism, is from this viewpoint quite indispensable in order to free men from superstition. It is only when one comes out of that and the abject ...
... marvellous creatures. I have known mother-cats which have sacrificed themselves entirely for their babies—people speak of maternal love with such admiration, as though it were purely a human privilege, but I have seen this love manifested by mother-cats to a degree far surpassing ordinary humanity. I have seen a mother-cat which would never touch her food until her babies had taken all they needed. I... body. But as soon as one begins to develop the mind, the taste for association also develops, with all the deformations that go with it. People who make very strict distinctions between man and woman (I don't know why, for one is as good as the other), say that man is mental and vital and woman physical and psychic. There is some truth in it. But naturally it involves all possible exceptions and co... said that most of the time people do not have their psychic being within them. I would like to explain this in greater detail.... You must remember that the inner beings are not in the third dimension. If you open up your body you will find only the viscera of the body which are in the third dimension. The inner beings are in another dimension, and when I say that some men do not have their psychic ...
... poem Swinburne asks us to be thankful That no man lives for ever, That dead men rise up never, And even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea. The verses are fine sight - with a faint attempt in the last line at probing by the word "safe" the subject of death's desirability. Take now Spenser's picture of Despair tempting man to self-destruction by the subtle lure of peace:... doth eternity. as well as: Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man. The "us" and the "ours" introduce an element outside the Urn and the reverie it evokes, but theirs is a natural function: they generalise the observing consciousness, they make humanity co-witness with the poet - and if there were "we" in the last line it would continue that element and serve... emendment up my sleeve to retain "ye" and yet avoid its hurried sharpness: we must shift the closing quotes to the very end of the stanza, so that the two "ye"s would connote man, to whom the Urn addresses its message. The argument that "man" is singular and "ye" plural has little weight. We are inclined to believe that "you" is Page 82 singular as well as plural, while "ye" is plural only: ...
... comes as her helper. Andromeda O you poor shuddering men, my human fellows, Horribly bound beneath the grisly knife You feel already groping for your hearts, Pardon me each long moment that you wrestle With grim anticipation. O, and you, If there is any god in the deaf skies That pities men or helps them, O protect me! But if you are inexorably unmoved... imagination trod by him, he could say at the close of his career: "I am not summoning everyone to be a spiritual philosopher or a mystic Yogi. Come to me with all your striving, hungering, ordinary humanity and you will receive my guidance. I will accept your limitations and lead you through them. Nothing human is alien to me and nothing Aurobindonian should be alien to you. There is always a mode of... subject. Sri Aurobindo shows by the labour he has spent on personalities and situations set in a variety of climes and ages that he never shies away from the touch or the clutch of man as he is. He lends himself to man at every stage of his development. The young adventurer, the longing lover, the ardent soldier, the powerful leader, the calm counsellor, the bon viveur, the dreamy girl-soul, the ...
... overpassed in the infinite complexity of man's nature and there was no sharp and unbridgeable division, only a gradation, since the actuality or potentiality of the three powers coexist in all men. Both the middle and the highest significances were near and present and pervaded the whole system, and the approaches to the highest status were not absolutely denied to any man, in spite of certain prohibitions:... on the spiritual motive. And for the mass of men this means always some kind of religious influence. That pervasive insistence was necessary in order that from the beginning some power of the universal inner truth, some ray from the real reality of our existence might cast its light or at least its sensible if subtle influence on the natural life of man. Human life must be induced to flower, naturally... characteristic spirituality of the Indian people. Page 219 The ancient idea of the adhikāra has to be taken into careful account if we would understand the peculiar character of Indian religion. In most other religious systems we find a high-pitched spiritual call and a difficult and rigid ethical standard far beyond the possibilities of man's half-evolved, defective and imperfect nature ...
... Champaklal there?... No, Mother. Oh, when no one is there on the landing, some people come upstairs and into the room!... ( Mother laughs ) Once there was a big to-do: it was in the morning and I was seeing people, when suddenly there barged in a very tall man. So everyone rushed to him and took him out. It seems that man had written to me that he wanted to see me, and I hadn't replied, so ( laughing... would come without reply!... A fairly young man. Afterwards he said (he knew some people here, who told him it was a big scandal), he said, "I don't even know why or how I did it!..." He was waiting there in front of the door on the terrace, and M. who had just seen me came out; thinking the man had come to see me, M. told him, "Come with me," and the man replied, "Go ahead, I'll follow you," but instead... 5 Everybody quarrels! And some people are without any scruples whatsoever. They are all against the prime minister because she wants to nationalize the banks; she wants to nationalize the banks because she has realized that there's a gang of rich men (whom I know and had been denouncing for a very long time) who monopolize everything and cause general misery—people absolutely devoid of scruples. So ...
... And indeed it is because people have not attempted to live in such a state that in spite of all moral injunctions religion has failed to make man act humanely. Not before the latent superman is evoked in man can the injustices, the cruelties, the selfishnesses that have been rampant in history cease. Just by himself being, by virtue of the higher states, the Divine Humanity, Jesus has no hope of leading... of what is in divine seed-form within man. To make a contrast between the divine Presence in mortal fallen man and the human soul which, in Sri Aurobindo's yoga, has to evolve all its latent Godliness by entering into higher states of consciousness that are its own concealed possibilities - to drive a wedge between humanity as we find it and the super-humanity aimed at by Sri Aurobindo is to misconstrue... richness and confusion: I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch, A blind man battering blind men; Or into that most fecund ditch of all, The folly that man does Or must suffer, if he woos A proud woman, not kindred to his soul. Before I go to your letter, though, let me say what delight ...
... For instance you see a man. You want to know what he is, what he thinks and what he does. How does the scientist or the material man do it? He watches the man, he notes what he says, what are his expressions of speech and face, what are his actions, what sort of people he lives with, etc. All this is objective. Then he reasons from his objective experience. He says "The man says this or that, so he... so he goes on reasoning. If he does not get all the necessary facts, he fills them up from his imagination or from his memory, that is his experience of other men, of himself or of human life as read of in books or heard of from other people. He perceives, he observes, Page 1380 contrasts, compares, deduces, infers, imagines, remembers and the composite result he calls reason, knowledge... the man is limited by the power of his limited knowledge, instead of moving nearer to Omnipotence. In brief, if a machine or instrument is used for a Page 1373 work for which it is unfit, for which it was not made or originally adapted, then it either cannot do that work at all or it does it badly; dharma-sankara is created . Now what I have described is the ordinary state of men before ...
... Sanjibani office. As Krishna Kumar Mitra used to work for his paper and receive people there, his wife Lilabati had hung up that motto on the wall. Page 73 But Sri Aurobindo always made light of his own accomplishments. No doubt Ramsay MacDonald was an astute man ... when he had to deal with ordinary men. But he was unable to shake off his European mindset to which a mystic is a... as had happened with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.... Pandit Jawaharlal finds Hindu culture so foreign, even bizarre, and fails to understand the diverse ways in which its religious spirit has helped humanity." Dilip was charitable. Because it was worse. Jawaharlal Nehru was a self proclaimed 'secularist' In other words, a Hindu hater. In a letter (17 November 1953) to Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the then... impractical? Well, 'no' would say an Indian, if by mystic you mean spiritual. A spiritual master's consciousness is wide as the universe, so it is natural that he sees more widely than we ordinary people do. In point of fact, Sri Aurobindo, like his predecessor Sri Krishna, was intensely spiritual and intensely material. He had a very firm grasp of the material. Remember the way he had organized ...
... Generally (there are exceptions), generally these people who have a lot of money put one condition: it must bring them at least some satisfaction. There must be some merit—they give, but they must get something. If they are not business people and do not give their money to gain more, if they are, for example, philanthropists who wish to give money to help humanity make progress, they always wish, more or less... describe someone as a spiritual man or a spiritual woman, people at once think of one who does not eat or sits all day without moving, one who lives in a hut in great poverty, one who has given away all he had and keeps nothing for himself. This is the picture that immediately arises in the minds of ninety-nine people out of a hundred, when you speak of a spiritual man; the one proof of spirituality... religious principles, for that was the only way to make people observe them. If you are not told that "God wants" that you should do this or that, you would not do it, the majority of men ordinarily do not do it. For instance, that very simple thing—washing your hands before eating; in countries where the civilisation is not quite scientific, some people discovered that in truth it was probably more hygienic ...
... arrived at Pondicherry by SS. Dupleix on the morning of 6th April and was received by Srinivasachariar and the India people. On 13 April, the irrepressible Papu Rao wired again that Sri Aurobindo and Ajit Singh were at Pondicherry, and somebody might be sent to identify the men. By 17 April, the dossier was fairly complete at Calcutta. The C.I.D. had managed to put together a good deal of relevant... utter disillusionment, that it was only my ignorance which had led me to think that the impossible was feasible here and now... in order to help humanity out, it was not enough for an individual, however great, to achieve an ultimate solution individually; humanity has to be ripe for it too. 31 If this realisation of his powerlessness to alter the face of the world with a mere flourish of his... against Sri Aurobindo and his young men was sought to be framed. In Nolini's words - Some of the local "ghouls" were made to help forge the documents - some photographs and maps and charts along with a few letters - which were to prove that we have been engaged in a conspiracy for dacoity and murder. The papers were left in a well in the compound of one of our men, then they were "discovered" after ...
... interests us, we who are here now, is that the time has come when some beings among the élite of humanity, who fulfil the conditions necessary for spiritualisation, will be able to transform their bodies with the help of the supramental Force, Consciousness and Light, so as no longer to be animal-men but become supermen. This promise Sri Aurobindo has made and he based it on the knowledge he had... the first human brain. And I told you that, consequently, one should not expect this to take place in a few months or a few years, that it would Page 321 obviously take much longer. Some people, it seems, thought that I was announcing that the superman would not come before another million years! I want to correct this impression. Sri Aurobindo has said that as the development rises in... the Spirit or the Supermind intervenes, it can go much faster. Therefore we may hope that in a few centuries, the first supramental race will appear. But even that is rather disconcerting for some people, for they think it contradicts what Sri Aurobindo has always promised: that the time has come for the supramental transformation to be possible.... But we must not confuse a supramental transformation ...
... the time; they had as teachers really highly com mendable men. The geography teacher, a reputed man, had written books (his books on geography were well-known) and was a very line man. So then we were doing geography 1 enjoyed enormously doing maps because they had to be drawn. One day, the teacher looked at me (he was an intelligent man), he looked at me. He asked me, 'Why are towns, the big cities... I saw a whole stage of humanity —the stage of the late Page 83 1800s, the second half of 1800. Strange, isn't it?" said Mother musingly. "It happened some eighty years ago probably (82 or 83 or 84 years ago), yet it came intense, vivid, living; so extraordinary that even now if I look I can S-E-E. I see the setting so very clearly, the apartment, the people, the scene, everything... birth Mother was not "watched by by a pack of people scrutinizing my every action and Page 151 making rules for what I should do." Mother had lived not only in France and Italy and England, but also in Russia; ancient Egypt, Assyria, India, China —Mirra had lived everywhere, in all times. Wherever and whenever humanity— nay, creation itself—had reached a certain ...
... survive and thrive. It is the whole man that needs to make the leap in evolution, and not merely a part of him. Another possible objection to these Yogas is that they create something analogous to a "brain-drain" in the affairs of humanity. The Hathayogin and the Rajayogin, while they may be solving their problems in their own way, leave the rest of humanity just where they are and always have... who responds utterly to the heart's longing for delight. And it is the same God too! III Numberless are the men and women who have followed one of these pathways to felicity, and they have found no reason to turn back. The great overwhelming mass of humanity has, however, remained behind. And there has not been effected any total change in the human situation. The several Yogas therefore... of these dynamic elements for the future life of humanity". Yoga is quite simply the movement or effort towards self-perfection reuniting "God and Nature in a liberated and perfected human life". There is of course the primordial process of natural evolution which is unconscious, slow and subject to uncertainties and serious set-backs, while it is man's prerogative to make the conscious and organised ...
... An increasing number of people of thought and action feel that humanity has been gripped by serious maladies and that these maladies are the result of our disequilibrium between the ideals that mankind is labouring to realise during the recent centuries and the disconcerting actualities which refuse obstinately to change. With the passing of every decade, humanity seems to feel more and more acutely... that humanity is passing through an acute crisis. Page 402 A huge structure is being built up with an increasing insistence on efficiency needed for industrialised society, leaving practically no room for the growth of profounder wisdom which can rightly guide human progress in the critical times through which we are passing today. As never before, humanity is able... possibilities of the imminent future. As never before, it is felt that human volition can play a decisive role in selecting, planning, designing and actualising these possibilities. As never before, humanity is convinced that the most desirable course for the human race is to strive with fixed determination for human unity, global peace and for the advancing of the three great ideals of progress, namely ...
... in its form by men, but itself goes phantom-like fleeting Void and null and dark through the uncaring infinite vastness, So now he seemed to the sight that sees all things from the Real. 86 Troy is doomed, Deiphobus is doomed, and he is already dead in the eyes of the gods though not as yet in the eyes of men. A man is dead, but till the news appear people think he is alive... except Dante.... To justify the ways of God to man intellectually is not the province of poetry; what it can do, is to reveal them. Yet just here is the point of failure. Milton has seen Satan and Death and Sin and Hell and Chaos; there is a Scriptural greatness in his account of these things: he has not so seen God and heaven and man or the soul of humanity at once divine and fallen, subject to evil and... in his tenderness his murmurs of understanding and pity. Wherefore are we afraid, then? Of whom are we afraid? Time was when, in the Garden of Eden, Man and Woman lived happy - Page 622 Adam, the goodliest man of men since born His sons; the fairest of her daughters. Eve - 34 but it was goodness and happiness in a vacuum, a toy perfection; it couldn't ...
... in our midst", and with all the power of his creative genius he presides over the formation of the University Centre which for years he considered as one of the best means of preparing the future humanity to receive the supramental light that will transform the elite of today into a new race manifesting upon earth the new light and force and life. 2 In the course of his presidential address... new university will be informed by the spirit of our great Master, the spirit of the Life Divine. It will not only arrange for the study and propagation of his teachings and take steps to bring humanity nearer to the realisation of his supreme ideal of the perfectly integrated life, but it will also be invisibly fashioned and moulded at every turn by a sense of his deathless Presence. Dr... beneficent power. Sadhaks, children, visitors - the Mother herself'- enacted their paean of gratitude to the Master who had "willed all, attempted all, prepared, achieved all" for present and future humanity. Around the Samadhi under the Service Tree, the unceasing procession of devotees seemed to affirm unconsciously the sentiments in J. Vijayatunga's apostrophe wrung from him soon after the Master's ...
... infrarational periods of humanity by a sort of ordered conflict. And this conflict ends in the survival not of the spiritually, rationally or physically fittest, but of the most fortunate and vitally successful. It is evident enough that, whatever else it may be, this is not a rational order of society; it is not at all the perfection which the individualistic reason of man had contemplated as its ideal... purpose, there was no necessity for men in the mass to think out their way of life by the aid of the reason. But the old method ceased to serve its purpose as soon as the symbols, types, institutions it created became conventions so imprisoning truth that there was no longer a force of insight sufficient to deliver the hidden reality from its artificial coatings. Man may for a time, for a long time even... greatness: it has to ask, first, whether the tradition contains at all any still living truth and, secondly, whether it contains the best truth available to man for the government of his life. Reason can accept no convention merely because men are agreed upon it: it has to ask whether they are right in their agreement, whether it is not an inert and false acquiescence. Reason cannot accept any institution ...
... world. Auroville is the first attempt in this experiment. A new world will be born; if men are willing to make an effort for transformation, to seek for sincerity, it is possible. From animal to man, thousands of years were needed; today, with his mind, man can will and hasten a transformation towards a man who shall be God. This transformation by the help of the mind―by self-analysis―is a first... February 1968 One must have an absolutely transparent sincerity. Lack of sincerity is the cause of the difficulties we meet at present. Insincerity is in all men. There are perhaps a hundred men on earth who are totally sincere. Man's very nature makes him insincere―it is very complicated, for he is constantly deceiving himself, hiding the truth from himself, making excuses for himself. Yoga is... there, present as never before; man's insincerity prevents it from descending, from being felt. The world lives in falsehood, all relations between men have until now been based on falsehood and deceit. Diplomatic relations between nations are based on falsehood. They claim to want peace, and meanwhile they are arming themselves. Only a transparent sincerity in man and among nations can usher in a ...
... give you some extracts from this review so that you may better appreciate his integral vision. ‘We start from the idea', he wrote, 'that humanity is moving to a great change of its life which will even lead to a new life of the race, — in all countries where men think, there is now in various forms that idea and that hope, — and our aim has been to search for the spiritual, religious and other truth... explained in the present terms of man or seen by his superficial sight, that there were other powers behind, other powers within man himself of which he is normally unaware, that he is conscious only of a small part of himself, that the invisible always surrounds the visible, the supra-sensible the sensible, even as infinity always surrounds the finite. She saw too that man has the power of exceeding himself... started meeting. The group was named Idea. Papers were read at the meetings and sometimes Mirra would discourse on her experiences. The members of this group were intensely interested in the future of humanity and in finding harmonious solutions to the immense problems that besieged it, but rejected the panaceas offered by the established religions. Indeed Mirra never had any belief in the conventional ...
... lift man's soul to God, I know that he can bring the Immortal down.... To bring God down to the world on earth we came, To change the earthly life to life divine... I sacrifice not earth to happier worlds. 167 Urban says truly that the religion of the mystics is, "that the love of man for God is also a love for all humanity...our human love, both for God and man, is also... many failures and the few significant advances; and he penetrates the mystery of the cosmos to seek the clue both to man's past failures and to the possibility of future victory. Yeats says that, "our little memories are but a part of some great memory that renews the world, and men's thoughts are not, as we suppose, the deep but a little foam upon the deep." 157 Aswapati, however, skims the foam and... her anxiety is human though her silent strength is verily superhuman. Savitri is both herself and a power beyond her apparently limited human self. She is at one and the same time conscious of her humanity and of her potential divinity: For I know now why my spirit came on earth And who I am and who he is I love. 164 Finding that there is no other way, she is obliged ...
... terminology, for these Bulletins are meant more for people who lead an ordinary life, though also for students of yoga — I mean people who are primarily interested in a purely physical material life but who try to attain more perfection in their physical life than is usual in ordinary conditions. It is a very difficult task but it is a kind of yoga. These people call themselves "materialists" and they are... to shock them. But I have known in my life persons who called themselves "materialists" and yet followed a much severer discipline than those who claim to do yoga. What we want is that humanity should progress; whether it professes to lead a yogic life or not matters little, provided it makes the necessary effort for progress. The Mother 25 December 1950 Questions and... to understand the other's point of view, to put oneself in his place and, instead of quarrelling or even fighting, find the solution which can reasonably satisfy both parties; there always is one for men of goodwill. Here we must mention the discipline of the vital. The vital being in us is the seat of impulses and desires, of enthusiasm and violence, of dynamic energy and desperate depressions, of ...
... "their beatitudes"—planes of consciousness quite unknown to even man's highest spiritual endeavour—but his soar reaches the "last high world" "where all worlds meet": In its summits gleam where Night is not nor Sleep, The light began of the Trinity supreme. 4 Aswapati is the representative of the aspiring humanity which seeks the whither and the what and the why of human existence... the Divine Response to human aspiration, the Divine Love incarnate in a human body. This divine holocaust is perhaps the quickest method to awaken the dark obstinate consciousness of man to his higher self. But humanity resists the Divine incarnation: Hard is it to persuade earth-nature's change, Mortality bears ill the eternal's touch: It fears the pure divine intolerance Of that... realised but not manifested. Manifestation requires the womb of the Mother. This is seen in the Mother's own revelation: Sri Aurobindo is the Soul of Matter, the aspiration of the whole humanity. He is the Light in Matter or the Spirit incarnated in Matter. Sri Aurobindo has separated himself from the Supreme and has plunged in this matter, in a body, with this load of inconscience and ...
... our national life. That is what we seek, that is why God has sent us into the world to fulfil Him by fulfilling ourselves in our individual life, in the family, in the community, in the nation, in humanity.... There are some who fear to use the word 'freedom,' but I always used the word because it has been the Mantra of my life to aspire towards the freedom of my nation." Sri Aurobindo based... The president of the Conference, Abdul Rasul, passed with his English wife in a carriage. Other prominent leaders followed on foot in a procession. Nobody stopped them. But just as a band of young men came behind, the policemen lathi-charged the unarmed boys. Chittaranjan, the son of Monoranjan Guha Thakurta, was assaulted and pushed into a tank. Although he was severely injured the police could not... never been demonstrated on such a scale." 1 1. Swadeshi and Swaraj, Page 305 Pal spoke on Swadeshi and Swaraj. "Swaraj," he explained, "will be the Swaraj of the Indian people, not of any section of it." This new National Movement in India, he asserted, "is essentially a Spiritual Movement." In a word, he became a popular exponent of the spiritual nationalism of Swami V ...
... definite as the one from animal to man and not just an enrichment or enlargement on the same level. The Ashram today is an organisation in which hundreds of souls - men, women and children from several countries - are being shaped to be the nucleus of the new humanity. It is a scene of varied enterprise, with engineers, doctors, craftsmen, physical culturists, sportsmen and manual workers... passing of the Master whom innumerable people had known by experience to possess supernormal power over even physical circumstances were a sort of strategic sacrifice in the interests of his own work. His co-worker whom the disciples have called the Mother was determined to carry on until the goal set by him would be reached: the beginning of a divine humanity, a new step in evolution as definite... us, a Reality eternal and infinite whose partial and divided reflections are caught in all that we ordinarily consider the highest humanity. Spirituality is oneness with or at least effective participation in that secret existence: it is for evolutionary man the act or state of what India has called Yoga. The word "Yoga" has the same root as the English "yoke" - it connotes the being yoked ...
... progressive mind of modern man. A totality in aspiration betokens a totality in realisation. The entire being of man yearning for the Divine shall attain the most perfect union with the entire being of the Divine. Sri Aurobindo stands for this entire turning, this completest synthesis and integral spiritual fulfilment of man. Having realised it in himself, he calls upon humanity to proceed towards the... failure—it had outlined an ideal, the shining ideal of a harmonious perfection and a divine fulfilment of man, and left it as a seed, in the terrestrial atmosphere, to germinate and grow and prepare its future efflorescence in the evolving life of humanity; and if it failed at all, it was because man was not evolved enough for such a global spiritual endeavour: his mind, life and body needed a long individual... vast supramental synthesis—the Supermind or vijnāna is the eternal home of all harmonies—for the ascent of man into the truth and unity of the One and the descent of the One into the whole being and life of man. The divine manifestation is the key-note of this synthesis, and universal humanity is the field of its perfection. ¹ All these syntheses were spiritual, but their characterisation made ...
... in us and o'er us, Stamping our image on men and events to be Zeus or be Ares. Love and the need of mastery, joy and the longing for greatness Rage like a fire unquenchable burning the world and creating, Nor till humanity dies will they sink in the ashes of Nature. All is injustice of love or all is injustice of battle. Man over woman, woman o'er man, over lover and foeman Wrestling we strive... and the heart of a people, Into her room comes creeping the mind of the slave and it poisons Manhood and joy and the voice to lying is trained and subjection Easy feels to the neck of man who is next to the godheads. Not of the fire am I terrified, not of the sword and its slaying; Page 371 Vileness of men appals me, baseness I fear and its voices. What can man suffer direr or worse... o'erbear this people stirred by Laocoon. Leave now Effort unhelpful, wrap thy days in a mantle of silence; Give to the gods their will and dry-eyed wait for the ending." So now the old men ceased from their strife with the gods and with Troya; Cowed by the storm of the people's wrath they desisted from hoping. But though the roar long swelled, like the sea when the winds have subsided, One man yet rose ...
... and feeling for humanity than the Master. The silent and solid help that was going out from him to humanity was glimpsed by them at times. They felt later, reading the line he wrote in Savitri about Aswapathy, "His spirit's stillness helped Page 214 the toiling world", that it was so true of his own life. What after all is that "practicality" of which people speak so much? Claiming... this early period – reveal him as the master-doctor, diagnosing in an instant, the spiritual nature and conditions of the spiritual disease in men and things even through photographs. This man, he says of one, is a born Yogi. In another case, he says: This man possesses a too keen Page 189 psychic sensitiveness; as such, he ought not to go on with psychic experiments at once. In... the physical cells to the Divine Light and the resistance of the Inconscient was formidable. When one knows that all this Herculean labour was undertaken not for himself but for humanity, for making a new departure for man in the course of his evolution then one feels that the words he later used of Savitri, "The world unknowing, for the world she stood", are so very apposite in his own case. It was ...
... call Mirra the ‘essential’ feminist, for reasons we shall discover soon. She talked, obviously, about the inanity of ‘the perpetual oppositions between men and women’ and stressed the inner fact of the union of ‘those two complementary halves of humanity’ that should now find its expression in the outer forms of society and in its laws. But she also said: ‘If women want to take the place they claim in... servant of the Divine it has spoken in the name of its Master. And as long as the Earth and humanity exist, it will be present in a body to preach the divine word. So, wherever I am asked to speak, I do it to the best of my ability, as a servant of the Divine. But to speak in the name of a particular doctrine or of a man, however great he may be, that I cannot do: the Eternal Transcendent forbids it.’ 41... that Richard must have arrived shortly afterwards. Mister Ghose, though, was ‘less than anxious’ to meet unknown people. After his arrival in Pondicherry he remained in seclusion for more than three months, not leaving the house in which he had been given shelter nor allowing the young men staying with him to do so either. ‘The British Government in India could never accept that Sri Aurobindo had come ...
... at war with all the other species, but it does not itself act foolishly. Stupidities and perversion begin with conscious mind and the human species. It is the wrong use man makes of his mental capacity. Perversion begins with humanity. It is a distortion of the progress of Nature which mental consciousness represents. And, therefore, the first thing which should be taught to every human being as soon... question of yoga or higher realisation, it is something which should be taught everywhere, in every school, every family, every home: man was made to be a mental being, and merely to be a man—we are not speaking of anything else, we are speaking only of being a man—life must be dominated by reason and not by vital impulses. This should be taught to all children from their infancy. If one is not dominated... expressing what he thinks and feels. Because this is what people usually do. They scold, even sometimes punish him; and so the child forms the habit of concealing his desires. But he is not cured of them. And you see, if he is always told, "No, you won't have that", then, simply, this state of mind gets settled in him: "Ah, when you are small, people don't give you anything! You must wait till you are big ...
... two of his books: The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859), and The Descent of Man (1872). The first book has had an enormous impact on the way humanity came to see itself. It has become the bible of present-day Darwinian biology and is quoted with reverence. To this end it is very useful, as in some cases Darwin has... culture was that of the ancient Greeks, who were the first (in the West) to propose answers to the basic questions of existence in a rational, original manner. Their common view was that the history of humanity and the world was cyclic; it repeated itself again and again at huge time-intervals from chaos to cosmos to chaos. But in the fragments left us from some early Greek thinkers one can find hints of... a distinct evolutionary view: I died as inanimate matter and arose a plant, I died as a plant and rose again an animal, I died as an animal and arose a man. Why then should I fear to become less by dying? I shall die once again as a man To rise an angel perfect from head to foot! 3 However, the clearest formulation of an evolutionary vision of the universe and life on the Earth is found ...
... plain in a letter which has been made public that we did not consider the war as a fight between nations and governments (still less between good people and bad people) but between two forces, the Divine and the Asuric. What we have to see is on which side men and nations put themselves; if they put themselves on the right side, they at once make themselves instruments of the Divine purpose in spite of... of his nature. In everything he kept his tranquil spirit, his impersonal way. He never raised his voice, did not insist on his point and when he criticised men or countries, there was no contempt in his expression. He saw the Forces of which men are unconscious instruments and the Impersonal in him looked at everything with an equal eye. All that he did, all that came from him, his ease, reserve, calm... spiritual existence and illumines every important concern of man, through verse of unparalleled massiveness, magnificence and metaphorical brilliance. Savitri is perhaps the most powerful artistic work in the world for expanding man's mind towards the Absolute. We can say that it is the prophetic message of the divinised earth and of man's God-like possibility: For in the march of all-fulfilling ...
... heartless. Then there is the question of vivisection. Darwin, the most gentle of men who would not deliberately hurt a fly, is on record as declaring that one who objects to experiments on living animals for medical research can never be a true friend of humanity. But I am sure Darwin wanted the vivisecting friends of humanity to be as humane as possible in their experiments. In all matters where a necessity... them I saw a number of artists on high ladders which took them to paintings hung on the walls. They must be either copying the paintings or touching them up where they had faded. The sight of these men, with berets on their heads and palettes in their hands, fired my fancy so much that I could not think of a more romantic job when I would grow up. But in my Page 305 middle teens... list, she concerned herself with the Parsi newcomer - 23 years old when he entered the Ashram - in whom she detected the capacity to draw and paint. In the early days when I used to watch people meditate with the Mother rather than do meditation myself, I made a series of sketches of many of them and put short sentences below my pictures. I had seen Purani's neck grow twice its normal width ...
... he was fishing for disciples, Sri Aurobindo reacted sharply: ‘Your image of fishery is quite out of place. I fish for no one; people are not hauled or called here, they come of themselves by the psychic instinct. Especially I don’t fish for big and famous or successful men. Such fellows may be mentally or vitally big, but they are usually quite contented with that kind of bigness and do not want spiritual... expecting from us and from humanity in general for the accomplishment of Your work upon Earth?’ Answer: ‘Nothing.’ – ‘From your long experience of over sixty years have You found that Your expectation from us and from humanity has been sufficiently fulfilled?’ Answer: ‘As I am expecting nothing I cannot answer this question.’ – ‘Does the success of Your work for us and for humanity depend in any way upon... impelled or called to the place of the participation, ‘the place of the Realization.’ But they were also very human. Wasn’t it the humanity in them that had to be transformed – something that had become possible after Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had transformed their own humanity? Sri Aurobindo wrote pertinently to Nirodbaran: ‘I have borne every attack which human beings have borne, otherwise I would be ...
... 22.” And it could explain why Streicher considered Hitler the saviour of the German people sent by God. Streicher himself acted as a basely possessed figure without any humane feelings. “He was considered disgusting even in the Third Reich”, according to Speer, and Joseph Persico observed at Nuremberg that “the man had become a pariah, reviled by his captors and shunned by his fellow defendants”. 1026... possessed hardly any power at the time”, writes Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch. “Julius Streicher believed not only that Adolf Hitler was blessed by God, but also that he was the intermediary between God and humanity.” Bärsch also points out that Streicher’s faith in Hitler was not based upon race. “One reads nowhere in Julius Streicher, generally labelled a primitive racist, that Adolf Hitler is the Führer because... will also insinuate that some chapters of Mein Kampf were written by Hess, which must have happened in his imagination. Hitler has always been his own man from the time he began to take his distance from Eckart, somewhere in 1923. And he was his own man because he had a direct contact with the highest inspiration, his god: the Lord of the Nations. Hess always protected Karl Haushofer and his son Albrecht ...
... categories were too abstract for Hitler’s demagoguery. How could Hitler preach the elimination and extermination of the Jews while saying that their evil, the poison of a demonic race, was there in all of humanity, including every German in his audience? Darwinism, as interpreted by Chamberlain and Rosenberg, was much more straightforward and handier. Anti-Semitism, after all, is a matter of gut feelings, and... and me . This text is not the rendering of a real dialogue but of a fictitious one, no doubt based – and herein lays its special value – on conversations which must have taken place between the two men. If these pages were pure invention, Eckart would never have given them to others to read and they would never have been published after his death, certainly not by the Nazi Hoheneichen-Verlag. The... the reactionaries that we are Bolshevists. From both sides it is the Jew who blows the storm clouds toward us.” 220 When one reads such an accumulation of crankiness, one wonders how millions of people, belonging to the most cultured nation in the world (at least in their own eyes) could accept them as plain truth. And there was much more of the same alloy, e.g. the world ice theory, the theory of ...
... individual's place in a larger, more meaningful pattern. A keener feeling of relationship to other people develops. Not uncommonly there is a "humanity- identification", in which one feels "love, grief, loneliness or physical suffering as though he is experiencing it as it has been felt by all people at all times and places". Finally, the outer and the inner world widens into a dimension whose... as an adjunct to ordinary methods of treating "twisted thought" LSD should be kept out of their reach. It is rewarding pre-eminently for "normal" people. And, among these, the subjects who would be most worth treating with an eye to the future of humanity are the practical thinkers, the matter-of-fact seekers, the leaders of organised common sense. As a result of their personal flashes of supernormal... tumbling one on the other. Can I accept this? This' the Ultimate Reality... I am God, the universe, Christ, all men, all everything - all exists within me. The Self is limitless, endless, eternal - it is all knowing, all aware, and at bottom God... And this Truth is not only true of me but of all men...." "Suddenly I burst into a vast, new, indescribably wonderful universe... I was immediately aware ...
... they have a vague feeling that they are not quite human in the ordinary way. But still there are cases where they are conscious and very conscious; not only do they know that they do not belong to humanity but they know what they are, act in that knowledge and deliberately pursue their ends. The beings of the vital world are powerful by their very nature; when to their power they add knowledge, they... points also. If in one place they yielded, all who now feel that they cannot give money to the cause of Truth would suddenly experience a great and intense desire to give. It is not that those rich men who are more or less toys and instruments in the hands of the vital forces are averse to spend; their avarice is awake only when the vital desires and impulses are not touched. For when it is to gratify... desire for money. To win money from their hands for the Divine means to fight the devil out of them; you have first to conquer or convert the vital being whom they serve, and it is not an easy task. Men who are under the sway of vital creatures can change from a life of ease, cast away enjoyment and become intensely ascetic and yet remain just as wicked as ever and even by the change turn worse than ...
... Gandhiji has spoken in favour of the androgynous mind. There is something of the woman in every man and something of man in every woman and it is time that the binary opposition between men and women gives place to a transcendental conception of the essential Page 330 unity of man and woman. To my mind, and the recent work by Lata Mani bears me out, Mother worship with all the... (f) Society has an organic unity and it should be the purpose of man to discover that unity. (g) Overturning society in the name of revolution is , hardly the conservative idea of how men and women must conduct themselves in society. Evolution and the refinement of one's consciousness is a preferable ideal to revolution. Man is constantly Becoming . (h) The conservative thinker... the colourful ritual and litany is an extremely potent weapon for a reorientation of gender relations. Woman worshipping the Mother acquires the attributes of Sakti. Man worshipping the Mother acquires the necessary humanity and veneration for Woman. These cannot but be positive contributions to nation-building. Kancha Illaiah has made a bold effort to question Hindu values and practices in ...
... always set the highest value on that in man which rises beyond the terrestrial preoccupation; it has held up the goal of a supreme and arduous self-exceeding as the summit of human endeavour. The spiritual life was to its view a nobler thing than the life of external power and enjoyment, the thinker greater than the man of action, the Page 126 spiritual man greater than the thinker. The soul... exists and to which in man it increasingly turns for transcendence. The sentiment of the Bengali poet, the wonderful singer and rapt devotee of the Divine Mother,— How rich an estate man lies fallow here! If this were tilled, a golden crop would spring,— expresses the real Indian feeling about human life. But it is most attracted by the greater spiritual possibilities man alone of terrestrial... satisfactions that can deny the nobility or idealistic loftiness of the ascetic endeavour. But there are the exaggerations and deflections that all ideals undergo. Those which are the most difficult to humanity, suffer from them most, and asceticism may become a fanatic self-torture, a crude repression of the nature, a tired flight from existence or an indolent avoidance of the trouble of life and a weak ...
... adjusting to the superficial ways of society may be called an "Alceste ". What has endeared Moliere to so many people, particularly in France, is the deep sense of humanity that pervades his plays. Harpagon, for instance, is above all a miser, but he is also a father, a man in love, a man torn between the fear of spending and the necessity of maintaining his social status. Moliere s heroes truly possess... le, " he wrote, "that a person be ridiculous in certain things and an honest man in others. " Such a wide understanding of human nature has created a tender bond between Moliere and his audiences. Moliere never judges. Rather there is a deep compassion in his acute observation of man and society and a sorrow that humanity is as it is. Moliere s way of expressing all this is through comedy. Born... that get-up, man? Whatever are you thinking about to get yourself rigged out like that! Do you want to have everybody laughing at you? MR JOURDAIN. My good woman, only the fools will laugh at me. MRS JOURDAIN. Well, it isn't as if folk have not done it before! Your goings on have long been a laughing-stock for most people. Page '203 MR JOURDAIN. What sort of people may I ask? ...
... all (though men are much more individualised than animals), there is a spirit of the species. There are collective suggestions which don't need to be expressed in words. There are atmospheres one cannot escape. It is certain (for I know this by experience), it is certain that there is a degree of individual perfection and transformation which cannot be realised without the whole of humanity having made... seems to me an insoluble problem. That is what people usually do, but that's no reason for approving it. This is exactly why, I believe, things go so wrong. It is like those who seeing others quarrelling rush forward and begin shouting louder than they to tell them, "Keep quiet!" You said that to each individual is given a problem to solve. So each man upon earth has to live individually, for, in... This is exactly the intrusion of vital movements. A child who doesn't live much with older people (it is bad for children to live much among older people), a child left to itself will sleep spontaneously whatever it may be doing, the moment it needs to sleep. Only, when children are used to living with older people, well, they catch all the habits of the grown-ups. Specially when they are told: "Oh! you ...
... when called for by the memory. It is a fact which has been proved by minute experiments. that the faculty of observation is very imperfectly developed in men, merely from want of care in the use of the sense and the memory. Give twelve men the task of recording Page 68 from memory something they all saw two hours ago and the accounts will all vary from each other and from the actual... greatly distrusted by the critical reason of mankind because of the admixture of error, caprice and a biassed imagination which obstructs and distorts their perfect workings. Yet it is clear that humanity could not have advanced to its present stage if it had not been for the Page 53 help of these faculties, and it is a question with which educationists have not yet grappled, what is... mighty and baffling element, the element of genius in the pupil. The mere instructor does his best to discourage and stifle genius, the more liberal teacher welcomes it. Faculties so important to humanity cannot be left out of our consideration. It is foolish to neglect them. Their imperfect development must be perfected, the admixture of error, caprice and biassed fancifulness must be carefully and ...
... The good they have done is turned to evil by this ignorant humanity. The messengers bring the crown for man, but in return they are given the cross — an allusion to Christ, his crucifixion. Their great name is all that lasts. Men succeed in pulling down everything else. What then is the net result? A fire has come and touched men's hearts and gone; A few have caught flame and risen to... watching over men left blind Takes up the load of an unwitting race, Harbouring a foe whom with her heart she must feed, Unknown her act, unknown the doom she faced, Unhelped she must foresee and dread and dare. Savitri takes up the load of humanity which is not conscious of that fact. She is compared to one who is charged with looking after blind people. She has to attend... battle with Death and win immortality for humanity. In vain now seemed the splendid sacrifice. She left her celestial home, left her glory, eternity and infinity, and chose to don the human robe, — a great sacrifice. But now it seems to have been done in vain. A prodigal of her rich divinity, Her self and all she was she had lent to men, Hoping her greater being to implant ...
... Part Two: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother Beyond Man Chapter Thirteen: Sri Aurobindo and the ‘Laboratory’ The Divine does not need to suffer or struggle for himself; if he takes on these things it is in order to bear the world-burden and help the world and men; and if the sufferings and struggles are to be of any help, they must be real … They must be... invisible forces at work unknown to the outward minds of men.’ 10 He cautioned an anonymous disciple: ‘The hostile forces exist and have been known to yogic experience ever since the days of the Veda and Zoroaster in Asia (and the mysteries of Egypt and the Cabbala) and in Europe also from old times.’ 11 And he warned Nirodbaran: ‘Man, don’t talk lightly like that of the devil. He is too active... and the Mother took this gigantic step because they had come to take it. A new phase of evolution began in which the Unity-Consciousness would be established in their body, therefore in the body of humanity, therefore in the mother-body of the Earth, and therefore in the evolutionary cosmos of which the Earth is the symbolical condensation and representation. A point of increasing importance seems ...
... spreading out from her head ). And it's not good that people know. But I've had lots and lots of visions of all types, from the most frightful to the most wonderful—all very apocalyptic, in the realm of the incredible. Many, many things, detailed as well as general. They would fill a volume. Page 416 I don't know, I have the feeling that humanity isn't ready for peace and needs to be shaken... Aurobindo told them. Gandhi was there and he retorted, "Why is that man meddling? He should be concerned only with spiritual life." 5 Page 420 They have conscientiously ruined the country. Yes. Yes, as much as they could. 6 That's what X saw: that they have been the ruin of the country. And so he said, "These men have ruined the country and they shall be destroyed." That's... shaken up. Yes, unfortunately it's not ready. They're falling into a stupor. They're falling into a stupor, lulling themselves with their non violence, their petty morality.... Humanity isn't ready. It's a pity. Because it can set things back thousands of years.... For there are moments when things converge, and it is rare to have a MOMENT in this Story: it stretches over long, long, almost ...
... consciousness of the infinite Aditi which we have chosen as our goal. All that we have done in our ignorance, in our divided and oppressed discernment of things, in our mere mortal becoming and humanity, against gods or men, he shall uncreate and make us free from the sin. For he is the creator of the Right, he is the creator who creates the Truth. That Truth he shall create in a great wideness and force... suppose that to these symbolists Mitra was essentially the Lord of Love, a divine friend, a kindly helper of men and immortals. The Veda speaks of him as the most beloved of the gods. The Vedic seers looked at Love from above, from its source and root and saw it and received it in their humanity as an outflowing of the divine Delight. The Taittiriya Upanishad expounding this spiritual and cosmic bliss... the five Aryan peoples labour therefore and travel for this bright and beautiful Mitra who comes into them with his luminous force and bears in his wideness all the Gods. He is the great and blissful one who sets and leads creatures born into the world upon their path. The distinction is drawn in one verse that Varuna is the masterful traveller to the soul's supreme seat, Mitra makes men advance in that ...
... together with the statues of their gods, when they founded the mysteries at Dodona, those of the Kabiroi, and probably most others including Delphi. The theos anèr , the divine Man, seems to have been known also by those people who dedicated their lives to becoming what, as they discovered, they were the living image of. Gnosticism Gnosticism, again centred around the eastern Mediterranean, was... d by his self-sacrifice, since the purusha’s mouth gave rise to the brahmin estate; his arms to the warrior estate; his thighs to the people at large; and his feet to the servile estate. “The symbolic representation of the universe in the shape of the Cosmic Man found expression in a distinctive approach to architecture, sculpture, and literature. The purpose of all human creation was not only to... diverse as the cultural backgrounds against which it developed, which are the one humanity in its various forms. The glimpses of those traditions in the previous paragraphs may illustrate Sri Aurobindo’s reminder that the great dynamic ideas at the basis of the Indian spirituality have been a common possession of humanity’s richest cultures. Much of these wisdom traditions has been misunderstood and often ...
... śrestha, that is played in the generalization of the law of action by which humanity can be uplifted at a given epochal stage of evolution: "Whatever is the mode of the action of the best leader, that very mode characterizes people in general. Whatever ideals he puts forth, that ideal is followed by the people." 77 And in the next three verses, Sri Krishna explains his own mode of action... historical moment for lifting up humanity to a higher stage of evolution. The dharma that is established by every divine incarnation, which occurs at every epochal moment of human history, yuge yuge, is an explicit expression of the supreme divine law of action, but that expression is specifically related to the guidance that is required to humanity so that the humanity at that stage can be uplifted... of the conscious Godhead in our humanity and essentially, the process is opposite of the ordinary birth of the jivas. The avatar is the divine born into the body as Lord of Nature, standing above and operating in her freely by His will, not entangled and helplessly driven round and round in the mechanism. The avatar, therefore, is a direct manifestation in humanity of the Purushottama. The descent ...
... matters in a spiritual man's life is not what he did or what he was outside to the view of the men of his time (that is what historicity or biography comes to, does it not?) but what he was and did within; it is only that that gives any value to his outer life at all. It is the inner life that gives to the outer any power it may have and the inner life of a spiritual man is something vast and full... a hundred * Cf. Sri Aurobindo: "If the Christ, God made man, lives within our spiritual being, it would seem to matter little whether or not a son of Mary physically lived and suffered and died in Judea. So too the Krishna who matters to us is the eternal incarnation of the Divine and not the historical teacher and leader of men." (Essays on the Gita, SABCL, Vol. 13, p. 12) Page 6 ... habitual sincerity of purpose, sustained earnestness of action, originality, imagination, personal magnetism and genius for leadership as the qualities that mark "greatness" in men, and ended by saluting Rammohan Roy as a man who thus fully qualified for greatness. A Rishi, a Mahapurusha, Rammohan was — and Ranade himself has been called a modern Rishi by V.S. Srinivasa Sastri. What an inspiring ...
... predominantly moderate. The Bande Mataram was almost unique in journalistic history in the influence it exercised in converting the mind of a people and preparing it for revolution. But its weakness was on the financial side; for the Extremists were still a poor man's party. So long as Sri Aurobindo was there in active control, he managed with great difficulty to secure sufficient public support for running... or against the Moderate resolution. This caused much amazement and discomfiture in the minds of the Moderate leaders who complained that the people had refused to listen to their old and tried leaders and clamoured against them, but at the bidding of a young man new to politics they had obeyed in disciplined silence as if a single body. About this period Sri Aurobindo had decided to take up charge... assistance were to be obtained from the older men who had advanced views or could be won over to them. Centres were to be established in every town and eventually in every village. Societies of young men were to be established with various ostensible objects, cultural, intellectual or moral and those already existing were to be won over for revolutionary use. Young men were to be trained in activities which ...
... instance. While a young man was fleeing after killing a police officer in Shyam Bazar, he forgot to throw away his revolver. It remained in his hand. One shopkeeper cried out, "Hide your revolver, hide your revolver!" And, of course, you have heard of Jatin Mukherji? DR. MANILAL: Yes, Sir. SRI AUROBINDO: A wonderful man. He was a man who would belong to the front rank of humanity anywhere. Such beauty... country was awakened within a short time. People who were cowards and trembled at the sight of a revolver were in a short period so much changed that the police officials used to say, "That insolent Barisal look!" It was the soul of the race that awoke, throwing up very fine personalities. The leaders of the Movement were either Yogis or disciples of Yogis-men like Monoranjan Guha Thakurtha, the disciple... authentic remains, I am told, but the Burmese people show a great respect for their Bhikshus. DR. MANILAL : Yes, respect for the appearance and not for the reality. SRI AUROBINDO: Lele also used to think that the appearance has some value. Once I met X with him. He asked me, "Why don't you bow down to him?" I replied that I didn't believe in the man. He said, "But you must respect the yellow robe ...
... not any man's possession, nay, abandon the whole world and all it contains", or even, though this would be contrary to his effective & cumulative style, "Abandon the whole world &, first of all, abandon the desire for other men's possessions." But he could not have written as it must stand now without link or clue; "Abandoning the whole world, enjoy by the whole world; covet not any man's possession... provision in this limited nature for the greater things to which man in his expansion aspires. That he must seek from the infinite; that he must acquire from God or the gods, by effort, by sacrifice. The sound, sane, normal, animal man hardly aspires, perhaps would not aspire at all, but for the stress of hunger, the irritation of other men pressing upon his little share of the world & above all the stimulus... outreaching egoistic desires of other men. He escapes perhaps into mind and seeks an unlimited satisfaction in the enjoyments belonging to that more elastic principle, in art, science or literature; but there too, though freer & better satisfied, he is both fettered by his nerves and body and hedged in by the limitations of the mind itself. The mind in sensational & vital man, incapable of an universal catholicity ...
... Part One: Aurobindo Ghose and Mirra Alfassa Beyond Man Chapter Nine: From Man to Superman [Present] man is but the shadow of Man; Man is but the shadow of God. 1 Inscription deciphered on a bas-relief in a Babylonian temple. To most of us, anything related to the spirit seems airy, insubstantial, unreal and on the whole fictitious. We... and the human is so great in consciousness, however physically small, that the scientists’ alleged cousinship of monkey and man looks psychologically almost incredible. And yet the difference between vital animal and mental man is as nothing to that which will be between man’s mind and the superman’s vaster consciousness and richer powers. That past step will be to this new one as the snail’s slow march... formulated in an elegant, impressive and somewhat forceful way, it would be finished.’ 5 Sri Aurobindo had written: ‘I may say that it is far from my purpose to propagate any religion, new or old, for humanity in the future. A way to be opened that is still blocked, not a religion to be founded, is my conception of the matter.’ 6 The Mother also said: ‘I have told you these things because it is necessary ...
... the one religion, which impresses on mankind the closeness of God to us and embraces in its compass all the possible means by which man can approach God. It is the one religion which insists every moment on the truth which all religions acknowledge that He is in all men and all things and that in Him we move and have our being. It is the one religion, which enables us not only to understand and believe... the salvation of humanity was cherished in the seclusion of this peninsula from of old. It is to give this religion that India is rising. She does not rise as other countries do, for self or when she is strong, to trample on the weak. She is rising to shed the eternal light entrusted to her over the world. India has always existed for humanity and not for herself and it is for humanity and not for herself... of the results was the formation of the Muslim League. The Reaction in Bengal The people of Bengal were indignant and outraged. For them, the partition was not merely a fresh application of the British policy of divide-and-rule, but the sundering of the soul of a people. Sri Aurobindo who was then in Baroda, wrote about the partition: "This measure is no mere administrative ...
... permeated the religion, the literature, the art, even the popular religious songs of a whole people. It is true that these things are realised by the mass of men more readily through the fervour of devotion than by a strenuous effort of thinking; but that is as it must and should be since the heart of man is nearer to the Truth than his intelligence. It is true, too, that the tendency to put too... ed souls, the external minds are the majority in India as everywhere. How easy it is for the superior European critic to forget this common fact of our humanity and treat this turn as a peculiar sin of the Indian mentality! But at least the people of India, even the "ignorant masses" have this distinction that they are by centuries of training nearer to the inner realities, are divided from them by... truths of Indian religious philosophy in their broad idea-aspects or in an intensely poetic and dynamic representation have been stamped on the general mind of the people. The ideas of Maya, Lila, divine Immanence are as familiar to the man in the street and the worshipper in the temple as to the philosopher in his seclusion, the monk in his monastery and the saint in his hermitage. The spiritual reality ...
... certain wider and deeper needs unsatisfied. The Reality of National Being The ideal national anthem must not only express the political and social man or even the complete self of thinking and feeling individuals composing a people, but also bring home to us the reality of national being. What is a nation? Of course, a nation must have certain common cultural features in all its geographical... emerge if the aggregate did not stand out in its own rights. Nationalism is vital to the full development of humanity. Consequently, no national anthem can be ideal unless it brings , however subtly and refinedly, to the forefront the typical national Being of a country: even if all humanity or all divinity be hymned, there must be in the face and figure of the invoked Spirit something clearly... le versatility, built grandly in stone and wood, fashioned majestic institutions, cast the lines of harmonious polities and thrilled with the luminous colourful patterns of the careers of memorable men, the country that had grown a passionate pilgrim of both eternity and time and developed a flexible yet ineradicable individuality numerous centuries before Islam's crescent ever dawned on its farthest ...
... has not passed through hell". So Aswapathy made his way through this realm "Peopled by souls who never had tasted bliss, Ignorant like men born blind who know not light," challenging the forces that lived there. As he probed deeper into this world of pain, he found a world of agony and people taking wicked joy in cruelty. Life itself here was a long punishment, the body was "a... struggle and vicissitudes. It introduced error and, consequently, slowed down the process of evolution and made man dependent upon his external sense in preference to his natural instincts. The divine Presence in man's heart was also obscured. This life was afraid of the birth of the soul in man and, to prevent it, it resorted to all kinds of tricks and methods. Sometimes this life suddenly attacks... the. Law "his tireless Grace". They always intervene in the passage of Light from above; "Wherever the. Gods act, they intervene". Generally they occupy all the, seats of power and influence in humanity and proclaim eternal laws as falsehoods. They even occupy "The world's shrines" and establish themselves as the ruler of this world. They assume Divinity unto themselves they desire to guide and ...
... respond when called for by the memory. It is a fact which has been proved by minute experiments that the faculty of observation is very imperfectly developed in men, merely from want of care in the use of the senses and the memory. Give twelve men the task of recording from memory something they all saw two hours ago and the accounts will all vary from each other and from the actual occurrence. To get... still greatly distrusted by the critical reason of mankind because of the admixture of error, caprice and a biased imagination which obstructs and distorts their perfect workings. Yet it is clear that humanity could not have advanced to its present stage if it had not been for the help of these faculties, and it is a question with which educationists have not yet grappled, what is to be done with this mighty... mighty and baffling element, the element of genius in the pupil. The mere instructor does his best to discourage and stifle genius, the more liberal teacher welcomes it. Faculties so important to humanity cannot be left out of our consideration. It is foolish to neglect them, it is criminal to discourage them. Their imperfect development must be perfected, the admixture of error, caprice and biased ...
... death denied" preserve the knowledge that preserves the world. For, when Kali comes men are endangered because they lose true knowledge and are covered in ignorance. But Kuthumi gives hope to man. "... for the golden age In Kali comes, the iron lined with gold, The Yoga shall be given back to men, The sects shall cease, the grim debates die out And atheism perish from... anxious, the paper said, "But, for the information of Government he has made some suggestions to us." The suggestions were a blend of sarcasm and irony habitual to Arabindo Babu. "Firstly, for humanity's sake there should be a shelter provided at College Square for this Gopal and his associates, wherefrom they would be able to discharge their duty with more care and efficiency than now." It was pretty... Indian society, but under Minto they openly adopted the policy of setting Muslims as a counterpoise to the Hindus. Muslims were no more to be the children of the soil, an integral portion of one Indian people, but as a politically distinct and hostile interest, to nullify the Hindus. Worse was the seed of discord sown by creating caste as a political instrument. Is it not strange that the British rulers ...
... little. This huge mammoth mass of humanity lay inert, like Kumbhakarna of the epic story, for hundreds of years. Here and there once in a while an attempt had been made to pour into its ears fiery words of awakening, like: Who would live a life bereft of all freedom, Who would care so to live? or, In this land of India there are thirty crores of men, And the foreigner rules here... had the effect of doubling or trebling the seriousness of Atul's offence; for he was an educated man, he claimed to be a leader, what he had done was done with full knowledge and deliberately. Hence the punishment he received was the heaviest of us all, a fine of a hundred rupees. Thus he became a marked man, and it stood in his way when in afterlife his name was considered for a judgeship of the High... influence as a strong man. Immediately after our so-called "arrest", when he came to know who I was, he blurted out "So you are Rajanibabu's son? But why didn't you tell me earlier? I would have let you off. Now I can't do anything about it, it is too late." He knew my father very well and had been a sub-inspector at Nilphamari as well. As I was saying, sub-inspector Raicharan was a man with an individuality ...
... somebody leaves the Ashram, I feel a kick, a shock, a heartquake. Sri Aurobindo: May I ask why? People have been leaving the Ashram since it began, net only now. Say 30 or 40 people have gone, 130 or 140 others have come. The big Maharathis, X, Y, Z departed from this too damnable Ashram where great men are not allowed to do as they like. The damnable Ashram survives and grows. A and B and C fail in... the Essays on the Gita you say, man "is ignorant because there is upon the eyes of his soul and all its organs the seal of... Nature, Prakriti, Maya... she has minted him like a coin out of the precious metal of the divine substance, but overlaid with a strong coating of the alloy of her phenomenal qualities, stamped with her own stamp and mark of animal humanity..." Page 170 Sri ... rationality. When the intellect of man is not severely trained to a clear austerity, one is apt to fall a prey to all sorts of perilous distortions and misleading imaginations. What one will then achieve is, in the significant words of Sri Aurobindo, only "illuminating confusion rather than clarifying truth". "Especially is this mixed functioning dangerous when men with unchastened minds and unpurified ...
... soul of man,—the most down- trodden man—that finds expression here. Says he:— "Into the image of a heart That feeds separate functions with blood they need For what they make, we'll shape the wealth Of the dispossessed world and let those riches pour Their fertilizing river delta Across the starved sand of the peoples". The image of the wealth of the peoples as a heart... following observation: "The poetry of Whitman and his successors has been that of Life but of Life, broadened, illumined, raised by the strong intellectual intuition of the self of man and i the large soul of humanity. At the subtlest elevation of all that has yet been reached stands, or rather, wings and floats in a high intermediate region, the poetry of Tagore not in the complete spiritual... acceptance of man's self as free from the bonds of the body, the possibility of the disembodied existence as a subject of poetry has become frequent especially under the stress of the last world-war. It has opened a new realm of experience altogether to the future generations. The same author in "A Song of the Cold" mourns the Page 81 loss of warmth in the hearts of men which has become ...
... others, the average men, wander along the intricate paths of reasoning, they go straight their way, guided through the windings of life by intuition, this superior instinct, as by a strong and unfailing hand. This faculty which is exceptional, almost abnormal now, will certainly be quite common and natural for the new race, the man of tomOITow. 8 In the past, sundry men and women - mystics... on 7 July 1916 in the Japanese journal Fujoshimbun is an eloquent plea for the recognition of the fundamental spiritual equality of men and women, and for making this "the focus of action and new life, around which will be constructed the future temple of Humanity". Page 178 There is the pure dream of motherhood, and there is the unfolding reality; and from the moment of conception... the invocation, or eruption, of Page 180 an altogether new power of consciousness as different from the mental that has been the badge of humanity for millennia, as the mental was different from the mere animal consciousness of man's remote simian ancestors. The emergence of 'mind', of intellect, of reason, if it made possible the development of the arts and sciences, and the sagas ...
... grandiose achievements and still remain a poor specimen of a man - selfish, censorious, Page 99 greedy, ambitious. Secondly, one may be busy all the time but with one's consciousness on the surface. The true measure of a man is the quality of his consciousness. One may even do next to nothing outwardly and yet be the acme of humanity. What did Ramakrishna or Ramana" Maharshi do by way of... of polymathy without sacrificing that thrust: this is the problem for people like us who are intoxicated with encyclopaedias and dictionaries,. In the wake of your hunger to know everything within man's range, you are led to "an epistemological inquiry -what exactly is knowledge and what is the raison d'etre of man's insatiable urge to search for it?" Over and above or rather behind and... Yoga without having come in physical contact with the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and doing this Yoga outside the Ashram. There have been people who knew the two Gurus physically yet did not continue to stay in the Ashram while doing the Integral Yoga just as there are people who are staying in the Ashram though they have never stood physically face to face with their two Gurus. In the complex situation you ...
... develop a resolute will and an unswerving sincerity so as to be able to realise what was open before them: If you have the will no more to belong to ordinary humanity, no more to be merely evolved animals; if your will is to become men of the new race realising Sri Aurobindo's supramental ideal, living a new and higher life upon a new earth, you will find here all the necessary help to achieve your... detection, sex or suspense were supposed to help people to "relax", even like other predictable ways like drinking and gambling. Page 523 But the Mother was definitely against this self-invited descent into the lower malebolges of perverted consciousness: Everything comes from this "need" of relaxation; and what does that mean for most men? It means, always, coming down to a lower level... the Mother's words and basked in her golden Presence evening after evening, it might indeed be said: A few shall see what none yet understands; God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep; For man shall not know the coming till its hour And belief shall be not till the work is done. 5 What was so wonderful about the Mother as a teacher, as a counselor, was that she had no ...
... think you have understood by now that the man with whose fate yours has been linked is a man of a very unusual character. Mine is not the same field of action, the same purpose in life, the same mental attitude as that of the people of today in this country. I am in every respect different from them and out of the ordinary. Perhaps you know what ordinary men say of an extraordinary view, an extraordinary... agreed to dine at my house that night. The man came back and informed us that the doctor was very ill. I at once went round, heard of the telegram and found the doctor very ill and quite unconscious. The other medical men in the station were Page 36 assiduous in their attentions. I did all I could. But it was all of no avail. The poor man lingered on for a day or two and then passed... picture which had been covered over by whitewash. At another séance Tilak was present. The spirit of Dr. K. D. Ghose was called and asked "What kind of man is this?" He answered: "When all your work is ruined and many men bow their heads down, this man will keep his head erect." This proved true. Once Ramakrishna Paramahansa was called and was asked questions. But he kept silent for a long time ...
... quotes Shankara to the effect that "the Lord is the only transmigrator". Reasoning from this, he infers that the one Self dwelling in humanity as in everything is alone the reality that passes from life to life. In support he quotes Aquinas's dictum: "All men are one Man." The whole argument strikes me as an evasion of what the theory of reincarnation implies. Did not Aquinas write at some length... ." Matthew (11:11) has, almost verbatim, an identical report of Jesus's pronouncement. Paul's two expressions are invariably associated in the Bible with natural humanity. To St. Paul the birth of Jesus was like that of any other man. But, even granting that there is scriptural authority for something extraordinary happening to Mary's body, how can it be compared to that of the resurrected Christ... Then the Mother affirmed that some "mediums", who are often people of very low character, perform dematerialisation and rematerialisation under the strictest scientific control. So such phenomena do genuinely occur in rare instances. After this, the Mother returns to the point originally raised and concludes: "In connection with great or holy men all sorts of stories get started. When Sri Aurobindo had ...
... The Gita teaches that the man of knowledge shall by his way of life give to those who have not yet the spiritual consciousness, the love and habit of all works and not only of actions recognised as pious, religious or ascetic in their character; he should not draw men away from the world-action by his example. For the world must proceed in its great upward aspiring; men and nations must not be led... comprehensive the seeing, the more it contains in itself the sense of the hidden Divine in humanity and in all things and rises beyond a superficial religiosity into the spiritual life, the more luminous, flexible, deep and powerful will the Art be that springs from that high motive. The Yogin's distinction from other men is this that he lives in a higher and vaster spiritual consciousness; all his work of... to shuffle off the coil of egoism and grow into a soul of self-abnegation that lives only or mainly for others or for humanity as a whole is the way of man's inner evolution according to this doctrine. Or if this is too secular and mental to satisfy the whole of our being, since there is a deeper religious and spiritual note there that is left Page 151 out of account by the humanitarian formula ...
... Aurobindo : We do not intend to change the external material being. Only, in certain cases where the man is open to the Higher Power, this change would take place and not in everybody's case. Its success would not mean success for all and equally for all. Disciple : Is the attitude of humanity as a whole a factor for success or failure in the effort ? Sri Aurobindo : Of course, it does... responsibility. { Laughter ). Page 317 I am not doing an isolated yoga. When I wrote that much-abused sentence about humanity in The Yoga and its Objects there was a truth behind it though I was not conscious of it. It is true that my yoga is not for humanity ; but it is not for myself either ; of course, my attaining to the Siddhi is the preliminary condition to others being able to attain... very posture there is divine self-confidence. In the heart of the Supreme Master, the great Yogin – a sea of emotions is heaving – is it a flood that mounts from or a flood that is coming down on humanity Page 302 Those alone who have experienced it can know something of its divinity. Those who have bathed in it once can never come out of that ocean. He sits there – with pink ...
... of what men may think, the athlete's life is not a life of pleasure and distraction; itis a life, on the contrary, made up of well-regulated endeavour and austere habits for getting the desired result and leaves no room for useless and harmful fancies. In work too there is an austerity; it consists in not having any preference and in doing with interest whatever one does. For the man who wishes... results of reliection or study. Here we are in an intellectual domain and we might think that in this region men are more reasonable, balanced and the practice of strict austerity is less indispensable. It is nothing of the kind, however: for even here, into this home of ideas and knowledge, man has introduced violence of his convictions, sectarian intolerance, passion of preference. Here also there will... upon earth suAered the same deformations as the rest. Moreover, all these experiences are quite good and useful for the ordinary man who follows the normal way of Nature in her wavering march towards the unity of the future. But they cannot satisfy men who are for hastening the movement, who, in other words, aspire to follow another line of movement, more direct and more swift, an exceptional ...
... complete now than it was before man appeared upon earth; man is one of the first transformative elements. Animals are obviously more conscious than plants, but WILLED (and thus more rapid) progress belongs to humanity. Likewise, what one hopes (more than hopes!), what one expects is that when the new supramental race comes upon earth, the work will go much more swiftly; and man will necessarily benefit... was so comical, seeing this the other day! At first it was a bit bewildering, but when I looked closely, it became utterly amusing: two little people with no physical resemblance, yet of a similar type—small and... in short, a similarity. It's like the four men I used to see in Japan: there was an Englishman, a Frenchman, a Japanese and one more, each from a different country; well, at night they were... reconsiders —anyway...) I was living in the inner rooms and seeing no one; he was going out onto the verandah, seeing everyone, receiving people, speaking, discussing—I saw him only when he came back inside. After a while, I too began having meditations with people. I had begun a sort of 'overmental creation,' to make each god descend into a being—there was an extraordinary upward curve! Well, I was ...
... to belong to the ordinary humanity, if you no longer want to be only evolved animals, if you want to become new men realizing the supramental ideal of Sri Aurobindo, if you want to live a new and higher life upon a renewed earth, then you will find here all the help needed to succeed. .. 9 Humanity is not the last rung of terrestrial creation. Evolution continues and man will be surpassed. It is... All of a sudden life had a meaning. Another meaning. And everything became possible. But sometimes people fled before that look: the swamp within found it unbearable. So much the better—an automatic sorting out. It would be lovely, she said one day while giving me a flower, if one could take people's consciousness as one takes a flower, and then, because one looks at it and holds it and the vibration... asked a somewhat reflective child, "when the mind came down into the earth's atmosphere, the ape didn't make any effort to change itself into a man, did it? It was Nature that supplied the effort. Yet now..." And Mother instantly replied: But it isn't man who is going to change himself into the superman! "No?" queried the astonished child. Just try a little! Mother replied amidst laughter in the ...
... spirituality is not a rational conclusion, but a realisation in the heart and a direct intuition. A spiritual man may not express his realisations through a new doctrine or relate it to some already existing doctrines, but that will not in any way diminish his spirituality. Again many people hold that the observance of ceremonials and rites comprises spirituality; this too is far from the truth. The... proved in his own life the conquest of the inner over the outer, of Consciousness over Matter, of the spiritual over the mundane. And then he sought to impress that high truth on the life-plane of humanity. He sowed the seed of a new future creation. That is why he is the confluence of two epochs. The past ceases and the new future is ushered in him. He seems to have assimilated the essence of all the... Brahman becomes the Brahman Itself." The essential truth of spirituality consists not even in "doing" something but in this 'becoming'. Man manifests his inner soul through his actions. His external conduct reflects his inner becoming. In the words of Sri Ramakrishna, a man breathes out what he eats. Perhaps we have a mission in the world, but before that we have to realise God. He alone has the right ...
... Just as a man should make a stairway in a place where four roads meet, Vasettha, and people should say to him, 'Well, friend, where are you going to build your mansion for which you are building this stairway? Will it face the east, or the south, or the west, or the north? How large will it be? Large or small or of medium size?' And when asked, he should answer, 'I do not know.' And people should say... loved one. Everywhere people have died. I see how foolish I was to think I could have my son back, and this afternoon I buried him. Now I have returned to you to hear your teachings. I am ready to listen." Then the Buddha said, "Gotami, you have learned a great deal today. But if you learn the truth of the Law of Impermanence, you can live in happiness. In all the worlds of men, and of the gods too... "Vasettha, it is like a string of blind men clinging to one another, the foremost can not see the way, neither can the middle one, nor the hindmost. The talk of the Brahmins is but blind talk. The first sees not, the middle one sees not, the hindmost sees not. The talk, then, of these Brahmins turns out to be ridiculous, mere words, vain and empty. Vasettha, if a man should say, 'I long for and love the ...
... Goddess of the beauty, brightness and joy in Nature and humanity. Hecate: Native of ancient Thrace, she was originally a moon goddess. Her name seems to be a feminine form of a title of Apollo, "the far darter". She and Helios together witnessed the abduction of Persephone by Hades. Hecate was powerful both in the sky and on earth. She gave men richness, victory and wisdom. She was also ... uncertain meaning and origin. Pandemian: Of Pandemos, "goddess of all the people", an epithet of Aphrodite. Paphos: A city a short distance inland from the west coast of Cyprus and the site of a famous temple of Aphrodite. Paris: A son of Priam and Hecuba, was reputed to be the handsomest of mortal men. Hence, in the quarrel over the golden apple, inscribed "For the fairest", thrown... Circe on whose island he and his companions have been stranded for a year, she warns him of the dangers ahead; "First thou shalt arrive where the enchanter sirens dwell, they who seduce men. The imprudent man who draws near them never returns, for the sirens, lying in the flower-strewn field, will charm him with sweet songs; but around them the bodies of their victims lie in heaps". Odysseus ...
... more and more imperative. ...... The new world cannot be built by only one man, but suppose we were a dozen people representing the best of Page 290 what Humanity has produced, a dozen men and women who have come to the end of the human curve and understood totally that they have to go beyond humanity and find out what Sri Aurobindo and Mother had seen — a dozen human beings who... know, I see cold headedly that it is the all of the old humanity that is attacked and tortured in me — were I pure and divine, nothing would touch me. It is as if I had suddenly taken on all the weight of the Hostility that was thrown at Her. It is awful, there are no words for it. I understand everything. Everything. But then if one man must make the new species — someone must do it, of course... While preparing Agenda IX, which I have just finished, I came across these words from Mother: "When you want to please people, you let things go as they are, waiting for Nature to impose her progress upon man. But this is not the truth of the creation. The true mission of man is to impose his progress on Nature." There is something of this in my heart struggling against time and inertia, for ...
... father's sentence from that throne Where Justice sits with bright unsullied robe Judging the peoples? Calmly expect his doom Which errs not. CASSIOPEA Thou art a man noble indeed in counsel And fit to rule the nations. CEPHEUS I approve. You laugh, my son? IOLAUS I laugh to see wise men Page 379 Catching their feet in their own subtleties. King Phineus, wilt thou... all men love to smile at and to punish With tenderness and chidings. It is a crime Full of impiety, a deed of danger That venturous and iron spirits would be aghast To dream of. You think because you are a child, You will be pardoned, because you are a princess No hand will dare to punish you. You do not know Men's hearts. They will not pause to pity you, They will not spare. The people in its... private chambers, But find them. Dercetes and the captains go out with their soldiers, the people making way for them. POLYDAON People of Syria, hearken, hearken! Poseidon for this sacrilege arouses The Assyrian from the land and from the sea His waves and all their sharp-toothed monsters: your men Page 428 Shall be rent and disembowelled, your women ravished, Butchered by foemen ...
... made a deep impression not only on Indians but; on the British bureaucracy as well, because he was not only gifted with vision but commanded a rare power of expression which could sway people. He sought out most men who were prominent in the then public life of our country and was most impressed by Sri Aurobindo's personality. Here is what he saw and felt in Sri Aurobindo even then: "In an age... things only as they touch his own mind or else concern his ego? But that I suppose would include 999,999 men out of every million. "What are external things? Russell is a mathematician. Are mathematical formulae external things, even though they exist here only in the World-mind and the mind of Man? If not, is Russell, as mathematician, an introvert? Again, Yajnavalkya says that one loves the wife... is turned inwards. The Upanishad speaks of the doors of the senses that are turned outwards, absorbing man in external things ('for their own sakes', I suppose?) and of the rare man among a million who turns his vision inwards and sees the Self. Is that man an introvert? And is Russell's ideal man 'interested in externals for their own sakes' — a Ramaswami the chef, or Joseph, the chauffeur, for instance ...
... and there. Until it comes, the sense of the others cannot be understood and till then all interpretations of present happening and forecast of man's future are vain things. For its nature, power, event are that which will determine the next cycle of our humanity." Sri Aurobindo (1917) The quotation of August, they dropped it, I didn't even see it! I think Nolini didn't like it. Page 246... conscious in most cases. It lasts for seven to eight days, and after that, it too dissolves—I am not talking about yogis, I am talking about ordinary people. Yogis have no laws, it's quite different; for them the world is different. I am talking about ordinary people living an ordinary life; for them it's like that. So the conclusion is that if you want to preserve your consciousness, it would be better to... organization. It's a sort of alliance between the vital forces and the forces of Nature. If, for example, he decided, 'Here is the number of people I am entitled to,' say four or five, or six, or one or two (it varies from day to day), if he decided so many people would die, he'll go straight and set himself up near the person who's going to die. But if you (not the person) happen to be conscious, if ...
... than many, saw Sri Aurobindo drawing into himself dark fumes that were rising from the subconscious parts of the people as they were coming to him for "darshan" in a procession. He was gathering up the lower elements of earth-nature within this area of representative humanity and then drawing them into himself. 10 What was the meaning of that vision? Was the battle raging even when the Darshan... first the sadhaks had their last Darshan of their beloved Master between five and six, and afterwards the local people and others who had come from outside filed past silently in an unending stream and paid their profound respects with tear-filled eyes to the almost mythical Person, the man-God who had made Pondicherry his home and Cave of Tapasya and Power-House of the New Consciousness. The news... Mother did not stand while seeing people, as she used to before, but sat in a chair. The demands on her attention were so many that she needed to have eyes on her back as she informed Champaklal on 11 May. On 7 June, after seeing several people at different times in the early morning, she told him: You cannot imagine even, how sick I become, it is suffocating. People are so much deep in tamas, ...
... are those encompassed by man's own endeavour: Personal effort brings about still greater marvels: it covers the soil with rich Page 482 harvests, tames wild beasts, tunnels through mountains, erects dykes and bridges, builds cities, launches ships on the ocean and flying machines in the air; in short it gives more well-being and security to all. 38 'Two men I honour, and no third... had seen this aura, but all do not possess this gift of vision. The Poet tells her that, while most people today are totally engrossed in material satisfactions, all is not lost, for there are "guardians of the supreme knowledge" who know the Truth, whose aim is to "awaken Page 474 man to the consciousness of what he truly is and what he can do". The Clairvoyant feels greatly thrilled... of the countryside. Like Tiruvalluvar, it is man's privilege and the burden of his destiny to be destroyer and preserver both, the destroyer of the agents of evil and the upholder of the imperatives of Dharma. It is significant that the Mother should have devoted a whole chapter in praise of the Simple Life. She notes that "in all countries many people are beginning to understand that a simple life ...
... begin and grow with increasing rapidity towards its fullness. All men might not reach that fullness till a later time, but still the human mind could come to stand perfected in the Light and a new humanity take its place as part of the new order. “This is the possibility we have to examine. If it is destined to fulfil itself, if man is not doomed to remain always as a vassal of the Ignorance, the... great need of the human being. Even as the animal man has been largely converted into a mentalised and at the top a highly mentalised humanity, so too now or in the future an evolution or conversion – it does not greatly matter which figure we use or what theory we adopt to support it – of the present type of humanity into a spiritualised humanity is the need of the race and surely the intention of... words are of immense importance for people who do not have the experience and who are interested in this kind of adventure. For, firstly, they tell us that a realisation of one of the spiritual levels has a direct repercussion on the physical body, on the adhara. We will have to come back to this when we learn about the work the Mother did for “the new humanity”. For the Mind of Light, which is the ...
... foundation for human unity. In the consciousness of most men, all this is the outcome of chance; they are not aware of the existence of a global plan and take circumstances as they come, for better or for worse according to their temperament: some are satisfied, others discontented. Among the contented, there is a certain category of people who are perfectly adapted to Nature's ways: these are the... reflection or study. Here we are in an intellectual domain and we might think that in this domain men are more reasonable, more self-controlled, and that the practice of rigorous austerity is less indispensable. It is nothing of the kind, however, for even here, into this abode of ideas and knowledge, man has brought the violence of his convictions, the intolerance of his sectarianism, the passion of... become a step towards the creation of the new race. For it is not possible to do both at the same time; at every moment one has to decide Page 54 whether one wants to remain part of the humanity of yesterday or to belong to the superhumanity of tomorrow. One must renounce being adapted to life as it is and succeeding in it if one wants to prepare for life as it will be and to become an ...
... social and political forms and culture. And equally then our cultural conception of humanity must be in accordance with her ancient vision of the universal man testing in the human race, evolving through life and mind but with a high ultimate spiritual aim, - it must be the idea of, the spirit, the soul of humanity advancing through struggle and concert towards oneness, increasing its experience... keep first in view the preservation, strengthening and enrichment of the nation-soul and its Dharma and raise both into powers of the life and ascending mind and soul of humanity. And at no time will it lose sight of man's highest object, the awakening and development of his spiritual being.5 In accordance with this view, the great purpose of education is to help the soul to come forward... being in its entirety, a new ascent of the species above and beyond man towards superman, leading in the end to the appearance, of the divine race upon earth.46 Page 78 Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education In the foregoing pages I have shown that, if education is to prepare humanity for its future and meet the needs of a rapidly evolving world, it must ...
... temporary field; but there is no other permanent field.. Humanity and its welfare and progress is the largest field and man is the highest possible form of existence. (The Supra Terrestrial View) The Supra Terrestrial View believes in the immortality of the human spirit in which earth is the place of trial, from which man has to painfully disentangle himself so that he may gain... Men murmured in amazement: "Oh, the tower of culture, egregiously high! The end of it lost in the clouds!" The scribes, with light hearts, hurried home, their pockets heavily laden. The nephews were furiously busy keeping the cage in proper trim. As their constant scrubbing and polishing went on, the people said with satisfaction: "This is progress indeed!" Men were employed... dogmatism, communalism, casteism, divisions. We want our youth to be filled with the free man's worship of the country, of the spirit of Mother India. We want our youth to be soldiers and warriors to fight against ignorance, selfishness, and all that obscures and obstructs our path to a glorious future of humanity's unity and harmony. We want our youth to be the creators of the new future, but all these ...
... nature and his somewhat unguarded susceptibilities he had always struck me as being, for all his special gifts and extraordinary powers, far more representative of essential humanity on the credit as well as the debit side than people like me could be, and also therefore, by virtue of those gifts and powers, capable of a greatness in which the mass could see not a thrusting of itself somewhat out into... but the leader of our evolution, the Yogi par excellence in whom man becomes God as much as God becomes man. The coming together, therefore, of Roy the seeker and Sri Aurobindo the adept and their relationship as disciple and master were perhaps in several respects the most highly significant phenomenon, so far as the psychology of man in general is concerned, in the history of an Ashram where more... cerebration cutting across its typical turn on the level of religious feeling. No doubt, there are other levels — for instance, the philosophical, the sociological, the political — but the majority of men live less on them than on those of science which is organised this-world sense and of religion which is Page xvi organised other-world sense. Of course, here as elsewhere in Roy, many ...
... perpetually necessary (for such poetry is the true nectar of mans rebirth in the spirit), is also perpetually unrealisable. The mystic has to express in words experiences that are beyond verbal expression. As Gilbert Highet perceptively says (he is thinking of poets like St John of the Cross, Holderlin, Valery, Donne and T.S. Eliot): These people had a certain experience of life which they found so... Henry Newbolt to task for thinking that McTaggart's philosophy of Time and Eternity 89 could provide a future poet with an inspiring faith to enable him to give solace and encouragement to ailing humanity, and declares that philosophy can do no such thing. In so-called philosophical poetry, as Arnold might put it, the poetry is the reality, the philosophy is the illusion; "the philosophy merely serves... which was deliberately fragmentary and inadequate and symbolic; but he makes an exception about Dante: That is why Dante is such a superb writer. He was one of the very few men in the world's history who have had such a vision and have been able to communicate it as a coherent whole... Most others cannot even think of making a complete exposition of such experiences ...
... from all reserves of diplomacy and self-interest, of the right of every aggregate of men naturally marked off from other aggregates to decide its own political status and destiny. These three positions were in fact distinct from each other, but each has in effect some relation to the actually possible future of humanity. The first based itself upon the present conditions and aimed at a certain practical... to the tendencies of unification and group-variation in dealing with the great mass unit of humanity. At present, the nation is the fulcrum which the latter tendency has been using for its workings as against the imperialistic tendency of unifying assimilation. Now the course of Nature's working in humanity may destroy the nation-unit, as she destroyed the tribe and clan, and develop a quite new principle... all, in the institution of Dominion Status substituting an internally free and equal position in a commonwealth of peoples for a dominating Empire. Yet these results, however imperfect, prepared the greater fulfilments which we now see accomplished as part of a new world of free peoples. × The League ...
... strictly shun all excess, all vice, small or big, one must deny one self the use of such slow poisons as tobacco, alcohol, etc. which men have the habit of developing into indispensable, needs that gradually demolish their will and memory. The all-absorbing interest that men, without exception, even the most intellectual, take in food, in its preparation and consumption, should be replaced by an almost... it is, and preparing this very body to become a step towards the creation of the new race. For the two cannot go together; at every minute you have to decide whether you wish to remain within the humanity of yesterday or belong to the supermanhood of tomorrow. You must refuse to be moulded according to life as it is and be successful in it, if you want to prepare for life as it will be and become an... necessary. The body of each one, with regard to its perfection or simply improvement, is a problem to be solved and the solution demands much patience, perseverance and regularity. In spite of what men may think, the athlete's life is not a life of pleasure and distraction; Page 436 it is a life, on the contrary, made up of well-regulated endeavour and austere habits for getting the desired ...
... syllable OM, O Satyakama, it is the supreme and it is the lower Brahman. Therefore the man of knowledge passeth by this house of the Brahman to the one or the other. And if one meditate on the single letter, he getteth by it knowledge and soon he attaineth on the earth. And him the Riks lead to the world of men and there perfected in Tapas and Brahmacharya and faith he experienceth the greatness of... authenticity, a satisfying finality that is at the same time an infinite commencement of truth, to which all our lines of investigation when they go through to their end arrive again and to which humanity constantly returns in its minds and its ages of greatest vision. The Upanishads are Vedanta, a book of knowledge in a higher degree even than the Vedas, but knowledge in the profounder Indian sense... that has baffled certain Western scholars and made them cry out that these scriptures are a mixture of the sublimest philosophical speculations with the first awkward stammerings of the child mind of humanity. The Upanishads are not a revolutionary departure from the Vedic mind and its temperament and fundamental ideas, but a continuation and development and to a certain extent an enlarging transformation ...
... unusually favourable conditions. It is difficult indeed to suppose that languages with powerful literatures spoken by millions of cultured men will allow themselves to be put into a quite secondary position, much less snuffed out by any old or new speech of man. But it cannot be quite certainly said that scientific reason, taking possession of the mind of the race and thrusting aside separative sentiment... supposing that the complete human group of united mankind will subordinate to itself in the same way and eventually absorb all smaller groups of separated humanity. It is only by a growth of the international idea, the idea of a single humanity, that nationalism can disappear, if the old natural device of an external unification by conquest or other compulsive force continues to be no longer possible;... debarred the new authority from averting by a timely intervention before they came to a head, to bring about a coordination of activities for common ends, would be the principal motives impelling humanity to advance from a looser to a closer union, from a voluntary self subordination in great and exceptional matters to an obligatory subordination in most matters. The desire of powerful nations to use ...
... was and why the World War II should not be looked upon "as a fight between nations and governments — still less between good people and bad people — but between two forces, the Divine and the Asuric (Diabolic)," he went on to add: "What we have to see is — on which side men and nations put themselves; if they put themselves on the right side, they at once make themselves instruments of the Divine purpose... possible for it to take up the whole being into its own native power, instead of the nature of man continuing to remain in half-light, half-darkness. I believe the descent of this Truth opening the way to a development of divine consciousness here to be the final sense of the earth-evolution. If greater men than myself have not had this vision and this ideal before them, that is no reason why I should... and laissez-faire"! Discipline was boosted in the West but look at what is happening there: men and women are getting more and more unhappy and cramped, slaving day and night like lifeless robots in a soulless manufactory deified as the State. India cherished individuality as sacrosanct and our spiritual men set store by the guidance of the inner beacon within as against the red lights of the outer ...
... by whom? It should be by people who have at least a world consciousness! ( Mother laughs ) Otherwise it can't work. So... there are going to be a hundred very difficult years, very difficult. Afterwards, maybe we'll emerge towards something.... ( silence ) What this man [the marquis] writes you here, lots of people are like that! Lots of them have written it, people from every country. They're... Well, if it's not possible in your body, how will it be possible in other bodies? No... I don't know. For man, it seems established that his progress is made from birth to birth, with very fleeting intermediary births, forms that aren't perpetuated. So it may be that some people, with a body somewhat... (what shall I say?) developed or advanced, could now have children who would themselves have... it's... But still, the world has reached such an acute state of suffering and pain that... Yes. The time has come for ONE body to change itself sufficiently to give a concrete hope to humanity. Yes, yes... Even if only, perhaps, as an example. Yes, perhaps, but not only that, because the day that Power would have entered your matter so totally, you would have the possibility of ...
... under one law.’ If today this is a fact for all to see and experience, it was far from apparent when that letter was written. Has not every race or people throughout the history of humanity held itself to be the ‘navel of the Earth’ and all other peoples to be barbarians and even non-humans? In A Message to America , written by Sri Aurobindo in 1949, we read: ‘There is a common hope, a common destiny... who had rarely called us even by our names in these twelve years.’ 47 Is it not obvious that the Avatar, in his love for humanity, was here taking leave of that humanity in the person of the pure Champaklal? It was ‘the embrace that takes to itself the body of God in man,’ as Sri Aurobindo had written in The Synthesis of Yoga. Then the Mother, who had gone again to the Playground that day... appearances, and it will always remain the map of the true India, whatever people may think about it.’ 11 To understand this, one must realize that every true nation is not only a certain area on a map, but a living being. As Sri Aurobindo wrote: ‘Each nation is a Shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity and lives by the principle which it embodies. India is the Bharata Shakti, the ...
... of possibilities, of separate even if not yet divided choice, is likely to lead to deviation from the Truth of things. The Overmind, therefore, does not and cannot possess the power to transform humanity into divine nature. For that, the Supramental is the sole effective agent. The Mother Questions and Answers (1929 - 1931): Supermind and Overmind * Supermind Here it is written: “It... And yet the fact is that the Overmind is far below the true Divine. It is not the authentic home of the Truth. It is only the domain of the formateurs*, all those creative powers and deities to whom men have bowed down since the beginning of history. And the reason why the true Divine has not manifested and transformed the earth-nature is precisely that the Overmind has been mistaken for the Supermind... prematurely to have possession of the supermind or even to have a taste of it.” What is a foretaste of the supermind?* It is still more unwise to imagine that one has it. That’s it. Yes, because some people, as soon as they find a phrase in a book, in a teaching, immediately imagine that they have realised that. So, when Sri Aurobindo began speaking about the supermind—in what he was writing—everyone ...
... growing human spirit. Man who is an ethical personality can only bow in worship before a Being in whom he sees his ideal of goodness realised, and who responds to what is highest and Page 23 best in himself. There emerges then, as the outcome of man's age-long search for God, the vision of a Reality, ethical, spiritual, and personal, in which the religious needs of humanity are fulfilled. The... there remain Page 21 the gravest inconsistencies between the different conceptions men have formed of God. In view of the path we have already traversed this fact hardly requires comment or elucidation. The notion of God, we know, has changed with changes in culture and spiritual attainment on man's part: it develops with human development. In the face of these facts we can understand that... relations with men. This is without doubt the conception of Deity which best maintains itself in the evolution of religion, and is most fruitful in its working. To investigate the truth of this idea is Page 27 therefore a problem which is set to the religious philosopher by the facts of religious experience. I do not think we are entitled to say more, than that man's spiritual experience ...
... The Sun and The Rainbow SRI AUROBINDO AND THE RESHAPING OF MAN 1 It is the message of Sri Aurobindo that the real call on men today in a world going wrong is not so much to reshape their machines, their technologies, their institutions, as to reshape themselves. By that reshaping, the outer face of their complex... Yoga will lead the earth towards an era of universal concord, a self-consummation of Man at once spiritual and scientific. To elevate our country to play that happy role is a vital part of the dynamic ideal of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in the Ashram of all-round Educational Research they have founded. Their call to men of good will everywhere is to co-operate with them and hasten the completion of the... towards an earthly unfoldment as of a godhead in the soul of man. 4 In India, of all places, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, with its International Centre of Education, should rouse the greatest interest and win the utmost encouragement. For, its work can be seen in intimate relation to the typical genius of the Indian people. Every country has its own basic psychological character and it ...
... the vitalised mind-consciousness in the microcosm, in the rapturous mid-world of fulfilled life-energy in the macrocosm. There kindled, awakened & manifested in man, samidhá buddhah, samiddhah, he does his work for upward-climbing humanity. Thus by the return in iddhah to the words & the idea with which he started, the Rishi marks the close of his first movement of thought. ... between the proper activity of Agni & Surya, of manas and chakshu, & to confine the latter to their proper sphere and thus by implication to confine the former also. When we are mortals content with our humanity, then we are confused in our functions; the manas or sense-mind attempts to do the work of Page 707 the mahas or idea-mind, to effect original knowledge, to move in Surya, in the powerful... passest beyond all others in him to whom thou makest thyself manifest in thy splendid beauty, adorable and full of body and widely luminous, the beloved guest of the human peoples. 10) To thee,Ovigorous Agni, the continents (or the peoples) bring their oblation from near and bring from afar; perceive the perfected mind in one most happy, for wide and mighty is the blessed peace of thee, O Agni. 11) ...
... quotes Shankara to the effect that "the Lord is the only transmigrator". Reasoning from this, he infers that the one Self dwelling in humanity as in everything is alone the reality that passes from life to life. In support he quotes Aquinas's dictum: "All men are one Man." The whole argument strikes me as an evasion of what the theory of reincarnation implies. Did not Aquinas write at some length... Jerusalem Bible phrases it, "born of a woman, born a subject of the Law". 2 St. Paul's two expressions are invariably associated everywhere else in the Bible with natural humanity. To him the birth of Jesus was like that of any other man. But, even granting that there is scriptural authority for something extraordinary happening to Mary's body, how can it be compared to that of the resurrected Christ when... Then the Mother affirmed that some "mediums", who are often people of very low character, perform dematerialisation and rematerialisation under the strictest scientific control. So such phenomena do genuinely occur in rare instances. After this, the Mother returns to the point originally raised and concludes: "In connection with great or holy men all sorts of stories get started. When Sri Aurobindo had ...
... taken on the proportions of a play." 16 There were, then, among the numerous "minor characters" the different categories of witnesses: the police and the secret service men; the men eager to please the police; and the people dragged unwillingly to give evidence. The method of examination and cross-examination followed by Norton struck Sri Aurobindo as very perverse and foolish and utterly wasteful:... he was a man divinely possessed - made a unique appeal to Mr. Beachcroft the Judge and the two Assessors: My appeal to you is this, that long after the controversy will be hushed in silence, long after this turmoil, the agitation will have ceased, long after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long... and realise the eternal destiny of her ancient and composite people. 5 But - perhaps understandably, yet most unfortunately, under the circumstances - the Government lost their balance and sense of measure, and started arresting persons right and left. The police, of course, fastened their suspicion at once on the young men (whom they had shadowed before) camping at the Manicktolla Gardens ...
... slaughter of Kurukshetra; but although the liberated man takes his part in the struggle and though he slay all these peoples, he slays no man and he is not bound by his work, because the work is that of the Master of the Worlds and it is he who has already slain in his hidden omnipotent will all these armies. This work of destruction was needed that humanity might move forward to another creation and a new... be possessed when the liberated man, free from ego and its desires, lives at last one with his highest self, one with all beings and one with God in an absolute bliss of the spirit. Page 506 × The cosmic order comes into question, because the triumph of the Asura in humanity means to that extent the triumph... cunning replaces true intelligence; he has a stupid and insolent contempt for those with whom he has to deal, especially for wiser men and his betters. A dull laziness, slowness, procrastination, looseness, want of vigour or of sincerity mark his action. The tamasic man is ordinarily slow to act, dilatory in his steps, easily depressed, ready soon to give up his task if it taxes his strength, his diligence ...
... and wondered how the cart had collapsed by itself. Many cowherd men and women gathered at the scene, and the small children who were playing around the cart said that the cart had been kicked apart by baby Krishna. But who were aware of the potent force in that baby, and how could they believe that that baby could do what even a strong man would have found difficult to do? The life of the Spirit... to that cry and to turn the prison into a garden of freedom and constant play, a constant Li/a. That young child that was born was the Spirit, the ever-free Player, who had heard the inmost cry of humanity that was knocking the prison doors from where escape was impossible and indispensable. If, therefore, the tales of the life of that young infant appear to be anecdotes of a story of impossible miracles... his childhood is not mere naughtiness but the bubbles and waves of the Ocean of Supreme Delight (Ananda) that was incarnated in this little boy of Gokul. That Delight is the very sap of the life of men and women and of all living creatures and even of the material universe. To see Krishna, therefore, was for all those surrounding him indescribable intoxication. To Yashoda, his foster mother, and to ...
... after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone his words will be echoed and re-echoed not only in India, but across distant seas and lands. Therefore I say that the man in his position is not Page 478 only standing before the bar of this Court but before the bar of the... of the man who put away from him all other thoughts and abandoned all his practice, who sat up half Page 476 the night day after day for months and broke his health to save me, —Srijut Chittaranjan Das. When I saw him, I was satisfied, but I still thought it necessary to write instructions. Then all that was put away from me and I had the message from within, 'This is the man who will... the King-Emperor of India of the Sovereignty of British India or a part thereof ..."; it was "to overawe by criminal force the Government of India or the Local Government of Bengal," etc. But all men are not alike. There were those who had courage. Among them was Bejoy Krishna Bose, who appeared for the accused from the very beginning to the end of the trial in all the Courts and "was possessed of ...
... beginning of realization.’ In whom but in herself ? ‘We have now proof that in certain conditions the ordinary state of humanity can be surpassed and that a new state of consciousness can work itself out which at least renders possible a conscious relation between mental man and higher man [i.e. overman, le surhomme ]’. 12 And once again she describes in unmistakable terms what that intermediary being... true reason why I am still here is that my physical presence helps humanity to progress,’ she said to Mona Sarkar. ‘My presence hastens the terrestrial evolution … I made the descent of the Supramental possible. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. It is not worth spending my time uselessly upon earth if my presence doesn’t help humanity to make a decisive progress. I can’t spend my time uselessly, I have... earth when looking into their eyes: such an extraordinary joy. Most people were young. There were very few children and their age was something around fourteen and fifteen, certainly not below ten or twelve. (I did not stay long enough to see all the details.) There were no very old people, apart from a few exceptions. Most of the people who went ashore were of middle age, except a few. Before this experience ...
... an element of mind which is being taken up by spirit: the animal is still present in its humanity; the very nature of the human Page 163 being presupposes a material and a vital stage which prepared his emergence into mind and an animal past which moulded a first element of his complex humanity.... "We arrive then necessarily at this conclusion that human birth is a term at which... of it while the parents of the new child are only the adventitious, purely physical agents." (CWM, Vol. 3, p. 145) (Q. 4): Do men retain their identities after the dissolution of their bodies? (A. 4): "Well, it depends. The ordinary mass of men are so closely identified with their bodies that nothing of them survives when the physical disintegrates.... What [little] survives has... to become more and more conscious of itself... . before becoming a psychic being as it is found in the human form..." (CWM, Vol. 9, p. 215) (Q. 35): Can the soul, having once arrived at humanity, go back to the animal life and body, which will be a retrogression? (A. 35): "It seems impossible that it should so go back with any entirety, and for this reason that the transit from animal ...
... first, the aspiration of the animality in man after Divinity and secondly, the rain of His answering Grace in order to transform man's seemingly ineradicable animality which has been the despair of dreamers and idealists. That is why Sri Aurobindo speaks so emphatically (if a little nostalgically) of the Descent of the power of Love Divine into our dismal humanity — a downpour of supernal Light on terrestrial... their manners, so there may be very spiritual men (I mean here by spiritual men those who have had deep spiritual experiences) who have no grasp over physical life or action (many intellectuals too, by the way are like that) and are not at all careful about their manners. I suppose I myself am accused of rude and arrogant behaviour because I refuse to see people, do not answer letters, and a host of other... make people humble and courteous rather than rude and boorish. This time he reprimanded me politely, but firmly: "But when on earth were politeness and good society manners considered as a part or a test of spiritual experience or true yogic siddhi. It is no more a test than the capacity of dancing Page 165 well or dressing nicely. Just as there are very good and kind men who are ...
... satisfied and men may love one another. So naturally people who did not agree with him, said to him, "But how does it happen that when the law of Nature alone reigns—as for example, without even going as far as the animal, in vegetable life—how does it happen that there are constant massacres between plants and the perpetual struggle for life? Is this what you call harmony?" Then the other man did not ... understand anything. In fact, people who are interested in general questions, those who come out of their little daily preoccupations of being born, living and dying, living as well as possible—there are people not satisfied with this, who try to have general ideas and look at world problems—these people make an inner effort or a mental effort, and in one way or another enter into contact with the... consciousness will change sufficiently for circumstances also to change. As for me, I have no illusions on the subject, because I know that Sri Aurobindo saw the truth of things and therefore, if humanity were ready to be transformed simply by the vision of the truth of things, well, at least all those who are in contact with this truth should be transformed. Well, they aren't. You know all the ...
... wholly without blemish, and Nala himself is more sinned against than sinning; it is the dark God who engineers most of the mischief. Humanity could almost raise the plaint, "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods!" The Savitri story is reared on quite other foundations. Man here is master of his fate; Woman is shakti, the redeemer, the transvaluer of values, the subduer of destiny. Comparing the two... affections of many generations of men, but the Savitri stands apart even among them, verily a star. "The 'story of Savitri' is the gem of the whole poem", wrote Alfred Wallace, 5 "and I cannot recall anything in poetry more beautiful, or any higher teaching as to the sanctity of love and marriage. We have really not advanced one step beyond this old-world people in our ethical standards." ... beauty, truthfulness, goodness and power. She is the eternal feminine coming from the home of the Absolute, not the conventional feminine—the fair sex, the weaker sex, made out of one of the ribs of Man! If Savitri never weeps, neither does she ever beg or play the pathetic suppliant. When Narad's terrible warning is uttered and Aswapati asks her to choose again, she doesn't plead with ...
... word with which people covered a lot of very undesirable things. You know, the idea of a God who wants to be the one and only … It is what had made me completely atheistic, if one may put it that way, in my childhood. I did not accept a being who declared himself to be the one and only and all-powerful, whoever he might be.’ 24 ‘All I knew was the God of the religions, God as men have created him... was what Impressionism revolted against; both attitudes were closely connected in her person as well as in the great painters known as the Impressionists. At the end of all myths and stories, humanity stood confronted with itself. Mirra was born at a time when the human being turned inwards and subjected to close scrutiny all that had gone before. This happened in literature (Proust, Rimbaud, Mallarmé)... At the Epicentre As we have already seen in passing, the world was in turmoil during the years of Mirra’s marriage and Paris was the epicentre of the profound changes that would churn up humanity. We do not have any of her writings from that period – if she wrote anything at all – but it happens that we get a glimpse of those years in some of her later conversations. Towards the end of ...
... considered impossible. And Sri Aurobindo writes in his epic, Savitri, "The high gods look on men and watch and choose, Today's impossible for the future base." So fundamentally there is nothing that should be considered impossible, I mean the programme that he lays down for man in books like The Life Divine. Consciousness is the fundamental fact of the cosmos and cosmic... everything else is unreal. The aim of man is to reach or ascend to the Transcendent by rejecting the world and life. The Spirit is pure and luminous without duality. The Brahman is, moreover, inactive, silent, eternal; the world is unreal, temporary. The ascetic attitude rejects nature and life on that basis. In India this attitude has played a great part and men have been told to reject life in order... friend, Dr. Chandrashekhar, an Andhra Poet, says, "No other philosophy or religion gives to life on earth such a high significance as the works of Sri Aurobindo." There are people who are confident about solving man's problems by other than spiritual methods. There are other factors also that have intervened and some of them advocate resorting to social or political action for solving them. ...
... with any vocabulary and with any theme but also from any plane. According to Sri Aurobindo, man lives on several planes, and Existence is a manifold chord of powers, each power constituting a plane on which there is a universal play and within this universal Nature a large number of individual natures. People do not always realise that there are other worlds than the physical: they consider all the... only because several levels and parts are involved. It is relevant also because what is involved is thinking. Man, full-fledged man, man of the historical times as distinguished from the prehistoric Homo Nean-derthalensis and the like, is labelled zoologically as Homo Sapiens, "Wise Man", "Man the Thinker". Of course each of us considers himself wise and considers every other person otherwise, but... totally deny the co-presence and interaction of head and heart. Do you remember the lines I once quoted to you from Housman? If men were drunk for ever With liquor, love or fights, Lief would I rise of mornings And lief lie down at nights. But men at times are sober And think by fits and starts, And while they think, they fasten Their hands upon their hearts. Thinking ...
... whole nature of the soul of man in the universe and validates by a large and wise unification its many-sided need of the supreme and infinite Truth, Power, Love, Being to which our humanity turns in its search for perfection and immortality and some highest joy and power and peace. There is a strong and wide endeavour towards a comprehensive spiritual view of God and man and universal existence. Not... Veda, sapta dhiyaḥ ,—the Upanishad speaks of all things as being arranged in septettes, sapta sapta . Along with these are coupled the four eternal Manus, fathers of man,—for the active nature of the Godhead is fourfold and humanity expresses this nature in its fourfold character. These also, as their name implies, are mental beings. Creators of all this life that depends on manifest or latent mind... him as the supreme and divine Origin of all that is in existence and the mighty Lord of the world and its peoples of whose being all things are the becomings. It is, secondly, the declaration of a unified knowledge and bhakti as the supreme Yoga; that is the destined and the natural way given to man to arrive at union with the eternal Godhead. And to make more significant this definition of the way, to ...
... t of plus and minus points, the minus ones indicating what you have lost strike me as very promising, they are plus points in disguise, empty spaces waiting or calling for touches from beyond our humanity. You are on the ambiguous, borderline of a new life without quite knowing it. When one is on the spiritual path, the falling away of old movements without new ones taking their place are not really... not writing this from book-learning: I never preach anything that I have not personally known through a life of more falls and physical setbacks than most people undergo -a life, however, which at the same time has felt more than many people the intimate uplifting hold of the Mother's sweetness and Sri Aurobindo's compassion. Being what we are, we cannot escape the pitfalls of a world of ignorance... emperor?" That single cry was enough to turn the tables. The entire contingent rose as one man and throwing away its rifles ran frenziedly towards Napoleon, exclaiming "Vive l'empereur.'" The soldiers knelt down at his feet, catching his hands and kissing them. The tremendous personality and genius of the man who had started as "the Little Corporal" and become conqueror of all Western Europe achieved ...
... All those who want to collaborate for the progress of humanity and for India's luminous destiny must unite in a clairvoyant aspiration and in an illumined work. 2 In other messages the Mother affirmed that Sri Aurobindo had given "not a hope but a certitude of the splendour" towards which the world was moving; that the centenary year gave people an opportunity truly to understand his message and... kept the grief to come. The Mother's comment is that one cannot bear the weight of "foreknowledge" unless one has the strength of a God: It is a Supreme Grace for man that the future is not revealed to him; because most men would not have the courage to live their life, if they knew what it would be. 38 But Savitri, because she is endowed with the all-embracing Divine Consciousness, is... ation - of experience so that there could emerge infallible global understanding and concord. If in our inner life the rift between man and god, matter and spirit, could be healed, then inevitably the healing of the rift between man and nature, man and collective man, would follow as a matter of course. VII In an earlier chapter a reference was made to Meditations on Savitri, a collaborative ...
... sinners (madhyama-pāpī); (3) extreme sinners (sthūla-pāpī); (4) ordinarily Page 47 virtuous people (sāmānya-dhārmika); (5) medium-level virtuous men (madhyama-dhārmika); and (6) men of high-pitched genuine virtue (uttama-dhārmika). These six categories of people will have to face different destinies in the other world after their death. Vasistha has discussed this issue in... grievously sick man. And they think that they have done all that was expected of them. For, what other responsibility could they possibly have! What a foolish idea. Let us listen to what the Mother has to say in this connection: "...the most important thing in this case is the last state of consciousness [of the dying man].... And here the responsibility of the people around the dying man is much greater... listen to what the Mother once said about the same question: "...man knows nothing about death - he does not know what it is, he does not know what happens, he has built all kinds of hypotheses, but there is nothing certain." (Notes on the Way, CWM, Vol. 11, p. 61) Yes, it has to be squarely admitted that the general run of humanity as well as the intellectual thinkers know next to nothing about ...
... see as the strongest attributes of Americans and their contributions to the yoga? The Americans who have come to the Ashram are highly evolved people and their presence is a gift to the Ashram. Many Americans in the Archives department are wonderful men and women and have progressed very much inwardly and have contributed in many ways to the work and are of great value to the Ashram. I have a very... “There were very few people in the Ashram in those days so there was no long queue,” Udar said. In August of 1937 they had their first darshan. This is how Udar described that moment: “When I saw Sri Aurobindo for the first time I got a shock. I had seen kings and emperors in Europe, England and Asia whose clothes were majestic but the person inside quite ordinary. Here was a man wearing only a dhoti... listening to a Cambridge-educated Englishman speaking. Sri Aurobindo just sat there looking as though he were gazing out into eternity in his great lonely days of descent into mortal life in order to help humanity. [Udar chose not to personalize other impressions of Sri Aurobindo but instead he quoted a passage from Savitri , Book III, The Book of the Divine Mother, Canto IV, The Vision and the Boon. Udar ...
... August 15, it is to the vision and power of supramental creation at work amidst us that the offering is done and in that gesture lies the seed of man's birth into integral Godhead. Hence the birthday of Sri Aurobindo is the supreme festival of progressive humanity, the portent which the Asura dreads most and would strive most to nullify. It gives to the occasion of India's celebration of her Independence... sign of man who is "something to be surpassed", the urge so long broken up by his ignorance into conflicting ideals, so long foiled of earthly satisfaction and therefore diverted to losing its visionary acuteness in some ineffable Beyond. By the oneness here and now of the three instrumental formulations of the Spirit Sri Aurobindo promises a different earth inhabited by a growing number of men made both... meant to be the end of World War II, with a decisive victory of the forces intent on putting the clock back and establishing on earth the reign of the Asura, the Titan, over the evolving God in humanity. But instead of a resounding Page 103 triumph, August 15 found Britain still full of fight and on that day the largest toll so far was taken of the Luftwaffe - 180 German planes ...
... Destiny, we are the children of Wotan, We are the human Titans, the supermen dreamed by the sage. A cross of the beast and demoniac with the godhead of power and will, We are born in humanity's sunset, to the Night is our pilgrimage. On the bodies of perishing nations, mid the cry of the cataclysm coming, To a presto of bomb and shell and the aeroplanes' fatal humming, ... the world domination of Germany and the Nazi system of life, but that it is a defence of the civilisation and its highest attained social, cultural and spiritual values and of the whole future of humanity. To this cause our support and sympathy will be unswerving whatever may happen; we look forward to the victory of Britain and as the eventual result, an era of peace and union among the nations... Younghusband wrote in his letter to Dilip: This war has been a terrible catastrophe and we here in London suffered badly .... But bad as it is the calamity has had one good effect; it has turned men's mind to God .... Ami The Life Divine could not have appeared at a more opportune moment. 2 II In his lightning Spring offensives against Denmark and Norway, Hitler exploited to the ...
... He did not come for a few individuals only, or for a single nation or race; he came for the transformation of earth-nature which had been abandoned to herself by God and man. God-men came to give some relief to the suffering humanity or to show it a door of escape from suffering, but none before Sri Aurobindo, the Supramental Avatar, accepting Matter as essentially Brahman, came to divinise it. When... unexpectedly left the stage! When the news was announced on the radio, it came as a heart-rending to the devotees all over the world and just at a time when his name spelt a word of hope to aspiring humanity, as a Yogi, Rishi, poet, philosopher, lover of mankind and bringer of new Light. It was hard to believe and many rushed to Pondicherry by whatever means available to have the last darshan of the Sage... over the tremendous loss received a sharp reprimand from the Mother, "To grieve is an insult to Sri Aurobindo who is here with us, conscious and alive." And "The lack of receptivity of the earth and men is mostly responsible for the decision Sri Aurobindo has taken regarding his body. But one thing is certain: what has happened on the physical plane affects in no way the truth of his teaching. All that ...
... is not the heart of the common man; or rather it is the universal heart of man but robed in the intellectual purple. The note of Sanscrit poetry is always aristocratic; it has no answer to the democratic feeling or to the modern sentimental cult of the average man, but deals with exalted, large and aspiring natures, whose pride it is that they do not act like common men (प्राकृतो जनः). They are the great... primal confusion, for it disorders the family which is the fundamental unit of society) and the destroyer of the peoples. What the ignorant do, O Bharata, with their minds enslaved to the work, that the wise man should do with a free mind to maintain the order of the world; the wise man should not upset the mind of the ignorant who are slaves of their deeds, but should apply himself to all works doing... infinite inferiority of the latter, its all too facile admission of men to the higher life and its relegation of worldly action to the lowest importance possible stands at the opposite pole from the gospel of Srikrishna and has had the very effect he deprecates; it has been the author of confusion and the destroyer of the peoples. Under its influence half the nation moved in the direction of spiritual ...
... clear, so precise!... It takes place while you're eating, so it's perfectly concrete. It's a mentor, this Consciousness. It knows, mon petit! It knows loads of things that men don't know! All that goes on in people, their reactions, their movements... And it's in contact with birds, in contact with flowers—they respond, birds respond very well.... It's really interesting, one could write very... vibration, In order to see clearly, one must get out of it, obviously. The same goes for the little individual—renouncing the individual is what you call "saintliness," but it's merely the beginning of Humanity! Does one "renounce" an anthill?—One gets out of it! And it is wide and joyful. We are right in the middle of human infancy. S. × ... don't need to go and beg all those people to tell them that Sri Aurobindo is great: we can just publish him here ourselves. But of course! That's my impression. They disgust me, these intellectuals. ( Mother laughs ) Oh, yes! For the past two days I've been in a state of indignation—not indignation; I feel outraged. I feel like striking at these people. ( Mother laughs ) They're idiotic ...
... you have a big dark underground, what's going to happen in there?... What's going to happen?—Lots of unspeakable things. Humanity isn't transformed, we shouldn't forget that! And all kinds of people will come.... Even if there is a control at the entrance, you can't stop people from going to see, and what will happen under there?... That was my first objection when R. told me, "We could build magnificent... possible of the outside element, so it may be a work of consecration. Otherwise, they told me (N. especially), Auroville's people are all full of arrogance and incomprehension, they see the outside of things. The force of the people here should be mixed into it. If the Ashram people do not mix with them, do not breathe the force into it, it will never work.... Right now, Paolo told me, Auroville as it... says, "This fellow..." and this fellow says, "That fellow..." and they are all like that! So I see in a definite way that IF the work is to be done, FIRST they have to overcome all this mean, petty humanity. They "see," they have "ideas" (they have lots of ideas), they have ideas and they see; others see other things and have other ideas, and then, "Oh, that's worthless, my idea is the right one...." ...
... where now there is darkness and ignorance, in changing the human life into “the life divine”. If ever there was a change or crisis in humanity, then the present one certainly must be greater than any other in the past. And if a profound crisis in the development of humanity requires a direct embodiment of the Divine in its manifestation, in other words an Avatar, then this very profound crisis certainly... else had to do before us. For the Leader of the Way in a work like ours has not only to bring down and represent and embody the Divine, but to represent too the ascending element in humanity and to bear the burden of humanity to the full and experience, not in a mere play or Lila but in grim earnest, all the obstruction, difficulty, opposition, baffled and hampered and only slowly victorious labour which... spiritual knowledge. She talked several times about high civilisations that had disappeared long ago. The progress of humanity moved in a kind of a spiral, she said, at times progressing, at times apparently regressing. Brilliant civilisations, “Golden Ages”, some of which still live in humanity’s memory, suddenly disappeared and were followed by long eras of darkness and primitivism. (We find this repeatedly ...
... with the times. The only values that have stood the test of time and are held dear by most people around the world are the ones that emanate from the great spiritual traditions. *It is important that value education be seen in its real form as the vehicle by which the rich spiritual traditions of humanity are restated, reinterpreted and reformulated for each succeeding generation of human beings... thinking and give to a benighted world a modern, universally acceptable philosophy of living. *If right thinking people, professing different faiths sit together in an atmosphere of mutual trust, with the one-point agenda that they have to write down a common spiritual code for humanity based on the original teachings of all the great world teachers, the task is not unachievable. In his address... embody the light and power of the Synthesis of Yoga and a programme of integral transformation of human life on the earth that would lead the evolution of Nature into the birth of a new humanity and super-humanity. * Besides these bold initiatives and experiments, we have here a great fund of educational research that can guide us in the tasks of value-oriented education and of the entire tran ...
... soul is to unite with the Divine. Thus it may be said that the role of the soul is to make a true being of man. 29 September 1959 Is there anything like good luck and bad luck, or is it something that one creates for oneself? There is nothing that can truly be called luck . What men call luck are the effects of causes they do not know. Nor is there anything that in itself is good or... world is preparing for a big change”, are You referring to the physical transformation? And how can we help? What is being prepared is the advent of the being who will succeed man, the being who will be to man what man is to the animal. And the work has already begun with the action of a new consciousness which came on the first of January 1969 and is at work in all who are ready. The action of... How can one eliminate the will of the ego? This amounts to asking how one can eliminate the ego. It is only by yoga that one can do it. There have been, throughout the spiritual history of humanity, many methods of yoga—which Sri Aurobindo has described and explained for us in The Synthesis of Yoga . But before eliminating the will of the ego, which takes a very long time, one can begin ...
... of the hidden truth and reality which 'surface contingencies seem often to deny. Let India's freedom mean precisely this higher synthesis so much needed and so long expected in the life of humanity. Page 107 ... nt. India means nations in bondage aspiring to be free, peoples living in conditions of want and weakness and internecine quarrel, still struggling towards a harmonious and prosperous organised life; she is the cry of the down-trodden demanding her share of earth's air and light – life-room. Britain represents the other side, the free people, organised, strong and successful. Neither America nor Russia... but if the ideal means a practical utility, a thing demanded by time and circumstances, a clear issue out of a dead impasse, well, they hesitate no longer and go about it in right earnest as practical men of affairs. Now, there can be no doubt that the British wish, are even eager, to have a settlement with India: they wish to have an India free and united and strong and they are willing ...
... of the hidden truth and reality which surface contingencies seem often to deny. Let India's freedom mean precisely this higher synthesis so much needed and so long expected in the life of humanity. Page 73 ... means nations in bondage aspiring to be free, peoples living in conditions of want and weakness and internecine quarrel, still struggling towards a Page 67 harmonious and prosperous organised life; she is the cry of the down-trodden demanding her share of earth's air and light—life-room. Britain represents the other side, the free people, organised, strong and successful. Neither America... but if the ideal means a practical utility, a thing demanded by time and circumstances, a clear issue out of a dead impasse, well, they hesitate no longer and go about it in right earnest as practical men of affairs. Now, there can be no doubt that the British wish, are even eager, to have a settlement with India: they wish to have an India free and united and strong and they are willing to lend ...
... him". Ambition scorns humanity, believes that the world exists for serving him and him alone, and turns all abilities to questionable purposes.... Whoever does not delight in being one of the multitude and has no desire to share their joys and sorrows can hardly do any good to mankind.... And Krishna comes into the picture as the avatār who was also a man of the people. He was the nation-builder... would also be serving humanity everywhere. Intuitions came to him like sudden shafts of lightning, and he could on those occasions by-pass or race beyond the intellect, relying only on the wisdom and power of the Unseen Guide. A great equanimity was indeed his, and he could be unruffled even when everybody else around him seemed to be disturbed or agitated. He was already a man apart, and he seemed... which make a great personality readily the representative man of his people". 39 It was inevitable that the Zeitgeist should throw up such a colossus as he: The condition of things in India being given, the one possible aim for political effort resulting and the sole means and spirit by which it could be brought about, this man had to come and, once in the field, had to come to the front ...
... conditions that had to be established if freedom was to come and remain. He was outspoken in his condemnation of the caste system, and he felt bitter that it had brought about the fragmentation of Indian humanity. He therefore affirmed - Religion and caste shan't divide us. We conclude with tributes paid by Shri C Rajagopalchari and Shrimati Sarojini Naidu. 'Just as in ancient days, Vyasa and Valmiki... daughter, Thangammal, and his friend S. Srinivasachari's daughter, Yadugiri Ammal, have published their memories of the poet, touched with tenderness and warm-hearted affection. Bharati was not like other men: he was wayward, impractical and unique. But he had one marvelous human gift: he could inspire affection - even love leading to idolatry - in his close friends and near relations. And he was a superlatively... Ettayapuram on 13 October 1947: 'Poet Bharati has fulfilled the true mission of a poet. He has created Beauty, not only through the medium of glowing and lovely words, but has kindled the souls of men and women by the million to a more passionate love of Freedom and a richer dedication to the service of the country.' Bharati saw India as his motherland - Bharat the Divine Mother - in diverse attitudes ...
... the Mother of Might, now tells him to desist from further aspiration of raising humanity to the God-state by immediately calling down the immeasurable descent; for time was not yet ripe. It wanted him to leave the all-seeing Power to hew its way. Time has not yet reached its fullness to change the cosmic dream of man and will be hostile to the untimely descent of Truth. The Lord of Life... An indication of what the transformed Earth shall be, is only hinted here in The Epilogue. The eye of divine vision shall be restored to man. His lost kingdom with the riches of spiritual realms shall be re-established. The suffering humanity shall gain heavenly 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., p. 697. 26 Ibid., p. 702. 27 Ibid., p. 711. Page 417 delight... however see the potentiality in man appearing with the prospect of our life being transformed into divine life. This he could find as if in the glimmerings of a dying torch in the darkness — in the Kingdom of the Little Life working in the grey anarchy. The Traveller, challenging the darkness with his luminous soul, then came into a fierce and dolorous realm peopled by them who never tasted bliss ...
... or mind are soon eliminated, and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment … Thus the weak members of civilized... the long process and a transition into a new world. Darwin, midwife of the theory of evolution as understood in the common mind, has contributed to a change in the understanding of the world and humanity. “It was Darwin the symbol, Darwin the name which stood for a process, the name which was hurled from one side to the other in the polemics of secularist platforms or journals, an imaginary Darwin... confined worlds of the human tribes have expanded, and the boundaries of their narrow egos have been relaxed, step by insecure step. Ignorance is fundamental; increasing enlightenment is the goal of humanity’s crusade, still far from the Jerusalem that has to be conquered. This sort of reflection is more than hyperbole. Science has always, in any period of history, assumed that it had reached the top ...
... Athens sprang from a similar but less steep height of poetic and artistic motive. The epic poems revealed the Hellenic people to itself Page 264 in the lucid and clear nobility and beauty of an uplifting of life and an aesthetic sense of the humanity and divinity of man; the later art and poetry interpreted to Athens her religious ideas, her thought, her aesthetic instincts, the soul of... then only a thin layer of shining mist to break through to get also at the self and spirit behind it, the eater of the honey of sweetness who is seated in the soul of man and extends himself through the universe. The ancient peoples had in a very large measure this foundation of satisfaction and harmony, took the greatest interest in the reality of the inner self, as once in India and China, the Atman... in the noble antique cultures. At one time poetry was a revelation to the race of the life of the gods and man and the meaning of the world and the beauty and power of existence and through its vision and joy and the height and clarity of its purpose it became creative of the life of the people. Ananda, the joy of the spirit in itself carrying in it a revelation of the powers of its conscious being ...
... they were quite a different race of men from those that lived before them. In spite of this help that came down in the form of higher beings that incarnate themselves upon earth, still, the burden is too heavy "Heavy unchanged weighs still the imperfect world; "Heavy and long are the years our labour counts And still the seals are firm upon man's soul". Therefore, in the highest... is also the promising fact of inspiration and intuition coming down into his consciousness. The higher divine Power told Aswapathy "Leave not the light to die the ages bore, Help still humanity's blind and suffering life.: "Let not the impatient Titan drive thy heart, Ask not the imperfect fruit, the partial prize. Only one boon, to greaten thy spirit, demand; Only one... and delight. "All Nature dumbly calls to her alone" and "All here shall be one day her sweetness's home." The effort of man for knowledge, the strivings of his Page 232 passion—all human effort in fact,—are directed towards this divine Power. It is through her that man will realise his unity with all beings and the fulfilment of divine life on earth. Aswapathy knew this "in a thunder-flash ...
... an eloquent asseveration (of his faith to Malsure: not in this living net Of flesh and nerve, nor in the flickering mind Is a man's manhood seated. God within Rules us, who in the Brahman and the dog Can, if He will, show equal godhead. Not By men is mightiness achieved; Baji Or Malsure is but a name,, a robe, And covers One alone. We but employ Bhavani's strength, who... of old And as of old, and man, though less than these, May yet proceed to greater, self-evolved. Man, by experience of passion purged, His myriad faculty perfecting, widens His nature as it rises till it grows With God conterminous. 7 This is a recurrent idea, an oft-repeated exhortation, in Sri Aurobindo's writings.* Frail mortal man has nevertheless the promise... Mortally wounded, yet Baji is but broken - not bent. The battle rages as wild as ever, Baji's fifty men are reduced to a mere fifteen. Not minding his own wound, Baji charges the enemy for the last time, "like a bull with lowered horns that runs"; the Mogul wall yields again, but now eight men alone are left, and none unwounded. Already, however, Shivaji is back with a formidable force, and the ...
... broke from her lips, no call for aid; She told the secret of her woe to none: Calm was her face and courage kept her mute. Yet only her outward self suffered and strove; Even her humanity was half divine; Page 379 Her spirit opened to the Spirit in all, Her nature felt all Nature as its own. Apart, living within, all lives she bore; Aloof, she carried in herself... if kept apart under the direct gaze of the Infinite as has been found in the past of man's surface and finite view and experience of himself and...it as best he can with a limited mind and senses. The door that has been shut to all but a few may open; the kingdom of the Spirit may be established not only in man's inner being but in his life and his works. Poetry also may have its share in that revolution... alone in a golden house of thought Page 377 Has lived walled in by the safety of thy dreams. On heights of happiness leaving doom asleep Who hunts unseen the unconscious lives of men, If thy heart could live locked in the ideal's gold, As high, as happy might thy waking be! If for all time doom could be left to sleep!" (Vol. II pp 65,66,68) IV SAVITRI BEFORE ...
... into humanity; it has still to develop that humanity into its higher possibilities. Obviously, the soul that lodges in a Caribbee or an untaught primitive or an Apache of Paris or an American gangster, has not yet exhausted the necessity of human birth, has not developed all its possibilities or the whole meaning of humanity, has not worked out all the sense of Sachchidananda in the universal Man; neither... finite. In man this difficulty reaches its acme. For not only is mankind unlimited in potentiality, Page 194 not only is each of its powers and tendencies seeking after its own absolute in its own way and therefore naturally restless under any rigid control by the reason; but in each man their degrees, methods, combinations vary, each man belongs not only to the common humanity, but to the... which is a "laboratory"... for a spiritual and supramental yoga, humanity should be variously represented. For the problem of transformation has to deal with all sorts of elements favourable and unfavorable. The element favourable carries in him a mixture of these two things. If only sattwic [virtuous] and cultured men come for yoga, men without very much of the vital difficulty in them, then, because ...
... on the group or the whole is everywhere the law. What I sow in this hour, is reaped by my posterity for several generations and we can then call it the karma of the family. What the men of today as community or people resolve upon and execute, comes back with a blessing or a sword upon the future of their race when they themselves have passed away and are no longer there to rejoice or to suffer; and... matters supremely is what I make of my heredity and not what my heredity makes of me. The past of the world, bygone humanity, my ancestors are there in me; but still I myself am the artist of my self, my life, Page 363 my actions. And there is the present of the world, of humanity, there are my contemporaries as well as my ancestors; the life of my environment too enters into me, offers me a... wrought in its past, will shape its future Page 360 destiny; individuals seem only to be temporary units of human thought, will, nature who act according to the compulsion of the soul in humanity and disappear; but the karma of the race which they have helped to form continues through the centuries, the millenniums, the cycles. But we can see, when we look into ourselves, that this relation ...
... impossible; there will be a reign of falsehood and darkness, a cruel oppression and degradation for most of the human race such as people in this country do not dream of and cannot yet at all realise. If the other side that has declared itself for the free future of humanity triumphs, this terrible danger will have been averted and conditions will have been created in which there will be a chance for... some other power and only when that happened he did extraordinary things. People who have seen him at that time said how he thumped, cried and screamed. The Japanese ambassador said, 'This man is mad. It is dangerous to have any alliance with him.' It is strange how the whole German race was stupid enough to follow this man. Such a thing would not have been possible in France or other countries." ... for nearly half a century, he always kept in touch with all world-movements through outer and inner means. Perhaps people will find it difficult to believe and many will flatly deny that such a spiritual force exists; and it will be hard for them to swallow that, if at all it exists, a man acquiring and possessing it can apply it to an individual or cosmic purpose. But fortunately we have Sri Aurobindo's ...
... entire humanity was passing through a great period of transition. I am sure you have heard people talking of transitions, and in a sense, humanity has always been in a period of transition. But the sense that I had and have is that the present state of transition is something unfathomable, multi-dimensional and incalculable in its import. To tell you the truth, I had come to feel that humanity was getting... that I have come closer to you during this brief conversation, there is no harm in whispering into your ears the nature of my secret activities. We have formed a society of like-minded people. Most of them are young men and women. We are all convinced that the present world order is unjust and untenable and that there is a need of radical changes in every domain of life and at every level of our existence... heading in a column : "Fifty seven arrested." I felt curious and began to read the details of this column. A story was narrated here of a group of young people whose houses were raided, and how on the basis of the evidence collected, fifty seven young men and women were arrested. Towards the end was a line that plunged a dagger in my heart. It read "The leader of the group is one Mr. Balwant Bapat and ...
... she verily symbolised "the dawn of the new era when humanity in both hemispheres would respond in equal measure to the call of the Divine". 14 On Darshan days in 1954, the tradition of organising educative exhibitions and having them opened by the Mother was continued and they evoked universal appreciation. The exhibition on "The Future Man" was thus opened on 21 February in the University Library;... Ascent to the Truth (another play written Page 575 by the Mother and staged on 1 December 1956) are much more than mere dramatic divertissements. The characters are recognisable types of humanity caught in the contemporary predicament of inescapable frustration. Is mankind doomed to go round and round the prickly pear of alternating giant exertion followed by abysmal defeat? Is there no way... defend themselves against it, suffered from its consequences. The world, the whole earth suffered from its consequences. There was a general deterioration from the vital point of view.... Naturally, men do not know what happened to them; all that they have said is that everything had become worse since the war.... For example, the moral level went down very much. It was simply the result of a formidable ...
... best and we may quote them for their cumulative effect of the Homeric "how" of saying things: Sing to me, Muse, of the man many-counselled who far through the world's ways Wandering was tossed after Troya he sacked, the divine stronghold. Many cities of men he beheld, learned the minds of their dwellers, Many the woes in his soul he suffered driven on the waters, Fending... the technical insights of Sri Aurobindo, misses yet the genuine Homeric "how" of expression, except for line 4: Sing, O Muse, of the man so weary and wise, who in far lands Wandered whenas he had wasted the sacred town of the Trojans. Many a people he saw and beheld their cities and customs, Many a woe he endured in his heart as he tossed on the ocean, Striving to win him... disciple Page 309 in the art of the caesura. Virgil, in the midst of describing a storm and the wreck of the ships of Aeneas, breaks into a line of universal appeal, the soul of all humanity speaking poignantly and profoundly: O passi graviora! dabit deus his quoque finem. Lewis gets something of the poignancy but it is not verbally subtle enough or rhythmically keen enough ...
... fortify and support it in its self-fulfilment. Loss of faith is the greatest loss modern man has suffered on account of his exclusive reliance on reason. Reason and Revelation The greatest scriptures of the world, those that have given spiritual strength and sustenance, light and joy to humanity ¹ & ² Words of the Mother. Page 214 through the ages... an obstacle to the higher realisation... People do not regard an all-engrossing satisfaction of the vital desires or the animal appetites as a virtue; the moral sense is accepted as a mentor to tell one the bounds that one may not transgress. It is only in his intellectual activities that man thinks that he can do without any such mentor or censor!”¹ Man's moral and spiritual sensibilities have been... the best interests of world peace and security. They maul and mutilate, ravage ¹ Man the Unknown by Alexis Carrel, Page 217 and destroy all higher values and the priceless legacies of the past; they lay waste vast areas of productive earth and poison the health and happiness of millions of men; they pollute the very air we breathe and the very water we drink, with strident professions ...
... and still increasing materialism of our times has shut us to the splendours in the life of the Spirit. "From this point of view," says the Mother, "humanity is far from having progressed." Is it enough that the modern man has more comforts than the cave-man of thousands of years ago? But where is the old foresight, where are the dreamers and prophets and visionaries? Where ignorance oft parades as bliss... audiences, for things have radically changed since then: Mental capacity seems to have grown, mental power seems to have developed, men seem to be much more capable of playing with ideas... but at the same time they have lost the simple and healthy candour of people who lived closer to Nature and knew less how to play with ideas. While a return to the past will not be wise, the current materialistic... Mara is the symbol of all that opposes the spiritual life; he is indeed the engineer of spiritual death. A gale may fell a tree, but not a rock; likewise, Mara may knock down the man of little or no faith, but not the man anchored in the true faith or faith in "one's own possibilities". Then, there is the ochre robe of the Buddhist monk, and of ascetics generally. But it is not the mere robe ...
... al, without force, incapable of creation or intelligent production, the man fit only for unskilled labour and menial service, the Shudra. The economic order of society was Page 170 cast in the form and gradation of these four types. The Brahmin class was called upon to give the community its priests, thinkers, men of letters, legists, scholars, religious leaders and guides. The Kshatriya... it was given a very different revealing significance. The ancient Indian idea was that man falls by his nature into four types. There are, first and highest, the man of learning and thought and knowledge; next, the man of power and action, ruler, warrior, leader, administrator; third in the scale, the economic man, producer and wealth-getter, the merchant, artisan, cultivator: these were the twice-born... corruption, degeneracy or oppressive formalism when the uses that justified it are no longer in existence. Even when its ways can no longer be made consistent with the developing needs of the growth of humanity, the formal system persists and corrupts the truth of life and blocks progress. Indian society did not escape this general law; it was overtaken by these deficiencies, lost the true sense of the thing ...
... knew fully well that they would not? 21 The Divine often advises or tries to guide man, knowing very well that His help will be refused. Why then does He do it? The Divine always informs, but it is rare indeed for men to listen to Him. Either they do not hear Him or do not believe Him. Men always complain of not being helped, but the truth is that they refuse the help which is always... at a rose, a thing that contains such a concentration of spontaneous beauty—not man-made: spontaneous, a blossoming; one has only to Page 341 see it to be sure that there is a Divine. It is a certainty. One cannot... it is impossible not to believe. It is like those people (this is fantastic!), those people who study Nature, really study it thoroughly, how everything functions and is brought... truth, this beauty of expression escape people! It is really strange that he is not yet recognised, at least as a supreme creator, a pure artist, a poet par excellence! So I tell myself that my judgments, my appreciations are influenced by my devotion for the Master—and not everyone is Page 308 devoted. I do not think this is true. But then, why are men's hearts not yet enchanted by His Words ...
... else had to do before us. For the Leader of the Way in a work like ours has not only to bring down and represent and embody the Divine, but to represent too the ascending element in humanity and to bear the burden of humanity to the full and experience, not in a mere play or Lila but in grim earnest, all the obstruction, difficulty, opposition, baffled and hampered and only slowly victorious labour which... its light and power and beauty,—not an egoistic supermanhood seizing on a mental and vital domination over humanity, but the sovereignty of the Spirit over its own instruments, its possession of itself and its possession of life in the power of the spirit, a new consciousness in which humanity itself shall find its own self-exceeding and self-fulfilment by the revelation of the divinity that is striving... Aurobindo about them. What a life!... People don't know what goes on. They know nothing—nothing. But it's fantastic. Occasionally some people were slightly conscious. For instance, during the last war I spent all my nights hovering above Paris (not integrally, but a part of myself) so that nothing would happen to the city. Later it came out that several people had seen what seemed to be a great white ...
... herself if she is to solve the problem of man with which she is faced. In fact, her task amounts to finding out a "magic leverage" in the midst of this vast cosmic prison-house of Ignorance so that man can attain spiritual freedom. Savitri's labour is not so much for herself as for humanity, because her own calamity is to her only a "private sign" of man's general fate. The question she has to face... awakening "Humanity framed his movements less and less". It was no longer possible for him to allow the human elements in him to govern his life, and to accept as final the limitations of human nature. He awoke in himself latent powers, faculties that lay dormant in him—powers of pure perception, intimate vision, and also of spiritual experience. He could know the motives, ideas and wishes in other men and... might. They drive the course of human events towards the intended purpose and in this process they do not care for the great commotion or disturbance which is caused in humanity. Their impact on the earth consciousness enables man to rise to a higher stage of evolution, and after having accomplished their purpose, leaving a permanent result of their work in life upon earth, they retire to their divine ...
... downright devastating as Page 160 the sonnet, but thirty or forty years earlier he preferred to be more insinuating, ' re persuasively positive in his affirmation. That man's mind should reduce humanity to cells, glands and plasms was like the infinite denying infinity! While (in Vision of Science) the two Angels were caught in their dialectic, there came the third Angel and tore away... from Kama's own exhortation: Thou, O solid earth, Enter into all life, support the worlds. I send forth joy to cheer the hearts of men, I send forth law to harmonise and rule. And when these things are done, when men have learned Page 172 My beauty. My desirability, My bliss, I will conceal myself from their desire And make this rule... human body on the snows.... Then to my human frame awhile descend And walk mid men, choosing my instruments, Testing, rejecting and confirming souls - Vessels of the Spirit; for the golden age In Kali comes, the iron lined with gold, The Yoga shall be given back to men, The sects shall cease, the grim debates die out And atheism perish from the ...
... and see the Cosmic Consciousness on earth individualising itself in all forms—plant, animal, man and growing towards what is beyond man. Plants It is true that the plant world—even the animals if one takes them the right way—can be much better than human beings. It is the mental distortion that makes men worse. The plants are very psychic, but they can express it only by silence and beauty... The minds of these people [ scientists ] are too much accustomed to deal with physical things and things measurable by instruments and figures to be much good for any other provinces. Einstein's views outside his domain are crude and childish, a sort of unsubstantial commonplace idealism without grasp on realities. As a man can be a great scholar and yet simple and foolish, so a man can be a great scientist... not usually attack unless they are menaced or frightened or somehow made angry—and they can feel the atmosphere of people. There are people who can move the ears without doing Yoga at all or calling upon the resources of the Kundalini. I suppose it is simply a movement that man has lost through disuse, not having had like the animals to prick up his ear at every moment to listen to sounds that ...
... in an editorial under the heading 'The Crisis' Sri Aurobindo wrote: In this grave crisis of our destinies let not our people lose their fortitude or suffer stupefaction and depression to seize upon and unnerve their souls.... Lala Lajpat Rai has gone from us, but doubt not that men stronger and greater than he will take his place. For when a living and rising cause is persecuted, this is the sure result... but in .a sudden moment of awakening from long delusions the people of Bengal looked round for the truth and in a fated moment somebody sang ' Bande Mataram'. The mantra had been given and in a single day a whole people had been converted to the religion of patriotism. The Mother had revealed herself. Once that vision has come to a people, there can be no rest, no peace, no further slumber till the... individuals risk everything, ease, wealth, liberty, life itself maybe, not out of hatred and hostility to other nations but in the firm conviction that we are working as much in the interest of all humanity, including England herself as in those of our own posterity and nation.... If England chooses to feel aggrieved by our nation-building, and obstruct it by unjust, violent or despotic means, it is ...
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