... social and economic organisation, — all these have been constantly influenced and moulded by the inspiring force of a multisided spirituality. Page 17 The distinctive character of Indian spirituality is its conscious and deliberate insistence on direct experience. It affirms that deep within the heart and high above the mind there is accessible to our consciousness a realm of truths, powers... of the spirit is far superior to dogma, belief and ritualism, and that dogmatic religion can and must ultimately be surpassed by experiential spirituality. Consequently, the history of Indian spirituality and religion shows a remarkable spirit of research, of an increasing subtlety, plasticity, sounding of depths, extension of seeking. There have been systems of specialisation and also conflicting... dispensable one, of the real and comprehensive system. Page 18 passing through the fifth stage, represented by a new synthesis, which is in the making. It is impossible to describe Indian spirituality and religion by any exclusive label. Even in its advanced forms, it cannot be described as monotheism or monism or pantheism or nihilism or transcendentalism, although each one of these is present ...
... can you suggest that Indian spirituality is not typically Indian but international? Page 259 Of course, we do not wish to say that the West is incapable of such spirituality or that it has absolutely nothing of it. Hut on the whole there is certainly an absence in the West of what is common air and water to the Indian spiritual aspirant. Further, Indian spirituality is assimilative and... and progressive - it can take into itself all the finest and deepest of Christianity -but Christianity knows itself only by opposing itself to Indian spirituality, by which it mostly understands a Western-type pantheism or Shankarite Illusionism (without appreciating Shahkara's lifelong devotion to the Divine Mother). Illusionism itself is misunderstood as landing the mystic in material unconsciousness... ness instead of in spiritual superconsciousness. Look at what the most progressive Christian - Teilhard de Chardin - has to say on Indian spirituality in general. He rejects it - for all its fascination through its sense of the cosmic - with horror and even tries to explain away his own pantheistic inclinations in terms of orthodox Roman Catholic theology! We are not by any chance fanatics ...
... other, resulting in confusion and yet enrichment, impelling wider understanding and mutual assimilation. There came about hardening of certain institutions coupled with opulence and richness; Indian spirituality inspired and supported art, architecture, sculpture, literature, philosophy and various sciences and arts to such a degree that there was nothing in the cultural domains which was not attempted... the midst of darkness that grew darker when the British triumphed in establishing its rule. By the year 1857, however, the first Battle of Independence heralded the advent of the new age, and Indian spirituality reasserted itself. Page 54 India had begun to enter into its fourth stage of development. First of all, the Indian mind was obliged to reconsider its own past in the light of the... Dayananda, Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, on the other, gave a new impetus not only to a new awakening but also to creation of new forms of culture on the basis of the original motive and power of the Indian spirituality. The political struggle for freedom assumed a powerful figure of nationalism drawing its force of sustenance from the ancient religio-philosophical culture, and the idea of the national ...
... Indian Spirituality and Life The Renaissance in India VIII Indian Spirituality and Life - 2 The task of religion and spirituality is to mediate between God and man, between the Eternal and Infinite and this transient, yet persistent finite, between a luminous Truth-consciousness not expressed or not yet expressed here and the Mind's ignorance. But nothing... inwards to the Truth which lies behind them. This external vision and attraction are the essence of the universal blinding force which is designated in Indian philosophy the Ignorance. Ancient Indian spirituality recognised that man lives in the Ignorance and has to be led through its imperfect indications to a highest inmost knowledge. Our life moves between two worlds, the depths upon depths of our... experiences as the one thing needful; the development of the ethical sense was the sole mental necessity, its translation into act the sole indispensable condition or result of the spiritual life. Indian spirituality reposed on too wide and many-sided a culture to admit as its base this narrow movement; but on its more solitary summits, at least in its later period, it tended to a spiritual exclusiveness ...
... spiritual experience to its farthest point, and chose to look from that farthest point at existence, so as to see what Truth or power it could give. That was the part of the heroic adventure of the Indian spirituality that manifested the spirit of experimentation and even a risky experimentation. There have been from this point of view the birth and growth of a number of exclusive spiritual pursuits, but ... development of spirituality that found itself on the special emphasis on synthesis and dynamic manifestation of the Spirit in life on the earth. In a. larger perspective of the history of the Indian spirituality, we can derive three important lessons that characterise true Indianness; firstly, that spirituality does not flourish on earth in the void; secondly, that spirituality and exuberance of life... India rose in the 19th and 20th centuries, the most leading power of reawakening has come from the impulse of dynamic spirituality and a synthetic spirituality. IV To speak only of Indian spirituality is an incomplete and misleading description of Indianness. For before the period of exhaustion, for at least three thousand years, India created abundantly and incessantly, lavishly, with an ...
... even when there is an unprecedented demand for internationality, universal citizenship, and oneness of humanity? - We can say that the first task of India is to understand what may be called Indian spirituality, its synthetic tendency, its catholicity, and its power to rejuvenate springs of culture Page 329 and irrigate the paths of perfection of intellectuality, vitality of heroism and vitality... This is evident from the way in which the West is turning to the East. This is also evident from the counsels of some of the greatest historians of our times, who have pointed to India and Indian spirituality for the cure of the decline and fall of the Western civilisation that is built upon the vital and pragmatic drives and intellect as the sole and highest governor of social building. And... culture through the entire educational programme in the country. The duties of citizens as laid down in the Constitution include the promotion of Indian heritage, which implies the study of Indian spirituality. With all these enabling factors, there should be no great difficulty to propose and implement spiritual education. Page 345 There are, however, those who maintain that the mind is ...
... behind the skin of this stupidity and perversity, and discover if he can the bone-structure supporting such a sustained asinine mascularity of invective against Indian culture. Quite simply, Indian spirituality - the surge and rise of the soul in man to the Truth, the Right, the Vast (satyam-rtam-brhat) at the heart of all existence - is the red rag to Archer' bullish "rationality". The only brand... is not pessimism, and the hope of "a luminous ascent into godhead" is not pessimistic either. Nor are pessimism and asceticism peculiar to India, and the central point to be pressed is that "Indian spirituality in its greatest eras and in its inmost significance has not been a tired quietism or a conventional monasticism, but a high effort of the human spirit to rise beyond the life of desire and vital... the renaissance couldn't be achieved through a wholesale outer change alone. Ultimate success would thus depend on the extent to which a deeply spiritual turn is given to all our activities. Indian spirituality has never meant a heady flight from life, and hasn't been wedded to dogma or asceticism or mere sectarianism. On the contrary, it is an all-inclusive or integral force of becoming, comprising ...
... its polity and social and economic organisation, — all these have been constantly influenced and moulded by the inspiring force of a multisided spirituality. The distinctive character of Indian spirituality is its conscious and deliberate insistence on direct experience. It affirms that deep within the heart and high above the Page 457 mind there is accessible to our consciousness a... of the spirit is far superior to dogma, belief and ritualism, and that dogmatic religion can and must ultimately be surpassed by experiential spirituality. Consequently, the history of Indian spirituality and religion shows a remarkable spirit of research, of an increasing subtlety, plasticity, sounding of depths, extension of seeking. There have been systems of specialisation and also conflicting... the Upanishads, the Gita and the Tantra. And, in modern times, we are passing through the fifth stage, represented by a new synthesis, which is in the making. It is impossible to describe Indian spirituality and religion by any exclusive label. Even in its advanced forms, it cannot be described as monotheism or monism or pantheism Page 458 or nihilism or transcendentalism, although each ...
... its polity and social and economic organization,—all these have been constantly influenced and moulded by the inspiring force of a multi-sided spirituality. The distinctive character of Indian spirituality is its conscious and deliberate insistence on direct experience. It affirms that deep within the heart and high above the mind there is accessible to our consciousness a realm of truths... the spirit is far superior to dogma, belief and ritualism, and that dogmatic religion can and must ultimately be surpassed by experiential spirituality. Consequently, the history of Indian spirituality and religion shows a remarkable spirit of research, of an increasing subtlety, plasticity, sounding of depths, extension of seeking. There have been systems of specialization and also conflicting... Upanishads, the Gita, and the Tantra. And, in modem times, we are passing through the fifth stage, represented by a new synthesis, which is in the making. It is impossible to describe Indian spirituality and religion by any exclusive label. Even in its advanced forms, it cannot be described as monotheism or monism or pantheism or nihilism or transcendtalism, although each one of these is present ...
... the significance of this failure and this temporary eclipse. I may have to deal with it again at closer quarters, since it has been raised as an objection to the value of Indian culture and Indian spirituality. At present it will be enough to say that culture cannot be judged by material success; still less can spirituality be brought to that touchstone. Philosophic, aesthetic, poetic, intellectual... Vatel and Beau Brummell are then the true heroes of artistic creation and not Da Vinci, Angelo, Sophocles, Dante, Shakespeare or Rodin. Whether Mr. Archer's epithets and his accusations against Indian spirituality stand in the comparison, let the judicious determine. But meanwhile we see the opposition of the standpoints and begin to understand the inwardness of the difference between the West and India... there is, its novelty is but of a day. Pessimism has been as rampant in Europe as in India and it is certainly a singular thing to find the materialist of all people bringing against Indian spirituality this accusation of lowering the values of existence. For what can be more depressing than the materialistic view of the quite physical and ephemeral nature of human life? There is nothing in ...
... each other resulting in confusion and yet enrichment impelling wider understanding and mutual assimilation There came about hardening of certain institutions coupled with opulence and richness; Indian spirituality inspired and supported art, architecture, sculpture literature philosophy and various sciences and arts to such a degree that there was nothing in the cultural domains which was not attempted... the midst of darkness that grew darker when the British triumphed in establishing its rule. By the year 1857, however, the first Battle of Independence heralded the advent of the new age, and Indian spirituality reasserted itself. India had begun to enter into its fourth stage of development. First of all, the Indian mind was obliged to reconsider its own past in the light of the new situation that... Dayananda, Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, on the other, gave a new impetus not only to a new awakening but also to creation of new forms of culture on the basis of the original motive and power of the Indian spirituality. The political struggle for freedom assumed a powerful figure of nationalism drawing its force of sustenance from the ancient religio-philosophical culture, and the idea of the national ...
... Indian Spirituality and Life The Renaissance in India VII Indian Spirituality and Life - 1 I have described the framework of the Indian idea from the outlook of an intellectual criticism, because that is the standpoint of the critics who affect to disparage its value. I have shown that Indian culture must be adjudged even from this alien outlook to have ...
... Indian Spirituality and Life The Renaissance in India XI Indian Spirituality and Life - 5 The most general charge against Indian culture in its practical effects can be dismissed without any serious difficulty. The critic with whom I have to deal has, in fact, spoiled his case by the spirit of frantic exaggeration in which he writes. To say that there ...
... Immanent Divinity while Christianity gave due place to both Aspects; but, in matter of fact, Indian spirituality, even if it laid the final stress on the Highest beyond form and name, yet gave ample recognition and place to the Divine immanent in the world and the Divine immanent in the human being. Indian spirituality has, it is true, a wider and more minute knowledge behind it; it has followed hundreds ...
... allure of the aloof Perfection to the dreamer in us of spiritual plenitude is greater than that of the world-intimate imperfect shedding of manifesting light. This fight is the history of Indian spirituality in the past. It can end only if a NEW vision is both entertained and practised - the vision of Page 66 complete illumination down to the very cells of the... the integral descent of the Supermind - has not shown itself utterly in the most outer physical. What has already happened, however, is more significant than anything in the history of Indian spirituality, for only the last steps in the top-to-toe descent remain and not even the first extraordinary steps that lead to these last have been taken by anyone hitherto. Even before the last hundredth ...
... vital energy and a fading of the joy of life and the joy of creation"; secondly, "a rapid cessation of the old free intellectual activity" (17); and, finally, the diminution of the power of Indian spirituality (17). Sri Aurobindo then identifies three "impulses" that arise from the "impact of European life and culture" (18). In the second essay, he rephrases them. The Western impact reawakened "a free... 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 instrumental in spiritualising the world and in bringing about what many have called a global transformation. In our present times of the clash of ...
... Evolution and the Earthly Destiny Humanism and Humanism A GOOD many European scholars and philosophers have found Indian spirituality and Indian culture, at bottom, lacking in what is called "humanism."1 So our scholars and philosophers on their side have been at pains to rebut the charge and demonstrate the humanistic element in our tradition. It may be... reason that the Promethean prophet conjured man to transcend his humanity anyhow, and rise to a superior status of culture and civilisation, of being and consciousness as we would say. Indian spirituality precisely envisages such a transcendence. According to it, the liberated soul, one who lives in and with the Brahman or the Supreme Divine is he who has discarded the inferior human nature and ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Divine Humanism A GOOD many European scholars and philosophers have found Indian spirituality and Indian culture, at bottom, lacking in what is called 'humanism'.* So our scholars and philosophers on their side have been at pains to rebut the charge and demonstrate the humanistic element in our tradition. It... reason that the Promethean prophet conjured man to transcend his humanity anyhow and rise to a superior status of culture and civilisation – of being and consciousness, as we would say. Indian spirituality envisages precisely such a transcendence. According to it, the liberated soul, one who lives in and with the Brahman or the Supreme Divine, is he who has discarded the inferior human nature ...
... developments and great treasures of spiritual knowledge and experience. If we are to search for our cultural identity, we can say that the first task of India is to understand what may be called Indian spirituality, its synthetic tendency, its catholicity, and its power to rejuvenate springs of culture and irrigate the paths of perfection of intellectuality, vitality of heroism and vitality and capacity... This is evident from the way in which the West is turning to the East. This is also evident from the counsels of some of the greatest historians of our times, who have pointed to India and Indian spirituality for the cure of the decline and fall of the Western civilisation that is built upon the vital and pragmatic drives and intellect as the sole and highest governor of social building. And... culture through the entire educational programme in the country. The duties of citizens as laid down in the Constitution include the promotion of Indian heritage, which implies the study of Indian spirituality. With all these enabling factors, there should be no great difficulty to propose and implement spiritual education. There are, however, those who maintain that the mind is the highest ...
... and the birth of activity of all the godheads - this is the quintessence of the means of attaining Knowledge, which results in immortality. 6 We find the most characteristic ideas of Indian spirituality in their seed in the Veda though not in their full expression. There is, first, the idea of the one Existence, supra-cosmic, beyond the individual and the universe. There is also the idea of... elect, but to draw all human beings and all life and all the parts and planes of the human personality upward, to spiritualise life and in the end to divinise the human nature. Indian spirituality as seen in the Veda, recognised both the spiritual and physical poles of existence, and sought the experience and realisation of higher planes of the Spirit even in the physical consciousness... perception that could explain the drift of Indian religion and spirituality towards a wide and many-sided culture. It is true that on its more solitary summits, at least in its later periods, Indian spirituality tended to a spiritual exclusiveness, which was, whatever its loftiness, quite excessive. Actually this exclusiveness imposed on Indian culture a certain impotence to deal effectively with the ...
... experience to its farthest point, and chose to look from that farthest point at existence, so as to see what Truth or power it could give. That was the part of the heroic adventure of the Indian spirituality that manifested the spirit of experimentation and even a risky experimentation. There have been from this point of view the birth and growth of a number of excusive spiritual pursuits, but... development of spirituality that found itself on the special emphasis on synthesis and dynamic manifestation of the Spirit in life on the earth. In a larger perspective of the history of the Indian spirituality, we can derive three important lessons that characterise true Indianness; firstly, that spirituality does not flourish on earth in the void; secondly, that spirituality and exuberance of life... the 19th and 20th centuries, the most leading power of reawakening has come from the impulse of dynamic Page 71 spirituality and a synthetic spirituality. To speak only of Indian spirituality is an incomplete and misleading description of Indianness. For before the period of exhaustion, for at least three thousand years, India created abundantly and incessantly, lavishly, with an ...
... birth of activity of all the godheads, — this is the quintessence of the means of attaining Knowledge, which results in immortality. 8 We find in the Veda the most characteristic ideas of Indian spirituality in their seed, though not in their full expansion. There is, first, the idea of the one Existence 9 , supra-cosmic, beyond the individual and universe. There is also the idea of one god who presents... not only to raise to inaccessible heights the few elect, but to draw all men and all life and the whole human being upward, to spiritualise life and in the end to divinise human nature. Indian spirituality, as seen in the Veda recognised both the spiritual and physical poles of existence, and sought the experiences and realisation of higher planes of the Spirit even in physical consciousness (prithvi)... perception that could explain the drift of Indian religion and spirituality towards a wide and many-sided culture. It is true that on its more solitary summits, at least in its later periods, Indian spirituality tended to a spiritual exclusiveness, which was, whatever its loftiness, quite impressive and excessive. Actually this exclusiveness imposed on Indian culture a certain impotence to deal effectively ...
... 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 would not have recognised... future world culture would have to be founded. A man without literary education is a standing challenge to the modern world, its scepticism, atheism and materialism. Through him the power of Indian spirituality, in its pure form, was effectively brought to the notice of the modern world. Ramakrishna and Vivekananda inspired nearly two generations of Indians when they were in bondage with self-confidence... of the inner, salutorily reformative of the outer life"20 " Indian culture ... has held up the goal of a supreme and arduous self-exceeding as the summit of human endeavour."21 " Indian spirituality in its greatest eras and in its inmost significance has not been a tired quietism or a conventional monasticism, but a high effort of the human spirit to rise beyond the life of desire and vital ...
... culture of ancient India had left no doubt in his mind of its "stupendous vitality", its "inexhaustible power of life and joy of life", its "almost unimaginable prolific creativeness". Ancient Indian spirituality was not a despairing gospel of world-disgust and supine quiescence, whatever may have been the passing symptoms of its long period of decline. It was a virile affirmation of life, but of a... root when I was eighteen." When he was fourteen years old, he was in England, knowing practically nothing of India, Indian culture, or the political and economic condition of India, let alone Indian spirituality. He knew next to nothing of Yoga. The seed that he speaks of must then have been a spontaneous inner awakening, a lightning flash of his soul's consciousness of its life-work. The seed took... is also a translation in English verse by Sri Aurobindo. Page 65 secret fire of an intense yearning for God and the fulfilment of His work on earth through a resurgence of Indian spirituality. 71 But when he first appears before his countrymen as a political thinker, it is only the love of his motherland that shines forth and inspires his writings, and the political liberation ...
... religious or philosophical eclecticism, but by an embracing and unifying spiritual vision, and it stands unparalleled in its comprehensive- ness in the annals of ancient mystical achievements. Indian spirituality, however, described a downward curve soon after this gigantic synthesis had lost its hold upon the people's mind. The lower parts of the nature of man, released from the central control of... impact of Western Materialism was a reaffirmation of the bare truth of the transcendent Absolute, and an uncompromising rejection of almost all that constitutes the richness and diversity of Indian spirituality. It was, as if, at that moment of eager return, the soul of India was trying to clutch at the roots of spirituality, which was its main- stay, and hack at the branches and leaves and flowers... for the accomplishment of his mission. Fourth, he heralded the coming synthesis in spirituality and foreshadowed something of its outline in his life and teachings. In Sri Râmakrishna Indian spirituality came to close! grips with the materialistic culture of the West. And what was the result of the combat? Vivekânanda and resurgent India. Vivekânanda, the "cyclonic Hindu", as he was described ...
... Indian Spirituality and Life The Renaissance in India IX Indian Spirituality and Life - 3 It is essential, if we are to get a right view of Indian civilisation or of any civilisation, to keep to the central, living, governing things and not to be led away by the confusion of accidents and details. This is a precaution which the critics of our culture ...
... Indian Spirituality and Life The Renaissance in India X Indian Spirituality and Life - 4 I have dwelt at some length, though still very inadequately, on the principles of Indian religion, the sense of its evolution and the intention of its system, because these things are being constantly ignored and battle delivered by its defenders and assailants on ...
... therefore have had global consequences in their lifetime and afterwards. India has become free; Asia has woken up; in Europe the European Union has been founded; the world is becoming one; Indian spirituality is penetrating the West; the supramental transformation of the world is under way. Each of these momentous changes in history was predicted by Sri Aurobindo between 1914 and 1921, at a moment... would develop a moral authority which would enable it to pursue with less and less opposition and friction the unification of mankind.” 77 Sri Aurobindo’s next prediction was about Indian spirituality spreading to the West and the other parts of the globe. That this has become a fact, and is ever-increasing, is so obvious that it does not need documentary support. The start of this contact ...
... pursuit". Teilhard de Chardin was born with an intuition of Indian spirituality that he called "pantheism" and grossly misunderstood because of the Western pantheistic philosophy that excludes the Transcendent. He always fought with himself because of conventional Catholic scruples and never achieved the synthesis of the true Indian spirituality which, from the time of the Rigveda, held that the Supreme ...
... 'horse-sacrifice' I realize that the Horse too plays a central part in Indian life, though a very different one from the Forest. As to the last stage of life few surely can face that solitude, Indian spirituality is so absolute in its affirmation that finally all this earth and all that it inherit must fade. I love it all so much, and see may a not as illusion so much as epiphany - the continual s... tackle the trivialities later." Your reference, apropos of your surprise that I was a "horseman", to the horse as an important part of Indian life gives me a cue to some observations on Indian spirituality. As you know, this spirituality has its fountainhead in the Rigveda, the earliest religious document of the Indo-European linguistic family to which both of us belong. In the Rigveda the cow ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Humanism and Humanism A GOOD many European scholars and philosophers have found Indian spirituality and Indian culture, at bottom, lacking in what is called "humanism."¹ So our scholars and philosophers on their side have been at pains to rebut the charge and demonstrate the humanistic element in our... this reason that the Promethean prophet conjured man to transcend his humanity anyhow, and rise to a superior status of culture and civilisation, of being and consciousness as we would say. Indian spirituality precisely envisages such a transcendence. According to it, the liberated soul, one who lives in and with the Brahman or the Supreme Divine is he who 'has discarded the inferior human nature and ...
... The Veda and Indian Culture _____________Appendix II____________ Important Landmarks of Indian History (Relevant to Indian Spirituality, Religion and Philosophy) The ancient dates of Indian history are quite uncertain. The earliest records of Indian history are the Vedas, but the period, when they were composed, has been a matter of controversy... which generated waves of nationalist movement and led India to her freedom on 15th August, 1947. It is, however, important to note that the meaning and significance of the vast effort of Indian spirituality and culture began to be understood only in the context of what is happening since the turn of the century in the inner life of India. It is, in fact, through the life and work of Sri Aurobindo ...
... also mean one who increases in being, in his brahma, his soul, who is getting vája or substance. The word Brahma is a great word in Indian thought, the greatest of all the words in which Indian spirituality has expressed itself; it means in the Upanishads, in all later literature, the Brahman, the Supreme & the All, the Spirit of Things & the sole reality. We need not ask ourselves, as yet, whether ...
... the highest flight of life, its very goal, and a governing force, a shaping power in art and culture and conduct. But art and culture and conduct are things which, this rational mind tells us, Indian spirituality and religion ought logically not to touch at all; for they belong to the realm of the finite and can only be founded on the intellectual reason and the practical environment and the truths and ...
... hints and bringing out their significance until it rises to its last great suggestion, its supreme mystery which it does not work out at all, but leaves to be lived out, as the later ages of Indian spirituality tried to live it out in great waves of love, of surrender, of ecstasy. Its eye is always on its synthesis and all its strains are the gradual preparation of the mind for its high closing note ...
... wrath of God against the sinner, God's hatred of the wicked are the fables of half-enlightened creeds, as much a fable as the eternal torture of the Hells they have invented,—but, as the old Indian spirituality clearly saw, with as much love and compassion for the strong Titan erring by his strength and slain for his sins as for the sufferer and the oppressed who have to be saved from his violence and ...
... of how Christian mystics are to be understood when they speak of being one with God and seeing no difference. Are you not being rather doctrinaire? Must apologetics lead you to consider all Indian spirituality dead wrong in asserting from experience the essential oneness of the soul with God and the existential difference in the manifested world? Must Church-dogma make you refuse to believe in their ...
... the knowledge of it as "a penultimate knowledge": the designation gives no prominence to the realisation of the Shankarite Self as compared with the various other realisations found in Indian spirituality down the ages. Vis-à-vis those realisations Sri Aurobindo has written of it: "There can certainly be no doubt of the validity, - complete within itself, - of this experience; there ...
... are, because of their essential catholicity of motive, really acceptable by even a person who though in India does not think and pray with a consciousness in direct tune with the typical Indian spirituality; but if anyone takes objection to them because of their non-Islamic, non-Christian, non-Jewish, non-Zoroastrian, non-Sikh, non-Jain and even non-Buddhist suggestion, then he fails to understand ...
... regarding the destiny we have spoken of. Sri Aurobindo has given the world what is at once the finest and grandest literary achievement of modern India and the deepest and highest articulation of Indian spirituality today - the epic with which he was occupied in the spare hours of a Yogi and which grew to over twenty-five thousand lines: Savitri, a Legend and a Symbol. In Savitri, we have proof as ample ...
... plane's typical seekings to build truth by its limited and uncertain though ingenious and multi-mooded power. The key-word recurs when Sri Aurobindo discusses some correspondences between Indian spirituality and the mystic thought in the background of a certain line of Greek philosophy. Broadly he writes: "The ideas of the Upanishads can be rediscovered in much of Pythagoras and Plato and form the ...
... the light on Nature's face. Among the poems of Sri Aurobindo's middle period, The Rishi represents, in a semi-dramatic form, the fullest philosophic statement of the all-round ancient Indian spirituality, at once life-transcending and life-embracing, which later ages broke up into many divergent strains and finally tended to narrow down to one predominant strain of other-worldly renunciation ...
... Aurobindo was educated in the West and has assimilated all that Westernism can give, and so can reach most effectively the Westernised being of Nehru and yet reach it with the whole bulk of Indian spirituality plunging with a unique dynamic direction in it to break wide a gate for the soul to emerge and make life flower in full. But Gandhi has not the Moksha, the soul's liberation into the ...
... and pass out, abandoning as ultimately useless the instruments through which it has worked. Some sense of this fulfilling destiny of the universe and its forms was there in very early ages of Indian spirituality; but it faded afterwards. Sri Aurobindo seizes that sense, clarifies it, dynamises it as a result of his Yoga which moves beyond all the splendid achievements of the past and reaches a power ...
... language has on it the stamp of a divine destiny. 11 Raine does not deny any of his arguments but then she thinks India is not yet ripe to produce work "that unites the knowledge of Indian spirituality with the polymorphous potentialities of English" Not for a long time. Pat comes Amal Kiran's reply which I did not read till this volume was published in 1986 and when I did, I felt as though ...
... humanity’s future; the awakening of Asia; the formation of supranational conglomerates, like the European Union, which would lead to the unification of mankind; world unity; and the spreading of the Indian spirituality and its techniques of self-realization, necessary for the change in the human being without which a better future is not possible. None of the five points is fully accomplished (the real India ...
... the Mahabharata and the Puranas. There is no reason to suppose that the connection of his name with the development of the Bhagavata religion, an important current in the stream of Indian spirituality, was founded on a mere legend or poetic invention. The Mahabharata is a poem and not history, but it is clearly a poem founded on a great historical event, traditionally preserved in memory; ...
... is reported to have been that, whatever might be the case, the dust could not be the proper thing for a man to lie in, and that man had not been created to adopt a prone posture.’ 17 That Indian spirituality (and its Eastern derivatives), as predicted by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, is spreading throughout the world, is undeniable. Truth is one; so are the fundamental human constitution, psychology ...
... fear-free pastures of the shining cows" (12th Hymn to Agni, verse 6). Perhaps the compound adjective standing for the Rigvedic attitude points to at least a strong strain in the original Indian spirituality which persisted in the Upanishads in the midst of some tendencies towards the future sense of world-illusion and differed markedly from the later Shankarite complete intransigence towards earth-life ...
... can you expect other than a confusion in your being? Especially Krishnamurti, with his intellectual seductiveness, must have been a contra influence - he strives to strike at the very root of Indian spirituality which lays a stress on guidance by and devotion to a Gum.The Integral Yoga is a very positive power and the personal presence of its teachers, whether physical or subtle, has to be felt all the ...
... [pp. 343-44] * Among the poems of Sri Aurobindo's middle period, The Rishi represents, in a semi-dramatic form, the fullest philosophic statement of the all-round ancient Indian spirituality, at once life-transcending and life-embracing, which later ages broke up into many divergent strains and finally tended to narrow down to one predominant strain of other-worldly renunciation ...
... hrdaye guhāyām 165 Huta 281,298,330 hymns to Agni 299 I Ignorance 248 immortality 61,83,90,303 Inconscience 80,95,247,260,321,328 Inconscient 252 Indian spirituality 99 Ingelow,Jean 155 inner being 173 inspiration Illumined Mind 237 Overhead 37,211 source of 200,215 Integral Yoga. See yoga intellect bright and ...
... inwards to the Truth which lies behind them. This external vision and attraction are the essence of the universal blinding force which is designated in Indian philosophy the Ignorance. Ancient Indian spirituality recognised that man lives in the Ignorance and has to be led through its imperfect indications to a highest inmost knowledge. Our life moves between two worlds, the depths upon depths of our ...
... rise to various systems of Yoga, and all of them led or hoped to lead through many kinds of psycho-physical, inner vital, inner mental, and psycho-spiritual methods to the common aims of all Indian spirituality,-- a greater consciousness and a more or less complete union with the One and Divine or full emergence of the individual soul in the Absolute. The Vedic idea of the battle between gods ...
... has arisen from an exclusive concentration only on one phase of experience in human history, during which the world came to be seen as meaningless or purposeless. If we examine the history of Indian spirituality, we shall find that the ascetic tendency of spirituality was only as experiment in sounding the extreme consequences of one of the aspects of spirituality. But in order to understand the all ...
... rather there is a wide, undulating, encircling movement of ideas which is the manifestation of a vast synthetic mind and a rich synthetic experience. This is one of those great syntheses in which Indian spirituality has been as rich as in its creation of the more intensive, exclusive movements of knowledge and religious realisation that follow out with an absolute concentration one clue, one path to its ...
... e, sculpture and painting are only a useless scribbling on paper, an insane hacking of stone and an effeminate daubing of canvas... Whether Mr. Archer's epithets and his accusations against Indian spirituality stand in the comparison, let the judicious determine." 13 Page 386 (3) The positivist's impatient arrogance: "Yoga, which Mr. Archer invites us so pressingly to abandon ...
... the trend towards it is unmistakable. The fourth dream relates to the gift by India of her spiritual knowledge to the world and here also we can see evidence of the increasing interest in Indian spirituality and yoga and of a widespread movement in this direction. Sri Aurobindo's final dream was 'a step in evolution which would raise man to a higher and larger consciousness and begin the solution ...
... March 1954 Ma, There are many persons, groups and institutions in the West who feel that India is or will be the spiritual guru of the world; but we find that their knowledge of Indian spirituality is limited. Should we increase contact with these groups? Should we present them with books by Sri Aurobindo and you on a large scale? Which books would you recommend for foreign readers? ...
... light of his own ideas. Disciple : Many educated Indians consider him a spiritual man. Sri Aurobindo : Yes, because the Europeans call him spiritual. What he preaches is not Indian spirituality but something derived from Russian Christianity, non-violence, suffering etc. Disciple : He admits to have been greatly influenced by Tolstoi. Sri Aurobindo : Yes. Tolstoi was his ...
... State can provide medical aid certainly but when one goes beyond one's province then the error comes in. To say that one can't change one's doctor, it seems to me, is a little too much. In Indian spirituality they have allowed all sorts of experiments including Vama Marga, and you see how wonderfully it has developed. Mechanisation has begun from the pressure exerted by the developments of the ...
... scope for freedom and plasticity. In India, even in spirituality they allowed all sorts of experiments, including the Vama Marga, the left-hand path of the Tantra, and you see how wonderfully Indian spirituality has developed. NIRODBARAN: Sometimes people justify both totalitarianism and imperialism. Shaw, for instance, justifies Italy's conquest of Abyssinia. To show up Abyssinia's inefficiency he ...
... under the stress of her own conservative nature, in part under compelling circumstances, still clings to her things of the past, darknesses that have been discarded by the modern illumination. Indian spirituality is nothing but consolidated mediaevalism; it has its companion shibboleth in the cry, "Back to the village" or "Back to the bullock-cart"! One of the main reasons, if not the one reason why India ...
... interest in the highways and byways of Western philosophical thought. Of the Indian philosophers also he had read only some of their main conclusions. Actually, his first real acquaintance with Indian spirituality was through the reported sayings of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and the speeches and writings of Swami Vivekananda. Sri Aurobindo had certainly an immense admiration for Vivekananda and a deeper ...
... perfection and fulfillment in general humanity, as an inevitable evolutionary consummation, is a new one cannot be gainsaid. There is no evidence of its existence either in the traditions of Indian spirituality or in Western religious and philosophic Idealism. The Christian ideal of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth is at best an ethical ideal of righteousness and piety, carrying no implications of a ...
... of its future. His Vedic researches seek to fix its prehistoric point of departure; the Gita-rahasya takes the scripture which is perhaps the strongest and most comprehensive production of Indian spirituality and justifies to that spirituality, by its own authoritative ancient message, the sense of the importance of life, of action, of human existence, of man's labour for mankind which is indispensable ...
... of supreme importance in the Veda. In the ceremonial interpretation यज्ञ is always understood as sacrifice and no other conception admitted. The Veda cannot be understood as the source of all Indian spirituality and divine knowledge, if this materialistic interpretation is accepted. In reality यज्ञ is the name of the supreme Lord Vishnu himself; it also means धर्म or योग and by a later preference of ...
... author or lost through damage to the manuscript that are required by grammar or sense, and that could be supplied by the editors Foreword Veda & Vedanta are the inexhaustible fountains of Indian spirituality. With knowledge or without knowledge, every creed in India, sect, school of philosophy, outburst of religious life, great or petty, brilliant or obscure, draws its springs of life from these ...
... also, being one in self with God, is unbound by his works and, in God, their free master and disposer. Na karma lipyate nare. Yet, in this divergence of views the dominant sense of our later Indian spirituality has been with the conclusion of Shankara and against the conclusion of the early, the inspired, Page 501 the suprarational Vedanta. To the modern Indian mind unaffected by European ...
... break out in the end from this mind bound to life and matter into a greater spiritual consciousness that is the innermost sense of Indian culture. It is this that constitutes the much-talked-of Indian spirituality. It is evidently very remote from the dominant European idea; it is different even from the form given by Europe to the Christian conception of life. But it does not mean at all that Indian culture ...
... between the spirit and the intelligence, the spirit illumining, the intelligence searching and arriving and helping the lower life to absorb the intuitions of the spirit, did its part in giving Indian spirituality a wonderful intensity, security and persistence not exampled in any other people. It is indeed largely the work of these philosophers who were at the same time Yogins that Page 371 ...
... get at the same result, an aesthetic interpretation or suggestion of the one spiritual experience, one in all its complexity and diversity, which founds the unity of the infinite variations of Indian spirituality and religious feeling and the realised union of the human self with the Divine. This is the unity too of all the creations of this hieratic art. The different styles and motives arrive at or ...
... six chapters. They have also used the headings given in 1953 to the four editorial divisions of the remainder of the work, with one change, the replacement of "Religion and Spirituality" by "Indian Spirituality and Life". The editors have carefully checked the text of each of the essays against the Arya text and, where appropriate, the revised versions. Page 450 ...
... seemed for a moment likely to perish by slow decomposition, and the ascending movement which first broke into some clarity of expression only a decade or two ago. Mr. Cousins has his eye fixed on Indian spirituality which has always maintained itself even in the decline of the national vitality; it was certainly that which saved India always at every critical moment of her destiny, and it has been the s ...
... Eternal Mother. And this self-surrender will be most genuine, complete and effective — that is, most eradicative of the ego — if one's Yoga depends on a condition which has been stressed in Indian spirituality from ancient times: the presence of a God-realised Master, the human-divine Guru. If the outer self is deeply attuned to the spiritual call, the Guru may not be indispensable. But, by and ...
... No modern intellectual with a spiritual cast of mind can escape the influence of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda and their disciples. Sri Ramakrishna represented a high point in Indian spirituality, the quintessential moment, the culmination of over five thousand years of experiment with Godliness in India. The remarkable thing about him was that he experimented with a variety of religious ...
... 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 deformed in ridiculous caricature by their modern rediscoverers ...
... and the special mould which the joy of love takes is the vision of beauty." 1 Divine Bliss is the fundamental which can give rise to Beauty as well as to Love in their highest modes. Ancient Indian spirituality recognised three Ultimates fused into a unity: Sat-Chit-Ananda — Being, Consciousness, Bliss. Everything else arises as expressions of these three-in-one. No doubt, any expression of them can ...
... quickest path to salvation. A welcome to suffering entered the Indian mind too during the last century - most probably owing to the influence of Christian missionaries. But it is no real part of Indian spirituality. You may ask: "Isn't there the term tapasya meaning 'penance'?" I may assure you that this translation is a mistake and is most probably due to the Christian missionaries' influence. ...
... pastures of the shining cows." (12th hymn to Agni, verse 6) Perhaps the compound adjective standing for the Rigvedic attitude points to at least a strong strain in the original Indian spirituality which persisted in the Upanishads and differed markedly from the later Shankarite intransigence towards earth-life. Freedom is sought not from earth-life as such but from what in it makes ...
... Divinity, November 26 confirmed to the very last particular of supramentalisation what the earlier occasion had betokened in general: the very last particular is the divinisation of the body. In Indian spirituality, from the beginning, Immortality has stood for much more than personal survival of physical death: it has stood for a realisation of the Divine Consciousness which is infinite and eternal, the ...
... fortune to accept two reformists—Sri Aurobindo and the Mother—as my Gurus. Both of them have revolutionized and reformed human life into Divine life and transformed the old face and outlook of Indian spirituality. They are the pioneers of a new ideal, namely that of transformation of human nature and divinization of human life. This was the first time in the spiritual history of the whole universe ...
... story in the Mahabharata and the Puranas. There is no reason to suppose that the connection of his name with the development of the Bhagavata religion, an important current in the stream of Indian spirituality, was founded on a mere legend or poetic invention. The Mahabharata is a poem and not history, but it is clearly a poem founded on a great historical event, traditionally preserved in memory; ...
... loss of the Veda as the law of the human cycle has been fully justified Page 12 by the event. The obscuration had already proceeded far before the opening of the next great age of Indian spirituality, the Vedantic, which struggled to preserve or recover what it yet could of the ancient knowledge. It could hardly have been otherwise. For the system of the Vedic mystics was founded upon experiences ...
... symbols of the Godhead. But it is the depth and largeness of its long thought and spiritual experience that prevent it from feeling or from giving countenance to these feeble shrinkings. Indian spirituality knows that God is Love and Peace and calm Eternity,—the Gita which presents us with these terrible images, speaks of the Godhead who embodies himself in them as the lover and friend of all creatures ...
... Sayana, the Vedic mantras remain for us what they have been for some thousands of years, a darkness of lost light and a sealed mystery. Driven from its ancient reverence for the mystic Veda, Indian spirituality under the stress of that modern scientific materialism which takes the savage for its basis and for its culmination the perfectly-equipped human ant or bee, felt the need of some ancient retreat ...
... the old style of spiritual pretension, and, when it is put in a current English production, suggests bujruki . Plain colours and as few symbols as may be are what we want at the beginning. Indian spirituality has lost itself in a jungle of symbols and shlokas and we have to get out of them on to the plain and straight ways and the open heights, where we can see the "much work that has still to be ...
... very small way and does not bring deification. Again, if the deification is limited by the intellectual light, it must be a rather petty affair at the best. There was a similar aim in ancient Indian spirituality, but it had a larger sweep and a higher height than that. No spiritual discipline aims at purification or deification by the destruction of the essence—there can be no such thing, the very phrase ...
... he interprets in the light of his own ideas. Many educated Indians consider him a spiritual man. Yes, because the Europeans call him spiritual. But what he preaches is not Indian spirituality but something derived from Russian Christianity, non-violence, suffering, etc---- The Russians are a queer mixture of strength and weakness. They have got a passion in their intellect, say ...
... Your "Yeats and Kabir" taught me several things. I had never realised Kabir's influence on Yeats. Now it is clear to me. Nor had I thought that Yeats had turned to the tradition of Indian spirituality resulting in his final unconcern with mediumship, magic and other secondary matters of occult lore. Your reference to Yeats's Indian studies having been coloured by the Shiva cult of the sacredness ...
... the destiny we have spoken of. Sri Aurobindo has given the world what is at once the finest and grandest literary achievement of modern India and the deepest and highest articulation of Indian spirituality today - the epic with which he was occupied in the spare hours of a Yogi and which grew to nearly twenty-four thousand lines: Savitri , a Legend and, a Symbol. In Savitri , we have ...
... religion primarily signified to him non-violence, then it is doubtful whether he can stand wholly as a representative of what India has historically understood by religion. In the golden age of Indian spirituality, the Vedic times, the arts of war were not taboo. Even in the Ashrams of the Rishis archery was taught - surely not just to hunt animals (though that too would be contrary to non-violence). It ...
... formation commensurable with that inner being and consciousness. It comes with a dynamic spirit, a warrior mood, that aims at conquering the physical world for the Lord, a temperament which Indian spirituality had not, or had lost long before, if she had anything of it. This was, perhaps, what Vivekananda meant when he spoke graphically of a Hindu soul with a Muslim body. The Islamic dispensation, ...
... formation commensurable with that inner being and consciousness. It comes with a dynamic spirit, a warrior mood, that aims at conquering the physical world, for the Lord, a temperament which Indian spirituality had not, or had lost long before, if she had anything of it. This was, perhaps, what Vivekananda meant when he spoke graphically of a Hindu soul with a Muslim body. The Islamic dispensation, ...
... to him." Ye yathā mām prapadyante. Indeed, it would be interesting to compare and contrast the Eastern and Western approach to Divine Love, the Christian and the Vaishnava, for example. Indian spirituality, whatever its outer form or credal formulation, has always a background of utter unity. This unity, again, is threefold or triune and is expressed in those great Upanishadic phrases, mahāvākyas ...
... of each Ashram sadhak's entire life, what is called a data fund, will also give us some idea of the future generation too. Its value in terms of research will be infinite. In the history of Indian spirituality this will become a unique precedent. Our work is the transformation of human nature. Experiments with human life. Nobody has ever done this kind of work with human life. That is why ...
... Hindu wisdom presented through the prism of a synthetising vision. What had appeared disparate, anomalous and. ambiguous was discovered as integral parts of an organic whole. Each strand of Indian spirituality, each phase of Indian culture, even each thread of the epic tapestry of ancient India was viewed and interpreted in a new light. Philosophy and history, allegory and legend, logic and satire ...
... perfection and fulfilment in general humanity, as an inevitable evolutionary consummation, is a new one cannot be gainsaid. There is no evidence of its existence either in the traditions of Indian spirituality or in Western religious and philosophic literature. The Christian ideal of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth is at best an ethical ideal of righteousness and Page 372 piety, carrying ...
... dynamic values of life—social, economic and political—prominently imposing themselves upon humanity, and yet to preserve the spiritual forces created :by our culture; or, in other words: Is Indian spirituality capable of assimilating the elements of western culture .and giving humanity a new synthesis that might point the way out of the present crisis ? It is spirituality that can give us guidance ...
... spiritual drive, and only a memory of god-intoxicated singers like Eknath and Kabir and Tulsi Das and Chaitanya and Farid and Nanak lay behind Page 9 to keep the obscured embers of Indian spirituality yet alive. Palsied in its outer forms, miserably racked within, breathing but an atmosphere of violence or sloth and caught helplessly in the tangle of oppression and sword-law, the condition ...
... as in the rest of the world, in order to get to... what is. Page 119 Day Five. Free Matter The Vedic Rishis Towarnicki: How is traditional Indian spirituality – Buddhism, Hinduism – expressed today? Satprem: Well, it's always the same thing. They all practice meditation. They all withdraw from appearances or activity, and they try to come into ...
... the better all existing political relations. "But it is equally necessary that we Indians should begin to think seriously what part Indian thought, Indian 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 ...
... renascence of India is complete, she will have an awakening, not of the same brutal kind, certainly, but startling enough, as to the real nature and capacity of the Indian spirit. Spirituality is indeed the master-key of the Indian mind; the sense of the infinite is native to it. India saw from the beginning, — and, even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance, she never lost... with the Page 19 Spirituality is indeed the master-key of the Indian mind... logical practicality and sense of science and organised method which distinguished her mentality, she set forth immediately to find out the way. Hence from long ages of this insight and practice there was ingrained in her her spirituality, her powerful psychic tendency, her great yearning... the right rhythm and measure. Thus an ingrained and dominant spirituality, an inexhaustible vital creativeness and gust of life and, mediating between them, a powerful, penetrating and scrupulous intelligence combined of the rational, ethical and aesthetic mind each at a high intensity of action, created the harmony of the ancient Indian culture. INDEED WITHOUT THIS OPULENT VITALITY and opulent ...
... of the world and remember God: but to make the whole of life a religion, a remembering of God and a seeking after him, is a thing that is not really done even in societies which like the Indian erect spirituality as their aim and principle. It admits philosophy in a still more remote fashion; and if nowadays it eagerly seeks after science, that is because science helps prodigiously the satisfaction... outer life, suffers in the end by this failure and contraction. The ancient Indian Page 163 ideal recognised this truth and divided life into four essential and indispensable divisions, artha, kāma, dharma, mokṣa , vital interests, satisfaction of desires of all kinds, ethics and religion, and liberation or spirituality, and it insisted on the practice and development of all. Still it tended... practical account, not in his own predominant individuality, but in the life of a larger vital ego. This ideal played a great part in the old aristocratic views of life; it was there in the ancient Indian idea of the kula and the kuladharma , and in later India it was at the root of the joint-family system which made the strong economic base of mediaeval Hinduism. It has taken its grossest Vaishya ...
... renascence of India is complete, she will have an awakening, not of the same brutal kind, certainly, but startling enough, as to the real nature and capacity of the Indian spirit. Spirituality is indeed the master key of the Indian mind; the sense of the infinite is native to it. India saw from the beginning, —and, even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance, she never lost... that in the Indian subcontinent, before the Muslim invasion, religion was a powerful binding factor; but after the Muslim invasion and its powerful impact, and more particularly in recent times, religion has unfortunately become a divisive factor and has created more problems than ever. This problem has to be tackled and the only way of doing it is to graduate from religion into spirituality. This will... ages of this insight and practice there was ingrained in her, her spirituality, her powerful psychic tendency, her great yearning to grapple with the infinite and Page 169 possess it, her ineradicable religious sense, her idealism, her Yoga, the constant turn of her art and her philosophy". Indian society and politics Even in politics and society, there ...
... Part III Definition of Culture. What is Indian Culture? Spirituality, brilliance of intellectuality and profusion of creativity. Page 242 Class VI (Note: Curriculum of class VI to VIII in Indian culture may be prescribed only for those students, who want to pursue the course of Indian culture at an advanced level. For those who do not wish to do... Origin and development of the modem Indian languages: Names of all modem Indian languages and famous authors and the works in these languages; g) The story of Arabic, Turkish and Persian in India: famous authors and famous works in these languages. Arrival and development of English in India: famous Indian authors and famous works of Indian authors in English. Part II... in Arabic and Persian; h) Bare outline of stories and dramas written in modem Indian languages; i) Indian authors in English: Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo. Class X The curriculum of class X will be devoted to Indian Art. Special reference to: a) Indian concept of Art; illustrations in Poetry, Music, Painting, Architecture and Sculpture; ...
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