... increase in importance if they are felt to be instinct Page 155 with the life of the Spirit and are conceived as a support for the rhythm of its workings. And human life was in ancient Indian thought no vile and unworthy existence; it is the greatest thing known to us, it is desired, the Purana boldly says, even by the gods in heaven. The deepening and raising of the richest or the most potent... seekings after delight and beauty or through his inner soul and its power of absolute spiritual calm, wideness, joy and peace. This is the sense of that spiritual liberation and perfection of which Indian thought and inner discipline have been full since the earliest Vedic times. However high and arduous this aim may be, it has always seemed to it possible and even in a way near and normal, once spiritual... Indian culture to have seized on this great dynamic hope, to have kept it a living and practicable thing and to have searched out all the possible paths to this spiritual way of perfect existence. Indian thought has made this great thing the common highest aim and universal spiritual destiny of the soul that is in every human creature. The value of the Indian conception for life must depend on the relations ...
... Our task of comparison will be all the more interesting because one of the cross-purposes in Teilhard's life was just that he found himself simultaneously attracted by and at variance with old Indian thought. As he has explained in his essay, How 1 Believe, 1 he recognised in this thought "an abundant sense of the Whole", which chimed with his own faith, but he saw in it (1) a suppression of... all value to life, detaches from terrestrial interests and insists on the unimportance of the life of the moment" - says: "To read these European comments one would imagine that in all Indian thought there was nothing but the nihilistic school of Buddhism and the monistic Illusionism of Shankara and that all Indian art, literature and social thinking were nothing but the statement of their... and austere exaggeration in the direction taken by Buddhism and Maya-vada s .... But the European critic very ordinarily labours under the idea that this exaggeration...was actually the whole of Indian thought and sentiment or the one undisputed governing idea of the culture. Nothing could be more false and inaccurate. The early Vedic religion did not deny, but laid a full emphasis on life. The Upanishads ...
... expression of the life and soul they had discovered. It was this peculiarity of thought which constituted the essential characteristic of the Vedic outlook and has stood at the root and basis of all Indian thought and religion then & subsequently. Nevertheless existence is not simple in its infinite oneness. Matter is prithivi, tanu or tanva (terra), a wide yet formal extension of being; but behind matter... deity in the chant of the brahma, the sacred hymn. It may 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 &... that Brahma in the Rigveda means often the soul, the psuche of the Greeks, animus of the Romans, as distinguished from the manas, mens or ϕρήν . This sense it must have borne at some period of Indian thought antecedent to the Upanishads; otherwise we cannot explain the selection of a word meaning hymn or speech as the great fundamental word of Vedanta, the name of the supreme spiritual Reality. The ...
... VIII VALUES OF INDIAN CULTURE a. It is natural that Indian education underlines the importance of what can be called Indian values. b. In Indian thought, a distinction has been made between the ego and the self. According to Indian thought, whereas egoistic personality is ridden with self-contradiction and internal conflict, a true selfhood is free from this contradiction and conflicts.... and spirituality is concerned, it may be said that much depends upon what we intend to include in Page 624 our definition of the word "morality" or in the word "spirituality". In Indian thought, a distinction between morality and spirituality has been clearly made and we have two definite terms, naitik and adhyatmik each having its own specific and distinguishing connotation. ...
... quite enormous amount of attention, occupied the greater part of Indian thought and writing not devoted to the things of pure knowledge and of the spirit and was so far pushed that there is no ethical formation or ideal which does not reach in it its highest conception and a certain divine absolutism of ideal practice. Indian thought took for granted,—though there are some remarkable speculations to... In latter times a Machiavellian principle of statecraft, that which has been always and is still pursued by governments and diplomats, encroached on this nobler system, but in the best age of Indian thought this depravation was condemned as a temporarily effective, but lesser, ignoble and inferior way of policy. The great rule of the culture was that the higher a man's position and power, the larger ...
... lessened by the destruction of the Jewish State, any more than it is proved and given greater value by the commercial capacity shown by the Jewish race in their dispersion. But I admit, as ancient Indian thought admitted, that material and economic capacity and prosperity are a necessary, though not the highest or most essential part of the total effort of human civilisation. In that respect India throughout... has learned from the modern masters of realism. But in substance and spirit it is a fairly correct statement of the notions which the European mind has formed in the past about the character of Indian thought and culture, sometimes in ignorance, sometimes in defiance of the evidence. For a time even it managed to impress some strong shadow of this error on the mind of educated India. It is best to begin... Indian culture denies all value to life, detaches from terrestrial interests and insists on the unimportance of the life of the moment. To read these European comments one would imagine that in all Indian thought there was nothing but the nihilistic school of Buddhism and the monistic illusionism of Shankara and that all Indian art, literature and social thinking were nothing but the statement of their ...
... note that the Indian educational thought has constantly emphasised the value of wholeness of integrality and comprehensiveness. In Indian thought, a distinction has been made between the ego and the self, between aham-bhava and Atman. According to the Indian thought, whereas egoistic personality is ridden with self-contradictions and internal conflicts, the true self or the true individual is... distinction between moral and spiritual values. In answer, it may be said that much depends upon what we intend to include in our definition of the word 'morality' or in the word 'spirituality'. In Indian thought, the distinction between morality and spirituality has been clearly made and we have two definite terms, naitika and adhyatmika, having their specific and distinguishing connotations. The ...
... Values of Indian Culture It is natural that Indian education underlines the importance of what can be called Indian values. In Indian thought, a distinction has been made between the ego and the self. According to Indian thought, egoistic personality is ridden with self- contradiction and conflicts and true self is the integrating centre in which physical, vital, mental and other... distinction between morality and spirituality is concerned, it may be said that much depends upon what we intend to include in our definition of the word "morality" or in the word "spirituality". In Indian thought, a distinction between morality and spirituality has been clearly made and we have two definite terms, naitik and adhyatmik each having its own specific and distinguishing connotation. ...
... and soul of man. Indian education aimed at helping the individual to grow in the power and force of certain large universal qualities which in their harmony build a higher type of manhood. In Indian thought and life, this was the ideal of the best, the law of the good or noble man, the discipline laid down for the self-perfecting individual. this ideal was not a purely moral or ethical conception... to be made between Spirit and Matter, and a denunciation of material life became more and more predominant. The call of the spirit and a recoil from matter characterize powerful movements of Indian thought. This affected the educational system, and the original impulse of integral education was lost. The consequences have been disastrous, and today we are in a deep crisis. Taittiriya Upanishad... individual and collective life has remained alive, at least to a certain degree, even in the present-day India. And there is even today an imagination and conviction in some deep recesses of Indian thought and feeling that there cannot be right and wise and ideal governance of society unless the rishi or a group of rishis guide and exercise political power. In some such conviction, Indian culture ...
... scientific dependence on the material laws which alone govern the existence of mortal creatures. It is to him an unintelligible chaos; it is animism; it is a monstrous folk-lore. The meaning which Indian thought puts upon these things, their spiritual sense, escapes him altogether or it leaves him incredulous or else strikes his mind as a vain and mad symbolism subtle, useless, futile. And not only is... mind and life are presupposed as the first step towards the divine knowledge—the doers of evil find me not, says the Gita. And they were unable to realise that knowledge of the truth means for Indian thought, not intellectual assent or recognition, but a new consciousness and a life according to the truth of the Spirit. Morality is for the Western mind mostly a thing of outward conduct; but conduct ...
... and perhaps also that the human Krishna was the founder, restorer or at the least one of the early teachers of this school. The Gita may well in spite of its later form represent the outcome in Indian thought of the teaching of Krishna and the connection of that teaching with the historical Krishna, with Arjuna and with the war of Kurukshetra may be something more than a dramatic fiction. In the Mahabharata... action, but it is here that he reveals its secret and the divinity behind our works. The symbolic companionship of Arjuna and Krishna, the human and the divine soul, is expressed elsewhere in Indian thought, in the heavenward journey of Indra and Kutsa seated in one chariot, in the figure of the two birds upon one tree in the Upanishad, in the twin figures of Nara and Narayana, the seers who do tapasyā ...
... largely from beyond the Tweed. The first speaker who took the affairs of the Empire under his patronage, was a certain Mr. Lockhart Smith. He gave some firm but kindly advice to the leaders of Indian thought as to the best way of managing their business forgetting that his time would have been more usefully employed in minding his own. It appears that the unrest was a natural and healthy aspiration... y the position is still far from clear or satisfactory to Mr. Lockhart Smith. This healthy unrest is still too healthily restless for Mr. Smith's nerves. He therefore calls upon the leaders of Indian thought to rise to the occasion and handle the situation with a statesmanlike reposefulness. They must learn to be quietly unquiet, restfully restless, humbly aspiring, meekly bold. If they are restless ...
... is a diffused virtue, knowledge and force in the many which acting collectively may outweigh and exceed isolated or rare excellences. If the king, the sage, the best are Vishnu himself, as old Indian thought also affirmed, to a degree to which the ordinary man, prākṛto janaḥ , cannot pretend, so also are "the five", the group, the people. The Divine is samaṣṭi as well as vyaṣṭi , manifested in... universal force; he seems to have summed up the principle of things in these two first terms, the aspect of consciousness, the aspect of power, a supreme intelligence and a supreme energy. The eye of Indian thought saw a third aspect of the Self and of Brahman; besides the universal consciousness active in divine knowledge, besides the universal force active in divine will, it saw the universal delight active ...
... metaphysical philosophy had to give place to experimental science. Sri Aurobindo, in the following Page 9 passage, describes briefly but illuminatingly the course of the development of Indian thought: "Intuitive thought which is a messenger from the superconscient and therefore our highest faculty, was supplanted by the pure reason which is only a sort of deputy and belongs to the middle... Upanishadic Rishis adopted less symbolic language and arrived at a clearer statement and more philosophical Page 21 language. In due course, Upanishads became a fountainhead of the highest Indian thought and replaced the inspired verses of the Vedic Rishis. The Upanishads are not philosophical speculations of the intellectual kind; they do not present systems of metaphysical analysis labouring ...
... practical reason. All "reasons" are practical (in a very important way). Correctly speaking, the Indian traditional thought is more concerned with experience than with reason. That explains why in Indian thought there is no recognized distinction between Rationalism and Empiricism. The absence of cognitive dualism has facilitated in India an integral approach to all issues, including the issues of values... salokya or nirvana. To put the matter from other end, while austerity as value has been recognized but its ascetic form and overtone has not met with the general approval of the mainstream Indian thought. All human beings, be they young learners or adult seeker of values, are always engaged in the search of purusarthas. IV SATYAM, SIVAM AND SUNDARAM It is interesting to ...
... Radhakrishnan, S, Indian Philosophy (Vols. I-II), Oxford University Press, 1999; Mohanty, J.N, Reason and Tradition in Indian Thought: An essay on the nature of Indian philosophical thinking, Clarendon Press, 1992, Oxford; Raju, P.T., Structural Depths of Indian Thought, Albany, State University of New York, 1985, New York; Butterworth, C.E. and Cassel, B.A., The Introduction of Arabic Philosophy ...
... Indian Theories of Knowledge, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1986. Mati Lal, B. K., The Word and The World, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1990. Mohanty, J.N., Reason and Tradition in Indian Thought, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992. Mother, The, Mother's Agenda, (Vols. 13) Institut de Reserches Evolutives, Paris. Moloyaina. H., Theories of The Chakras, Theosophical Publishing... Mystery ofConsciousness, A New York Review Book, N.Y, 1997. PAGE–150 Shankara, Crest Jewel of Discrimination, Vedanta Press, Hollywood, C.A., 1975. Sinari, R., The Structure of Indian Thought, Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, 1970. Sinha, Debabrata, Phenomenology & Existentialism: An Introduction, Progressive Publishers, 1974. Singer, P (ed.), A Companion to Ethics, Blackwell ...
... provinces of that supreme region. It maps out, but it does not cut up or build walls or hedges to confine our vision. Page 56 There have been other syntheses in the long history of Indian thought. We start with the Vedic synthesis of the psychological being of man in its highest flights and widest ranging of divine knowledge, power, joy, life and glory with the cosmic existence of the... is what present-day interpretations seek to make of the Gita. We are told continually by many authoritative voices that the Gita, opposing in this the ordinary ascetic and quietistic tendency of Indian thought and spirituality, proclaims with no uncertain sound the gospel of human action, the ideal of disinterested performance of social duties, nay, even, it would seem, the quite modern ideal of social ...
... mind and soul of man. Indian education aimed at helping the individual to grow in the power and force of certain large universal qualities which in their harmony build a higher type of manhood. In Indian thought and life, this was the ideal of the best, the law of the good or noble man, the discipline laid down for the self-perfecting individual. This ideal was not a purely moral or ethical conception... came to be made between Spirit and Matter, and a denunciation of material life became more and more predominant. The call of the spirit and a recoil from matter characterize powerful movements of Indian thought. This affected the educational system, and the original impulse of integral education was lost. The consequences have been disastrous, and today we are in a deep crisis. But is it a question ...
... angle, attempted many extremes and many syntheses. But the European critic very ordinarily labours under the idea that this exaggeration in the direction of negating life was actually the whole of Indian thought and sentiment or the one undisputed governing idea of the culture. Nothing could be more false and Page 239 inaccurate. The early Vedic religion did not deny, but laid a full emphasis... religions which drew from them and from spiritual experience very different conclusions. At the present time, in spite of a temporary exaltation of Shankara's philosophy, the most vital movements of Indian thought and religion are moving again towards the synthesis of spirituality and life which was an essential part of the ancient Indian ideal. Therefore Mr. Archer's contention that whatever India has achieved ...
... Greater Psychology 3 Consciousness: the Materialistic and the Mystical Views Perhaps the earliest roots of the concept of consciousness lie in ancient Indian thought which, founded on immediate mystical experience, conceived of the Absolute Reality as Sat-Chit-Ananda (Existence-Consciousness-Bliss). In this concept of the triune Reality, Chit or Consciousness... unity which materialistic Science perceives from the other end when it asserts that Mind cannot be another force than Matter, but must be merely development and outcome of material energy. Indian thought at its deepest affirms on the other hand that Mind and Matter are rather different grades of the same energy, different organisations of one conscious Force of Existence. 15 Chit ...
... nor the human soul is allowed to stretch its history beyond one life-time. In Indian thought both the Avatar and the human soul can stretch their histories not only beyond one life-time but even outside the human formula itself. Here is indeed evolution with a vengeance. Rebirth, which is a cardinal tenet of Indian thought, carries one not only through a long series of human embodiments towards a divine ...
... probability of our hypothesis be lessened, but rather its validity confirmed if it be found that the body of ideas and doctrines thus revealed in the Veda are a more antique form of subsequent Indian thought and religious experience, the natural parent of Vedanta and Purana. So considerable and minute a labour is beyond the scope of these brief and summary chapters. Their object is only to indicate... historical and ethnical sense of the ancient hymns. In consequence, following again the ordinary line taken by modernised Hindu opinion, I regarded the Upanishads as the most ancient source of Indian thought and religion, the true Veda, the first Book of Knowledge. The Rig Veda in the modern translations which were all I knew of this profound Scripture, represented for me an important document of our ...
... can writings so obscure or at any rate so imperfectly understood have exercised over the thought of millenniums the vast and pervasive influence of which we know, so pervasive that all positive Indian thought, even Buddhism, can be described as Vedic in origin and shaping spirit when not Vedic or even when anti-Vedic in its garb and formed character? Thought has other means of survival and reproduction... thought and mentality and, modifying them in expression but not in essence by his own present personality, he pours them out on his surroundings. This has been the secret of the persistent Vedism of Indian thought & spirituality from the earliest ages to those modern movements of which we are ourselves the witnesses or the partakers. Outward aids have powerfully confirmed the effect of these inward processes ...
... brain sufficiently to grapple with the increased mass of intellectual toil, and it shared with the old system the defect of ignoring the psychology of the race. The mere inclusion of the matter of Indian thought and culture in the field of knowledge does not make a system of education Indian, and the instruction given in the Bengal National College was only an improved European system, not Indian or National ...
... nature of the Spirit and re-become a portion of the Godhead from whom we have descended into this mortal figure of being. There is here at once a departure from the general contemporary mind of Indian thought, a less negating attitude, a greater affirmation. In place of its obsessing idea of a self-annulment of Nature we get the glimpse of an ampler solution, the principle of a self-fulfilment in divine ...
... Every one of these advances leads directly or in its intrinsic meaning towards a nearer approach between the mind of East and West and to that extent to a likelihood of a better understanding of Indian thought and ideals. In some directions the change of attitude has gone remarkably far and seems to be constantly increasing. A Christian missionary quoted by Sir John Woodroffe is "amazed to find the ...
... Yoga with the way of works is interesting; for it shows that quite a different order of ideas prevailed at that time from those we now possess as the result of the great Vedantic development of Indian thought, subsequent evidently to the composition of the Gita, by which the other Vedic philosophies fell into desuetude as practical methods of liberation. To justify the language of the Gita we must suppose ...
... is what present-day interpretations seek to make of the Gita. We are told continually by many authoritative voices that the Gita, opposing in this the ordinary ascetic and quietistic tendency of Indian thought and spirituality, proclaims with no uncertain sound the gospel of human action, the ideal of disinterested performance of social duties, nay, even, it would seem, the quite modern ideal of social ...
... that unity which materialistic Science perceives from the other end when it asserts that Mind cannot be another force than Matter, but must be merely development and outcome of material energy. Indian thought at its deepest affirms on the other hand that Mind and Matter are rather different grades of the same energy, different organisations of one conscious Force of Existence. But what right have ...
... historical and ethnical sense of the ancient hymns. In consequence, following again the ordinary line taken by modernised Hindu opinion, I regarded the Upanishads as the most ancient source of Indian thought and religion, the true Veda, the first Book of Knowledge. The Rig-veda in the modern translations which were all I knew of this profound Scripture, represented for me an important document of our ...
... the soul in the body, the lasting type or idea in the mutable form with a power and masterly revelation of which European art is incapable. It is therefore sure to conquer Europe as steadily as Indian thought and knowledge are conquering the hard and narrow materialism of the nineteenth century. Asceticism and Enjoyment Small things are often indicative of great and far-reaching tendencies. While ...
... knowledge of their forefathers that it has to be translated into modern European terms before they can understand it. For it is the European ideas alone that are real to them and the great truths of Indian thought seem to them mere metaphors, allegories and mystic parables. So well has British education done its fatal denationalising work in India. The Brahmin stands for religion, science, scholarship ...
... likely to be of an enduring character if it overleaps the stages of his ascent and leaves the intervening levels untrodden and therefore unmastered. The endeavour may succeed with individuals,—Indian thought would say with those who have made themselves ready in a past existence,—but it must fail with the mass. When it passes beyond the few, the forceful miracle of the spirit flags; unable to transform ...
... evolution. When the Swetaswatara sums up the process of creation in the pregnant formula "One seed developed into many forms", it is simply crystallizing the one general idea on which the whole of Indian thought takes its stand and to which the whole tendency of modern science returns. The opening of the Brihadaranyakopanishad powerfully foreshadows the theory that hunger & the struggle for life (ashanaya ...
... his fellows. As a philosopher, as a metaphysician, as a powerful logician & victorious disputant his greatness can hardly be measured. For a thousand years and more he has stood in the heavens of Indian thought, his head far away in the altitudes of Adwaita, his feet firmly planted on the lifeless remnants of crushed systems and broken philosophies, the wreckage of his logical conquests, his mouth like ...
... but a Transcendentalism of which Theism, Pantheism, polytheism are all single circumstances & carefully harmonised factors. It is doubtful whether pure Pantheism can be discovered anywhere in Indian thought or Indian religion—for even when the Vedantist sees the flame as God, he is able to do so because he regards the flame not as a flame but as intrinsically something else, a supra-material presence ...
... another, in ourselves, in Indra, in the Maruts, in every living being or active force, but if we seek to approach, study & seize it vanishes from our ken, is the Brahman. No other conception of Indian thought fits this profound & subtle description. What sublime & numerous echoes wake in our memory as we repeat this mantra. There comes to us the solemn stanza of the Gita, Ascharyavat pashyati kaschid ...
... this Force a consciousness, that seems to be impersonal, indeterminate, void in essence of all but abstract qualities or energies; for everything else is only a result, a minor phenomenon. Ancient Indian thought starting from quite the other end of the scale arrived on most of its lines at the same generalisation. It conceived of an impersonal existence as the original and eternal truth; personality is ...
... between the Personal and the Impersonal is substantially the same as the Indian distinction, but the associations of the English words carry within them a certain limitation which is foreign to Indian thought. The personal God of the European religions is a Person in the human sense of the word, limited by His qualities though otherwise possessed of omnipotence and omniscience; it answers to the Indian ...
... can imagine free time was limited. I have pondered it as I have explored with you Mallarme and his implications for poetry - the wonderful new perceptions which he explored - the affinity with Indian thought and how Sri Aurobindo saw him as the fountain-head of a 'future poetry'. It is a very fine contribution not only to the study of Mallarme but to the unfolding of poetry. You cannot imagine the ...
... whole Christian doctrine of creation instead of the Divine's self-loosing forth into manifestation arises in order to avoid the sort of pantheism which excludes other ways of God's existence. Indian thought with its pantheism which accompanies divine transcendentalism as well as what I may term divine individualism has no need to fall into a "creatio ex nihilo". And I consider it mistaken to ...
... know"-ing. Another mannerism is "what's called". I have heard a great Bengali scholar in philosophy, now dead, use it with outrageous results. He once visited the Ashram and lectured on the progress of Indian thought in the world. And this is one of the sentences with which he developed his subject: "Then what's called Viveka-nanda sailed away and after many what's called hardships reached Chicago and there ...
... consciousness is the inner fact which alone illumines the problem of earth existence and opens to it its true solution; apart from it our life here has no intelligible significance. Ancient Indian thought discovered an evolution from birth to birth, from the life of tree and plant to the life of insect and animal, from the life of the animal to the life of man, attained with difficulty through the ...
... thought, everything that was and is ours, so that we may be able to say to ourselves and our nation, 'This is our dharma .' We shall review European civilisation entirely from the standpoint of Indian thought and knowledge and seek to throw off from us the dominating stamp of the Occident; what we have to take from the West we shall take as Indians. And the dharma once discovered we shall strive our ...
... Catholic Europe and the obscure beginnings of modern thought and science. The fourth and last attempt which is as yet only in its slow initial stage is the quiet entry of Eastern and chiefly of Indian thought into Europe first through the veil of German metaphysics, more latterly by its subtle influence in reawakening the Celtic, Scandinavian and Slavonic idealism, mysticism, religionism, and the direct ...
... the primary role played by the sexual urge and the urge for power in the motivation of human behaviour, it has overlooked the role of wealth with its associated instinct of greed. By contrast, in Indian thought greed for wealth has always been viewed as one of the most powerful motivating forces in human life.) In Jung's concept of the collective unconscious, too, we find some degree of concurrence between ...
... examined critically, reveals itself as a finite looking at itself as self-existent and yet unstable in its status and its movement— -a self-contradiction. According to certain dominant trends of Indian thought, there is a distinction between the ego and the individual. The egoistic personality is, according to this thought, a personality that is at war with itself. The true individual is harmonious, ...
... utility not only of the Vedic ritual but also of the Vedic text. Upanishads were increasingly clear and direct in their language, and they came to be regarded as the fountainhead of the highest Indian thought, although the Vedic texts are even now recognized as authorities. As a whole, however, there grew a belief that Upanishads constitute the Book of Knowledge, jnanakanda, and the Veda came to be ...
... moral and spiritual values. In answer, it must be said that much depends upon what we intend to include in our definition of Page 22 the word "morality" or the word "spirituality". In Indian thought, the distinction between morality and spirituality has been clearly made and we have two definite terms, naitika and adhyatimika, having their specific and distinguishing connotations. The ...
... between the Veda as Sri Aurobindo interpreted it and the Upanishads and suggests that the body of ideas and doctrines, which are found in the Upanishads, bore a more antique form of subsequent Indian thought and spiritual experience. This suggestion is further strengthened by what Sri Aurobindo Page 65 has written in his "Foundation of Indian Culture”, on Indian religion and spirituality ...
... dualists, who sees non-difference (abheda) everywhere. Kālidāsa was well-versed not only in Vedānta but also in Sāmkhya dualism, Yoga philosophy and its practices, rather in almost all the systems of Indian thought, but his fundamental attitude towards all schools of thought, rather towards everything, Page 25 was that of a true Vedāntin. His universal vision as well as sympathy ...
... distinction between moral and spiritual values? In answer, it may be said that much depends upon what we intend to include in our definition of the word "morality" or in the word "spirituality". In Indian thought, the distinction between morality and spirituality has been clearly made and each one has its specific and distinguishing connotation. The word "morality" connotes a pursuit of the control and ...
... know"-ing. Another mannerism is "what's called". I have heard a great Bengali scholar in philosophy, now dead, use it with outrageous results. He once visited the Ashram and lectured on the progress of Indian thought in the world. And this is one of the sentences with which he developed his subject: "Then what's called Vivekananda sailed away and after many what's called hardships reached Chicago and there ...
... self-purification through suffering. They had the idea of self-mastery, that the body shall do what the spirit wants it to do. That was the idea behind asceticism. Self-mastery has been the trend of Indian thought all along its spiritual development. Even Buddha, when he started, had the idea of uprooting suffering and evil from the world. Only, he said that you can't have it here in this world unless you ...
... Nandakumar, Prema. Bharati in English Verse (1958); A Study of 'Savitri'(1962); The Glory and the Good: Essays on Literature (1965); Subramania Bharati (1968) Naravane, V. S. Modern Indian Thought (1964) Navajata, Sri Aurobindo (1972) Nevinson, Henry W. The New Spirit in India (1908) Nirodbaran, Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo (1954); Correspondence with ...
... perhaps Imposed a little later, are really of a piece in spirit with The Rishi. They are Poetic projections of psychological realities and show the influence of ancient Page 173 Indian thought on Sri Aurobindo's modem sensibility. The poems, however, may be enjoyed as much for the energy of the thought as for the memorability of the recordation. The language and the rhythm too show a ...
... Early Cultural Writings The Revival of Indian Art The Main Difference 16-October-1909 The greatness of Indian art is the greatness of all Indian thought and achievement. It lies in the recognition of the persistent within the transient, of the domination of matter by spirit, the subordination of the insistent appearances of Prakriti to the inner ...
... fantastic, unsound and ephemeral. It cannot, we think, be the final attitude; an independent scrutiny of the ancient scriptures and forms of philosophy and religion is needed through the whole range of Indian thought and devotion both to recover their more ancient and original forms and principles often concealed by later accretions and crystallisings and to separate from them whatever is of imperishable worth ...
... was Shankara who applied rigorously the analytical method of the intellectual reason in all its trenchant clearness and force to metaphysics. Hence the greatness of his position in the history of Indian thought. From his time forward Indian metaphysics was bound to the wheels of the analytical and intellectual mind. Still, it is to be noted that while the philosophers thus split the catholicity of the ...
... would not Page 244 exclude, and we know he does not exclude, thought, literature and religion from the forces that must uplift our nation and are necessary to its future. To recover Indian thought, Indian character, Indian perceptions, Indian energy, Indian greatness, and to solve the problems that perplex the world in an Indian spirit and from the Indian standpoint, this, in our view, is ...
... are, rather, forceful excursions into terse and strenuous logic, basing, strengthening, building up, adding a wing here and a story there to the cunning and multiform, yet harmonic structure of Indian thought. Nowhere will you find an exhaustive and systematic statement of a whole philosophy interpreting every part of the universe in the terms of a single line of thought. This habit of suggestiveness ...
... embraces all the provinces of that supreme region. It maps out, but it does not cut up or build walls or hedges to confine our vision. There have been other syntheses in the long history of Indian thought. We start with the Vedic synthesis of the psychological being of man in its highest flights and widest rangings of divine knowledge, power, joy, life and glory with the cosmic existence of the ...
... that follows & forms the substance of the Gita, the incarnate Master of things, among a host of profound & subtle reasonings, uses also this striking exhortation which has become a commonplace of Indian thought, Mayaivaite nihatáh púrvam eva, Nimittamátram bhava, Savyasáchin. "By Me are these already slain & dead, do thou become only immediate means & determining cause, O Savyasachin." The Universal Will ...
... us beware lest in vindicating the claim of Vedanta to an European eminence & elevation, we bring it down from its own heaven touching domain upon its Asiatic and Himalayan mountain tops. Ancient Indian thought and life regularised in teaching a practical difference which the West admits in practice and denies in theory; it admitted three distinct standards determinant of conduct, the customary law, ethical ...
... Matter that for two thousand years, since Buddhism disturbed the balance of the old Aryan world, has dominated increasingly the Indian mind. Not that the sense of the cosmic illusion is the whole of Indian thought; there are other philosophical statements, other religious aspirations. Nor has some attempt at an adjustment between the two terms been wanting even from the most extreme philosophies. But all ...
... connotations in different contexts. The meanings given below apply to the terms as used in this book. the Absolute — the supreme reality of that transcendent Being which we call God. Indian thought calls it Brahman, European thought the Absolute because it is a self-existent which is absolved of all bondage to relativities. Advaitin — a Vedantic Monist. Akshara — the Immobile ...
... that unity which materialistic Science perceives from the other end when it asserts that Mind cannot be another force than Matter, but must be merely development and outcome of material energy. Indian thought at its deepest affirms on the other hand that Mind and Matter are rather different grades of the same energy, different organisations of one conscious Force of Existence. But what right ...
... Catholic Europe and the obscure beginnings of modern thought and science. “The fourth and last attempt, which is as yet only in its slow initial stage is the quiet entry of Eastern and chiefly of Indian thought into Europe, first through the veil of German metaphysics, more latterly by its subtle influence in reawakening the Celtic, Scandinavian and Slavonic idealism, mysticism, religionism, and the direct ...
... omnipresent and animating each mind and body with the idea of an "I". × Dr. Schweitzer in his book on Indian thought asserts that this was the real sense of the Upanishadic teachings and rebirth was a later invention. But there are numerous important passages in almost all the Upanishads positively affirming ...
... supreme reality of that transcendent Being which we call God, something without which all that we see or are conscious of as existing, could not have been, could not for a moment remain in existence. Indian thought calls it Brahman, European thought the Absolute be cause it is a self-existent which is absolved of all bondage to relativities. For all relatives can only exist by something which is the truth ...
... some mental conception about God and ourselves and the world is an object good for the intellect but not large enough for the Spirit; it will not make us the conscious sons of Infinity. Ancient Indian thought meant by knowledge a consciousness which possesses the highest Truth in a direct perception and in self-experience; to become, to be the Highest that we know is the sign that we really have the ...
... obsolete the utility not only of the Vedic Page 15 ritual but of the Vedic text. Upanishads, increasingly clear and direct in their language, became the fountainhead of the highest Indian thought and replaced the inspired verses of Vasishtha and Vishwamitra. 3 The Vedas, becoming less and less the in dispensable basis of education, were no longer studied with the same zeal and intelligence; ...
... though prehistoric, was anything but primitive. × The rivers have a symbolic sense in later Indian thought; as for instance Ganges, Yamuna and Saraswati and their confluence are in the Tantric imagery Yogic symbols, and they are used, though in a different way, in Yogic symbolism generally. ...
... and the great Indian religions do go back in their source to Vedic origins. We can see there in their original seed or in their early or even primitive forms the fundamental conceptions of later Indian thought. Thus a natural starting point will be provided for a sounder study of Comparative Religion in the Indian field. Instead of wandering amid insecure speculations or having to account for impossible ...
... the world into the truth of spiritual being. That is the ascetic solution, if it can be called a solution; at any rate it is a decisive and effective way out of the enigma, a way to which ancient Indian thought of the highest and most meditative kind, as soon as it commenced to turn at a sharp incline from its first large and free synthesis, had moved with an always increasing preponderance. The Gita ...
... would mean a period without a king, but, in the case of an imperial seat like Māgadha, an absence of Imperial Dynasty." In other words, whatever the Greeks may have understood, a "republic" in Indian thought can cover rule over Māgadha by either freebooters or foreigners as well as a kingless polity. Mankad goes on to refer to a Purāna unnoticed by Pargiter - the unconventional Yuga-Purāna ...
... of Christianity as an 'incarnational' religion I was not thinking of the doctrine of the Incarnation as such - of course there is the Lord Krishna and the Lord Buddha or some holy man, or indeed Indian thought does not limit incarnation to a single incarnation (which is indeed absurd) but culturally speaking the European-Christian emphasis has been incarnational, and whatever is sublime in Christian ...
... narratives in blank verse which were published several years later in book-form. Both of these are Indian in matter and spirit, and the shorter pieces too show in various lights the facets of Indian thought; but there is one inimitable fragment which suggests that, though Greek traditions were no longer his main preoccupation, he had not quite forsaken his early love. Suddenly in the midst of the ...
... wise, satisfied with their knowledge of the Self after finding it, with their self -disciplined and prepared, dispassionate and serene enter from here into the omnipresent allness." (III.2.5). Indian thought grapples with the notion of the "spirit of leadership" rather than behavioral traits. To the seers of the Upanishads what is of ultimate value is a radical transformation of the ego-driven self ...
... (2001), Glimpses of Vedic Literature. New Delhi: Maharshi Sandipani Rashtriya Veda Vidya Pratishthan, Sareen, S. K. and Paranjape, M. (eds) (2004), Sabda. Text and Interpretation in Indian Thought. New Delhi: Mantra Books. Sri Aurobindo. (1970), The Life Divine. (Birth Centenary Edition ed.). (Vol. 18). Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust. Sri Aurobindo. (1971), The Secret ...
... First, we see the earliest synthesis in the Veda. This was followed by the synthesis of the Upanishad. At a later stage, the Bhagavad Gita provided a new synthesis. The conflict that arose in Indian thought as a result of the growth and development of Buddhism was sought to be resolved by the composite philosophy that we find embedded in the Puranas and Tantras. Still later, when the conflict between ...
... in fortune is shown to be accruing to oneself on account of some lapse in one's action in the past. This is in accordance with the doctrine of Karma that pervades our whole life, according to Indian thought. This doctrine of Karma has its origin in the doctrine of Rta in the Vedas. Rta stands for certain harmony that governs the functioning of the entire universe. This harmony has been highlighted ...
... metaphysical dualism, culminates in a second negation — at the other pole to the materialistic — of the eventual prospect of the divine transfiguration of the body and the physical existence of man. Indian thought, in particular, since the advent of Buddhism on the scene, has lived in the 'shadow of this great Refusal' and generally considered that the final end of life for all is the garb of the ascetic ...
... examined critically, reveals itself as a finite looking at itself as self-existent and yet unstable in its status and its movement—a self-contradiction. According to certain dominant trends of Indian thought, there is a distinction between the ego and the individual. The egoistic personality is, according to this thought, a personality that is at war with itself. The true individual is harmonious, ...
... Banarasi dass, 1988, Delhi, 5 Vols. Das Gupta, S.N., Yoga as Philosophy and Religion, Motilal Banarasi dass, 1987, Delhi. Das Gupta, S.N., Yoga Philosophy in Relation to other Systems of Indian Thought. Motilal Banarasidass, 1974, Delhi. Dayanand Saraswati (Swami), Satyartha Prakash, tr. Durga Prasad. Hiriyanna, M., Outline of Indian Philosophy, Alien and Unwin Ltd, 1948, London ...
... individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe. {Synthesis of Yoga, Vol. 20, pp. 41-43.) * * * There have been other syntheses in the long history of Indian thought. We start with the Vedic synthesis of the psychological being of man in its highest flights and widest rangings of divine knowledge, power, joy, life and glory with the cosmic existence of the ...
... towards the quest of God and metaphysical truths and thus a new era was ushered in. Now, on what ground do the European scholars make such an assertion as regards the historical development of Indian thought? As a matter of fact, we do notice that every teacher of Philosophy whenever he has cited anything from the Upanishad has also tried to corroborate it with a similar quotation from the Veda for ...
... knowledge of their forefathers that it has to be translated into modem European terms before they can understand it. For it is the European ideas alone that are real to them and the great truths of Indian thought seem to them mere metaphors, allegories and mystic parables. So well has British education done its fatal denationalising work in India. "...And the two highest castes are the least easy ...
... the historical and ethical sense of the ancient hymns. In consequence, following again the ordinary line taken by modernised Hindu opinion, I regarded the Upanishads as the most ancient source of Indian thought and religion, the true Veda, the first book of Knowledge .... " " My first contact with Vedic thought came indirectly while pursuing certain lines of self-development in the way of Indian yoga ...
... ... How shall deliverance be secured? (Var Majh, 145) This distinguishes the Kali age: the tyrant is readily approved.... (Ramkali, 902) In language so familiar to Indian thought, the country was getting enveloped more and more in "tāmasic ignorance and rājasic impulsion". 14 It was an Asuric age, native Asuras fought among themselves and fought the foreign Asuras ...
... greatest extremist towards the Government and change for 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 ...
... hurls them furiously on a single objective." It is true that ancient Indians thought that this could be done most effectively by making the mind the master of the body and, in the course of time, the word came to be confined to the sense of ascetic practices having this object. It is also true that given the tendency of the ancient Indian mind to follow each pursuit of life to its farthest point and to... hermits. Here was a scene that contained too many potential marvels to be ignored by a poet of love and beauty and the joy of life. The greatness of ascetic mastery had been depicted many times before in Indian epics, but it had never been made a part of the beauty of life, while Kalidasa's appreciation is aesthetic in its nature. The picture of Parvati, immobile, standing in water during the nights of the... desires to see, to touch, to caress. She seeks for the Spirit, not as an object of worship, but as her lover by whom she wants to be embraced. One is not very far here from the subsequent development in Indian Page 16 religion when the relation between the human soul and the Supreme will be seen and experienced as the love of a woman for her lover. In these religions of bhakti, the emotional ...
... that of the Indian schools of thought. Although the book will be published first in Marathi, we are promised a version also in English. We look forward with interest to a work which, proceeding from a scholar of such eminence and so acute an intellect, one especially whose name carries weight with all Hindus, must be considered an event of no small importance in Indian religious thought. We welcome... mysteries is over and the age of monstrosities has never been. Ignorance is the only monstrosity. Page 460 Mr. Tilak's Book on the Gita In an interview with the representative of an Indian journal Mr. Bal Gangadhar Tilak has given a brief account of the work on the Gita which he has been writing during his six years' internment in Mandalay. He begins:— "You know that the Gita is regarded... grouping together young men of different castes and religions in a common ideal. All sectarian and political questions are necessarily foreign to its idea and its activities. It is on a higher plane of thought superior to external differences of race, caste, creed and opinion and in the solidarity of the spirit that unity can be realised. The Idée Nouvelle has two rules only for its members, first, to ...
... which a critic lately flung against a book by an Indian of poems steeped in mystical vision and experience. The critic remarked that the poems left a vague feeling of inadequacy because they were written by an Indian in a foreign tongue not indeed ungrammatically or unidiomatically or with imcompetent technique but with a certain Indian-ness of thought which fitted like a round peg the square hole... to remember that Gosse's advice to Sarojini Naidu amounted to saying: "If you, an Indian with such a flair for our tongue and our literary technique, want to write good English poetry, do not echo English thought and vision but write utterly as an Indian." Surely, if English words were impervious to Indianness of mind, Gosse's advice would be egregious nonsense. The fact is that English words... unbridgeable gulf between Indian thoughts and English words. In its full form this afflatus from dimensions of consciousness so far explored only by fits and starts or in their first aspects will constitute a new age by the sustained height and depth and breadth it will reveal. The English tongue will bear a taste of the occult and the Unknown as never before. That will be an Indian extension of its basic ...
... carefully reading all that Sri Aurobindo has said on the subject ( Synthesis of Yoga: in the "Yoga of Knowledge" he deals with religions; the first chapters of Essays on the Gita; Foundations of Indian Culture; Thoughts and Aphorisms , and many others too). Therefore start reading first . So I am not replying to your questions because they are part of the course I want to give myself and have not, besides ...
... is also transformative. And because the post-Rigvedic sages and even the oldest Indian seers did not have their poise in the sheer Supermind they missed altogether the transformative aspect. God was indeed taken as omnipotent but it was never thought that he could totally divinise mind, life and matter. Indeed the thought of doing so was never taken as having entered God's consciousness! Just as even... dealing with it from above and, as Coleridge would put it, "defecating it to a transparency" through the use of "That which thinks not with the mind but by which the mind is thought". (Kena Upanishad) The oldest Indian seers also used this "That": what they did not succeed in keeping alive was the fine distinction between — to use Sri Aurobindo's terminology — Supermind and Overmind. In the... and finally the very secret of the Supermind was lost or at any rate hazed off. The lack of a concrete complete grasp of the Supramental is clear to me from the fact that the last formula of Indian spiritual thought was Sat-Chit-Ananda (Existence-Consciousness-Bliss) — surely a magnificent summing up of Reality and yet containing the seed of a static realization in which no vision of a universe sprouting ...
... higher and the lower, which Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga affirms and uses as a lever of ascent into the fullness of the Life Divine, is not unfamiliar to the central body of Indian spiritual thought. It is implicit also in the thought of some of the old religions and philosophies of the world. But its practical application to spiritual life, which was the core of the Vedic spiritual culture, has long been ...
... of the Indian Government on the idea of a loose federation. At Page 123 the same time, perhaps partly inspired by a suspicion of these subtle antennae, rumours were afloat in Pakistan that India, in order to bring about an end to Partition, was at the bottom of the inner dislocation. Countering these rumours and keeping those antennae in view and representing Indian political... in such a role get authorised by you? Here is a passage in which not only you but also Sri Aurobindo is committed by words attributed to you: The Year 1957 will be a very important year in Indian history, like 1757 and 1857. It will see the end of Pakistan and there are serious possibilities of a Russo-American was over India. Many politicians expected war in March 1950 and they came to... future in 1957 that 1957 is as important in India's history as in their own ways 1757, the year of the Battle of Plassey which brought India into British hands, and 1857, the date of the so-called Indian Mutiny against British domination. Now you Page 118 have the correct sequence of the possibilities in front of you. " A World War such as I have spoken of in the interview ...
... the thought of the Gita reaches beyond to a tertiary condition of our developing self-consciousness towards which the secondary is only a partial stage of advance. The Indian social tendency has been to subordinate the individual to the claims of society, but Indian religious thought and spiritual seeking have been always loftily individualistic in their aims. An Indian system of thought like the... he has moved, by the path of works towards the discovery of the Divine in themselves. Outwardly his actions may not seem to differ essentially from theirs; battle and rule as well as teaching and 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 ...
... to emerge and with some promise of being not, as it once was, the sorrowful physician of the malady of life, but the beginning of a large and profound clarity. The European eye is struck in Indian spiritual thought by the Buddhistic and illusionist denial of life. But it must Page 31 It knew that without a "fine excess" we cannot break down the limits which the dull temper... spiritual truth. After the age of the Spirit, the age of the Dharma; after the Veda and Upanishads, the heroic centuries of action and social formation, typal construction and thought and philosophy, when the outward forms of Indian life and culture were fixed in their large lines and even their later developments were being determined in the seed. The great classical age of Sanskrit culture was the flowering... What was this ancient spirit and characteristic soul of India? European writers, struck by the general metaphysical bent of the Indian mind, by its strong religious instincts and religious idealism, by its other-worldliness, are inclined to write as if this were all the Indian spirit. An abstract, metaphysical, religious mind overpowered by the sense of the infinite, not apt for life, dreamy, unpractical ...
... profound clarity. The European eye is struck in Indian spiritual thought by the Buddhistic and illusionist denial of life. But it must be remembered that this is only one side of its philosophic tendency which assumed exaggerated proportions only in the period of decline. In itself too that was simply one result, in one direction, of a tendency of the Indian mind which is common to all its activities,... spiritual truth. After the age of the Spirit, the age of the Dharma; after the Veda and Upanishads, the heroic centuries of action and social formation, typal construction and thought and philosophy, when the outward forms of Indian life and culture were fixed in their large lines and even their later developments were being determined in the seed. The great classical age of Sanskrit culture was the flowering... nadir of setting energy, the evening-time from which according to the Indian idea of the cycles a new age has to start. It was that moment and the pressure of a superimposed European culture which followed it that made the reawakening necessary. We have practically to take three facts into consideration, the great past of Indian culture and life with the moment of inadaptive torpor into which it had ...
... and the tide of power Are taken from us and, though a glowing form Abides astonishing earth, imagined supreme, Too little of what was meant has left a trace. 17 In Indian aesthetic thought of the c, such a sinking of the Inspiration would be attributed to a failure of yogic concentration (shithila samādhi) 18 . Though the six Darshanas were well established and systematic... difference between Indian and Western Philosophy. The primacy of Spirit and the yoking of human effort to it with an aim to union enters too, into accounts of the human creative process and spawns a tradition of artistic practice known as shilpa-yoga (the Yoga of Art or Art as Yoga). Thinking of the creative process in these terms can be seen from the earliest Indian texts. In the Nasadiya... Some rapture of the all-creating Bliss, Some form and plan of the Beauty unutterable. 22 The Golden Age of Indian Art is considered to be the period from the late 4 th to the 6 th c, though astonishing embodiments of Beauty continue to be seen in Indian sculpture and architecture right up to the 16 th c. and in Painting at least upto the 18 th c. By the 5 th c, sophisticated ...
... figure henceforth not only as great poets and artists or heroes of thought and action, but as our typical heroes and exemplars of spirituality. Not Buddha, not Christ, Chaitanya, St. Francis, Ramakrishna; these are either semi-barbaric Orientals or touched by the feminine insanity of an Oriental religion. The impression made on an Indian mind resembles the reaction that a cultured intellectual might feel... triumph of Indian culture baffles and offends the average positivist mind of the West.... "But the positivist mind may yet be of good courage: for its hold is still strong and it has still the claim of intellectual orthodoxy and the prestige of the right of possession; many streams must swell and meet together before it is washed under Page 387 and a tide of uniting thought sweeps humanity... fake, not an honest critical production." 15 (Paragraphing ours) (5) "These irrational half-savages!" "... when this Western mind is confronted with the still surviving force of Indian religion, thought, culture, it finds that Page 388 all its standards are denied, exceeded or belittled; all that it honours is given a second place, all that it has rejected is still held in ...
... intensities — Bliss, Light, Love etc." (2.1.1935) It is in the fitness of things that, though in this poem Bliss is put on a par with other intensities, it is set first among them, for in Indian mystical thought Ananda is the fount of all creation. Not from any need, any lack, does the Divine manifest the universe, but from His fullness of joy and that is why the universe is re-garded as his lila... Love 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... particular becomes inevitable in terms of art by the logic of exactly proportionate rhyme. Can we say with some probability what "seven" levels Sri Aurobindo may have meant? In reference to the ancient Indian Page 150 scriptures, he has explained this number by a scheme of planes diversely distinguished at different historical periods. In the most popular version the number denoted the ...
... the Word, Vachas, Gih, Uktha, may almost Page 720 be described as the fundamental thought of the Vedic seers, and this initial psychic perception of our forefathers has dominated Indian religious thought & discipline ever since. The name of God, the mantra, is still the keystone of all Indian yoga. We shall not realise the full bearing & rationale of this great Vedic conception unless we... as a living & acting presence. The mantra then, when it is thought of as operating to bring out the ukthyam, the thing desired & to be expressed, out of the soul into the mind state, mati, is called brahma orángúsham brahma or, briefly, ángúsham; when it is thought of as mentalising the ukthyam, it is called manma or mantra, when it is thought of as expressing by speech the ukthyam in the thinker's practical... Existence. In that Tapas the sacrificial activity of Agni in man, the kratu, becoming Godward will finds its manhaná, its absolute fullness & fulfilment. Sat, Tapas, Ananda, Vijnana, Manas—this is the Indian ladder of Jacob by which one descends & ascends again to heaven. Man the Doer, the Manu, the Krana, perfecting himself by works, is lifted by the divine will to Vijnana, to the ideal self of true knowledge ...
... detail. Even as the criticism is general as well as particular, the "aggressive defence" too has the same dual cast. Did Indian religious thought really preach universal asceticism or a total flight from life? Sri Aurobindo points out that ordinarily - in the Indian way of life - moksa (spiritual liberation) comes as a feat of transcendence out of the fullness of the other three, kāma (... ic Indian attitude corrosively pessimistic - or more pessimistic than, say. Western or Christian thought? A divine discontent with Page 494 the normal concert of human activities 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 sp... provide also the inspiration for all the best Indian poetry to come. The Upanishads add a more specifically intellectual dimension to the poetry and the speculation, but they also connect with the higher spiritual thought of the civilised world, ancient and modern: The ideas of the Upanishads can be rediscovered in much of the thought of Pythagoras and Plato and form the profoundest ...
... active and transformative in the finite substance of mortal man. The divineness to which Sri Aurobindo devotes the first stanza, figuring the Rose of God as the Rose of Bliss, is what Indian mystical thought has always not only considered the original fount of creation but also linked most immediately with beauty. Essentially the perfection of form conveys delight because essentially delight composes... Bliss-experience in particular becomes inevitable in terms of art by the logic of proportionate rhyme. Can we say with precision what "seven" stands for in the poem? In reference to the ancient Indian scriptures, Sri Aurobindo has explained this number by a scheme of planes diversely distinguished at different historical periods. In the most popular version the number denoted the three transcendental... and Sim on the head of the Timeless, guest of the marvellous Hour— two excellent lines in reference to the divine original whose imperfect translation is our mental thought and which has to make this thought no longer a translation but a transparence of the "great wisdom-bloom on the summits of being" (another phrase which is excellent poetry conjuring up by its long ea and oo and ...
... humiliating for the credulous and totally unprepared Indians who thought they were living in friendship with the Chinese: Hindi-Chini bhai bhai! (the Indians and the Chinese are brothers). The Mother never underestimated the Chinese. Had Sri Aurobindo not written that they would invade Tibet — as happened in 1959 — to use it as a gateway to India? The Indian Army was helpless against the hordes of the... necessarily the most advanced. Around them moved the candidate-yogis who at one time had been very serious in their endeavour but who had got stuck somewhere on the path — and the Ashram was, according to Indian norms, not a bad place to spend one’s days in a sinecure. Once accepted by the Mother, she never left you in the lurch, materially or otherwise — and it happened that their yoga unexpectedly got restarted... (surely the most effective they could have had), of course the secretaries and heads of departments who represented her in the Ashram organization, ministers and high-ranked functionaries of the diverse Indian states and the Central Government, heads of state and religious leaders … The whole world passed by her there in that room on the second floor, where her chair was always turned towards Sri Aurobindo’s ...
... in China. That event marks the beginning of an invasion of Chinese custom and thought by the culture and philosophy of the Indians. Buddhism gradually became a powerful force within China and as it did so, violent power struggles broke out between Taoists and adherents to the invading religion. Meanwhile, Indian monks travelling to China to disseminate the Buddha's teachings passed on the road... can be called European or American in the same way that, say, judo, can be called Japanese. The Enigma of Bodhidharma There is some evidence that in the year AD 520 an Indian monk, thought to have been born in Kanchipuram near Madras, travelled to the city of Kuang (modern Canton) where he was granted audience by Wu Ti, an Emperor of the Liang Dynasty. From there he travelled... he was 150 years old? If he did, was he saying what he thought was true or speaking in riddles in the manner of later Ch'an and Zen monks? Does the phrase 'basically a Hon of Posseur' mean that he looked like one or was one? Pelliot thinks that it means the 'Hon with the blue green eyes'. The person he was describing could have been an Indian, even if his colouring was fair. In the north-west of ...
... to the exit, the issue. But this exit leaves the problem where it was; it is only a way of escape for the personal being out of the unsolved perplexity of the cosmic existence. In ancient Indian spiritual thought there was a clearer perception of the difficulty; the practice of truth, virtue, right will and right doing was regarded as a necessity of the approach to spiritual realisation, but in the... and does what it can with it: this is the reason why we see evil coming out of what we call good and good coming out of what we call evil; and, if we see even what was thought to be evil coming to be accepted as good, what was thought to be good accepted as evil, it is because our standards of both are evolutionary, limited and mutable. Evolutionary Nature, the terrestrial cosmic Force, seems then at... One whose intelligence has attained to Unity, casts away from him both sin and virtue. Gita. (II. 50.) He who has found the bliss of the Eternal is afflicted no more by the thought, "Why have I not done the good? Why have I done evil?" One who knows the self extricates himself from both these things. Taittiriya Upanishad. (II. 9.) These are they who are conscious ...
... that be, lived by the average English-educated Indian, is the most effective piece of destructive criticism on the education given by the Indian Government. It followed therefore, as night followed day and day followed night, that the individual and society in India couldn't be transformed "till you have thoroughly purged and purified his thoughts and aspirations by giving him free and impartial... The reader is referred to V.P. Varma's The Political Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo (1960), Karan Singh's Prophet of Indian Nationalism: A Study of the Political Thought of Sri Aurobindo Ghosh 1893-1910 (1963, 1967 and Haridas and Uma Mukherjee's Sri Aurobindo's Political Thought: 1893-1908 (1958). Page 256 went also to Krishna's life to draw a lesson in nation-building. The essay... accepted by the Indian press of all complexions with something like genuine relief, but it also provoked in the Anglo-Indian press "wild and hysteric shrieks of piercing harshness flying Morleyward". 32 However, some time after the session was over, the Moderates began to think that they had committed themselves too readily and a little too much, and the Nationalists thought that they had we ...
... Principal Chitle said that one of the chief deficiencies in the contemporary Indian juristic thought was that it has not seriously attempted to correlate the ancient Indian jurisprudence with the modern jurisprudence. He frankly admitted that he himself was more at home in Roman Law and modern jurisprudence than in the ancient Indian wisdom. Page 127 He added, "Mr. Bhatt, one of the main reasons... studied on my own the entire history of thought, eastern and western. I had, of course, the guidance of Brahmadevji, but his methods of teaching were quite unique. Externally, he was not very communicative; he guided me only through suggestions and encouraging smile. A major part of my studies was devoted to the Vedas, Upanishads and the Gita. I also studied Indian Law and jurisprudence, mainly under... raised by Professor Bapat. His question sparked off a lively discussion on the importance of Constitutional Law, merits of the Indian Constitution and whether Indian Constitution could be regarded as a model piece of legislation. Professor Bapat upheld the greatness of the Indian Constitution and Professor Desai, while praising some of its salient features, pointed out that its main defect was that it ...
... elaborate form and detailed law of arrangement its application in fact and rule of life. The European eye is struck in Indian spiritual thought by the Buddhistic and illusionist denial of life. But... in itself that was simply one result, in one direction, of a tendency of the Indian mind which is common to all its activities, Page 610 the impulse to follow each motive, each specialisation... (i)Morning Assembly (ii)Thought for the day (iii)Story-telling (iv)Study of great books (v)Drama Page 526 17.Should a writer be socially, morally, ethically committed for promoting highest aspiration and fostering the growth of values? 18.Creative process can only grow in freedom. The two terms for writer Manishi and Brahman . In Indian context any intellectual... break down the limits which the dull temper of the normal mind opposes to knowledge and thought and experience, and it had in seeking this point a boundless courage and yet a sure tread. Yet it is notable that this pursuit of the most opposite extremes never resulted in disorder.... In every extreme the Indian spirit seeks for a law in that extreme and a rule, measure and structure in its application ...
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