... two-handful of clothes were taken, dropped down forcefully on a smooth concrete slab — and hit-hit-hit (banged down) and pushed on to the next man who dipped the lot in a tub of cold water and again hit-hit-hit and passed on to the next man. This was repeated via 4-5 men. This was done early in the morning at 4.30. It was like body-building exercises (My brother and I joined in on occasions for the fun of... nothing new, for in Calcutta he was running a club where young boys could come and learn some healthy exercises, get disciplined, spend time usefully. The Play Ground was where I met him for the first time, as an 8-year-old. I was sitting in one corner of the Ground sketching a bird or an animal on the sandy ground as asked by some older boys. P approached me and asked why I was not playing. I replied... replied in broken English that I did not know I could. He gave me permission to join the boys playing Kabaddi or King and Fortress etc. There was not much organisation into groups or of timings. Pranab-da then took charge. He called in Biren Chunder his erstwhile mentor and a family friend. Both P and Biren Chunder were wellknown boxers in Calcutta. Biren-da was known as K.O. King. Their aim was to K.O ...
... Apart from two of them, I never saw even a trace of fear in the face or speech of anyone. Almost all were young men, many mere boys. Even strong-minded people were likely to be very upset at the thought of the dire punishment to be given to the accused if found guilty. But these young men did not really hope to be acquitted at the trial. Especially, on observing the frightful paraphernalia of witnesses... football for a few days, though the ball was made of a unique material; blind man’s buff was played on some days, on others a number of groups were formed for lessons in ju-jitsu, high and long jumping or for playing draughts. Except a few reserved and elderly people everybody joined in these games at the request of the boys. I observed that even those who were not young had a childlike character. In... grace of the most Gracious became steeped in joy. Those boys achieved in a few months what Yogis take a long time to attain. Ramakrishna Paramahamsa once said, “What you are seeing now is really nothing — such a flood of spirituality is coming into this land that even boys will attain realisation after three days’ Sadhana.” To see these boys was to have no doubt about the truth of this prophecy. They ...
... education that asked for different types of education and different kinds of physical culture for boys and girls, even as she firmly discountenanced the only too common tendency of women to overemphasise their femineity and men their masculinity. For the Mother, as for Sri Aurobindo, men and women alike, boys and girls alike, were but vessels of the immortal spirit, and the whole aim of education - and... the other pose challenges of adjustment to present-day man, and the body should accordingly be in readiness to meet with self-assurance the coming events. Hence the primacy the Mother gave to physical culture in her scheme of integral education. As regards the particular questions Whether there should be different sets of exercises for boys and girls? Whether the muscular woman was for that reason... is more dignified and also more effective". Page 439 Nor is it necessary, in the name of the 'blessed feminine', to insulate girls from all association with boys. The organisation of separate sets of exercises for boys and girls would create more problems than it would solve, and might even congeal the superficial differences into unwholesome rigidities. Robust health in women couldn't ...
... the man. He said, 'But you must respect the yellow robe .' '' Sri Aurobindo was no respecter of sham. Before leaving Calcutta in mid-March, Lele had met young people of the Secret Society. Barin had not told him that they were revolutionaries. Nor did he tell Lele what they were doing in the Maniktola Garden. Lele on his several visits met Upen, Prafulla Chaki, and other young men and boys. He... The Most Dangerous Man Barin reports that he called Lele to Calcutta for his own sadhana, as well as for training and giving initiation to his boys. Lele came in February 1908 and put up at Sejda's Scott's Lane house. He even went one day to Belur Math and sat in meditation with Swami Brahmananda. He also met Baba Bharati. But it seems that Lele "knew the man by the dress" only ! Lele... the most suitable time would be in late evening when he habitually went to the Club in a victoria. So on 30 April 1908, around 9 P.M., the boys threw bombs on a carriage they presumed to be Kingsford's. But it was not. It is amazing how many of the most brutal of men seem to have a charmed life ... for a time. Mrs. Kennedy and her daughter were going to the Club in their own carriage, and both of them ...
... Someone climbed up that staircase and went and stood on the covered terrace on the first floor. Over the sands some people appeared, streaming in groups of young and old, boys and girls, men and women, children, a lot of army men too dressed in their battle fatigues, all walking towards this house. Each one of them held the Indian flag. Some people were coming by boat, some were walking, some were... tinfoil seal and served the two boys some biscuits on a plate. Tea was getting ready. The two boys began munching the biscuits with great relish. These were expensive, foreign biscuits. The piping-hot tea arrived. 'The biscuits are just delicious!' the boys exclaimed. 'Can we take some with us?' 'Go on, take as many as you wish,' said the lady. The two boys filled their pockets with biscuits... When the boys still did not budge the Englishman took out a revolver from his pocket and screamed at them: 'If you don't go I'll shoot. Get out !' What could the boys do now? And so in that dark night crackling with rain and thunder they rushed out of the house. The Englishman was screaming from behind: 'Run away quickly. Go away as far as you can .' The boys started running ...
... chronicle this story." All the same, after three months when the two boys were allowed to go out of an evening, they tried to bring back, clandestinely, some eggs. Eggs in the house of an orthodox vegetarian! But how to dispose of the shells? Flush them down the drain, of course! and they will vanish in the sewers. To the boys' sorrow the drain pipe ended about one foot from the ground in the courtyard... the horse carriage, Srinivasachari and Bharati explained to Sri Aurobindo the arrangements made for his lodging. At first the Guest was reluctant to live in another man's house and said he would rather have a separate place. The two men assured him that an alternative existed, in case this one did not suit him. But this one was safer than the other. Would 'Babu' not give it a try tonight? Sri Aurobindo... habit of drinking tea for quite some time. During those six months Sri Aurobindo drank his tea from a silver tumbler which had been offered by Shankar Chettiar." It was no high tea, just plain tea. The boys had something in 1 See Mother's Chronicles, Book V, ch. 19. Page 39 between meals. "Let me now introduce you," murmured Moni, "to some of our eating habits during ...
... There was to be a centre kick following the goal. I stood with the ball at the centre and told the two boys on my right and on my left to keep as far away as possible from the centre and to go on making long passes. I sent the ball from the centre straight to the right wing. Our outside man was ready. He took the ball and passed it back to me at the centre. I was already far ahead, almost beyond... with British soldiers, our Bengali boys had to be protected, they must win. The Sannyasi enquired whether they had guns and cannon and what was the strength of the enemy. He was answered that it was not that kind of battle—it was a football game. The Sannyasi shook his head and sent him away. The gentleman returned and saw that with great effort his boys had managed a drawn game and they pulled... supporters naturally took their side. The boys of the Cercle Sportif were the enlightened, nationalist element in the local population. Now, the play began. One of the conditions of the match, laid down in advance, was that if any of the players on either side were to get disabled in the course of the game, he could be replaced by another. The Sportif boys had arranged among themselves that in case ...
... be a centre kick following the goal. I stood with the ball at the centre and told the two boys on my right and on my left to keep as far away as possible Page 455 from the centre and to go on making long passes. I sent the ball from the centre straight to the right wing. Our outside man was ready. He took the ball and passed it back to me at the centre. I was already far ahead... with British soldiers, our Bengali boys had to be protected, they must win. The Sannyasi enquired whether they had guns and cannon and what was the strength of the enemy. He was answered that it was not that kind of battle – it was a football game. The Sannyasi shook his head and sent him away. The gentleman returned and saw that with great effort his boys had managed a drawn game and they... supporters naturally took their side. The boys of the 'Cercle Sportif' were the enlightened, nationalist element in the local population. Now, the play began. One of the conditions of the match, laid down in advance, was that if any of the players on either side were to get disabled in the course of the game, he could be replaced by another. The Sportif boys had arranged among themselves that in case ...
... Page 279 its policy and strategy, he had left Barin with his boys to train them as he liked, and had no direct contact with the young men. "I? Good Lord! I had nothing to do with them," Sri Aurobindo exclaimed, amazed at an account brought to him. "It was all Barin's work. I never knew who these boys were and never saw them. Only once Barin brought a troop of them to my house but... 'Act' in 1908 against the Swadeshi press. The revolutionary movement in Bengal was spearheaded by a band of young men under the leadership of Barin, who worked among schoolboys giving them religious, moral and Page 277 political education. He taught the boys all about the state of the country and the necessity for independence, and told them that the only way left was to fight... took the bombs away but didn't do anything at Manicktola." Actually, the police arrived before Barin and his band of young men could remove or destroy all the incriminating articles. Those were tumultuous days. The first revolutionaries were all very young —school-going boys or college students. Not only were they green in age, but they were all totally Page 280 inexperienced. ...
... suffering and pains during periods? 5) Do you think there should be different types of exercises for boys and girls? Will a girl bring harm on Page 290 her genital organs by practising the so-called manly sports? 6) Will a girl's appearance change and become muscular like a man and make her look ugly if she practises vigorous exercises? 7) Will the practice of vigorous types... But with a wise and progressive training, girls as well as boys can participate in all kinds of sports, and thus increase their strength and health. Page 294 To become strong and healthy can never bring harm to a body, even if it is a woman's body! 6) Will a girl's appearance change and become muscular like a muscular man's and make her look ugly if she practises vigorous exercises... transformation; this is more dignified and also more effective. 5) Do you think there should be different types of exercises for boys and girls? Will a girl bring harm on her genital organs by practising the so-called many sports? In all cases, as well for boys as for girls, the exercises must be graded according to the strength and the capacity of each one. If a weak student tries at once to ...
... sturdiness in holding by them. He has dared to go to jail and honour those who follow his example,—the bold bad man! And yet we seem to have somehow or other a dim recollection of a venerable Congress leader named Babu Narendranath Sen figuring prominently at a meeting in which men and boys who had gone to jail for resisting the Government, were honoured and saluted as national heroes. Evidently we have... enlightened men, that is to say, to all whose views agree with the Mirror 's. Mr. Tilak, we learn, has seriously offended our contemporary by giving honour to Mr. Bhopatkar on his release from jail; his speeches on the occasion of the Shivaji festival were displeasing to the thoughtful and enlightened men who congregate in the office of the Indian Mirror ; and to sum up the whole matter, he is a man of extreme... Western India; it is a man of moderate views: one, let us say, who dare not look Truth in the face and speak out boldly what he thinks. It is not the one man whom the whole Hindu community in Western India delights to honour, from Peshawar to Kolhapur and from Bombay to our own borders; it is one who will not talk about Shivaji and Bhavani—only about Mahatmas. It is not the man who has suffered and denied ...
... overcome her suffering and pains during periods? Do you think there should be different types of exercises for boys and girls? Will a girl bring harm to her genital organs by practising the so- called manly sports? Will a girl’s appearance change and become muscular like a man’s and make her look ugly if she practises vigorous exercises? Will the practice of vigorous types of exercises... foolishness. But with a wise and progressive training, girls as well as boys can participate in all kinds of sports, and thus increase their strength and health. To become strong and healthy can never bring harm to a body, even if it is a woman’s body! Will a girl’s appearance change and become muscular like a muscular man’s and make her look ugly if she practises vigorous exercises? Weakness... transformation; this is more dignified and also more effective. Do you think there should be different types of exercises for boys and girls? Will a girl bring harm to her genital organs by practising the so- called manly sports? In all cases, as well for boys as for girls, the exercises must be graded according to the strength and the capacity of each one. If a weak student tries at once ...
... occupied. While the boys were getting the luggage packed and the two elders were talking, they were all served with tea and "a plate of small, crisp, fish-shaped biscuits." Being a Tamil orthodox Brahmin, Srinivasachari did not partake of the ship's food. But the others enjoyed it. After their tea in the cabin, the boys took the three trunks and bedding and then all the four men got down into the boat... Srinivas went away to Pondicherry and his children were educated there. Thus, Srinivasachari was no stranger to Pondicherry. The family however had returned to Madras after the father s death, and the boys went to college there. It was Tilak s advent on the national scene that attracted the family to work for the country. Srinivas had come back to Pondicherry to help Subramania Bharati against whom... to be a printing press. The owner did not live there. A local man directed the newcomer to another part of the town: a house on Muthumariamman Koil Street. It was to the master of the house, Srinivasachari, that Moni handed over Sri Aurobindo's letter of introduction. Srinivasachari was a Tamil Brahmin. Moni saw in front of him a man of thirty odd years, of medium height, fair, large-eyed, with ...
... of the mind, it has not yet been found possible to provide under modern conditions a suitable moral training for the school and college. The attempt to make boys moral and religious by the teaching of moral and religious text-books is a vanity and a delusion, precisely because the heart is not the mind and to instruct the mind does not necessarily improve the heart. It would be an error to say that it... it, watching, suggesting, helping, but not interfering. The one excellent element in the English boarding school is that the master at his best stands there as a moral guide and example, leaving the boys largely to inliuence and help each other in following the path silently shown to them. But the method practised is crude and marred by the excess of outer discipline, Page 28 for... inner and private, according to his own likings and passions. On the other hand, to neglect moral and religious education altogether is to corrupt the race. The notorious moral corruption in our young men previous to the saving touch of the Swadeshi movement was the direct result of the purely mental instruction given to them under the English system of education. The adoption of the English system under ...
... Playground Physical education started with a group of small boys. During the first years of the Ashram there was no organisation for any sports or games here. The younger boys, Mona, Manoj, Harit, Kittu, Gama, Sumantra and several others would wander around and play anywhere. Nirmal-da and Shanti-bhai had made a group of these boys and they used to make some arrangements for them to play. Nirmal-da... beginning our physical education activities were limited to the Playground and included volleyball and a few other games. Boys and girls had different time-schedules for sports. Sometimes it was the girls who played first and at other times it was the boys. In the mornings the boys used to go in a group to the Military Ground to play football. In 1948 the Ashram acquired the Tennis-ground and the... The other players were Udar, Bula-da, Rajen-da. Then football was started at the Tennis-ground. The Ashram boys played their first match at the invitation of a teacher from the French College, Professor Saravane and a wealthy landowner, played against a team of boys from outside. Our boys lost as they had not yet got used to playing on a regular field. Ranju had been made the team captain. An eyewitness ...
... the three boys. Swarnalata, however, had begun to show signs of abnormality just after the birth of her first son, Benoybhusan. Sometimes she would beat her children. Purani recounts, "One day she was in a fit of anger and was screaming and beating Manmohan mercilessly. Sri Aurobindo who was present got afraid and making an excuse that he was thirsty he went out of the room." Man's cruelty... were long in coming from the boys' house which was considerably higher up, Annette left. But luckily she met them. "Coming up the very steep hill towards home I met the boys —all grown and 1. For the amusement of our readers, here is an advertisement found in The Bengali Directory (1878) : "DARJEELING LORETTO HOUSE (Boarding and day-school for girls and little boys.) Lady Superioress, Mrs.... see 'the Doctor's little boys' in 1877. She wrote to her husband Henry (29 September) about her impression of the convent. "An amiable sister responded to my summons and ushered me into a room where flowers were arranged like Dutch flower pieces in quaint latticework dishes." She waited there, "and at length a lady appeared and had a long chat with me. She told me they (the boys) were very good and i ...
... importantly, Rajnarain took great pains with his boys. He did not believe in corporal punishment but in interesting the students and capturing their attention. He encouraged them to read books and built a school library. He gained for the School such a high reputation among the inhabitants of the district that in spite of a Missionary school which admitted boys gratis, numerous poor people applied every... he has been able to raise the necessary subscriptions. Ce n'est que le premier pas qui compte. [The first step is what matters.] Another subscription has been set on foot among the friends of the boys to supply backs to the forms and stools for the feet of the pupils, who will no longer be placed like notes of interrogation on the forms with legs dangling, a position that weakens and deforms the... sine die with a vote of thanks to the chair. [Signed:] Mr. Bright, Magistrate.' After him the Barrack-Master, Capt. Short, wrote, 'The meeting having adjourned, it is proposed en passant that the boys anxious to become students be examined as to their physical prowess, the best being: to go head foremost through an inch saul 1 board. Vivat Regina.' "While these were being written, the buggy ...
... Daily dozen for Men Preface It has been universally accepted by health counsellors and health seekers that physical exercise, like hygiene, food, sleep, etc., is one of the most essential things in a man's daily life. Children, boys and girls, men and women, in fact everybody, should do some kind of physical exercise if they want to lead a life of health... each exercise have been given. But this is only a guide, and one need not strictly limit oneself by these repetitions. For a man with normal health and body, the maximum number given in the text should be sufficient. A weaker man should keep nearer to the lower number. A heavy man with a high fat percentage should increase the number to twenty, twenty-five or thirty repetitions to burn his excess fat... health and happiness. It is understood that the exercise programme will vary from person to person. A man doing hard physical labour requires some quiet and relaxing exercises like stretching, asanas or deep breathing. Teachers, students, office workers and those who lead a sedentary life, must do exercises that make them pant and perspire. Growing children must be given an exercise programme that will ...
... burden of a humiliating past and the dull memory of servitude and a cringing existence. But my glorious young ones – is there a more beautiful youth in the whole world? Have a look at these young men and boys! What a material! With them I can build a new world!” 814 “My pedagogic principles are tough”, continued Hitler. “The weak parts must be hammered away. In my Ordensburgen a youth will grow... trenches, fought more ruthlessly, mercilessly and savagely than any other battle in the past, produced men whom the world had never seen before … These were new conquerors, natures of steel, adapted to battle in its most abhorrent form … When I observe them, the insight lights up in me: this is the new man.” 810 Jünger was personally admired and his writings were widely read. Especially his war reminiscences... became the only authorized youth organization in the Reich. When a member had served his years in the Hitler Youth, he was in fact a fully trained military man. “While training in shooting and manoeuvre exercises was extended to all young men, the defence training of the Hitler Youth was expanded into special units. In 1938 the Naval Hitler Youth numbered 50 000, the Motorized Hitler Youth 90 000 ...
... within a few days. In any case, we kept following the progress of our boys in Calcutta and when we were informed that our boys from the Berhampur Krishnanath College had won the championship we went to meet the Principal. He had already read about it in the papers. On seeing us tears welled up in the old man's eyes. "You did well to send them, Pinu" he said. Then everything happened... for voluntary work and our boys performed their tasks to the best of their ability. In a short time we became quite well known for the work we did. Parents started encouraging their boys to join our club. They felt that their boys were less likely to fall into bad company and ruin their character by being in our club. We used to watch more attentively the boys who were promising. By giving... began developping very well. The boys were regular in their exercises and soon enough the whole of Behrampur knew about its activities. Boys started coming to the club from not only the surrounding areas but also from distant places and they were all students from schools and colleges. There were requests for "demonstrations" from several places and soon our boys gained a reputation for their skills ...
... were going ahead in Maniktala training boys in Yoga, Oh yes, when I told him that yesterday he said that you were at Calcutta, so how could you meet him at Bombay? He said it might have been in one of your comings and goings SRI AUROBINDO: My comings and goings? I had not much money to come and go. (Laughter) And Then? NIRODBARAN: There were two boys among them who were very remarkable—Prafulla... while putting you young people in danger?" Chaki suddenly clasped Charu's feet and said , "Are you testing me? My duty is to do what I am commanded." "Such was the material," Charu said, "first-rate boys and, added to everything else, the yogic force made them remarkable." It seems Barin was giving them spiritual training. SRI AUROBINDO: It was Lele who gave them the initiation into Yoga. Barin called... very much impressed and picked him out from the group. He wanted to take Chaki with him to make him a fine Yogi and consulted you and you replied that he should ask Dutt. Lele remarked that such fine boys were being wasted in the movement. SRI AUROBINDO: I said Dutt should be asked? But does he mean to say that Lele knew about the movement? He knew nothing at all except at the end when he said to ...
... clergymen, nor clergymen among bookmakers. In later life a man's occupation and status give an indication of his interests and capacities. I have, in my day, lived in various different social strata — diplomatists, dons, pacifists, gaol-birds, and politicians — but nowhere have I found the higgledy-piggledy ruthlessness of a set of boys. Intellectual boys, for the most part, have not yet learnt to conceal... of over-education by merely saying: "Let boys and girls run wild and not be bothered with too much learning." Our social Page 408 Photo Nathalie Nuber, Auroville structure increasingly depends upon trained and well-informed intelligence. The present world-wide depression is largely due to lack of education on the part of practical men: if bankers and politicians understood currency... lowest, be much richer than we are. The advancement of science — to take another illustration — cannot continue at anything like its present rate unless a man can reach the frontiers of existing knowledge by the time he is twenty-five, since few men are capable of profound originality after the age of thirty. And the average citizen cannot play his part in a complicated world unless he is more accustomed ...
... common aspiration to find the Truth. Present: The man of goodwill, the philanthropist. The disillusioned man who no longer believes in the possibility of happiness on earth. The scientist who seeks to solve the problems of Nature. The artist who dreams of a more beautiful ideal. A group of three students (two boys and a girl) who have faith in a better life and in themselves... life, how can one help men effectively? All the remedies we use are mere palliatives, not cures. Only the consciousness of Truth can save humanity. PESSIMIST I have suffered too much in life. I have experienced too many disillusionments, borne too much injustice, seen too much misery. I no longer believe in anything, I no longer expect anything from the world or from men. My last remaining hope ...
... all returned to their homes delighted and strengthened by this beautiful poem of hope. And so it was that a sick man helped his friends in good health. Whosoever is courageous can give courage to others, just as Page 187 the flame of one candle can light another. Brave boys and girls who read this story, learn how to encourage others, and be courageous yourselves. Page 188 ... smoke, the sparks, the flames, to safety. This is courage. Some time ago I visited an infant school in England. The little school-children were between three and seven years old. There were both boys and girls, who were busy knitting, drawing, listening to stories, singing. The teacher told me, "We are going to try the fire-alarm. Of course there is no fire, but they have been taught to get up... enables one to stand up to unjust men, however powerful they may be, and to make them listen to the voice of right and truth. The Rajah of Almora, in order to repel some invaders who had raided his mountain country, enrolled a number of men in a new regiment and provided each one with a good sword. "Forward, march!" commanded the Rajah. Instantly the men unsheathed their swords with a great ...
... Mahārāja, who became overwhelmed with fear and grief. Indeed, this harsh news struck him like a thunderbolt. With great difficulty, he somehow managed to approach the Kāliya lake. Many cowherd men, women, and young boys followed Nanda Mahārāja. Balarāma, the son of Rohinī, also arrived on the shore of the Kāliya lake. Everyone gathered to view the situation. Nanda and the other cowherd inhabitants of... and fetch the boys Rāma and Krsna to participate in the Dhanurya-jna (worship of the bow) to be held soon and to behold the splendour of the city of Mathura." Akrūra replied: 38. "O King! Your resolution to save yourself from death is certainly in order. But you have to be even-minded in success and failure. For it is the unseen divine agency that awards the fruits of all actions. 39. Men often plan without... 25-26. Hearing the conversation between these ignorant boys oblivious of the real state of affairs, the Lord, who is present in the hearts of all, understood that it was a real serpent and the boys had ignorantly taken fact for fancy. Anxious to save them, he wanted to stop them from proceeding further. Before he could do so, however, the boys and the calves entered into the monster's mouth. But instead ...
... the wind, ‘Help! Help!’ He rushed out to try and finish off Benoy, Badal and Dinesh in a man-to-man combat. But he had to concede defeat. Despite so many soldiers around he could not handle three young Bengalis. The famous Gurkha regiment was called to confront this fearless trio. Where on earth did these three boys get such tremendous force to take on the formidable British Army and inflict a shattering... markings of a hero. Tejen’s father (Jatindranath Mukherjee) has the markings, and others too. Some of them are endowed with almost divine qualities, rarely to be found among men. Let me tell you now about how two young boys heroically bore the torture inflicted on them by the police. They went on repeating Vande Mataram , Vande Mataram , Vande Mataram . Our Biren Sen (in the Ashram) like Sudhir-da... of young boys appears before my eyes and I remember their fearless faces and feats of bravery. They were born much after the Muraripukur boys. But these boys too were fired by that intrepid self-confidence that was lit by the matri-mantra Vande Mataram and they had set out to liberate their Motherland from the chains of slavery. We are all familiar with the courage and heroism of boys like Benoy ...
... much agitation in the minds of men and the young hearts, one of the Englishmen in our college, Russell, our professor of Logic and Philosophy, got it into his head to come out with something tactless against the Bengalis. It was like a spark in a powder dump. There was much excitement and agitation among the students. Could this not be avenged? Should the white man be allowed to escape scot-free... Swadeshi movement was in full tide, flooding the land with its enthusiasm, particularly the student community. But how about the Calcutta Presidency College? That was an institution meant for the "good" boys and for the sons of the rich, that is, for those who, in the parlance of the time, "had a stake in the country," those who, in other words, had something to lose. How far were they touched by that... the Ishan Scholarship in his B.A. examination and was ultimately given the name Swami Raghavananda or Sitapati Maharaj at the Ramakrishna Mission. These more or less made up the list of the "good" boys. Among the "bad" ones was Indranath 1 I cannot now exactly recall if Bhupati Mohan had been at the Presidency College right from the First Year class, or whether he joined the Third Year 'from ...
... Aparna, arrived and looked after him during the day. Some of us boys were called in for the nights. We talked deep into the night. He told us tales, tall ones and true ones. He told of his escapades, hilarious encounters with other men, ghosts and doctors — often heavily spiced with unmentionable comments. He could bowl us, young men, over on our own ‘home-ground’ (of speech and thought). He did not... Nolini-da: So you want to stay in this Ashram? Kobi: Yes, Sir. N: But do you know this Ashram is not like other Ashrams you have been to. Here great and equal freedom is given to all — boys and girls, men and women alike. You have not seen the like before. It may go against your sensibilities and moral standards. That will not do. Kobi: (Just heard and digested — no comments, no answer. Then... eating a tiger — “tiger-eating men”! All were horrified. Some tried to dissuade them from this ultimate “carnivorism”. But the two would not let such a bargain go waste merely because of the queasiness of a few mere men. Finally the Guru himself — Rabindranath Tagore — had to intervene. The next gastric outing was at the expense of one of their neighbours. That young man planted a coconut seedling, ...
... Unions to suppress strikes, is a masterpiece of unconscious humour. We shall next hear that Mahomedan Educational Conferences should be organised to discourage Mahomedan education, that the anti-circular boys should make it their chief object to put down picketing, and perhaps that a League is being formed with Babu Narendranath Sen at its head to "suppress" the Indian Mirror . We do not think the... strength and band itself into formidable combinations? Their work will be, then, to resist the greed and heartlessness of Capital and vindicate the claims of the toiler to just treatment and a man's wages for a man's work. O God forbid! These Unions are rather meant to suppress strikes and establish kindly relations between the employers and the employed! Are we, after all, one wonders sometimes, a nation... great ideals, the exaltation of frank and glorious conflict, the divine impulse that only comes to those who know they are battling bravely and openly for the freedom of their country, not to men who cringe to the enemy and lie and palter with their consciences. Truth and bold straight dealing we believe to be not only our noblest but our wisest policy in our struggle with the alien. Our leaders ...
... shadow of Buddhism stalked over all the land" and the philosophy of Illusion hypnotised men into inactivity the 'ashrams' became mere monasteries, places of retreat and nooks of quietism, a very different ideal had flourished in still earlier times: The old Ashrams were not entirely like that; the boys and young men who were brought up in them were trained in many things belonging to life: the son of... Reddy personally offered the gold medal and cheque to Sri Aurobindo. Later, Dr. Reddy went round the Ashram, and in the evening witnessed in the Playground a demonstration of physical culture by the boys and girls, and had a discussion with the Mother about the working of the Ashram. Recalling the impressions of his visit, Dr. Reddy wrote in the columns of Mother India: ... this extraordinary... the ancient spirit of strength and joy that pervades them. The Mother, the embodiment of grace, light and tenderness, ordered an exhibition of games and physical exercises by Page 462 the boys and girls of the Ashram School. I said to myself, "If all the schools were like this, won't India be unassailable by internal foes or external?" The parades were excellent. The exercises were gone through ...
... go up to Cambridge, Ara joined the I.C.S. Class organized by St. Paul's School —which had no official recognition from the I.C.S. — for a group of senior boys who were working for the I.C.S. entrance examination. That year there were five such boys, among whom A. A. Ghose was the only Indian; he stood second in the Class. In the Open Entrance Scholarship examination —the I.C.S. recruited its new members... entered the university a raw student, comes out of it a man and a gentleman, accustomed to think of great affairs and fit to move in cultivated society, and he remembers his College and University with affection, and in after days if he meets with those who Page 189 have studied with him he feels attracted towards them as to men with whom he has a natural brotherhood. This is the social... ranked eleventh. In his I.C.S. Class Report from St. Paul's School, for the half-year ending July 1890, we note that the teachers commented on his 'lack of energy,' although they found the young man's work 'good.' This was the period when the adolescent was living in the difficult conditions of the Kensington Club. Thus Sri Aurobindo became, at one and the same time, a probationer for the Indian ...
... world outside―this question: "Why do you have the same programme of physical education for boys and girls?" There are some who consider it a scandal; some consider it a glaring error from the physical, material point of view. "Why aren't girls treated in a special way and quite differently from boys?"― then the great argument―" as it is done everywhere ." Ah! thank you. Then why do we have... is also an assertion that this fact is remarkable because it is a girl ; now it is not at all a remarkable fact that it is a girl: it is remarkable because she has done very well, and there are many boys who have not done so well. But if one wants to magnify this fine fact by comparing her with other girls who have not done as well, it becomes deplorable. So this question was brought to me. I believe... a girl, from the point of view of physical education? I don't see why there should be one special ideal for the physical Page 241 education of girls and another for the education of boys. Physical education aims at developing all the possibilities of the human body―possibilities of harmony, strength, suppleness, skill, endurance―and increasing the mastery of the functions of its ...
... so much agitation in the minds of men and the young hearts, one of the Englishmen in our college, Russell, our professor of Logic and philosophy, got it into his head to come out with something tactless against the Bengalis. It was like a spark in a powder dump. There was much excitement and agitation among the students. Could this not be avenged? Should the white man be allowed to escape scot-free,... Swadeshi movement was in full tide, flooding the land with its enthusiasm, particularly the student community. But how about the Calcutta Presidency College? That was an institution meant for the "good" boys and for the sons of the rich, that is, for those who, in the parlance of the time, "had a stake in the country," those who, in other words, had something to lose. How far were they touched by that flood... the Ishan Scholarship in his B.A. examination and was ultimately given the name of Swami Raghavananda or Sitapati Maharaj at the Ramakrishna Mission. These more or less .made up the list of the "good" boys. Among the "bad" ones was Indranath Nandi, a son of Colonel Nandi of the Indian Medical Service. Let me recount some of his exploits. He had been a colleague of Barin Ghose of Manicktolla Gardens ...
... very quickly so that she could have some time to get ready and come for Prosperity blessings in the afternoon. She would be in a hurry during the children's darshan too. That day I was to take the boys to a football match in which our Ashram team was playing. During the children's darshan I wanted to inform her about it because in those days nothing was done without Mother's approval. But being in... match. I was hurt and I quietly returned home. Page 263 When I went to her for Prosperity darshan she started quite unexpectedly talking to me and enquired whether I was taking the boys for the football match. A big crowd of devotees was standing behind me waiting in line. She must have realised how I was feeling and compensated me in this way. I was very moved. Q: Looking after... wherever they go, they would emit light. I want our children to become strong, healthy, honest and capable and so build a better India and a better world. (65) A long time back, some boys and girls requested me to speak about the Physical Education Department. I have included here the text of what I told them. Brothers, Sisters and Friends, Like many other activities of the Ashram ...
... little belongings all the smaller boys he can get within his cane's reach, not displeased if they show a little fight so that he can exhibit his heroic strength of arm by punishing them. And then he adorns himself with glittering Victoria crosses and calls on all his associates to admire his gallant and daredevil courage. Sometimes [it reminds me] of an old man, a man very early old, still strong in... Europe. Why? Because it is vaunting and dominant? I think so. There are two hypnotisms that work with an almost miraculous power upon men's minds, the suggestion of the habitually repeated word and the suggestion of the long-established or robustly accomplished fact. Men are almost entirely led or stayed by blind hopes or blind hopelessnesses. They are ever ready to cry "As it was yesterday, as it is ...
... thrown in. Here is a great man, in the true sense of the word, whom I reluctantly bring under the heading of “Not so Great”. He for one, I am sure, would just have smiled and not let it ruffle the quiet deep waters of his greatness. He was one of the most self-effacing men one comes across. With that assurance backing me, I would start this, an eulogy of the great man who wouldn’t be “so great”... mother, Anil the elder brother, Minnie the elder sister and Sunil formed a close and well-knit family. The father loved young Sunil and Sunil was very attached to the father. As a boy, he did what boys did — played, studied, fought with sister (only 15 months older, so did not deserve his respect). He was a bit short tempered — would shy anything handy if roused. He must have tamed this temper in... for I have never heard him raise his voice in anger — except once — in all the 50 years I have known him. I can’t even recollect his showing any signs of impatience. What stood him out from the other boys was that he showed glimpses of his future brilliance even in those early years. Whatever he took up, he did better than most. Maths was already his forte. He even picked up a knowledge of horoscope ...
... Mother told me: "You'll play as my partner everyday. Can you play tennis?" I said: "Yes, Mother, many people in my house played tennis. But what I dislike is that poor people act as ball boys. Tennis is a rich man's game." Page 37 Mother said: "No, tennis is a fine game. It gives very good exercise to the body. I used to play tennis when I was young. You'll play with me every day." ... isn't as easy as he thinks!" This sort of one-upmanship was common between the *A Bengali novel by Sarat Chandra Chatterjee Page 34 two teachers and the mischievous boys of the class enjoyed egging them on. (35) W hen we were still at Berhampore we began a competition of long-distance swimming. That was in 1942. In the beginning the distance was taken... great. Keeping this ideal in mind we tried our best against all odds and in all sincerity to make our club really big. During floods or other natural calamities we would organise relief camps. Our boys were often called up by people to work as volunteers during festivals. In the tem- ple premises of the Mandals* we set up a library, where there were discussions on various topics, some used to write ...
... difference—it's a very small difference), but if people were to know that too soon, A LOT OF THEM would go away.... So I'd really like to know what was in the minds of those boys who went away? Whether they knew, whether they were boys with a spiritual life or...? Because, of course, the first stage once one knows that... if one knew that death really isn't such a total difference as people think, if they... recently in France, some six or seven students have set themselves on fire? What?! Yes. Set themselves... ...on fire, and they died. How horrible! Seventeen- or eighteen-year-old boys. Oh!... Students. It's the latest fad—here also they wanted to do the same thing.... What's that? A protest against this suffocating society. How horrible.... In France? In... have been subjected to rules, because, naturally, the minute there is a rule, it's meant to be broken. And then, everyone does it on the sly, oh!... I got a letter from a man (I didn't get it directly, it came through someone), a man who offered, if I gave him the dollars I receive (I receive a good deal of them—not a huge lot, but still, regularly enough), if I gave him the dollars, he offered to give ...
... When all the boys came and played with me, twisting and turning me, I did nothing." "Don't be so foolish," said the sadhu. "I asked you not to bite. But I did not forbid you from hissing to frighten away those who would harm you!" So, this story has shown you some ideas on non-violence which you may practise in suitable circumstances. Of course, it is a sign of great cowardice to beat a man who is inferior... [Nirod-da narrates the Mother's story of the boy whom She had taught to put his fists in his pocket whenever he was angry, so that he wouldn't respond violently. ] I'm sure many of you here are boys of this sort; about the girls I don't know! Mother surely doesn't mean here the practice of non-violence. What she means, I think, is control over one's passions. Control of passions is one thing, ... the miser by generosity. So here too Buddha upholds non-violence in a way, but I may warn you that he's not an ordinary human being but a great yogi, so he does not fit into the category of ordinary men. What he does by his soul-force, we can't. Here is an example of it: his cousin was very jealous of him, always tried to harm him. Once he let loose a mad elephant when Buddha was coming with his disciples ...
... married. One day sitting at the Ashram gate Prabhakar-da was talking to him about his father, how his father used to help many poor boys in their studies, how he was always ready to assist them in difficulty. Raptly Kiran-da listened to him thinking what a wonderful man Prabhakar-da's father had been. Then out popped the crucial question: "Tell me, was your father ever married?" (68) ... saw a group of boys, carrying books under their arms, going to school. They all ran to us as soon as they spotted us. From the pages of their books they drew out the photos we had taken on the previous occasion. It was Page 67 very heartening for us to see with what care and joy they had preserved the photos. Quite some time afterwards one of the boys, aged about twelve... the outskirts of the town and the site of an ancient Chola temple. Perhaps not more than thirty or forty families live here. I have noted a strange thing that wherever I may go I attract young boys round me. Here too among such a crowd I found a clever, smart boy who became my un-asked-for guide. He began showing me round. For instance he showed me a carving in the temple which when covered on ...
... physical education groups. There was to be, first, no difference between boys and girls; all should undergo the same exercises and the same programme. This was and is even now, I think, compulsory for the younger groups—the green group and the red and even a little beyond. But it has been often asked, "Since the bodies of boys and girls are different, especially with regard to sex, is it not natural... example in the student movement or the women's emancipation movement. Now when women are fighting for freedom for themselves, they consider themselves as women fighting for freedom against men. "We are women, you are men; you enjoy privileges and rights, we are denied them; we want them, we claim them." In the youth movement also, the young people say: "All the powers the old people enjoy, the positions... even today go on duty in saris. The tradition is very strong, and in this respect we here claim to be the pioneers of this new development in which the physical freedom of women is equal to that of men. This was the lesson taught by the Mother. Long ago, some twenty-five years ago, a well-known leader of India, a great educationist came and saw our Playground activities and made the remark: ...
... Henderson says that in Germany even before Hitler the atmosphere of life had so much pressure that one felt constantly suffocated. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, practically all of Germany was like that. Boys and young men were being trained to be devilish. When there was some complaint against harsh treatment meted out by the German army, people said, "Wait till the Nazis come to power. Then you will realise what... mistakes. SRI AUROBINDO: A lot of them. They assume things. With Hitler one can't assume anything. He does what is unexpected. All these people go by scientific principles. Hore-Belisha is the only man who can do something new. Eden is good but not for this. He would be better as Foreign Secretary, and Irwin in the India Office where he could go on with his peace plan and appeasement. Pétain has something ...
... how to work, but men are not like that. When men look after the kitchen, they put on the table what they can or have. You take it or leave it! Particularly, the young revolutionaries of those days were like that. They also knew that I was quite indifferent about the subject and that I would be satisfied with whatever was served. Do not forget that we were, all of us, wanted men. My boys were utterly penniless... Barin's boys used to meet. "Barin was arrested with the rest of his fellows, and so was I afterwards, at my place. This was because I was Barin's elder brother, a revolutionary leader whom Nevinson, a British journalist, had described after having met me as 'the man who never smiles.' They also considered me 'the most dangerous man in the British Empire'! (Laughter) So, that most dangerous man was... are so easily frightened? Dogs, even mice and cockroaches make us scream or run. The boys laugh at us. It is really too shameful. I often decide I won't be so easily scared, but when the time comes I find myself trembling." (Laughter) "But the cause are those very boys! Right from the earliest dawn of history men have preferred their women to stay at home. They have treated them as pretty dolls to ...
... the British must be driven out, India must be rid of the Britisher. In the parks and wherever there was an open space, crowds would gather to listen to lectures and orations, crowds mostly of boys from the schools and colleges – the girls had not yet come out and joined. Swadeshi, boycott, national education, rural uplift – these were the slogans dwelt upon everywhere. And with it all there went... all processions. Page 325 No one was to take out a procession or join in one. In defiance of the order – defying orders was part of the programme of those days – groups of young boys came out and roamed about the streets singing. But that was all they did, there was no occasion for any breach of the peace save the disturbance that their shouts might have caused. Nevertheless, the... had the effect of doubling or trebling the seriousness of Atul's offence; for he was an educated man, he claimed to be a leader, what he had done was done with full knowledge and deliberately. Hence the punishment he received was the heaviest of us all, a fine of a hundred rupees. Thus he became a marked man, and it stood in his way when in afterlife his name was considered for a judgeship of the High ...
... and had done the office work. The day's work done, he had joined the boys as he habitually did. Forgetting all cares the seven of them had become absorbed in the seance. The 'spirits' that came during the seances were a variegated lot. Some were serious, others were fiery. But that day it was a humorous spirit. The young men were responding with incessant merry laughter. The seance was in full... in those climes. N°4 Shyampukur Lane, Shyambazar. A young man is seen—only there was no one to see!—trying to melt himself in the shadows, trying to avoid the bright patches of lamp lights. Furtively he enters the building, with many a backward glance, to make sure that he has not been followed. To his relief he does not see any C.I.D. men who are always hanging around watching the comings and goings... room from where mingled loud laughter was spreading outward in waves. Page 526 Inside, seated on a sort of wooden cot —the only furniture in the room —was a man in his late thirties. Younger men, in their early twenties or adolescents, sat around him, one or two on the cot, the others on the floor. In this inner part of the building, the 'Chief' 1 as some called him, had a ...
... doing so the Scotch Warder came and gave me a push. The young men around me became very excited and I did Page 483 nothing, but I gave him such a look that he immediately fled and called the Jailor. It was a communicative anger and the young men rallied round to attack him. When the Jailor, who was rather a religious man arrived, the Warder said I had given him an 'insubordinate look... quite alive. I told them the warder was a fool." In Alipore Jail his sadhana moved very fast. And it showed physically, as had happened when he was doing prana-yama. His hair, for instance. The boys were greatly struck by its brilliance. They thought at first that it was due to oil. But the prisoners were not getting any oil in the jail! Upen put the question to Sri Aurobindo, to which he simply... had heard that the total suspension of the diverse functions of the mind, and its concentration on a single thing might produce a physical result of this kind. I at once called the attention of some boys to it. None dared approach him; and at last Sachin slided up to him and asked, 'What have you got by your spiritual practices?' Arabinda put his hands on Sachin's shoulders and answered, 'Why, my boy ...
... War Banner of the Reich, and played a dominant role in the Eiserne Faust , the Iron Fist. And there was, in addition, the homosexual boys’ network, an at the time most scandalous eruption of the latent homoeroticism in the youth movement and the Männerbünde , the men’s leagues, including Army and Free Corps. Röhm had become a member of the DAP shortly after Hitler. Again the jovial Eckart played... headquarters of the plot, the two men on guard at Hitler’s door were not SA men at all, but members of the Organization Consul, that section of the Ehrhardt group which had been behind the murders of Erzberger and Rathenau … The SA usually marched together with the Viking Bund , who were Ehrhardt’s militarized formations.” 190 “Then there was a slightly mysterious man named Lieutenant Klintzsch”, remembers... Ehrhardt had begun mobilizing antirevolutionary soldiers into a five-thousand man brigade, which one impartial expert later called the best combat unit he had ever seen.” 181 Still, this Free Corps was only one of many “which sprang up like mushrooms after the rain”, and who numbered in the whole of Germany about 400 000 men. (Germany had demobilized six million soldiers.) “The Free Corps were latter-day ...
... and children two hours a day. Some men looked after sick people at home or in hospital, took care of cows and picked up pieces of broken glass from the road. From Moga : Two ladies taught Hindi to girls. Men fed animals and planted trees. One member of the Samaj gave free lessons to a poor working-man. From Ferozepore : Eight ladies cared for the sick. Boys went about helping old and crippled... share of each one. Only the chief men in the caravan had a share of water. The first time that the water was measured out like this, Kab-ibn-Mamah was about to take the cup when he saw a man of the Namir tribe looking at him longingly. Kab said to the man who was giving out the water, "Give my share to this brother," and pointed to the man of Namir. The man drank eagerly. Kab had no water. ... the resting-place of the dead. "Our Emperor is a just man," said the people of China, "for he is always ready to lend an ear to the complaints of the poor." But a day came when the ear could hear no more. The Emperor suddenly became deaf. He could no longer listen to the song of the birds, the murmur of the wind or the voices of men. The Emperor wept, and the nobles and officers who met ...
... young men, Nolini: Shadowy forms were moving about the place, there was a clatter and a creaking of boots. Suddenly out of the dark silence, a conversation arose: "Your are under arrest. Your name?" "Barindra Kumar Ghose." "Arabinda Ghose?" "No, Barindra Kumar Ghose." * "A spy, Rajani Sarkar by name, had gained admittance into the garden as a friend of one of the boys and... "Have you seen Arabinda Ghose's eyes? He has the eyes of a mad man!", and Dutt had to take great pains to convince Sir Edward that Arabinda wasn't mad at all but was really a true Karma Yogi. 35 There was a more portentous encounter when a Scotch Warder gave an insolent push to Sri Aurobindo when he was about to enter his cell. The boys around naturally got very much excited and might have exploded... 32 As for the way Sri Aurobindo's unruffled demeanour struck the boys, we have the testimony of one of them, Upendranath Bandopadhyaya, as recorded in his book of reminiscences in Bengali: Arabinda would also keep his comer and get lost in his spiritual meditations. Even the hell of the noise that the musical boys made did never disturb or Page 321 affect him. In the ...
... moneymaking middle class in England say the same thing, and further Page 586 strengthen their argument with the interesting inquiry, "What is to become of our boys if we leave the management of India in your hands?" The man from the Continent or America asks plainly, "How can the whole three hundred million of you be kept under by 70,000 tommies?" Ought not all this to give our Moderate... a country of three hundred million men can consent to be governed by a handful of foreigners he simply cannot understand. He thinks of the Indian as a member of a sub-human race, outside the pale of his privileges, his code of morality, his civilisation. And that new-fangled specimen of the Indian race, the educated Indian, only intensifies his contempt. That a man who has been nurtured on the literature... only to be a slave, and education succeeds in perfecting him only in the art of slavery. And as slavery means to the European the permanent extinction of all the nobler possibilities that lie before man, servile India ceases altogether to engage his least consideration or enlist his sympathy; let her alone with her slave's philosophy and art, thinks he, she can be of no service to the future of the ...
... Sarojini, to England. The boys were entrusted to an English family, the Rev. William Drewett, a congregational minister, and Mrs. Drewett, who lived at 84, Shakespeare Street, Manchester. Mr. Drewett was a cousin of a magistrate at Rungpur, Mr. Glazier, with whom Dr. Krishnadhan was on friendly terms. Page 29 He left strict instructions with the Drewetts that the boys "should not be allowed... —1883 classes of the school. At first Mrs. Drewett, who had taken lodgings for them, was with the boys in London, for St. Paul's was but a day school. At the St. Stephen's Avenue house, the old lady, who was pious Christian, used to have passages from the Bible read at prayer time. The boys were expected to participate in all this, and Benoy Bhushan often conducted the worship. On one occasion... with the Drewetts, on account of differences with the deacons Mr. Drewett resigned the pastorage of the Stockport Road Congregation Church and emigrated to Australia with his wife, leaving the three boys in charge of his mother. Presently old Mrs. Drewett took lodgings for the Ghose brothers in London at 49, St. Stephen's Avenue, Uxbridge Road, Shepherd's Bush. Sri Aurobindo was admitted to St. Paul's ...
... other help, not even of a dictionary. But, from this point of view, there was no one, the students thought, who could match 'Professor J. N. Dasgupta. He was actually a History man, but he was given to teach English as well. The boys would say, the naughty ones perhaps, that Dasgupta left us in no doubt or uncertainty as to the meaning anywhere, so he would dictate, "father means the male parent'.'! Percival... and histories and cultures of so many strange lands, please tell us something." Vidyabhushan was particularly learned in Pali and the Buddhist scriptures. Without a murmur he accepted the order of the boys. While talking of Pali and the Buddhists, he told us something about the Tibetans too. "What you call Darjeeling," he said, "is not a distorted version of Durjayalinga. Actually it is a transcription... our eyes by easily passing off useless Brummagem ware with the label of the real thing. One such piece of eminently useless stuff is their poet Wordsworth, whom they have tried to foist on our young boys to their immense detriment." This remark was no doubt a testimony to his inordinate love of the country. Page 439 But it remains to be seen how far it would bear scrutiny as being based ...
... ten years Eddie remained in Boys Town. Then, well near the top of his class, he left to join the United States Marines. On blood-smeared beaches he won three promotions. “His chest,” boasts Father Flanagan, “is covered with decorations. Nothing strange about that, for he has plenty of courage. But God be praised for something else: he had the love of the men in his outfit - brother to the... killed her, but her screams brought policemen. Now Eddie had wound up in Boys Town. Page 56 Putting aside the report. Father Flanagan looked at the villain of the piece. In the dimmish light Eddie sat unmoving, head lowered, so that it was hard to see much of that sullen face. As the man watched, the child produced a cigarette paper and a sack of tobacco. One hand... and down the aisle, swearing like a longshore- man and throwing movable objects on the floor, finally pitching an inkwell which landed accurately on a plaster bust of Cicero. Replacing Eddie in his seat. Father Flanagan apologized: * “It was my fault. I never told him he mustn’t throw inkwells. The laws of Boys Town will, of course, be enforced withhim, as with ...
... the same direction today. Although I managed the club and prepared the boys, I did not know clearly what ideal I was to set before them in life. I could not accept any political, social, religious, or economic philosophy of those times. I wanted to build innumerable gymnasiums throughout Bengal where the work of preparing man would go on. Behind every club there would be an industry that would bring... Vyayam Samiti" and strove to develop my body as well as my character. And with whatever knowledge I had then, I began my work of preparing young boys. Between 1940 and 1945 I managed through my hard work to give the club its moorings. A lot of fine boys came out of this club and succeeded in different fields of life to show their skill and abilities. Page 207 After I came away to the... and cymbals rose and the more tumultuous became their dance. During the cold season in the month of Paush (December-January), the festival of Paushali was celebrated. It was most enjoyable. Boys below sixteen-seventeen used to come in groups of eight or ten one after the other. They each held a long flag-like stick to which a garland of marigolds was tied. We children used to rush and assemble ...
... the use of the word "boys", and an anticipation of the agrarian outbreak in connection with the Punjab Government's ill-advised land legislation. The bubble has been speedily pricked by the simple statement of facts in the Punjabee and by Lajpat Rai's own evidence. That Lajpat Rai was acquainted with Shyamji Krishnavarma when he was in England, was known already; so were many men who worked with him... dismissal a man whose guilt has yet to be proved, are actions which show that Swami Dayananda's religion may have emancipated the intellects of the leading Samajists but has done little to elevate their character. We must also express our amazement at the action of the Samaj in accepting the resignation by Lala Lajpat Rai of his offices on the various governing bodies of the Samaj. There are two men who are... likely to alarm than gratify a suspicious and nervous Government which might see in it a disingenuous device for reviving the proclaimed Samitis. The only other resource is for these novel vigilance men to turn detectives, discover the Terrorists and give information to the police, which they can only do by becoming agents provocateurs and so worming themselves into the confidence of their quarry. That ...
... curls dancing to the ‘kadam’ (rhythm) of his khadams. Yet, what really set him apart was a raspish tongue with two cutting edges, honed by regular and impartial use. This spiced the man — he was one of those last angry men — sincere, intolerant and outspoken. Poornananda was born sometime in 1902 — so say some records. Others claim 1893 as the year! The dates are very uncertain. He himself would not... was well disguised or hidden deep within — not to speak of the “fullness” (poorna) of it. He was irascible, critical and seemed ever dissatisfied. A name or sobriquet nearer the mark, relished by the boys (the authors), unrelished by the gentleman himself was “ORANGE”. A kindlier appellation was ‘Swamiji’. Why all this ado about a name? Let us proceed, and maybe find him a name he can fit into. (Rare... night. They had to start on the right note — strip and dip in the cold Ganga, and not much to wear. Then followed the daily life of the Ashram. No ready-made meals with servers and dishwashers. The five boys went out in the morning in five different directions. They carried a ‘jhola’, a vessel slung on the shoulder by a hammock like piece of cloth. They had to beg at three different houses each day, and ...
... went on from day to day spreading all over India the message of that great man, until the whole country was filled with the ideas he had preached. This man, from a remote village of Bengal, without education, by the sheer force of his own determination, realised the truth and gave it to others, leaving only a few young boys to keep it alive. This is the message of Sri Ramakrishna to the modern... thoughts and his message were known to very few capable of giving them out. Among others, he left a few young boys who had renounced the world and were ready to carry on his work. Attempts were made to crush them. But they stood firm, having the inspiration of that great life before them. These young men, Page 241 living as sannyasins, begged through the streets of the city where they were born... sell the produce of ;he fields... The true man is he who is strong as strength itself and yet possesses a woman's heart. The history of the world is the history of a few men who had faith in themselves. That faith calls out the inner divinity. You can do anything. You fail only when you do not strive sufficiently to manifest infinite power. As soon as a man loses faith in himself, death comes. Believe ...
... There are a thousand parties and not one Man in all this. There was an India,-apparently, but a thousand pieces there too, and small treacheries everywhere that Page 9 divide and rule and fill their democratic and humanitarian bellies, or Marxist or Christian or of God knows what devil. What happened? Next year, then, we will be big boys, two thousand years of age.... ... revolt against everything, like an earthquake from top to bottom: it was No to men, No to life, No to the West, and goodness knows what else to the East behind different faces. Yet those Eyes looked at me as if from the depths of a millennial cataclysm. I was like a terrible Question, devastating and devastated: Men, WHAT? The earth, WHAT? Life, life above all, WHAT? And WHAT for? It was not "... be found. We were "men" for ever and a day, or devils, according to taste. A real Cataclysm, gaping like a geological or zoological fault between two worlds. Before, there was WHAT? Nothing, obviously, or archaeological devilry and idols for our various museums and our fantastic tales, or prehistoric mythologies—History means Us. Us, who? And us, what? Were there still men to ask "What"? Science ...
... dancing — on greased skins sometimes to display a nice skill of foot and balance of body; games where men leaped in and out of flying chariots; games so many one grows weary with the list of them. They are embodied in the statues familiar to all, the disc thrower, the charioteer, the wrestling boys, the dancing flute players. The great games — there were four that came at stated seasons — were so important... train anything but the whole man. It was as natural for the polis to have gymnasia as to have a theatre or warships, and they were constantly used by men of all ages, not only for physical but also for mental exercise. But it is the Games, local and international, which most clearly illustrate this side of the Greek mind. Among us it is sometimes made a reproach that a man "makes a religion of games"... statuary. The festival gave the sculptor unequalled opportunities to study the nude human body in every natural form and pose. Poets wrote odes in honour of the victor, and these were sung by choruses of boys in the procession that welcomed him home. So the winning athlete was immortalized in statues and poems; his excellence had made him worthy of being among the gods. Greece lost its freedom when ...
... the Indian Sociologist as credentials, naming men of advanced views as his 'gurus', professing to possess the Manicktola bomb-formula, offering to kill to order all who may be obnoxious for private or public reasons to any Swadeshist and informing everyone, but especially French gendarmes, that he has come to Pondicherry to massacre Europeans. The man seems to be a remarkable linguist, conversing in... Bengali style, the other in European style, in a silk suit. As Moni and Bejoy showed no inclination to get acquainted with them, the silk-suit sort of gate-crashed, and began to show great interest in the boys. He even lent a copy of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, which Moni read. But Moni and Bejoy were quite sure that he, Silk-suit, was a spy. Things would have gone on for how long nobody... people who met us, what places we frequented and how our guests spent their time The British Indian police set up a regular station here, with a rented house and several permanent men. They were of course plainclothes men, for they had no right to wear uniform within French territory. They kept watch, as I have said, both on our visitors and guests as well as ourselves. Soon they got into a habit of ...
... " said Sri Aurobindo. Along with P. Mitter, Sarala Ghosal had already started a sort of Revolutionary party of which Sister Nivedita was a member. Sarala Ghosal founded several clubs where not only boys but girls too were taught to wield lathi and sword. A worshipper of Shakti, she was the foremost organizer of physical education in Bengal. The Tagores had a tradition of physical training. There was... to recruit young men. Barin states that that was six months before he himself was sent to Bengal. Jatin was also charged with setting up centres in every town and eventually in every village. "Societies of young men were to be established with various ostensible objects, cultural, intellectual or moral and those already existing were to be won over for revolutionary use. Young men were to be trained... or following. He "spoke of the Society and its aim to P. Mitter and other leading men of the revolutionary group in Bengal and they took the oath of the Society and agreed to carry out its objects on the lines suggested by Sri Aurobindo." He revealed an unknown aspect of the revolutionary movement. "It was our men who got hold of the movement in Bengal and gave it a revolutionary character. Otherwise ...
... the Woman. Here in our Ashram, you must have noticed how a new life has been breathed into everything; how boys and girls are mixing freely and taking part in all activities without any distinction of gender. Mother wants me to forget, to banish this old conventional sense of man and woman. We must forget that. We must live in a higher consciousness where this distinction does not exist... was to what I am today. Not so much because of what He has written, but because of His kindness, His compassion, His friendship. You know what friendship is, my friends! You have lots of friends, boys and girls. Friendship gives you warmth, friendship gives you inspiration, friendship gives you faith. A true friend is a rare thing in the world, and if that friendship comes from the Divine, it is... Indira Gandhi, so on and so forth. They are all the time before your eyes, but there is another order of great men, who are not so much before your eyes and who live a secluded life. They are called yogis, who live in union with God, with the Divine, and exercise their influence upon men and upon the world silently, secretly, from behind the veil. And of those yogis, Sri Aurobindo was the summit ...
... disaster made not the slightest effect on the boys. They were no Vaishnava ecstatics - they were hero-warriors of Durga!* They were determined to go their own way, and some five of them went to Deoghar to conduct a secret test-explosion of a bomb they had made at the Gardens. The bomb did explode among the hills, but also killed one of the young men, Prafulla Chakravarti, and injured another, Ullaskar... begun on 19 April 1908: The work now before us is of the sternest kind and requires men of an unflinching sternness to carry it out. The hero, the martyr, the man of iron will and iron heart, the grim fighter whose tough nerves defeat cannot tire out nor danger relax, the born leader in action, the man who cannot sleep or rest while his country is enslaved, the priest of Kali who can tear... any inner activity"; "I carried on a daily newspaper," * Nevertheless, when C.C. Dutt offered to stay on in Calcutta to-look after the boys, Sri Aurobindo ("the Chief) told him with a gracious smile: "I assure you, Charu, I shall look after the boys here. But you must go back to your job.... Well, there are reasons why my best recruiting sergeant must be in Ahmedabad just now." (Sunday Times ...
... carrying six famous men indifferent spheres of life, and an unknown young man, who are all on their way to attend a World Conference on Human Progress, is wrecked in mid-ocean, and these seven "brought together, apparently by chance", take refuge in a lifeboat. The six famous men are the Statesman, the Writer, the Scientist, the Artist, the Industrialist and the Athlete. The Unknown Man sits at the helm... The Lovers have lagged a little behind, engrossed in each other and oblivious of the rest, whether ahead of them or left behind them. The three Students (two boys and a girl) who come in the rear of the Lovers are already panting. One of the boys feels utterly exhausted, and is inclined to rest for a while. "No, no, there's no question of giving up," he tells his comrades. "But why don't we Page... to that of a man who rides a tiger. Faster and faster must the business grow, farther and farther its tentacles extend, - or there must be a terrific and irretrievable crash! "My business is growing so rapidly," he muses, "that it now looks more like an inflated balloon than a living body moving harmoniously and steadily towards maturity." To what end all his vaunted successes? Are men truly happier ...
... pregnant even though Joseph never slept with her. He being a man of great faith accepts Mary in her pregnant condition as his wife and protects her. In fact, after the birth of Jesus, he is told to run away to Egypt with her for a time because the king Herod attempted to murder all newborn boys in his kingdom because of a prediction by Three Wise men that the King of the Jews has been born. In Chapter II... Saviour-to be, Jesus, that one sees everywhere in the Christian world. The Star and the Three Wise men described in Matthew are often also incorporated into scenes of the Nativity as this scene is called in paintings. The Gospels offer very little about the growing-up of Jesus, or his life as a young man. One exception is found at the end of Chapter II of Luke, and tells of the visit of the 12-year-old... regulations. Once when he cured a man's withered hand in the synagogue*- on the Sabbath, the Pharisees were furious and "egan to plot to kill him. But Jesus insisted "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." ________ *synagogue: the place of worship and gathering of a Jewish congregation. Page 21 Forgiving Sin by the Son of Man But perhaps the most provoking ...
... famous Nationalist, a lover of Mother India and its suffering inhabitants, but because the news had spread fast that he was a Yogi, and the villagers came to seek his blessing. In the camp, if one of the boys awoke in the middle of the night, he would see him seated in lotus posture. Eyes wide open. His unblinking gaze fixed on ... what? Page 274 ... Aurobindo's birthday on 15 August 1909—his last at Calcutta—"a band of young men attended at N°6 College Square, to offer their felicitations to Arabindo Ghose on his attaining his 39 th year." There's accuracy of police report for you! Factually Sri Aurobindo was thirty-seven that day. As was the prevailing custom, the young men offered him sweets, fruits, flowers and Page 272 cloth... with success. And when the released prisoners reached their house, what joy there was! A jubilant welcome was given to the guests. After which the ladies of the house went to the kitchen. The young men out of 1 Sahana Devi, C.R. Das' niece, was a great singer in those days. I met her first in Pondicherry in 1935. Such an affectionate nature is hard to find. Page 271 ...
... loved Hephaestion to madness; but when Theodorus of Taras offered to sell him two boys of great beauty he sent the Tarentine packing, and begged his friends to tell him what baseness of soul he had shown that anyone should make such a proposal to him. He gave to friendship the tenderness and solicitude that most men give to love. No statesman known to us, much less any general, ever surpassed him in... performing magic ceremonies with the magician Aristander, and offered sacrifices to the god Fear; he who faced all men and beasts with a very ecstasy of courage was "easily alarmed by portents and prodigies," even to changing important plans. He could lead many Page 85 thousands of men, could conquer and rule millions, but he could not control his own temper. He never learned to recognize his... In this little item, perhaps, lay his greatest influence upon history. Mentally he was an ardent student, who was too soon consumed with responsibilities to reach maturity of mind. Like so many men of action, he mourned that he could not be also a thinker. "He had," says Plutarch, "a violent thirst and passion for learning, which increased as time went on. He was a lover of all kinds of reading ...
... backyard. The water from the well was used for cooking, for bath and every other purpose. Nolini added, "for cleaning our teeth, we used tooth powder," and not neem twigs as I thought. Well, the boys managed to procure a camp cot for Sri Aurobindo. They themselves had no bedding, so they slept on mats. 'Slept,' that is when the buzzing and bites of mosquitoes would allow sleep. They were too poor... the four young men. Almost the first need they felt was therefore for books. "Sri Aurobindo had fixed Rs. 10 a month for buying books. He himself used to select the books—mostly they were classics of English literature ... especially the series published in the Home University Library and the World Classic editions," Nolini specified to me. Sri Aurobindo took up the young men's education from... Moni— at Shankar Chetty's house. Then Sri Aurobindo's brother-in-law, Saurin Bose, turned up on 30 th September, the 'last day' (Moni says) at Shankar Chetty's, and passed the night with the two young men. Next day, on the forenoon of 1 st October, the four of them moved to their new residence. The move brought them from the west of the canal to its east. The canal, running north to south, divides ...
... of battle prating like two Little boys. There is surely no lack of insults for either Of us to mouth, vile things so many they'd sink A ship of two hundred oars. For the tongue of man Is a glib and versatile organ, and from it come many And various words, whose range of expression is wide In every direction. And the sort of words a man says Is the sort he hears in return... the Trojan's man-guarding shield. Having thus escaped The long lance, Aeneas stood up, and the sight of that shaft So close to his flesh filled his bright eyes with measureless Panic and pain. But Achilles whipped out his keen blade And charged down upon him, ferociously screaming his war-cry, And mighty Aeneas picked up a huge stone, one That no two men of today could... bronze-headed spear both Trojans and Leleges. May no man, then, fight face to face with Achilles, For always beside him a god goes, warding off death. And even unaided his spear flies very straight, Nor does it stop save deep in the flesh of some mortal. Page 50 Still, were God to give us an equal chance In man-to-man combat, he would not easily beat me, Not though ...
... professional men to the lasting pauperism and degradation of a great and ancient people. And Nationalism grew as Krishna grew who ripened to strength and knowledge, not in the courts of princes and the schools of the Brahmins but in the obscure and despised homes of the poor and ignorant. In the cave of the Sannyasin, under the garb of the Fakir, in the hearts of young men and boys many of whom could... entering into every house, and haling men and women commit them to prison". The instruments of death are furbished up, the rack and thumbscrew and old engines of torture which had been rusting in the lumber-room of the past are brought out, and the gallows is made ready and the scaffold raised. Even of the nation to which the gospel is preached, the rich men and the high-priests and pundits and people... people of weight and authority receive its doctrine with anger, fear and contempt;—anger, because it threatens their position of comfortable authority amongst men; fear, because they see it grow with an inexplicable portentous rapidity and know that its advent means a time of upheaval, turmoil and bloodshed very disturbing to the digestions, property and peace of mind of the wealthy and "enlightened ...
... whereabouts of ‘the most dangerous man in India.’ As Pondicherry was French territory, they had to get permission to send a detachment of their men to keep an eye on Aurobindo Ghose. ‘The British Indian police set up a regular station here, with a rented house and several permanent men,’ writes Nolini in his Reminiscences. ‘They were of course plain-clothes men, for they had no right to wear uniform... plenty of them were humming around! He also reasoned that ‘great men could not have been after a chimera.’ One of the great men he met was Swami Brahmananda, Deshpande’s guru, who had an ashram on the banks of the river Narmada and was supposed to be well over a century old. ‘He was, when I met him just before his death, a man of magnificent physique showing no signs of old age except a white beard... twelve, nine and seven, and their younger sister Sarojini on a voyage to Great Britain. A friend, the British magistrate of Rangpur, had given him the address of an excellent person to look after the boys: the Reverend William H. Drewett, Congregational minister at Manchester. And that is where Doctor K.D. Bose left his sons, with the recommendation that they would be allowed to choose their own religion ...
... By his own account, his Irish "father" kept him off the ghetto trash heap. "Coach Riley taught me to behave. His influence on me and many other boys kept us out of trouble. Without his guidance, we could very easily have become wards of the state." Riley introduced Jesse to yet another white exemplar, the world renowned track star Charley Paddock. Virtually unbeatable as a varsity sprinter at... celebrated winner of 4 gold medals in the Berlin Olympics of 1936. He was a black man and his coach a white man, in a time where segregation in America was still very much a reality. Nevertheless, a strong bond was soon established between them, to the extent that Jesse Owens himself would say that coach Riley was "a rare man, as much a father to me as Henry Owens was. " We offer the following brief... his white mentor. "He was the first white man I really knew," Owens said, "and without ever trying, he proved to me beyond all proof that a white man can understand — and love — a Negro." They never discussed racial issues, but on those Sunday afternoons at Riley's home after lunch they did talk about values, manners, and dreams. "He trained me to become a man as well as an athlete," Jesse recalled. ...
... Conference, Abdul Rasul, passed with his English wife in a carriage. Other prominent leaders followed on foot in a procession. Nobody stopped them. But just as a band of young men came behind, the policemen lathi-charged the unarmed boys. Chittaranjan, the son of Monoranjan Guha Thakurta, was assaulted and pushed into a tank. Although he was severely injured the police could not stop him from shouting 'Bande... jungle for the Santal and travels the hills for the wild tribes of the mountains. It cares nothing for age or sex or caste or wealth or education or respectability.... It speaks to the illiterate or the man in the street in such rude vigorous language as he best understands, to youth and the enthusiast in accents of poetry, in language of fire, to the thinker in the terms of philosophy and logic, to the ...
... by young men and women whose ideal it was to live on the land and till it with all their dedication and strength in the manner they supposed their forefathers had done in olden times. “This association was already known to me through their publications at the time I was still in prison, and I have given it the best of myself. It was an association of young, völkisch-conscious people, boys and girls... day from early morning till late at night. If the country was good, the city was bad; a harvest was nature’s gift from the land, a city was man’s product from the mind; “culture” was related to the land and healthy, “civilization” was an artefact of man’s brain, rootless, and symptomatic of decline. This dualism is again abundantly expounded by Spengler in his utterly negative book. (For Spengler... Walter Darré, leading SS-ideologist and Hitler’s Minister of Agriculture, and Martin Bormann, after Hess’ flight to Great Britain as Hitler’s private secretary one of the most powerful and dangerous men in the Third Reich. Bormann’s wife Gerda, a fanatical Nazi, wrote: “He [her husband] divided all the people in three groups: peasants, rooted in the soil, nomads roaming through the steppes, and parasites ...
... your senses gone? — that made you famous once, both among outland men and those you rule in Troy! How can you think of going down to the ships, alone, and face the glance of the man who killed your sons, so many fine brave boys? You have a heart of iron! If he gets you in his clutches, sets his eyes on you — that savage, treacherous man — he'll show no mercy, no respect for your rights! "Come, all... he rose from his seat, raised the old man by the hand and filled with pity now for his gray head and gray beard, he spoke out winging words, flying straight to the heart: "Poor man, how much you've borne —pain to break the spirit! What daring brought you down to the ships, all alone, to face the glance of the man who killed your sons, so many fine brave boys? You have a heart of iron. Come, please... choose to help Achilles. That man without a shred of decency in his heart... his temper can never bend and change — like some lion going his own barbaric way, giving in to his power, his brute force and wild pride, as down he swoops on the flocks of men to seize his savage feast. Achilles has lost all pity! No shame in the man, shame that does great harm or drives men on to good. No doubt some mortal ...
... Mirra Alfassa Beyond Man Chapter One: A Perfect Gentleman Sri Aurobindo wrote to one of his first biographers: ‘I see you have persisted in giving a biography — is it really necessary or useful? The attempt is bound to be a failure, because neither you nor anyone else knows anything at all of my life; it has not been on the surface for men to see.’ 1 ... practicable for those who had been studying in Great Britain. And so it came to pass, in 1879, that Dr Ghose took his three eldest sons to Manchester, then the most populous city in the United Kingdom. The boys were put into the care of the Reverend William H. Drewett, with the explicit order that they must be kept away from anything or anybody even remotely connected with India. ‘Aurobindo spent his formative... eventual rejection of the ICS a scandalous waste. But the Maharajah of Baroda, Sayaji Gaekwad, was in luck; he found himself in London precisely at that moment and so got the chance to hire a young man with the capabilities of Aurobindo Ghose, an ICS trainee, for 200 rupees per month. Swami Vivekananda, the great disciple of Ramakrishna Paramahansa, travelled to the West in 1893; in the beginning ...
... didn't know it was so easy!" When my brother Barin and I were at Baidyanath, we used to go out with guns to shoot at birds, obviously with the idea of practising. My auntie saw us and said, "These two boys will be hanged." The prophecy almost came true, for Barin got a death-sentence. Before the Swadeshi movement started, Debabrata Bose and I went on a tour of Bengal to study the conditions of the... He went up for medicine but couldn't go on. He returned to India and got a job in Coochbehar. Now I hear he has come back to Calcutta. He is a very practical man, the opposite of poetic, and takes more after my father. He is a very nice man and one can easily get on with him. ... usual leisurely steps. When he came to India, his playing the poet dropped off. When Barin and I became politically famous, Manmohan used to say with arrogant pride, "There are only two and a half men in India. The two are my brothers and the half is Tilak." Manmohan and I used to quarrel pretty often but I got on very well with my eldest brother. Once Manmohan said to me, "I hear you have been ...
... hesitation in using his axe in an effort to exterminate the Kshatriyas. Rama, a Kshatriya prince of the Solar dynasty, killed in battle Ravana, the king of Lanka, who was a Brahmin by birth. The boys and young men who were brought up in the old ashramas were trained in many things belonging to life, including the use of arms. Knowledge, the Veda, could be had by everyone. Satyakama Jabala, son of the ... importance to consider how woman shall be legally and socially related to man, as his inferior, equal or superior; for even the relation of superiority is not more impossible in the future than it was in the far-distant past." This was in 1910. The Rishi sent his penetrating gaze to the far-distant future. "Unknown to men the social revolution prepares itself, and it is not in the direction they... there was no official bar. In the Egyptian society woman had a remarkable status, almost equal to that of man and far more advanced than in Rome or Greece. It was with the advent of Muslims and their barbaric ways that women in India were shackled. For to the Mussulmans woman is the property of man. A few centuries of habit built up a multi-storied building in Indian society. But thanks to the efforts ...
... and a great pandit. He was honoured by all, full of years and wisdom. His name was Junun. Many young boys, many young men used to come to him to receive initiation. They stayed in his hermitage, became pandits themselves, then returned home after a long and studious retreat. One day a young man came to him. His name was Yusuf Hussein. The Mahatma agreed to let him stay with him without even asking... lives there on the banks of the river Neela. Go and take this box to him from me. But take good care, brother, don't make any mistake on the way. Keep this box carefully with you and give it to the man whom it is for. When you come back I shall give you initiation." Once again the Mahatma repeated his advice and described the route Yusuf had to follow to reach the river Neela. Yusuf bowed down at his... journey. When he reached the river Neela and the house of his Master's friend, Yusuf handed the Mahatma's present to him and waited silently in a corner because of the fault he had committed. This man was a great saint. He opened the box and immediately understood what had happened. "Well, Yusuf," he said, turning to the young aspirant, "so you have lost that mouse.... Mahatma Junun won't give you ...
... nice and appropriate when the thing comes from their lips. Thus the principles that guided the organisation of physical education are as you know now: there is to be, first, no difference between boys and girls, all should undergo the same exercises and the same programme. This was and is even now, I think, compulsory for the younger groups – the green and the red and even little beyond. But it has... either in the student movement or the women's emancipation movement. Now when women are fighting for freedom for themselves they consider themselves as women fighting for freedom against men. "We are women, you are men, you enjoy privileges, rights, we are denied them, we want them, we claim them." In the youth movement also the young people say: all the powers the old people enjoy, positions and emoluments... ce even today are on duty with saree. The tradition was very strong and in this respect, we here claim to be the pioneers of this new development of physical freedom of women to be equal to that of men. This was the lesson taught by the Mother. Long ago, some twenty-five years ago, a well-known leader of India, a great educationist came and saw our playground activities and made the remark: "I have ...
... frightfully from a skin disease, and Charles V had gout, arteriosclerosis, and dropsy. Many eminent men had syphilis (Henry VIII, Benvenuto Cellini, Baudelaire), and sufferers from tuberculosis can be listed with out end — Voltaire, Kant, Keats, Dostoevsky, Moliere, Schiller, Descartes, Cardinal Manning, Spinoza, Cicero, St. Francis. But in the realm of physical deformity names are not so numerous. Several... Ask any fisherman what that means. There is a curious double paradox here. His illness made him robust, yes, and for many years he was one of the sturdiest and healthiest men alive. Yet something oddly perverse attends a man who, wonderfully healthy, cannot walk. Other compensations were more orthodox. He always had a good excuse not to do thing that might bore him. He dropped out of society... and he fell prey to minor illness. Page 444 Catastrophe Strikes On August 10,1921, Roosevelt took his wife and their sons for a sail on a small craft which he was teaching the boys how to handle. Returning to Campobello he saw a forest fire on the nearby shore; the whole family landed for the strenuous fun of fighting it. To cool off, he decided to take a swim in a nearby lake ...
... roses to everyone these days It is because I always have roses at hand. 26 June 1970 * * * Sweet Mother, Why do you usually give red roses to men, light-coloured roses to women, and roses of different colours to little boys and girls? It is because red roses give an impression of strength and light-coloured roses give an impression of charm and sweetness. 3 3 : This reply was... common name or use of a flower corresponds to the significance you have given to it. In that case, does the flower have that quality inherent in it, which men with a certain sensitivity perceive, or does the flower respond to the mental formation of man who has used it for yearsfor a certain purpose? It is rather a more or less widespread collective suggestion. This is how a universal language could... “But for that one must know what condition is essential to the plant and provide it.” After fifteen minutes of meditation She said : “I was just reflecting. Men have upset the life of plants and animals, and supermen have upset the life of men.” 12 November 1971 * * * Sweet Mother, What effect will the light of the new creation have upon flowers and plants? The whole creation will ...
... carried out on a grand scale and Alexander went so far as to discharge all the debts owed by any of his guests. (...) The thirty thousand boys whom he had left behind to be given a Greek education and military training had now grown into active and handsome men and had developed a wonderful skill and agility in their military exercises. Alexander was delighted with their progress, but the Macedonians... tried to persuade him to attack by night, so as to conceal from his men the most terrifying element in the coming struggle, that is the odds against them. It was then that Alexander gave them his celebrated answer: "I will not steal my victory." Some of his companions thought this an immature and empty boast on the part of a young man who was merely joking in the presence of danger. But others interpreted... amazed to see that men who had fought and conquered in such great battles could have forgotten that those who labour sleep more sweetly that those who are laboured for. Could they not understand, when they compared their style of living with that of the Persians, that there is nothing more slavish than the love of pleasure and nothing more princely than the life of toil? 3 How can a man attend to his ...
... himself is more sinned against than sinning; it is the dark God who engineers most of the mischief. Humanity could almost raise the plaint, "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods!" The Savitri story is reared on quite other foundations. Man here is master of his fate; Woman is shakti, the redeemer, the transvaluer of values, the subduer of destiny. Comparing the two stories Sri Aurobindo writes:... primordial and permanently significant like the Sun itself. There are other 'episodes'—the Nala and the Sakuntala, for example—in the Mahabharata that have also won the affections of many generations of men, but the Savitri stands apart even among them, verily a star. "The 'story of Savitri' is the gem of the whole poem", wrote Alfred Wallace, 5 "and I cannot recall anything in poetry more beautiful, or... beauty, truthfulness, goodness and power. She is the eternal feminine coming from the home of the Absolute, not the conventional feminine—the fair sex, the weaker sex, made out of one of the ribs of Man! If Savitri never weeps, neither does she ever beg or play the pathetic suppliant. When Narad's terrible warning is uttered and Aswapati asks her to choose again, she doesn't plead with ...
... enters man and takes charge of his being then man too will become capable .of a higher harmony. The result will be a new equilibrium of his mind, life and body. He will gain a nobler beauty and grace and all the modern crookedness and distortion will disappear. He will gain with ease an infallible direct Knowledge that is beyond the senses. We can discern some of it among Yogis and great men - this... intruded into their system and destroyed this equilibrium as it has done in men. That is why they have neither maladies nor griefs. There is no distortion in their own nature. If they happen to fall ill then they can very easily restore the harmony in their body and life, and for this they don't need any great effort. "But man is unable to do so because mind has come into him. Mind has disrupted... three months. (15) When I first arrived in the Ashram, a football team had just been formed. Occasionally, this Ashram team used to play matches with teams from outside. Very often, the young boys of the Ashram, would go to see the game. But I always took Mother's permission and received her blessings beforehand. We never did anything or went anywhere without informing Mother. One day ...
... and members of the Samitis, sometimes mere boys, have to rot in hajat until the case goes up to a court of justice and the judge looks at the case and after he has patiently heard it out has to ask, "Well, but where is the evidence?" Formerly, you may remember, those of you who have lived Page 78 in the villages, that wherever there was any man in a village who was physically strong the... forward and forward until we have achieved the ultimate emancipation, that utter freedom of the soul, of the body, of the whole man, that utter freedom from all bondage towards which humanity is always aspiring. We in India have found a mighty freedom within ourselves, our brother-men in Europe have worked towards freedom without. We have been moving on parallel lines towards the same end. They have found... and the suffering. They made it their ideal to see that there was no sick man or sick woman of however low a class or depressed a caste, of whom it could be said that they went unhelped in their sickness in the Bakarganj District. That was the first crime the association committed. The second crime was this. These young men went from house to house seeking out the suffering and the hungry when famine ...
... through the night to protect his family from the prowling leopard. If our animal kindred can show affection for their young and protect them, it is no wonder that even primitive men form groups or families consisting of a man, a woman and children. When does the mother begin to love her child? At the beginning of his life. When does the child begin to love his mother? Not at the same time. First... unto thy Lord well-pleased and well-pleasing, enter among my servants and enjoy my paradise." How sweet to the ears of Mohammed is the voice of his child! How sweet to parents are the voices of boys and girls who repeat their lessons! I shall not describe the rest of the scene of Ibrahim's death. I only wish to tell how his mother Mary watches over him lovingly, how affectionately his sister Fatimah... , near to a lake, and they lived together in peace. One day a man from the city of Benares lost his way in the jungle and wandered in despair for seven days. The elephant-king knelt down and invited the lost man to climb on to his back; then he took him to the path which led to Benares and showed him the way. Alas, the man's heart was wicked. He told the King of Benares what a fine white elephant ...
... sides. By about 5 or 5:15 all of them had arrived. It was probably one hour before sunset. This I surmised by the dimness of the light inside the house." Among the invitees were the local friends of the boys from Cercle Sportif, like Joseph David, Sada (we shall meet him later), and others. Amrita takes up from here. "In the hall of the front Page 359 portion of the house some twenty... as I hear, being their favourite," reported the police chief. Nolini: "This man plays football well." Sourin: "Picks up quarrels like a mad man sometimes." Moni: "Plays football well." Joseph David: "Studying in B.A. Class. A close friend of the Bengalis.... It is learnt that letters for the Bengalis come addressed to this man." Amrita soon became familiar with the names of the 'Bengalis.' "Among... himself was a politician. He, like other adults, talked about it a great deal at home. Four names occurred again and again: Tilak, Bipin Pal, Lajpatrai—the famous Lal-Bal-Pal—and Aurobindo. Those were the men who dared to ask publicly independence from the foreign rule. Strange are the ways of destiny. Because, said Amrita, of the four names "only one name caught my heart and soul. Just to hear the name— ...
... past—even the galleries of Islam's crumbling minarets and the roofs of Hindu temples—were crammed with faces. Women peeped through shutters or stood shamelessly beside their children and brothers. Boys and girls thrust their heads through holes in the ruinous walls. At every few yards more garlands were offered, more bunches of flowers and sweet-smelling seeds. Thick fell the showers of rose-water... with Paradise in sight. Nationalism to him was far more than a political object or a means of material improvement.........Grave with intensity, careless of fate or opinion, and one of the most silent men I have known, he was of the stuff Page 410 that dreamers are made of, but dreamers who will act their dream, indifferent to the means." And Sri Aurobindo on Nevinson. "Yes, I met... letter about my coming had been stopped, no doubt by the postal spies, as he said nearly all his letters were. He had no special reason to complain of that, nor did he complain.... He was a youngish man, I should think still under thirty. Intent dark eyes looked from his thin, clear-cut face with a gravity that seemed immovable, but the figure and bearing were those of an English graduate." During their ...
... ter who is continually rewarding with lollipops his good boys and continually caning his naughty urchins. It is cognate also to the barbarous and unthinking system of sometimes savage and always degrading punishment for social offences on which human society, unable still to find out or organise a more satisfactory way, is still founded. Man insists continually on making God in his own image instead... be thus ragged, hungry, unfortunate, pursued by griefs, void of honour among men? Yes, thou art proved wicked, because thou art ragged. God's justice is established." The Supreme Intelligence being fortunately wiser and nobler than man's childishness, this is impossible But let us take comfort! It appears that if the good man has not enough good luck and ghee and rupees, it is because he is really a... transform or outgrow. We should be inclined to wonder how these fancies of children found their way into such profound philosophical religions as Buddhism and Hinduism, if it were not so patent that men will not deny themselves the luxury of tacking on the rubbish from their past to the deeper thoughts of their sages. No doubt, since these ideas were so prominent, they must have had their use in ...
... and a great pandit. He was honoured by all, full of years and wisdom. His name was Junun. Many young boys, many young men used to come to him to receive initiation. They stayed in his hermitage, became pandits themselves, then returned home after a long and studious retreat. One day a young man came to him. His name was Yusuf Hussein. The Mahatma agreed to let him stay with him without even asking... lives there on the banks of the river Neela. Go and take this box to him from me. But take good care, brother, don't make any mistake on the way. Keep this box carefully with you and give it to the man whom it is for. When you come back I shall give you initiation." Once again the Mahatma repeated his advice and described the route Yusuf had to follow to reach the river Neela. Yusuf bowed down at his... journey. When he reached the river Neela and the house of his master's friend, Yusuf handed the Mahatma's present to him and waited silently in a corner because of the fault he had committed. This man was a great saint. He opened the box and immediately understood what had happened. "Well, Yusuf," he said, turning to the young aspirant, "so you have lost that mouse.... Mahatma Junun won't give you ...
... me to discard this? Do you know how well it has served me?" (42) In 1945, a physical education section was opened in the Ashram with 14 boys. Some time later another section was opened with 10-15 little boys and girls. After some time big girls also wanted to participate and so 32 of them joined a big girls' group. Their uniform was salwar kameez. When the salwar-kameez... terribly unfair!" Page 226 (39) In 1950, towards the beginning, a group of scouts came to the Ashram from Calcutta. They were to spend a few days in the Ashram. The boys were very easygoing, simple, jovial and orderly. Every evening, in the Playground, they would play games with our children and sing scout-songs to them. Everyone was very happy. And Mother too was very... And we all had a good laugh together. (49) As I told you earlier, towards the beginning of my Ashram-life, I used to occasionally go on pretty long cy cling-trips with some boys and girls on Sundays. Now let me tell you about an incident in which thanks to Mother's Grace and to the courage, intelligence and presence of mind of the children, I was saved from an accident. ...
... for the abode of Yama and came and sat on the latter's doorstep. Page 115 There he lay in wait for three whole nights in the hope of getting a chance to meet Yama. Even as the boys Dhruva and Prahlada had had a vision of God through their simple faith, so did the simple but stout-hearted Nachiketas too reach the abode of Yama and meet him. The minions of Yam a went and told... grasped all by himself. Man has open before him two doors leading to two different paths: one is that of the good, the other of what is pleasant. The two lead in opposite directions; Nachiketas had renounced the pleasant and had chosen the good. On the basis of this choice depend, in the beginning and throughout at each step, the progress and upward evolution of man. He alone who can recognise... desirable things that are hard to get on this mortal earth, you can demand exactly as you please. Charming damsels with their chariots and song and dance, than whom there is nothing more acceptable to men - all this I shall give you for your enjoyment at will. But do not ask any more about death." But Nachiketas was no mere boy or unripe youth. His reply was immediate, "All that you have named, O ...
... for the abode of Yama and came and sat on the latter's doorstep. Page 1 There he lay in wait for three whole nights in the hope of getting a chance to meet Yama. Even as the boys Dhruva and Prahlada had had a vision of God through their simple faith, so did the simple but stout-hearted Nachiketas too reach the abode of Yama and meet him. The minions of Yama went and told... grasped all by himself. Man has open before him two doors leading to two different paths: one is that of the good, the other of what is pleasant. The two lead in opposite directions. Nachiketas had renounced the pleasant and had chosen the good. On the basis of this choice depend, in the beginning and throughout at each step, the progress and upward evolution of man. He alone who can recognise... desirable things that are hard to get on this mortal earth, you can demand exactly as you please. Charming damsels with their chariots and song and dance, than whom there is nothing more acceptable to men — all this I shall give you for your enjoyment at will. But do not ask any more about death." But Nachiketas was no mere boy or unripe youth. His reply was immediate, "All that you have named ...
... arithmetic and religion. The boys were given simple agricultural jobs and weaving to do, the girls were set to spinning, gardening and cooking; initially there were many difficulties and little response from children and parents, but after some time the situation improved, and the children became more cheerful and healthy. It is an indescribable joy to see boys and girls, who had been wretched... connected with one of the objects temporarily occupying my fancy. 1 He was a good pupil at school, at least in regard to subjects which interested him. He grew into a young man with radical views who joined with other young men of Zurich in a "society " advocating widespread political and social reform. (It should be remembered that Zurich was a city-state at the time, strictly controlled by a few... brought up to be a writer. I feel at home when I have a child in my arms, or when a man who feels for humanity stands before me. And then I forget the poor truths ', fashioned by the pen.... For of everything which does not interest me as being indispensable to mankind I am unconcerned and the most ignorant of men. 1 Furthermore, Pestalozzi felt that the real meaning of his story had been m ...
... which will do well enough for the training of the mind, it has not yet been found possible to provide under modern conditions a suitable moral training for the school and college. The attempt to make boys moral and religious by the teaching of moral and religious text-books is a vanity and a delusion, precisely because the heart is not the mind and to instruct the mind does not necessarily improve the... it, watching, suggesting, helping, but not interfering. The one excellent element in the English boarding school is that the master at his best stands there as a moral guide and example leaving the boys largely to influence and help each other in following the path silently shown to them. But the method practised is crude and marred by the excess of outer discipline, for which the pupils have no respect... respond when called for by the memory. It is a fact which has been proved by minute experiments that the faculty of observation is very imperfectly developed in men, merely from want of care in the use of the senses and the memory. Give twelve men the task of recording from memory something they all saw two hours ago and the accounts will all vary from each other and from the actual occurrence. To get ...
... which will do well enough for the training of the mind, it has not yet been found possible to provide under modern conditions a suitable moral training for the school and college. The attempt to make boys moral and religious by the teaching of moral and religious text-books is a vanity and a delusion, precisely because the heart is not the mind and to instruct the mind does not necessarily improve the... it, watching, suggesting, helping, but not interfering. The one excellent element in the English boarding school is that the master at his best stands there as a moral guide and example, leaving the boys largely to influence and help each other in following the path silently shown to them. But the method practised is crude and marred by the excess of outer discipline, for which the pupils have no respect... when called for by the memory. It is a fact which has been proved by minute experiments. that the faculty of observation is very imperfectly developed in men, merely from want of care in the use of the sense and the memory. Give twelve men the task of recording Page 68 from memory something they all saw two hours ago and the accounts will all vary from each other and from the actual ...
... would look at it back in 1914; everything was so natural that it scarcely seemed like yoga, or perhaps everything was yoga, like the very air we breathe. Sri Aurobindo was surrounded by half a dozen boys, mostly Bengalis, who had followed their "leader” into his exile, and were all waiting for the moment He would return to the revolution—no one suspected that He was doing the revolution. Sri Aurobindo... was yoga— All Life is Yoga, He would soon inscribe as an epigraph to his first book, The Synthesis of Yoga. That is why nobody could discern anything, for yoga, like life, was everywhere. And the "boys'’ went in and out at their own sweet will, discussed politics or the latest soccer game—their favorite, if not main occupation—with the youths of the Pondicherry Sports Club. Sri Aurobindo was their... (Antigone, Medea, The Aeneid) to one of them who proved particularly interested in literature—this was Nolini, Sri Aurobindo’s oldest disciple, who would become the General Secretary of the Ashram. But the boys did not regard themselves as “disciples,” and besides, Sri Aurobindo did not try to teach anything, unless He was asked to. There was no question of an "Ashram,” because Sri Aurobindo did not want to ...
... traversed, as far as I could see, a distance of some five yards,—flew at the level of my head and fell almost beside me. There was no person near; the servant was out, having gone to the bazaar; of the four boys, three were lying down in their rooms, another shut up in his at the other end of the house. The gate was bolted & no one could enter, or, if he did, escape in a second. There was no bird in the air... for "[The Indian] Sociologist" and "Liberator". 7) I had a cognition formerly that the man calling himself Ram Rao Yogi was a detective—independent of all inference. Learned on Feb 1 of a police report in which he is mentioned as watching the trains and taken for some time by the others as a Bande Mataram man. 8) Confirmation by B. [Bijoy] of my cognition of the new change of soul in the dog. ... though I had no intention of writing today. It was written with a fountainpen, while usually I write with an ordinary pen and a long thin nib. 9) A scene of the future. An Occidental port with ships, men walking in Indian dress. Sarvatragati. 10) Mountains in the sea. Scene of one of the swargabhumis. Sarvatragati. 11) A Madrasi house, tiled floor bare with an armchair. January 31ṣṭ 12) Chitra ...
... groups of boys to the advanced students, let alone to the elite. Occasionally, in fact, he felt the desire to reach even further back and to attempt to deal with even younger pupils, those who had never yet had courses of any kind and knew nothing of the Glass Bead Game. He found himself sometimes wishing to spend a while in Eschholz or one of the other preparatory schools instructing small boys in Latin... stairs, pointed to a practice room, and told him: "You're supposed to wait here till they call you." The wait was short, but seemed to him an eternity. No one called him, but a man entered the room. A very old man, it seemed to him at first, not very tall, white- haired, with a fine, clear face and penetrating, light-blue eyes. The gaze of those eyes might have been frightening, but they were... make a little music together." Knecht had already taken out his violin. The old man struck the A, and the boy tuned. Then he looked inquiringly, anxiously, at the Music Master. "What would you like to play?" the Master asked. The boy could not say a word. He was filled to the brim with awe of the old man. Never had he seen a person like this. Hesitantly, he picked up his exercise book and ...
... for a selfless performance of the divine will working through our nature; not social service, but the action of the Best, the God-possessed, the Master-men done impersonally for the sake of the world and as a sacrifice to Him who stands behind man and Nature. In other words, the Gita is not a book of practical ethics, but of the spiritual life. The modern mind is just now the European mind, such... situation by sending Buddha back to his wife and father and the government of the Sakya State, or would direct a Ramakrishna to become a Pundit in a vernacular school and disinterestedly teach little boys their lessons, or bind down a Vivekananda to support his family and for that to follow dispassionately the law or medicine or journalism. The Gita does not teach the disinterested performance of duties... Sunday use and erected in His place man as its deity and society as its visible idol. At its best it is practical, ethical, social, pragmatic, altruistic, humanitarian. Now all these things are good, are especially needed at the present day, are part of the divine Will or they would not have become so dominant in humanity. Nor is there any reason why the divine man, the man who lives in the Brahmic consciousness ...
... to deal with them. But they were poles apart from you in their looks and their manner. They were harsh and rude and hard; one could know at once what kind of people they were." Most of us were boys and young men of 16 to 20, except for a few like Barin, Upen and Hrishikesh who were of about the same age, all nearing thirty. But within the very precincts of jail we made them understand how one "softer... parade. The poor old man was brought in to identify Nolini Gupta. Sudhir-da whispered to me, "You stand in the front line with a quiet nonchalant air. I shall be just behind." Sudhir-da stood behind, with his head down and showed by his fumbling and nervous manner as if he were trying to hide himself. The old man was in a fix; he got so confused that he finally shouted, "That was the man over there, I have... would just turn round to see. There was something sensational that happentd one day; it concerned myself. They produced an important witness against me; it was the cabin-man at the railway level-crossing near Deoghar, a poor old man. Were he to identify me as the person who had been passing to and fro near his cabin – we had several times been to Dighiriya hill across the railway line – that would prove ...
... This first phase of our life was over by the end of a month and a half. The scene now opened to still brighter prospects. As the authorities discovered that we meant no harm and were perfectly good boys, they offered us a much nicer place for our stay. It was a spacious hall divided into three compartments, with a verandah and a courtyard in front. And our daily ablutions were now to be performed outside... tried to commit suicide, the other two would stop him! How utterly man could degrade man to a state worse than that of beasts even, one might say, was illustrated admirably by the life one had to lead in these "44 Degrees". Wordsworth must have had good cause to write: And much it grieved my heart to think What man has made of man! Page 373 But of course one might take this... the more "intellectual" types. Here Upen took the lead and I too spent most of my time here because of him, The third compartment belonged to the atheists and rationalists, the so-called "practical" men, Hem Das and his chief disciple young Krishnajiban ruled here. The groups exchanged banter freely among themselves, but there was never any dearth of good feeling and friendship. It was again during ...
... knowledge which all men carry about with them, and to these sympathies in which, without any other discipline than that of our daily life, we are fitted to take delight, the Poet principally directs his attention. He considers man and nature as Page 228 Country Concert, Painting by Corot (detail), Conde Museum, France essentially adapted to each other, and the mind of man as naturally... Wordsworth, Wordsworth Poetical Works, ed. Thomas Hutchinson (London: Oxford, 1984), pp. 735-38. Page 230 Portrait of a boy. Painting by Peter Lely times leave the circle of boys and skate off alone "to cut across the reflex of a star" reflected in the ice; or, stopping short, he would watch the solitary cliffs continue to wheel round and round him until, at last, "all was tranquil... tribunal to which it appeals, and receives them from the same tribunal. Poetry is the image of man and nature.... What then does the Poet? He considers man and the objects that surround him as acting and re-acting upon each other, so as to produce an infinite complexity of pain and pleasure; he considers man in his own nature and in his ordinary life as contemplating this with a certain quantity of ...
... a moment! That is not the way things are done. I have brought my men with me to dress you to music. Suits like these must be put on with ceremony. Hello there! Come in! Page 200 Enter four tailor boys dancing TAILOR. Put on the gentleman's suit in a manner befitting a gentleman of quality!- Four tailor boys dance up to MR JOURDAIN. Two take off the breeches in which he... that out? MUSIC MASTER. What is war but discord among nations? MR JOURDAIN. True. MUSIC MASTER. If all men studied music wouldn't it be a means of bringing them to harmony and universal peace? MR JOURDAIN. That seems sound enough. DANCING MASTER. And what do we say when a man has committed some mistake in his private life or in public affairs? Don't we say he made a false step... them. TRIO FIRST SINGER [woman]. Who gives her heart in loving To a thousand cares is bound; Men speak of love and wooing As one continual round Of rapture. — Not for me! No, not for me! I keep my fancy free, I keep my fancy free. SECOND SINGER [man]. Could I succeed in proving The ardour of my heart, Could I succeed in moving You to that better part ...
... cherished the memory of his former Professor. "Being in close contact with this great man, I sometimes used to take liberties with him. While I was in Matriculation class, I once asked him how I should improve my English, what author I should read and study. I had read some portion of Macaulay's Lives of Great Men and I was fascinated by his style. I asked him if I should read Macaulay. Then, as was... intellectual feast that seemed to us. Later on Ghose was appointed Lecturer in French and English. His tutorial work was much appreciated. He took an active part in the literary activities of the College boys." Sri Aurobindo never looked at the Notes, as he recalled in 1938. Sometimes the students remarked the disparity between what was in the Notes and his explanations, so that many of them found him ...
... spectators were erected and decorated with flags and flowers. Invitations were extend ed by the rulers who organized the festival by sending special envoys to different parts of the country. Of course, boys and girls were fond of these social gatherings and parents of young people studying at Universities like Varanasi or Taksila sent messages for their sons to come and watch the tournaments. These... of the leaves, so is that of men. The wind scatters the leaves to the ground: the vigorous forest puts forth others, and they grow in the spring-season. Soon one generation of men comes and another ceases." The tragic note was produced by the tension between these two forces, passionate delight in life and apprehension of its unalterable framework. The Greek men wanted so much their fame to be... knew that, in the same way a wave is not separate from the ocean, man is not separate from the universe and the universal energy. The same force which moves in stars and planets moves in man. And they knew that the source of energy is spiritual but in the physical world the basis, the foundation on which it stands is physical. Man can increase his capacity as a receptacle of this energy. By the ...
... other men sat with him. Page 107 The gentleman called the waiter and said: "You see those two persons? Serve them well with piping-hot food." We presumed he was the owner of the restaurant, After our sumptuous breakfast I asked for the bill. I went up to the counter and asked: "Where's our bill?" Our waiter appeared and said pointing to the gentle- man: "He has... miserable life. People used to call them: "Phooto Bagchi" (Bagchi with a hole). As a pitcher with a hole cannot hold water so this family too with its false pride could not hold any dignity. The boys of this Bagchi family would always show off as aristocrats and used to make fun of their friends in conversation. Sitting in the verandah, talking with others, one of them would say: "Do you... without a penny in his pocket, none knew where he had gone. He returned two years later and can you imagine what he had with him, one mug, a blanket and a ten-rupee note." One of the Bagchi-boys decided to come to the Ashram. He was travelling with a group of caterers on the Kundu Special. Unfortunately on the way one of the travelers caught small-pox so all of them were quarantined. He ...
... BY THE WAY Part - II Note from the Publisher Dada (Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya) is present in his office every morning from 8.30 to 11.45. During this time boys, girls and growing-ups from the Ashram come to see him. He also receives visitors. They all have something to ask him and he answers their questions. The visitor goes back happy. All those who are... themselves and then all fear or worry vanishes. Page 2 The youngsters, in particular, feel they must come and speak to him however small or ordinary their grievance. Once two little boys had a fight. One of them came running into the office to complain: 'Dada, he called you a fatso!' Dada asked: "What did he say? Fatso? To whom?" Angrily the boy replied: 'You ! He called... difficult one. Not everyone can walk on it. The Mother never believed in keeping anyone here force. Whatever path one chooses in full freedom is the right path. "Every year almost twenty-five boys and girls pass out our school. Very few of them take up the Ashram life. Mi of them leave. This year, out of twenty-five students twenty two have gone out and even of these three who will stay or ...
... parts of the world. And to follow man in this career, sometimes wise, more often mad and foolish, is no easy matter. With the help of books one might make an attempt. But Naini Prison does not provide a library. So I am afraid it is not possible for me to give you any connected account of world history, much as I should have liked to have done so. I dislike very much boys and girls learning the history... And so from this book of nature we would learn something of those far-off days I when no man or animal lived on this earth of ours. As we read on we shall see the" first animals appear and later more and more animals. And then will come man and woman, but they will be very different from the men and women we see today. They will be savages not very different from animals. Gradually they will... wrote: "I was full of questions and this enabled him to tell me about the world, and the men and women who inhabited it and who have moved others by their ideas and actions, and through literature and art.... The letters in this book, written when I was eight or nine, deal with the beginnings of the earth and of man's awareness of himself. They were not merely letters to be read and put away. They brought ...
... offends us. It hurts our self-respect: Why must a rational man be led to kowtow to what his reason cannot label or docket? I recall a remark Tagore made years ago. He and Bertrand Russell had once gone out for a stroll in Cambridge. As they passed by King's College Chapel Page 124 they heard a choral hymn being sung by the boys: lovely music! Tagore suggested to Russell that they step... true in this indictment against the mystic is that his contribution to human culture its not conterminous with that of the social man in his various, more or less, social moods, Art, poetry, music, the crafts, philosophy, — in fact every walk of life hitherto trod by men the world over — all fall more or less under the category of our social moods. It has indeed, been claimed by some poets, artists... daily with a paradox, namely, that the most abstract and even seemingly impossible of scientific theories (theories which once upon a time men could only gape at) have been fruitful in inventions which have profoundly modified not only the outer life of man but his thoughts and aspirations as well. Tout se tient (things lean upon one another and hold together,) Romain Rolland wrote to me once ...
... " Narendra had earlier approached other so-called holy men with the same challenging query, and never received a convincing answer. But this time the young man was shaken by the prompt, terse reply: "Yes, I see Him just as I see you here, only in a much intenser sense." "For the first time, " Narendra recounted later, "I found a man who dared to say that he had seen God... As I heard these... But when challenged to repeat the lesson, Narendra recited it word for word, much to the teacher s surprise. He was energetic, restless and agg ressively independent and a natural leader among the boys of his age. Once, when Naren was quite small, someone told him that a ghost lived in a certain tree. lie immediately scrambled up the tree to show his friends that this was not true. At the... those powers, or not." 16 The answer was certainly the one his Master expected of him. Such, then, was the relationship between the teacher and his pupil, between the man of realization and the man of reason. The love and liberty which Narendra enjoyed at the hands of his Master were unique: Sri Ramakrishna confided the secrets of his heart to Narendra. This helped increase Narendra' ...
... unexpected events and accidents happen in men's lives cannot be denied as a fact and everyone may be painfully aware of such happenings if he looks around with an observant eye. We cite below a few instances which are personally known to the present writer. (1)'A' is a man of sattwic nature - a perfect gentleman and generous to the fingertips. A man of universal goodwill and love, he considers... Destiny of Man". This Vidhata does nothing out of his arbitrary, capricious whim. His every single action and decision is invariably a dispensation of justice. It is this Vidhata who is the sole Judge of men and after every act of judgment decrees appropriate rewards and punishments to a human being. But the question remains: What is the standard of judgment of this Vidhata-Purusha? Men thought... concerned. And such is not the case unique to our times. Men have met such saddening events and accidents throughout the recorded history of humanity in all times and climes and have anxiously sought for their satisfactory explanations and from this attempt have arisen many alternative theories and hypotheses. Thus, man has sometimes speculated that all this is due to an invisible but ...
... requests the two young boys to continue to chant during the ceremony. The assembled viewers, remark on the physical resemblance of the boys to Sri Rama, and Sri Rama on being told by the twins that the great poem was composed by the great sage Valmiki, sends a message to Valmiki to bring with him Sita. Valmiki arrives with Sita and declares the purity of Sita and that the twin boys were born to her. Sri... Mithila, whose daughter would be wedded only to that lion among men who could lift the formidable bow of Shiva. None of the assembled kings and princes had succeeded, but Sri Rama, whose arms were a solid mass of strength, could lift that bow with one stroke and even break it. In that event was concealed the union of the divine master of man and the celestial goddess who had also descended on the earth... three are great epics and all the three stand out as great hymns of heroism; each has its own excellence and Page 13 even superiority over the others, but the Ramayana alone presents to Man in his ascent, a shining example, of one who is very much like him and yet, is infinitely greater than he can become. It is rightly said that Sri Rama was the Supreme Lord himself, who had descended ...
... and a camp-cot had been arranged. Nolini recalls that they had neither a decent kerosene lamp nor a lantern, except a single candlestick for Sri Aurobindo's personal use. Then, one afternoon when the boys went out for their games, the electricians came and fitted four points for the entire building: one in Sri Aurobindo's room, another in the centre of the verandah, and two downstairs. By the time the... also one towel for all! The one towel served him also after the others had toweled themselves. It would be stretching the truth to say that it was a rich household. It was not. The four or five young men who lived there had one mat each. It was an all-purpose mat: it served as bedstead, mattress, coverlet and pillow. That being Page 389 the sole furniture all their books—plenty of books—lay... had gone there after school to fetch Ramaswamy for their evening walk. That day as he entered the house he found his older friend sitting all alone in the open courtyard. Said Ramaswamy to the young man, "The two persons from France have arrived. They will just now come and see Sri Page 386 Aurobindo. The order is that none other than the inmates should remain in the house. You go ...
... to Chidambaram. Well Done, Chidambaram! A true feeling of comradeship is the salt of political life; it binds men together and is the cement of all associated action. When a political leader is prepared to suffer for the sake of his followers, when a man, famous and adored by the public, is ready to remain in jail rather than leave his friends and fellow-workers behind, it is a sign... were many other secret societies in Bengal already flourishing. Rajnarain Bose had already formed one in which the Tagore brothers were members, and Sarala Ghosal founded several clubs where not only boys but girls too were taught to wield lathi and sword. Sarala Ghosal was indeed the foremost organiser of physical education in Bengal. It will be of some interest to note that Sri Aurobindo first... assistance were to be obtained from the older men who had advanced views or could be won over to them. Centres were to be established in every town and eventually in every village. Societies of young men were to be established with various ostensible objects, cultural, intellectual or moral and those already existing were to be won over for revolutionary use. Young men were to be trained in activities which ...
... Verily Man shall not taste of victory Till he throws his sword away." Then Alfred, prince of England, And all the Christian earls, Unhooked their swords and held them up, Each offered to Colan, like a cup Of chrysolite and pearls. And the King said, "Do thou take my sword Who have done this deed of fire. For this is the manner of Christian men, Whether... followers. He has himself spoken of the grave and dangerous work he had to do, work which exposed him even to losing his life along with those who had turned heroes under his inspiration. Many of his "boys" actually went to the gallows with smiling faces and the cry he had made India-wide of "Bande Mataram" - "I bow to You, O Mother" - with which Bankim Chandra Chatterji's famous patriotic song begins... two points: (1) "Gandhi, on the other hand, it seems to us, gave a new vitality and contemporary life to India's ancient wisdom;" (2) "Gandhi, therefore, again it seems to us, was able to move other men in the direction of greatness - toward heroism, that is." Finally, you declare: "If Sri Aurobindo has anything of this sort to his credit, it has not come to our attention." I should like to ...
... all charged up during the football season. There were also arrangements for playing hockey and cricket. Father used to play these two games with the boys. What exciting games there would be in the afternoon! When father joined the game the boys would play with a lot of gusto. Father also played tennis very well. When the Mother started playing tennis here, on father’s birthday (11th July 1948) She... Mother had Herself drawn the outline of it on the wall. In the Mother’s vision this was the true map of India. Everyone would ask the Mother all types of questions, especially the 16-17-year-old boys and girls. In fact the class had been started for them. Listening to the Mother, I would simply forget myself. The Mother had a natural flair for explaining the most difficult philosophical and spiritual... Helped by the Mother’s indulgent Love, a new wondrous consciousness began to take shape within us. Year after year, how much time, love and infinite patience the Mother lavished on us ordinary little boys and girls so that our personality would develop and grow! How She used to speak to each one of us according to our receptivity and understanding. How She educated us and surrounded us with Her support ...
... substituted by Pranam. What an unearthly hour for Pranam! This happened particularly when she was passing through a period of trance. Many people would go to sleep in the courtyard, especially young boys and girls. Then Haradhan, an old sadhak, would announce, "Mother has come, Mother has come!" All would wake up and in a flurry stand in the queue to see the Mother who was often in a state of trance... expansion and acquisition, it had to be tested in the crucible of outer life. We soon became one spiritual family. The Mother had to look after the mental, vital and physical health of the green ones, both boys and girls. Along with the necessity, means also came forward to meet the demand. Sisirkumar Mitra from Vishwabharati, with a long teaching experience, and Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya from Calcutta, an... Aurobindo has done it so well in his essay on The Divine Body. 6 My vision being more earthly, I can see that it has served the most important purpose of keeping the inflammable material of young boys, girls and children under a strict supervision through compulsory activities from 4.30 p.m. to 7.00 p.m. or so. One can very well imagine what would have been the moral effect on them, had there not ...
... of good fortune. Too symmetrical to be true. The object of birth being growth by experience, whatever reactions come to past deeds must be for the being to learn and grow, not as lollipops for good boys of the class (in the past) and canings for the bad ones. The real sanction for good and ill is not good fortune for the one and bad fortune for the other, but this that good leads us towards a higher... life. There are certainly results of the energies put forth in a past life, but not on that rather infantile principle. A good man's suffering in this life would be a proof according to the orthodox theory that he had been a very great villain in his past life, a bad man's prospering would be a proof that he had been quite angelic in his last visit to earth and sown a large crop of virtues and meritorious... or less—not in all details but broadly—the conditions of its future life. But these are exceptional cases. Possibly we could speak of it for ourselves here, but for the majority, the vast majority of men, even those who are educated, it is out of the question. And what comes then is a psychic being in formation, more or less formed, and there are all the stages of formation from the spark which becomes ...
... thy brother. 484) Love of God, charity towards men is the first step towards perfect wisdom. 485) He who condemns failure & imperfection, is condemning God; he limits his own soul and cheats his own vision. Condemn not, but observe Nature, help & heal thy brothers and strengthen by sympathy their capacities & their courage. 486) Love of man, love of woman, love of things, love of thy neighbour... compassion is the noblest gift of temperament, not to do even the least hurt to one living thing is the highest of all human virtues; but God practises neither. Is man therefore nobler and better than the All-loving? 530) Love and serve men, but beware lest thou desire their approbation. Obey rather God within thee. 531) Not to have heard the voice of God and His angels is the world's idea of sanity... rainbow-hued relation? Then hast thou no need of any heaven and thou exceedest the emancipation of the Adwaitin. 476) When will the world change into the model of heaven? When all mankind becomes boys & girls together with God revealed as Krishna & Kali, the happiest boy & strongest girl of the crowd, playing together in the gardens of Paradise. The Semitic Eden was well enough, but Adam & Eve were ...
... effect on large masses of men, creating a new phase of human thought and a fresh type of character. Its first immediate effect was to transform a few heterogeneous desert tribes of the Arabian peninsula into a nation of heroes. Muhammad is for every Muslim the prophet to whom the Koran was revealed; in fact, the Koran is unique in being entirely transmitted through one man. Muhammad could not... definitely to Mecca. The ten-year truce still had eight years to run, but due to an attack on a muslim tribe, Muhammad declared the truce void in AD 630. He gathered 10.000 men and marched to Mecca. Abu Sufyan, then the head man in Mecca, perceiving the strength of Muhammad's forces, allowed him to enter unopposed. Muhammad responded handsomely by declaring a general amnesty for all but two or three... classroom. The teacher, for reasons undisclosed, asked each boy to take a living pigeon and to slaughter it in a place where no one can see him. Muhammad goes off with a bird and a knife like the other boys, but later returns with the pigeon still alive. The angry teacher asks Muhammad to explain his disobedience. The boy answers: "Sir, you asked me to slaughter this bird at a place where no one would ...
... While appreciating the idea of silence room, he said that the actual situation in regard to the buildings of schools in the country is so unsatisfactory that there are not even toilet facilities for boys and girls. He wondered whether the proposals made in the paper of Kireet Joshi could succeed in the present circumstances. He added that many of these proposals are all tall order for teachers, and... while character development has to start at home, it should continue in schools, in community and in every domain of social and political life. She felt that there should be no discrimination between boys and girls. Kireet Joshi, before presenting his third paper, added that if his proposals seem to be impracticable, - although they are not impracticable, - those which would be presented in the... higher values. He expressed his hope that with men and women who were present in the Workshop, there was a great possibility that the resurrection of the country would be possible. He added that European renaissance was brought about by the effort of about 100 enlightened individuals, and he felt that India is a vast country and would throw up 100 men and women to help regeneration of the country 7 ...
... was smiling again. I again found my Mother in the form of my friend. I had the same experience on another occasion. One day Manoj asked the Mother in the Playground: “Mother, why did you create boys and girls?” The Mother kept quiet for some time. Then She laughed and said: “Your seeing humans as boy or girl is not quite right. When I talk to you, I don’t think this is Manoj or that is Priti... revealing Her fiery, furious, fearful aspect of Mahakali. The Mother had stared at them in such an unflinchingly piercing way that even we began trembling with dread. But because these were two little boys, they were spared. Then She climbed up the staircase with firm, strong steps, and every step felt that terrifying shiver while we just went on looking at Her in stunned silence. The Mother in Her... white had come and installed herself within us on this day. With all our devotion, faith and love we would make offerings at her feet. For this was the puja of the little children and the young. The boys would come together to make a little mountain of earth and sand. And a little stream would come cascading down it. On either side were placed beautiful flowers, birds and different types of creatures ...
... all records — medical, Athletic Competition, Swimming Competition, etc. Pranab-da urges use but can’t tolerate any misuse. One day I witnessed the following drama. I was unaware, but he noticed two boys wrestling on top of a pile of Gymnastic mattresses. He came striding in and ‘smack’ one hard slap on an upturned bottom. The boy exclaimed “Ké sala ” (Bengali expression) and looked up, saw who was... regularly. All this helped delay, but finally the end came — on the 8th January 2010. An era had ended. One is tempted to say: “When again one such?” What can we now conclude about the man? He was practically a one-man show. One can even assume he was dictator, but a benign one. With his powers and understanding, he could take immediate action, get things done. (He did consult us when needed.) Now we... teacher (Guru) and an elder brother was probably the source of the unconsciously harboured “cool feelings” towards Pranab-da — for our (mine and one or two others) minds somehow “opposed” these two men. These feelings were those that the Mother saw and so told me to “completely co-operate with Pranab”. Quite a roundabout way of knocking some sense into me, a hard nut to crack. So again my heartfelt ...
... all the smaller boys he can get within his cane's reach, not displeased if they show a little fight so that he can exhibit his heroic strength of arm by punishing them. And then he adorns himself Page 81 with glittering Victoria crosses and calls on all his associates to admire his gallant and his daredevil courage. Sometimes it reminds me of an old man, a man very early old, still... Secret of the Veda. This point will be developed in further passages. Page 49 all the possible means by which man can approach God. It is the one religion which insists every moment on the truth which all religions acknowledge that He is in all men and all things and that in Him we move and have our being. It is the one religion which enables us not only to understand and believe... * * May 23, 1907 Where the will of a higher Power is active in a great upheaval, no individual is indispensable. * * * May 28, 1907 We have to fill the minds of our boys from childhood with the idea of the country, and present them with that idea at every turn and make their whole young life a lesson in the practice of the virtues which afterwards go to make the patriot ...
... article "The Ashram and the Centre of Education' in Sri Aurobindo Circle, 26th Number (WO), pp. 30-47. Page 765 for boys and education for girls. The Centre of Education accordingly provides the same programme - including physical education - for boys and girls. There is still room for plenty of choice, but the options are made by the inner preference and not by the mere fact of sex... its growth within us oneness with our fellow-men will become the leading principle of all our life, not merely a principle of co-operation but a deeper brotherhood, a real and an inner sense of unity and equality and a common life. 38 Sri Aurobindo saw very clearly what was happening obscurely behind the phenomenal play, and he saw too that man had it in him to advance or retard this evolutionary... physical determinism that seemed to be so irresistible by a new freedom and puissance resulting from the infusion into the very cells of the body by the Supramental force. It was perhaps easier to make boys and girls growing up in the Ashram atmosphere open themselves to the possibility of such an infusion, and a consequent inner awakening, than it would be for older people with set habits of body and ...
... was an Irish man. The Police went to him to ask for permission to search the hostel. The Superintendent was furious. “These boys are like my sons. These are my boys.” After a lot of arguing when the Police expressed their desire to search the room father had first entered, the Superintendent acceded to their request. The reason was that father did not stay in that room. The Irish man knew about... along with the revolutionary work. He was awarded the Gold Medal twice for his M.A. examination. It needs to be mentioned that when Bagha Jatin decided to leave for Balasore with his group of young boys for some revolutionary work, father’s name was on that list. I am told that at the last moment Bagha Jatin told Meghnad Saha and father: “I also need brilliant students. You will wake this country... death in great detail to him. I include that description below. If man lives his life consciously then his soul progresses. Father’s life is proof of that. The Mother observed: “Take N.D. for example, a man who lived his whole life with the idea of serving Sri Aurobindo; he died clasping my photo to his breast. This was a consecrated man, very conscious, with an unfailing dedication, and all the parts ...
... what to do with the lorry. So I thought of making good use of it." After a few months, suddenly, Mother tells me, "You wanted to do some construction work. You can start now. You see, these [Ashram] boys, when there is some construction, they go away to Group [for physical education]. You can't leave like that during concreting." . [Yet another example:] One fine morning, She wrote a letter to... you started the reboring work. Reboring was started by Vishwanath-da, he showed me how to do it. I can't take the credit for myself. (Abhay-da's strength lay in pooling together the men and resources of the various departments under him. He redistributed freely the money from one department to another with the Mother's sanction. Wlien he suggested once to the Mother to separate the... for growing the biggest roses that I have ever seen in Ashram gardens. This he did much against the wishes of his seniors, but Abhay-da (as people called him and even now remember him fondly) was a man of great will-power, and lie believed in what he did and wouldn't listen to anybody except the Mother. Perhaps that's why he later got into trouble with the Trustees after Mother passed away - he was ...
... aspiration to find the Truth. Present: The man of goodwill, the philanthropist. The disillusioned man who no longer believes in the possibility happiness on earth. The scientist who seeks to solve the problems of Nature. The artist who dreams of a more beautiful ideal. A group of three students (two boys and a girl) who have faith in a better life and... how can one help men effectively? All the remedies we use are mere palliatives, not cures. Only the consciousness of Truth can save humanity. PESSIMIST I have suffered too much in life. I have experienced too many disillusionments, home too much injustice, seen too much misery. I no longer believe in anything. I no longer expect anything from the world or from men. My last remaining... decisive turning-point. Now the ascent will become steeper and harder and above all, we are going to cross over to the other side of the mountain where we shall no longer be able to see the valley and men. This means that I shall have to give up my work and betray my pledge to help humanity. Do not ask me to stay with you; I must leave you and return to my duty. (He starts back on the downward ...
... It all stemmed from the brief career of one man, who died at the age of 33. Who really was the man known as Alexander the Great? In only thirteen years, between 336 and 323 BC, he earned enough fame to fuel legends down through the ages. Thirteen years of unrelenting drive, of amazing deeds. Here was a young man able to inspire large troops of men to follow him in a whirlwind of conquests that... civilisation. This was more an instinctive feeling than a product of reflection. Men like Alexander are often seized by blazing intuitions, but these often get mixed with their more fundamental ambitious drive. A study of Alexander the Great is instructive in several ways. Firstly, it shorn us what the life-force in man can achieve under circumstances and conditions as favourable as Alexander's,... of his son. At any rate, whenever he heard that Philip had captured some famous city or won an overwhelming victory, Alexander would show no pleasure at the news, but would declare to his friends, "Boys, my father will forestall me in everything. There will be nothing great or spectacular for you and me to show the world." He cared nothing for pleasure or wealth but only for deeds of valour and glory ...
... Hindusthani. When he was five years old, he was sent, along with his two elder brothers, to the Loretto Convent School at Darjeeling, run by an Irish nun. There the three brothers had only European boys for friends and companions, for it was a school meant only for European children. Page 4 Sri Aurobindo (seated right) with his parents, brothers and sister at Manchester... the Adharma, I loose myself fort h into birth.” — The Gita, Chapt. IV. 7 "There are moments when the Spirit moves among men and the breath of the Lord is abroad upon the waters of our being; there are others when it retires and men are left to act in the strength or the weakness of their own egoism. The first are periods when even a little effort produces great results and... adventure and inquiry which characterised the scientific research of his times. But the cruelty and oppression which he saw perpetrated in the name of civilisation and the heartless exploitation of man by man, filled him with a "strong hatred and disgust". He had formed no ties in England, and 6. "Sri Aurobindo and His Ashram”. Page 11 had not made England his adopted ...
... and despised homes of the poor and ignorant. In the cave of the Sannyasin, under the garb of the Fakir, in the hearts of young men and boys many of whom could not speak a word of English but all could work and dare and sacrifice for the Mother, in the life of men of education and parts who had received the mantra and put from them the desire of wealth and honours to teach and labour so... 33 And Sister Nivedita and others who watched Sri Aurobindo at close quarters could see that he was a man of God, that his Nationalism was really a new religion. If it was the purpose of religion to take men to God, it was the purpose of the religion of Nationalism to bring men to their Mother, India - Bhavani Bharati or Prabuddha Bharata! To strive for the country, for India, was work... a God-driven human instrument, engaging in multiple-tasks with a sense of preordained inevitability. To measure Sri Aurobindo's actions or words - to measure the man himself - in terms of a human calculus applicable to other men would thus not lead us anywhere. In that age of supermen - for among the Nationalists there were personalities like Tilak, Lajpat Rai, Ajit Singh, Bepin Pal, Aswini ...
... till late at night, and then Sri Aurobindo would return to his rooms. A few of the young men with Sri Aurobindo - like Nolini, for example - had been revolutionaries who followed him to Pondicherry, and perhaps they still hoped that he would one day return to Bengal to lead a new movement. There were also boys like Aravamudachari (to whom Sri Aurobindo later gave the name Amrita) who were irresistibly... Yogins, not merely men moved intellectually and emotionally by one or two of the central ideas of the Yoga. Spreading of the idea is the second necessity, for that the Review at present offers itself among other means. The other means is to form brotherhoods, not formal but real .. for the practice of the Vedantic yoga .... 38 To sum up, as Sri Aurobindo worked it out, one man at least should... 1914 Sri Aurobindo had written to Motilal Roy intimating that Paul Richard, although unsuccessful in the election, was trying to start an association of the young men of Pondicherry and Karikal "as a sort of training ground from which men can be chosen for the Page 100 Vedantic Yoga". In a letter written about a month later, Sri Aurobindo informed him that they were starting a monthly ...
... Dupleix . But, whatever their names, the young men soon won the esteem of the local people and also became very popular because of their prowess as footballers. Nolini, Suresh and Bijoy were all expert players, Nolini being particularly brilliant. They became members of a local club, the Cercle Sportif of Pondicherry; they soon formed a fine team and the boys of this club were the enlightened, nationalist... contingent of CID men at Pondicherry and they spent money liberally in recruiting local spies to obtain information on the activities of the political absconders. Indeed it did not take the India Government long to find out that Sri Aurobindo was in Pondicherry. On April 9, a police detective at Madras, acting on information received from Pondicherry, reported to his superiors that the man they wanted seemed... was then a young man of 28, not yet the most famous Tamil poet of his time, but already well known for his lyrics, impassioned patriotic poems and fearless criticism of the Government. As a result of his provocative writings he was forced to leave Madras and take refuge in Pondicherry where he was helping Srinivasachari to bring out India. Bharati, like so many sensitive young men of his generation ...
... a rusty stove and a packing case. Two small twin boys were using the box as a table as they scraped at a dish of mush between them. Dad came out rapidly and said, "David, this woman is sick. Get Dr. Mumford right away. Then go to the store and get your mother." David ran. Dr. Mumford's office was on the main street. The doctor, a stocky man with bright eyes, was out the door with his bag before... survive, I tell you, after tonight. And tomorrow I'll call again and smash up all your blessed bottles and things." With this he vanished like a summer gale. The healer of men, sat stupefied, his scales in his hand, till an old man thought fit to grunt, "My good doctor, sir," and continued, hesitantly, "I would, if I were you... well, for example, bring out my best medicines and—toe and line, go, don't... then, that's final. Tomorrow I will invite five men of standing and have the property divided. Once and for all, Narayani, I won't have try to reform him any longer with blandishments, advice or 'persuasion". From now on he can do what he likes, for all we care." His voice hardened. "Oh, the young ruffian, to manhandle the son of the most honoured man of the district!" Digambari's joy knew no bounds ...
... ANDRÉ ( The Industrialist ) PRANAB ( The Athlete ) Six of the world's most famous men have been brought together, apparently by chance, in a life-boat in which they have taken refuge when the ship that was carrying them to a world conference on human progress sank in mid-ocean. There is also a seventh man in the boat. He looks young or, rather, ageless. He is dressed in a style belonging to... There is a silence as the six men exchange glances, showing their approval. Then: The Writer Your words have a compelling force, a contagious power. Yes, we feel that a new door has opened before us, a new hope is born in our hearts. But it will take time to realise, a long time perhaps. And now death awaits us, the end is near. Alas, it is too late. The Unknown Man No, it is not too late... his profession and he enjoyed the praise of his fellow-townsmen without any false modesty. At the beginning of the century, when the internal combustion engine made its first appearance, we small boys were thrilled by the possibilities it opened up, and to build a horseless carriage, or a motor-car as it was beginning to be called, presented itself as a goal worthy of our greatest efforts. For the ...
... counsel And with them Eurus came, Polydamas' son, who most dearly Loved was of all the Trojan boys by the glorious virgin. Page 403 She from her arming stayed to caress his curls and to chide him: "Eurus, forgotten of grace, dost thou gad like a stray in the city Eager to mix with the armoured men and the chariots gliding? High on the roofs wouldst thou watch the swaying speck that is battle... it poisons Manhood and joy and the voice to lying is trained and subjection Easy feels to the neck of man who is next to the godheads. Not of the fire am I terrified, not of the sword and its slaying; Page 371 Vileness of men appals me, baseness I fear and its voices. What can man suffer direr or worse than enslaved from a victor Boons to accept, to take safety and ease from the foe... in us and o'er us, Stamping our image on men and events to be Zeus or be Ares. Love and the need of mastery, joy and the longing for greatness Rage like a fire unquenchable burning the world and creating, Nor till humanity dies will they sink in the ashes of Nature. All is injustice of love or all is injustice of battle. Man over woman, woman o'er man, over lover and foeman Wrestling we strive ...
... Page 45 Maharaja of Cooch-Behar, and Manomohan was to become Professor of English at the Presidency College, Calcutta. The prodigal boys returned home at long last, Sri Aurobindo first, the others later; they were now stalwart young men, well-set apparently in life — but Dr. Krishnadhan's strong heroic soul had already passed away. When, after an absence of fourteen years, Sri... democracy? What had such a mere sadhu to offer to the young men steeped in the latest knowledge of the West? But there's a Divinity that shapes our ends still: God knew. what he was doing. He sent that man to Bengal and set him in the temple of Dakshineshwar in Calcutta, and from North and South and East and West, the educated men, men who were the pride of the university, who Page 60 ... some time, I sent an orderly to remind him.... The man came back and informed us that the doctor was very ill. I at once went round, and heard of the telegram and found the doctor very ill and quite unconscious. The other medical men in the station were assiduous in their attentions. I did all I could. But it was all of no avail. The poor man lingered on for a day or two and then passed away. ...
... junior to me by nine years, appealing to my father when he was cleaning up a nest of cockroaches: "O papa, please don't kill baby cockroaches!" I believe little girls are more sensitive than little boys, but by and large the innocence of childhood, though quite genuine, is not unadulteratedly psychic. And it is the play of the true Soul we need in every activity of ours. Page 310 ... them I saw a number of artists on high ladders which took them to paintings hung on the walls. They must be either copying the paintings or touching them up where they had faded. The sight of these men, with berets on their heads and palettes in their hands, fired my fancy so much that I could not think of a more romantic job when I would grow up. But in my Page 305 middle teens... hand and, on the other, animal sacrifices to gods? I find the latter gruesome and degrading, the former exciting but heartless. Then there is the question of vivisection. Darwin, the most gentle of men who would not deliberately hurt a fly, is on record as declaring that one who objects to experiments on living animals for medical research can never be a true friend of humanity. But I am sure Darwin ...
... knew fully well that they would not? 21 The Divine often advises or tries to guide man, knowing very well that His help will be refused. Why then does He do it? The Divine always informs, but it is rare indeed for men to listen to Him. Either they do not hear Him or do not believe Him. Men always complain of not being helped, but the truth is that they refuse the help which is always... this separation of girls and boys is atavistic, but it remains to ask You what we captains should do about it. Personally, I think it is better to close one's eyes to it, but there are others who prefer to give advice or even to scold. I think that by closing one's eyes to it, one minimises the importance of the problem and thus this idea of difference between girls and boys will be less striking. What... why! Because you are more conscious, or rather less unconscious. 23 May 1963 Page 277 Sweet Mother, Girls are always at a disadvantage: they cannot do what they want, as boys can. Why not? There are hundreds of proofs to the contrary. 31 May 1963 Sweet Mother, What is the best relationship between two human beings? Mother and son? Brother, friend or ...
... that the Sri Aurobindo Ashram was the only ashram where men and women lived together on equal terms. It was also the only ashram where children formed an integral part of its life – and where physical education formed an integral part of life. South India can be blisteringly hot. Then how does one dress for the physical exercises? For the boys there was no problem, but what about the girls? We turn... January 1955. ‘The Ashram accorded him a cordial welcome. The Ashram boys and girls, beginning with the youths and ending with the infant section, formed a guard of honour lining his route from the street through the inside courtyard up to the Meditation Hall. He was received by the Secretary and others at the gate. He regarded the boys with intent eyes as he passed to pay homage to the Samadhi [i.e. Sri... asks? He answers the question himself: ‘Some, particularly old people, were shocked to see their daughters scantily dressed [that means in shorts, shirt and kitty-cap] and doing exercises jointly with boys; a few conservative guardians were planning to take their wards away from such a modernized Ashram. I, personally, admired, on the one hand, the revolutionary step taken by the Mother far in advance ...
... not any man's possession, nay, abandon the whole world and all it contains", or even, though this would be contrary to his effective & cumulative style, "Abandon the whole world &, first of all, abandon the desire for other men's possessions." But he could not have written as it must stand now without link or clue; "Abandoning the whole world, enjoy by the whole world; covet not any man's possession... provision in this limited nature for the greater things to which man in his expansion aspires. That he must seek from the infinite; that he must acquire from God or the gods, by effort, by sacrifice. The sound, sane, normal, animal man hardly aspires, perhaps would not aspire at all, but for the stress of hunger, the irritation of other men pressing upon his little share of the world & above all the stimulus... outreaching egoistic desires of other men. He escapes perhaps into mind and seeks an unlimited satisfaction in the enjoyments belonging to that more elastic principle, in art, science or literature; but there too, though freer & better satisfied, he is both fettered by his nerves and body and hedged in by the limitations of the mind itself. The mind in sensational & vital man, incapable of an universal catholicity ...
... Unless institutions were built from within, and reared on the foundations of the Spirit, they would be pitiful edifices indeed. Besides, even as not walls but men make a city, so too not buildings nor brave speeches make a university but boys and girls and their teachers. And the Mother found the nucleus of her vision of a university in her evening Playground audiences, and she was content. ... intended to develop the School and the Ashram into a university that was as large as life, and comprehended the past, present and the future. Where else except in an Ashram of the Vedic type could boys and girls receive the blessings of an integral education? And such an Ashram being already there in Pondicherry - a sanctified spot with its roots supposedly in the Vedic past - that was also the... expected to do to realise Sri Aurobindo's vision of the future. 11 In the first of these articles on the Centre, the Mother straightaway touched the heart of the problem: The conditions in which men live on earth are the result of their state of consciousness. To seek to change these conditions without changing the consciousness is a vain chimera... collective progress and individual progress ...
... not at all like the flimsy picture drawn by Mr. Gokhale of the all-pervading boycott for the spread of which Page 852 we—particularly the people of Eastern Bengal—had to suffer so much. Boys received stripes, many of them suffered physical pangs in jail, and several others gave up everything. We did not like Mr. Gokhale's intention of giving a commercial appearance to our boycott. We fought... displeased, and actually was displeased, at the change of language—this trivial verbal change made solely with a view to improving the elegance of style. The object of the Congress is not to enable men to write English correctly and elegantly. If slightly bad language would satisfy all, what harm would there be in allowing it to stand? It would be regarding the Nationalist party as ignorant and dull-headed... the changes they introduced in the resolutions of last year were merely trivial and verbal and were made to make the meaning clear and to put them in better language. It is surprising to find that a man like Mr. Gokhale says so! The resolution of Swarajya was passed last year at Calcutta. I have already told you how the final goal, which was clearly laid down in that resolution, has been rendered doubtful ...
... Brindavan. I felt that my subtle body was walking at Krishna's heels." Concerning another incident, Sri Ramakrishna said: "Once at Sihore, I fed the cowherd boys. I put sweetmeats into their hands. I saw that these boys were actually the cowherd boys of Brindavan, and I partook of the sweetmeats from their hands." These incidents show how much the glory of Brindavan had filled the Page 226 ... me. I was completely overwhelmed. Hriday used to bathe me there as if I was a child." His biographer Swami Saradananda, who had an eye for detail, wrote: "When he [Sri Ramakrishna] saw cowherd boys returning from pastures and crossing the Yamuna with herds of cattle at sunset, he became filled with spiritual emotion, inasmuch as among them, he had the vision of the cowherd Krishna, dark-blue like... thatched huts on the bank and big plum trees. It was the 'cow-dust' hour. The cows were returning from the pasture, raising dust with their hoofs. I saw them fording the river. Then came some cowherd boys crossing the river with their cows. No sooner did I behold this scene than I cried out, 'O Krishna, where are you?' and became unconscious." Sri Krishna's divine love for the gopis of Brindavan ...
... faculty, how do you explain people's seeing Ram, Krishna, Shiva, etc. in you at Darshan?—I mean by people who have apparently no such faculty. We've heard about Krishna presenting himself before small boys, taking them to school, etc.—fables? With many people the faculty of this kind of occult vision is the first to develop when they begin sadhana. With others it is there naturally or comes on occasions... order to have peace. In my Yoga also I found myself moved to include both worlds in my purview, the spiritual and the material, and to try to establish the divine Consciousness and the divine Power in men's hearts and in earthly life, not for personal salvation only but for a life divine here. This seems to me as spiritual an aim as any and the fact of this life taking up earthly pursuits and earthly things... there by nature and most have much difficulty in developing it. It was so even with me. What I understand of the matter is that if you intend that somebody should see the Divine in you—be it a blind man—he is able to see. No faculty is required. It would be something of a miracle to see things without the faculty of seeing. We don't deal much in miracles of that kind. 30 July 1935 Page 236 ...
... God be born into the human clay In forms made ready by your human lives. Then shall the Truth supreme be given to men: ... 14 The Mother's New Year message for 1963 recalled also another of Sri Aurobindo's inspiring utterances on "Man A Transitional Being": Man's greatness is not in what he is, but in what he makes possible. His glory is that he is the closed place and secret workshop... Physical Education had started around 1945 with but fourteen boys, no equipment, and no regular playground. During the next seventeen years, it grew wings of purposive and planned development and in 1962-63 counted 677 members 11 divided into twelve groups determined by age and other considerations. While the programme was the same for the boys and the girls, there was some latitude on considerations... of all self-deceit and hypocrisy and vain self-flattering that thou mayst look straight into thy spirit and hear that which summons it. 13 Before the world could change, man must change; before the world could be saved, man must cleanse and save himself. Self-deceit was deceiving oneself; hypocrisy was deceiving others; together these two movements - one inward and the other outward - moulded a ...
... England. At Manchester, he stayed with friends of his father, the Rev William H. Drewett and Mrs Drewett, and learned from them Latin, French, history, geography and arithmetic. Even in England, the Ghose boys were carefully insulated, under instructions from their father, from the Page 6 influence of Indians and Indian ways. Sri Aurobindo and his two brothers grew up practically... he passed away in the early hours of 5 December 1950. The period of Sri Aurobindo's active participation in politics was short, yet he shot to prominence quickly, and his words moved men's hearts more than the proverbial trumpet. His direction of Bande Mataram was an illustrious page in the history of Indian journalism. Not only did he wield a brilliant pen in political controversy... events of the Pondicherry period of Sri Aurobindo's life is but the mockery of a biography, for the real life of an 'enlightened one' like him is not lived on the outside for the curious eyes of prying men or for cheap reportage. When the body was consigned to its last resting place, the Mother read the following message, which was both a prayer to Sri Aurobindo and a benediction to the assembled congregation: ...
... Brahman began to shun all connection with the world and the shadow of Buddhism stalked over all the land and Ashrams turned into monasteries. The old Ashrams were not entirely like that; the boys and young men who were brought up in them were trained in many things belonging to life; the son of Pururavas and Urvasie practised archery in the Ashram of a Rishi and became an expert bowman, and Karna became... and I have supported war and sent men to it, even though politics is not always or often a very clean occupation nor can war be called a spiritual line of action. But Krishna calls upon Arjuna to carry on war of the most terrible kind and by his example encourage men to do every kind of human work, sarvakarmāṇi . Do you contend that Krishna was an unspiritual man and that his advice to Arjuna was... on the playground was not meditation and was used for efficacy in the movements of the body and not for any purpose of Yoga. 14 March 1949 Much less than half the Ashram, the majority of them boys and girls and children, have taken up sports; the rest have not been pressed to do so and there is no earthly reason why any pressure should be put upon you. The Mother has never intended to put any ...
... the fox. "It means to establish ties." "'To establish ties'?" "Just that," said the fox. 'To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each... whom stayed at the same small hotel. In this new life, he satisfied his need to associate with men he considered superior, men removed from the shabby futilities of ordinary life. "The aeroplane is a means of getting away from towns and their book-keeping and coming to grips with reality... It is the men and not flying that concerns me most." In October 1927, one year after joining Latecoere Airlines... after some thought, he added: "What does that mean —'tame'?" "You do not live here," said the fox. "What is it that you are looking for?" "I am looking for men," said the little prince. "What does that mean — 'tame'?" "Men," said the fox. "They have guns, and they hunt. It is very disturbing. They also raise chickens. These are their only interests. Are you looking for chickens?" "No ...
... one of our own. That fun Page 56 is gone now. During such hilarious moods, Mother used to come in slowly; then, you understand, as soon as we heard Her step, all of us became good boys, no mischief at all. Even Sri Aurobindo Himself -ah ... ah ... a! All goody-goody," Gopal bodo shubodh balok." 90 There is another joke of Pavitra-da. I've heard it from my friend Amal,... place in the world when it realises this. Mother was talking, I believe, to some people who had gone to see Her, a gathering of men and women (again I have to make the distinction, can't help it, but it is formal). Mother hopes that: Men present would not be offended that it is only the women who know how to use this power which comes from serving the Truth. ... not otherwise. So this is the call of the spirit! The call of the spirit does not obey this moral law because it is a higher law; it is the law of God, whereas the moral laws are the laws of man. This is, in a nutshell, the distinction Page 55 between the two. So the Japanese and those who are strictly moral, I'm afraid they don't, or very rarely, hear the voice of God, because ...
... Rebha comes. Rebha arrives. REBHA Ye are suitors for a parley? VICURNA Rebha, with beaten men? REBHA Because you had your sister in the car Our shafts were hampered. Page 741 VICURNA Nor could with swords prevail Against two boys so many hundred men. REBHA O Prince Vicurna, what thou hast done today Against thy name and nation, I forbear To value... These opposite godheads. Follow Nature's prompting, Nor with thy human policy pervert Her simple ends. YOUGUNDHARAYAN Nature must flower into art And science, or else wherefore are we men? Man out of Nature wakes to God's complexities, Takes her crude simple stuff and by his skill Turns things impossible into daily miracles. ROOMUNWATH This thing is difficult, and what the gain... VUTHSA I give enough I think for all the world. VASUNTHA It is your trade to occupy the world. Men have made kings that folly might have food; For the court gossips over them while they live And the world gossips over them when they are dead. That they call history. But our man returns. ALURCA Do here and in all things, says the Minister, Thy pleasure. But since upon a dangerous ...
... good service) he is forced to do so owing to strong financial necessity of his house and family. He will return afterwards and stay and work with us. Now I will be in the Ashrama with my wife and two boys, Champaklal and Natvarlal. Now I have realised perfectly well, how difficult it is to establish a Deva Sangha or a spiritual unity even between a few souls. I fee] that it is most difficult or rather... from your letter that you want to make work and activity the goal and to use this yoga as a means for that. The sadhana must be done in order to get to a Consciousness which is above this human and men The rest, whether to do a work (if any work, the nature of the work) or to do a particular work or to remain quiet will all be decided by that Supreme Consciousness which is above us. Then only we become... mistaken, are bound to fail if they are not instruments of the true Force. I do not wish, however, to waste time over the past and its mistakes and failures; it is the future that matters. The two men you speak of in your letter will be tried; the Mother will put her force behind your and their endeavour. The success will depend on whether you can make your self a transmitting instrument and whether ...
... taste to the discomfiture of the queens. Krishna served Sudama as a personal guest making him feel like old days— the days of boys' equality. Sudama could not ask for Krishna's help for removing his poor condition and returned home rather disappointed with all the ideas of men in. common life. When he reached his place he found it was so transformed that he could not recognise his own house... while the emotional being goes in another direction, the vital being pulls in a third direction. So the whole force of man's consciousness is divided. The consciousness is divided and force is divided. There is not a sort of harmony in the operation of the consciousness of man because man is not an integrated being. He does not act as one organized and integrated consciousness. He works as three or four... delight in man ? In which instrument does it reside ? Bliss exists in man in the form of his psychic being, the soul. Soul is an emanation of the delight of Satchidananda and therefore it always seeks delight and can get it, because it is always universal, when it gets back to its true experience or realization of self. Delight is the true constituent of the Page 214 self of man, not mind ...
... not know anyone there nor had I ever entered the place. Without looking anywhere, I headed for the staircase leading to the terrace. Two boys were playing with my kite on the terrace. I went and snatched it away from their hands: "Give me back my kite!" As the boys realised that they would not be able to fight with me they began shouting: "Baba! Dada! look, this boy is taking the kite away, come,... so that no pigeon would die. After a long time the house-owner arrived. Mr. Maitra's father's student. He made us sit and wanted to be introduced to us. So he asked Mr. Maitra: "Who are these two boys?" Page 185 ... suddenly hollered: "Offer something to the poor man, offer something, sir!" I told you that Motakaka was a little distracted that day. Startled and disturbed by his sudden hollering, he scolded him loudly. And as a result of that bad scolding, the poor old man went away wailing. I was standing a little away. I do not know why but hearing that man cry like that I too started crying. And I just could ...
... social hypocrisy. Only what the man admires and accepts, becomes part of himself; the rest is a mask. He conforms to the discipline of society as he conformed to the moral routine of home and school, but considers himself at liberty to guide his real life, inner and private, according to his own likings and passions.19 The attempt to make boys and girls moral and religious by preaching... the name of "human sciences" (or "sciences of man"). But there is something more behind the common opposition between the humanities and science. The term "humanities" was initially equivalent to "classical studies" and it was introduced in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to describe a conception of education common to all cultural men of that time. Its characteristics were 1... prized by the great men of the past, and that the ideals of the past will find their realization in the future, here upon earth. In this new vision the various branches of knowledge would not be classified into opposing factions. A grouping of the branches may be done for convenience's sake, with regard to their interconnexion. But, whether their object is the study of man or of nature, they are ...
... the brother of my own, Page 131 And that all the men ever born are also my brothers and the women my sisters and lovers, And that a kelson of the creation is love."² I could easily give more instances, but one will suffice I take it from the Autobiography of J. Trevor.³ "One brilliant Sunday morning, my wife and boys went to the Unitarian Chapel in Macclesfield. I felt it impossible... understanding, so there are intellectual men who reject and avoid the things perceived by the prophetic faculty. A blind man can understand nothing of colors save what he has learned by narration and hearsay. Yet God has brought prophetism near to men in giving them all a state analogous to it in its principal characters. This state is sleep. If you" were to tell a man who was himself without experience... a degree which escapes all expression, and which no man may seek to give an account of without his words involving sin. "Whoever has had no experience of the transport knows of the true nature of prophetism nothing but the name. He may meanwhile be sure of its existence, both by experience and by what he hears the Sufis say. As there are men endowed only with the sensitive faculty who reject what ...
... Brahman began to shun all connection with the world and the shadow of Buddhism stalked over all the land and the Ashrams turned into monasteries. The old Ashrams were not entirely like that; the boys and young men who were brought up in them were trained in many things belonging to life: the son of Pururavas and Urvasie practised archery in the Ashram of a Rishi and became an expert bowman, and Kama became... humanity should be variously represented. For the problem of transformation has to deal with all sorts of elements favourable and unfavourable. The same man indeed carries in him a mixture of these two things. If only sattwic and cultured men come for yoga, men without very much of the vital difficulty in them, then, because the difficulty of the vital element in terrestrial nature has not been faced and... Playground, and physical education - games, athletics, sports - came to occupy a visibly important place in Ashram life. It was after the communal riots of 1946 that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother felt that boys and girls - and even grown-up sadhaks - might with advantage give due attention to their physical fitness. When eyebrows Page 581 were raised within the Ashram and without regarding ...
... whom Barin acted as medium was his own father Dr. Krishnadhan. Once when Tilak was present, and Dr. Krishnadhan's spirit was asked what kind of man the Lokamanya was, the answer came: "When all your work will be ruined and many men bow their heads down, this man will keep his head erect." This was an anticipation of the greatness of Tilak's compelling eminence after the first suppression of the nationalist... Karma Yogis attached to the temple, "a nucleus of men in whom the Shakti is developed to the uttermost extent, in whom it fills every comer of the personality and overflows to fertilise the earth"; and thirdly, the nectarean message of so-aham, "the mighty formula of the Vedanta... the knowledge which when vivified by Karma and Bhakti, delivers man out of all fear and all weakness". Then comes the... who accompanied Sri Aurobindo and K.G. Deshpande when they visited the Ashram at Page 193 Ganganath where a school called "Bharati Vidyalaya" was run by Swami Rakshananda. 31 The boys in the school received spiritual as well as secular education, and there was some considerable stress on physical training as well - team games, drill, marching, attack-and-defence with bamboo sticks ...
... no longer want to be only evolved animals, if you want to become new men realizing the supramental ideal of Sri Aurobindo, if you want to live a new and higher life upon a renewed earth, then you will find here all the help needed to succeed. .. 9 Humanity is not the last rung of terrestrial creation. Evolution continues and man will be surpassed. It is for each one to decide whether he wants to... yoga asanas, everything imaginable, boxing and vaulting horses, and what not. The girls wore white headscarves and shorts—shorts in India, in 1950, were a scandalous outrage—and they mixed with the boys in groups identified by different colors: there was the group in red shorts, the blue group, the khaki group and the green group for the little ones, the white group for over eighteen, the gray—and... asked a somewhat reflective child, "when the mind came down into the earth's atmosphere, the ape didn't make any effort to change itself into a man, did it? It was Nature that supplied the effort. Yet now..." And Mother instantly replied: But it isn't man who is going to change himself into the superman! "No?" queried the astonished child. Just try a little! Mother replied amidst laughter in the ...
... Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty... the regeneration of the world. Even the staid Wordsworth found a new source of profound poetry in the humble creatures of fell and waterside, in leach-gatherers and old huntsmen, small girls and idiot boys. Even so devoted a lover of physical nature as Keats came to see that the poet must not detach himself from mankind, but live in compas-sionate understanding of it. And this understanding was in many... Shakespeare, in whom everything human touches some chord and passes into music. But they are closer to common life than Pope or Dryden, even than Milton or Spenser. It would be hard to think of another man who combined, as Blake did, an extraordinary power of vision with the tenderest compassion for the outcast and the oppressed, or who, like Shelley, used his Platonic musings to unfold an enormous scheme ...
... faculty, how do you explain people's seeing Ram, Krishna, Shiva, etc., in you at Darshan?—I mean by people who have apparently no such faculty. We've read about Krishna presenting himself before small boys, taking them to school, etc.—fables? With many people the faculty of this kind of occult vision is the first to develop when they begin sadhana. With others it is there naturally or comes on occasions... this play is again guided by Something? There is no question of responsibility. The "Something" does not act arbitrarily, paying no heed to the play of forces or the man's nature. "Selects" does not mean "selects at random." If a man puts himself on the side of or into the hands of the hostile influences and says "This way I will go and no other. I want my ego, my greatness, my field of power and ... what they can. Why? And still the Ananda of simply being in bone and flesh surpasses all sorrow! I would like to be an optimist, but surely not in excess! For most people it does. All are not men of sorrows like yourself or fallen into the Byronic vein. Some of course have so miserable an existence that it stifles the innate pleasure of life—but these are after all a small minority. You have ...
... not of love, please! Don't trick your ears that you're going to hear a love story. No, this story took place when I was seventeen or eighteen, so love was out of the question. At that time, men and women, boys and girls had no chance of being together as you do, so where was the question of love? Love had to be born in marriage or out of marriage; outside marriage was impossible, so it was always in... Pranab 69 said in the gymnasium, "Who will believe that Nirod-da had gone to England ?" I thought, What is the special stamp on an England-returned man? Is it because of my native Bengali clothes that they do not believe ? Pradyot is an England-returned man and they would at once admit that he was indeed England-returned. Why? Because he puts on trousers, or because he talks in a European manner? They... comes upon the streets and reflects a rugged face. Drunken, that's why he staggers, remember. And yet He is the Prince of Peace of whom the ancient wisdom tells, And by their silence men adore the lovely silence where He dwells. Wonderful! [He reads out the last line again. ] I saw the King of Kings again, a thing to shudder at and fear, A form so darkened ...
... make nothing of the Divine in man. If there is no divinity in man, then there is no possibility of Avatarhood; also spirituality can just as well pass away into silence—it has no foundation here. If the divinity is there in man, it can break through its coatings. You admit that it can do it in debauchees and moral insolvents—that it can manifest in ignorant and uncultured men and women is a proved fact;... not a question of Sri Krishna's disciples, but of the earth Page 407 consciousness—Rama was a mental man, there is no touch of the overmind consciousness (direct) in anything he said or did, but what he did was done with the greatness of the Avatar. But there have since been men who did live in touch with the planes above mind—higher mind, illumined mind, Intuition. There is no question of... awaken that that he is there. The psychic being does the same for all who are intended for the spiritual way—men need not be extraordinary beings to follow Yoga. That is the mistake you are making—to harp on greatness as if only the great can be spiritual. Regarding the divinity in man—what is the use of this divinity if it is coated layer after layer with Maya? How many can Page 418 ...
... disappear. The sex exists in itself—put a number of sexual men together debarred from all possibility of feminine society—after a time Page 487 they will begin to satisfy themselves homosexually. Sex-sensation may begin anywhere. As vital love it begins in the vital centre, heart or navel—many romantic boys have this and it starts a love affair (often at the age of 10 or even... cannot be said of many, perhaps of any man! But there is another side to the picture. Women are perhaps less physically sexual than men on the whole,—but what about vital sexuality? the instinct of possessing and being possessed etc. etc.? If there were not the sex-push in her, how could that [ feeling of unpleasant warmth ] be? The sex-push is not merely the impulse to the act, as she perhaps thinks... thinks, as the push to envelop and Page 534 occupy the man and to possess and be possessed. That is so especially with women, the sex-act being very often less attractive to them than to men; but of course always, if the vital physical reaches a certain point, the physical sex-movement tends to follow. She may not have the sex-feeling towards you, but there is a certain kind of vital ...
... ko boycott karo! Khaddar pehno! 197 How effective it was! So all of us said, the call has come - what should we do? We must do something. We formed a group of ten to twelve boys; we went to a place, sat down and volunteered our names. Most of us were enlisted. I was the youngest in the group. It was to start the next day. I decided to go, without any hesitation. I packed my... great excitement on a large scale. Now the students came forward and took up the lead. Leaders came to our hostel and told us that we must take up the challenge. The British government is arresting our men, we must stop them. So one after another, leaders from the hostel came forward and batches were formed. The Prince of Wales was to visit India soon, and Mahatma Gandhi said he must be boycotted... te, and I in the first year), and I went to see her. We were talking and she suddenly said, "Mama, if you had been to prison, we would have been so proud of you!" You ladies, how you can fire up men's ambitions! Thus the seed was sown; then you know all that followed. I do not know the reaction of my mother. But of one thing I am certain, that this prison life was a turning point in my life ...
... Assyrians at three points came breaking in Across the border and the frontier forces Are slain. They torture, burn and violate: Young girls and matrons, men and boys are butchered. Salvation is not in your front and flight Casts you from angry gods to men more ruthless. I wonder not that you are silent, stunned With fear: but will you listen, countrymen, And I will show you a cure for these fierce... crimson rivers. I'll not wait for shipwrecks. Assyrian captives and my Syrian subjects, Nobles and slaves, men, matrons, boys and virgins At matins and at vespers shall be slain To me in my magnificent high temple Beside my thunderous Ocean. I will possess Women each night, who the next day shall die, Encrimsoned richly for the eyes' delight. My heart throngs out in words! What moves within me... Scene II The Temple of Poseidon. Polydaon, Therops, Dercetes, Cydone, Damoetes and a great number of Syrians, men and women. Iolaus stands bound, a little to the side: Cepheus and Cassiopea, surrounded by armed men. POLYDAON Cepheus and Cassiopea, man and woman, Not sovereigns now, you see what end they have Who war upon the gods. CASSIOPEA To see thy end My eyes wait ...
... esteem and love of men and their scorn and persecution and hatred, every happening that would be to others a cause of joy and every happening that would be to others a cause of sorrow. Look with equal eyes on all persons, on the good and the wicked, on the wise and the foolish, on the Brahmin and the outcaste, on man at his highest and every pettiest creature. Meet equally all men whatever their relations... for a selfless performance of the divine will working through our nature; not social service, but the action of the Best, the God-possessed, the Master-men done impersonally for the sake of the world and as a sacrifice to Him who stands behind man and Nature. In other words, the Gita is not a book of practical ethics, but of the spiritual life. The modern mind is just now the European mind, such... conceals the truth and makes men look upon masks, a Force which is only capable of a sum of secondary and depressed values, Page 83 not of the full power and glory and ecstasy and sweetness of the manifestation of the Divine. This Nature in us is a Maya of the ego, a tangle of the dualities, a web of ignorance and the three gunas. And so long as the soul of man lives in the surface fact ...
... the entrails of his father. (Laughter) Disciple: Sri Krishna and Arjuna can serve as examples of men who resorted to what the Mahatma calls "violence". Another Disciple: But the Mahatma says, "I am not Krishna". Page 533 Sri Aurobindo: Any man can say, "I am not Prahlad". 22 * The interviews, on the other hand, were rather more formal occasions,... enough to make them thrill with the intimations of that new revelation and to sense with a wondrous new surmise a great future for man and the world. The war and the first after-war years in Europe were a period of agonising self-appraisal for sensitive young men and women. And in India too the situation was not very different, thought not for quite the same reasons. In externals, the world... For the intellectuals, for the sophisticated, for the bright young things and the grey elderly wrecks, for the hollow men and the stuffed men and the electronic men, the world had the look of a rat's alley, a waste patch or a giant capsule, and in their struggle for existence men encountered only prickly pear, rattling bones or pursuing shadows. The mood found expression, in the West, in the chilling ...
... every possible case, imaginable and unimaginable, must obviously occur. 14 July 1960 Sweet Mother, My brother has started working in the Sports Ground at night along with some other boys. I do not know if this is all right for him after all the studies during the day and the physical education activities in the afternoon. He does not even take rest after lunch. He says he does not feel... are you referring to the physical transformation when you say "The world is preparing for a big change"? And how can we help? It is the advent of the being that will succeed man, the being that will be to man what man is to the animal, that is being prepared. And the work has already begun with the action of a new consciousness which came on the first of January 1969 and is at work in all who are... a human life. But simply because human life has become so complex, it has also become relatively short, and it is now rare to live to be a hundred. When man lived in harmony with Nature, his life lasted longer. Page 371 When man lives by and for the Divine, his life will be longer, and one day the Divine will reveal to him the secret of immortality. 6 January 1972 It is the ...
... manifested in me) is all irony and deceit. It thinks only of playing tricks. When it laughs it mocks; when it says to do something it makes this very thing impossible to do etc. I was told that our boys (young or old) like to play with me (the exact words were “to give me a game”) for some reason or another, but to play truly and to learn to play they must play among themselves. You have this... written on occultism, if you do not practise it yourself, you will never be an occultist. Nov. 1957 1958-02-15 Last night I had the vision of what this supramental world could become if men were not sufficiently prepared. The confusion existing at present upon earth is nothing in comparison with what could take place. Imagine that very powerful will has the power to transform matter as... the physical consciousness. 0 Nature, I bring to thee force and light, truth and power; it is for thee to receive and utilise them. It is thou who wilt be receptive in the fruit of thy creation, man, and open the doors of his understanding; it is thou who wilt give him the energy of progress and the will of transformation; and, above all, it is thou who wilt make him accept the Presence and aspire ...
... ever likely to be remembered at all. Who would remember Mr. N.N. Ghose today except for Sri Aurobindo's taking some notice of him, as for example in: Men of all parties, except the party of Mr. N.N. Ghose which, as it consists of only one man, need not concern us.. . 27 We quite admit that it is difficult to understand the mystic wisdom of a Page 258 sage [Mr. Ghose] who asserts... patriotism in the young; for they know well that a mere Page 248 intellectual habit untranslated into action is of no value in after life. The Japanese when they teach Bushido to their boys do not rest content with lectures or a moral catchism; they make them practise Bushido and govern every thought and action of their life by the Bushido ideal. This is the only way of inculcating a... and Chidambaram Pillai supported the proposal. But Tilak wired: "For God's sake, no split." Sri Aurobindo acquiesced, and so they went to Surat. C.C. Dutt has recorded that, along with Barin, a few boys also went to Surat carrying fire-arms, and had instructions from Dutt "to close round Aurobindo Babu in case there was a row." (Sunday Times, 17 December 1950) Page 266 The Surat ...
... degree. In a fifteen-minute talk, he gave me his philosophy in a nutshell. He was simple and courteous, outspoken and free in his interrogation. It seemed as though he could know a man by the sweep of his eyes, and read men's minds from a survey of their photographs. He appeared as one highly cognisant of the value of time.... He was kind throughout, as to a child, but I could discern enough in his demeanour... more and more fell, and finally the boy was wounded in the leg. Then they started feeling the thing was going too far. ‘I was with Sri Aurobindo: quietly we were working, meditating together. The boys cast a furtive glance to see what was going on and began warning us, for it was perhaps time to tell us that the thing was taking pretty serious proportions. I understood immediately what the matter... will be enough if I can get as instruments of God one hundred complete men free from petty egoism. I have no confidence in guruhood of the usual type. I do not want to be a guru. What I want is for someone, awakened by my touch or by that of another, to manifest from within his sleeping divinity and to realise the divine life. Such men will uplift this country.' A few words about Motilal Roy and the ...
... the soul's take-off and it has lost itself in the Self? Human joys and miseries: are they but twists and turns in the Supreme's dance of self-delight? Are human beings no more than 'flies to wanton boys'? Phenomenal life - life in the body, senses, mind - is what we know and experience. Neither denying it totally nor reducing it to Somebody's playful rapture can charge life with purpose. But if the... against Sri Aurobindo and his young men was sought to be framed. In Nolini's words - Some of the local "ghouls" were made to help forge the documents - some photographs and maps and charts along with a few letters - which were to prove that we have been engaged in a conspiracy for dacoity and murder. The papers were left in a well in the compound of one of our men, then they were "discovered" after... opening of the consciousness to the Divine. He must have made a tremendous impression upon M. Richard, for in his book. The Dawn over Asia, he described Sri Aurobindo as the greatest of the great men or divine men of Asia, "the leader, the hero of tomorrow". One interesting event during the six months' stay at Shankar Chettiar's house was Sri Aurobindo's 23-day fast. He had fasted once earlier ...
... nothing of the Divine in man. If there is no divinity in man, then there is no possibility of Avatarhood; also spirituality. can just as well pass away into silence—it has no foundation here. If the divinity is there in man, it can break through its coatings. You admit that it can do it in debauchees and moral insolvents—that it can manifest in ignorant and uncultured men and women is a proved fact;... awaken that that he is there. The psychic being does the same for all who are intended for the spiritual way,—men need not be extraordinary beings to follow Yoga. That is the mistake you are making, to harp on greatness as if only the great can be spiritual. Regarding the divinity in man—what is the use of this divinity if it is coated layer after layer with Maya? How many can really become conscious... is an action of a Force among many forces—in the supramental it becomes a law of the nature. Can the supramental really make immortal a tottering old man, with all his anatomy and physiology pathological? Well, don't you know that old men sometimes get a new or third set of teeth in their old age? And if monkey glands can renew functionings and forces and even make hair grow on a bald head ...
... my palace floors, For I would walk in redness. I'll plant my gardens With heads instead of lilacs. Hecatombs Of men shall groan their hearts out for my pleasure In crimson rivers. I'll not wait for shipwrecks.... Nobles and slaves, men, matrons, boys and virgins At matins and at vespers shall be slain To me in my magnificent high temple Beside my thunderous Ocean... madness and demoniac Huge longings. Then the Power withdrew from him Leaving the broken .incapable instrument, And all its might was split from his body. Better To be a common man mid common men And live an unaspiring mortal life Than call into oneself a Titan strength Too dire and mighty for its human frame, That only afflicts the oppressed astonished world, ... however, is with man, for man may rise high - albeit his way is strewn with shocks and traps - and draw his being close to the Divine. When one at last closes Perseus the Deliverer, one carries in one's memory the imprint of many striking gestures and many richly human faces, but one particular face and gesture stands out especially radiant, - sun-curled Andromeda defying man and god alike, ...
... members fanned out to oppose the attackers. The spirit of the freedom fighter flared up in old Sudhir-da’s heart — he was in his mid-seventies then. Out he came totteringly, armed with a stick. The young boys tried to make him go home. But Sudhir-da answered, “Do not stop me please. I know my fighting days are over, but nothing can change my attitude. At least I am capable of dying, if not of fighting back... Sudhir Kumar Sarkar: A Spirit Indomitable Tributes and Reminiscences A True Man NOLINI KANTA GUPTA ( Life long associate of Sri Aurobindo and Secretary of Sri Aurobindo Ashram ) Sudhir — M ānusher madhy é m ānush ek Sudhir — A true man among millions Lieutenants of Sri Aurobindo DYUMAN ( Trustee, Sri Aurobindo Ashram ) What shall I say? Nolini... asked Ranju: “Who is he?” Ranju replied, “He is Sudhir Sarkar, Sri Aurobindo’s co-worker.” Hearing this my respect for him grew even more. I felt that we had met the right man from the very first day. Sudhir-da was a very simple man. Usually he wore white cotton shorts and a banian. His hair was close-cropped, half white and half black. I heard that he himself clipped his own hair. When I looked at ...
... named. The time fixed for the ceremony was early morning. Hundreds of people gathered in the vast open space; all kinds of vehicles were used to cover a distance of about ten miles; children, boys, girls, men, women old and young, Indians, Westerners - all had assembled for the solemn occasion. A sacrificial fire was lit-"A fire that seemed the body of a god" -with the chanting of Vedic hymns, and... face. I approached him and asked for the news. He replied that the man was out of danger or something to that effect, but his facial expression belied his words. When I gave the report to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, Sri Aurobindo said, "But I saw him lying dead on the operation-table." That was what had happened in fact. This man was, by the way, the son or grandson of the leader of Pondicherry’s... suggestion and said that he would get some slides on the subject. A few years later when the doctor had left I was asked, with the Mother’s permission, to give a number of talks to a group of young men on the same subject with a special emphasis on brahmachārya and its vital connection with the seminal fluid. When, however, years afterwards, another request was made for a talk, she said, "Why raise ...
... "Boycott"; the British must be driven out, India must be rid of the Britisher. In the parks and wherever there was open space, crowds would gather to listen to lectures and orations, crowds mostly of boys from the schools and colleges — the girls had not yet come out and joined. Swadeshi, boycott, national education, rural uplift —these were the slogans dwelt upon everywhere. And with it all there went... unnerve their souls.... Lala Lajpat Rai has gone from us, but doubt not that men stronger and greater than he will take his place. For when a living and rising cause is persecuted, this is the sure result that in the place of those whom persecution strikes down, there arise, like the giants from the blood of Raktabij, men who to their own strength add the strength, doubled and quadrupled by death or... Aurobindo attended as an observer, could not ignore the intensity of popular feelings and gave support to the movement. Yet the Government was adamant and the man most responsible for its hardline policy was the Viceroy, Lord Curzon. A very able man and a brilliant administrator, he was a diehard imperialist who believed in Britain's divine right to rule over India. For him, the Partition was a 'settled ...
... soul of man; he wandered into the dim regions of aspiration where the mind finds a soothing resting-place. He was far more a mystic than a politician.... [He looked] a youngish man, I should think still under thirty. Intent dark eyes looked from his thin, clear-cut face with a gravity that seemed immovable.... Grave with intensity, careless of fate or opinion, and one of the most silent men I have known... situation by sending Buddha back to his wife and father and the government of the Sakya State, or would direct a Ramakrishna to become a Pundit in a vernacular school and disinterestedly teach little boys their lessons, or bind down a Vivekananda to support his family and for that to follow dispassionately the law or medicine or journalism." 3 ' 3.From The Human Cycle: "The truth is that... outward image and visible expression. Human society progresses really and vitally in proportion as law becomes the child of freedom; it will reach its perfection when, man having learned to know and become spiritually one with his fellow-man, the spontaneous law of its society exists only as the outward mould of his self-governed inner liberty." 6 4.From Savitri: "I know that thy creation ...
... agreed to dine at my house that night. The man came back and informed us that the doctor was very ill. I at once went round, heard of the telegram and found the doctor very ill and quite unconscious. The other medical men in the station were Page 36 assiduous in their attentions. I did all I could. But it was all of no avail. The poor man lingered on for a day or two and then passed... picture which had been covered over by whitewash. At another séance Tilak was present. The spirit of Dr. K. D. Ghose was called and asked "What kind of man is this?" He answered: "When all your work is ruined and many men bow their heads down, this man will keep his head erect." This proved true. Once Ramakrishna Paramahansa was called and was asked questions. But he kept silent for a long time... 55 writes; He [Jatin] had an intense desire for doing work. He was, besides, a military man. For a Bengali this fact of becoming a military man is such an unimaginable thing that his temper became that of 'general'. Jatin used to exercise his generalship fully upon his young men." Sri Aurobindo heard both the sides and gave his ruling that Jatin must continue to work. The final ...
... good fortune. Too symmetrical to be true. The object of birth being growth by experience, whatever reactions come to past deeds must be for the being to learn and grow, not as lollipops for the good boys of the class (in the past) and canings for the bad ones. The real sanction for good and ill is not good fortune for the one and bad fortune for the other, but this that good leads us towards a higher... are of man becoming man and woman becoming woman in the next life—except when they become animal, but even then I think the male becomes a male animal and the female a female animal. There are only stray cases quoted like Shikhandi's in the Mahabharata for variations of sex. The Theosophist conception is full of raw imagination, one Theosophist even going so far as to say that if you are a man in this... life. There are certainly results of the energies put forth in a past life, but not on that rather infantile principle. A good man's sufferings in this life would be a proof according to the orthodox theory that he had been a very great villain in his past life, a bad man's prospering would be a proof that he had been quite angelic in his last visit to earth and sown a large crop of virtues and meritorious ...
... of the psychic law which manifests the Divine Will. The Mother Words of the Mother - III: The Divine's Help to Man Every soul is not evolved and active; nor is every soul turned directly to the Divine before practising yoga. For a long time it seeks the Divine through men and things much more than directly. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Psychic Being The source of sincerity... fourteen, for example, who is at school, who has ordinary parents and has been ill-treated, his mind is very much in the forefront; there is something hard in him, the psychic being has gone behind. Such boys do not respond to the vibration. One would say they are made of wood or plaster. The Mother Questions and Answers (1950 - 1951): 8 January 1951 If the inner truth, the divine presence in... But in man there is always a psychic being, and it is always through it that he comes into contact with the eternal Truth. And this contact with the psychic being is usually disclosed to him in the same way, for it carries with it its own grace, its own splendour and beatitude. The psychic being is characteristic of man, and if one goes to the bottom of the matter, perhaps this is what gives man his ...
... beginning, she found Sri Aurobindo keeping money under the table cloth or under his bed. Mother asked him: "Why do you keep money in this way?" Sri Aurobindo said: "If money is not kept hidden the boys will take it and go to town and spend it on food and drink." Mother said: "From now on I'll take charge of your money." So after this, she took the responsibility of keeping Sri Aurobindo's... through time that man's inner aspirations and dreams gradually become real. In the world of manifestation, Mother is that catalyst of time - she is Mahakali. Mother and Sri Aurobindo sought to bring down a vast and lofty consciousness into man's present life so that it is renewed and transformed. As flowers spontaneously blossom at the coming of light, so will man's life become beautiful... minute later I saw Mother storm out in a huff. I asked: "What happened, Mother?" Mother said: "You know Pranab, the man told me that once he had been in great difficulty and one of his friends helped him out with a lot of money. This friend saved him. Now the man is saying that he doesn't want to return the money to him but he would like his friendship not to be affected. He came to me ...
... certificate. This was about the time I entered the Yugantar Office. During the last six months when I visited Calcutta I stopped at 32, Maniktolla, Barindra’s garden. Upen Babu used to stop there — many boys used to visit the garden and stopped there, a short time only and then go away. I cannot remember their names and I did not make enquiries as regarding their names as it was against the rule (prohibited)... Sudhir. There was nothing in that post-card about the garden except the postscript which ran as follows: “The condition of the garden is bad; monkeys are entering. There is possibility of spoiling. The boys are like that.” If their Lordships were not satisfied that Sudhir wrote that post-card then the case against him was one of mere suspicion only. Mr. Das: … For instance, in Sudhir’s case, he (Mr.... act in opposition to the local authorities. The Roll of Honour on the wall of the Court in Calcutta What was alleged was that Indra Nath and Sudhir were in company with two local men of Jamalpur and as there was an apprehension of a disturbance between the Hindus and Mahomedans being caused by these persons they were bound down under section 107 of the Criminal Procedure Code to ...
... : These men, Chesterton and G. B. S., try to be clever at any cost. It seems that G. B. S. wants to put in here the idea of evolution. ( After three days ) Sri Aurobindo : I have finished reading Joan of Arc . It is no drama at all. Joan talks like a pushing impertinent peasant girl and Charles VII talks like a school urchin and all the rest talk like London shop-boys except when... it is easy to mistake them for true gods, because the vital being in man lends itself easily to such deceptions. The second reason is that they satisfy, or promise to satisfy, desires of the vital being of man, or if there is vanity they pander to it. Disciple : In that case it seems that many of the gods worshipped by men are vital gods. Page 86 Sri Aurobindo : I think... also harm men ? Sri Aurobindo : Not knowingly. That is to say, they have no himsā-vritti – harming impulse. But if a man goes and butts against the gods then he knocks his head. But no god harms intentionally. It is you who go to get your head broken. It is your folly and stupidity which is responsible for the knocks. . Disciple : The gods do not care whether man is killed or ...
... the Ashram; she looked after him till his last breath. “Some of us boys were called in for the nights. We talked deep into the night. He told us tales, tall ones and true ones. He told of his escapades, hilarious encounters with other men, ghosts and doctors—often heavily spiced with unmentionable comments. He could bowl us, young men, over our own ‘home-ground’ (of speech and thought). He did not modulate... Nolini: So you want to stay in this Ashram? Nishikanto: Yes, Sir. Nolini: But do you know this Ashram is not like other Ashrams you have been to. Here great and equal freedom is given to all—boys and girls, men and women alike. You have not seen the like before. It may go against your sensibilities and moral standards. That will not do. Nishikanto: Yet I would like to stay here. [13] Dilip Kumar... and the Mother walked in between giving away alternately left then right. Nishikanto, who was diabetic and not allowed to have sweets, asked two boys to close up and stood a step behind stretching out his joined palms through the gap between the two boys to elude the divine detection. The Mother, neither looking left or right with her gaze turned down, began to place the chocolate on the palms of the ...
... ce and talent, but lacked in strength Page 286 Sri Aurobindo in Alipore jail, 1908 and manliness. But at the very sight of these boys I felt that the large-hearted, powerful, spirited men of some other ages, educated in other ways, had come back to India. That fearless, candid look, that virile manner of speech, that carefree, joyous laughter, and, even... and advanced. In the poet's dream it figured as the emergence of the universal man, in the mind of the spiritual seeker it meant the attainment of Swarajya, and in the vision of the Rishi it was the Integral Yoga destined to transform half-animal man into a dynamic divinity. "In Indian politics there were three men embodying in various degrees this urge and yearning - Tilak, Brahmabandhab Upadhyaya... triumphantly to their fulfilment. The men who have led hitherto have been strong men of high gifts and commanding genius, great enough to be the protagonists of any other movement, but even they were not sufficient to fulfil one which is the chief current of a world- wide revolution. Therefore the Nationalist party, custodians of the future, must wait for the man who is to come, calm in the midst of ...
... action as most men have in the modem time. With me all is different, all is uncommon. 37 You know what the common run of men think of extraordinary ideas, extraordinary endeavours, and extraordinarily high aspirations. They call all that madness. But if the mad man succeeds in his field of action, instead of calling him mad, they call him a great man of genius. But how many of such men succeed? Out... ahimsa has to spring from the depth of the mind, and it must not be forced upon man from outside appeal of urgent needs.... No doubt through a strong compulsion of desire for some external result, men are capable of repressing their habitual inclinations for a limited time, but when it concerns an immense multitude of men of different traditions and stages of culture, and when the object for which... lived from day to day, what were his habits, his tastes, his characteristic reactions to men and things, his instinctive gestures and chance utterances, his views on some of his well-known contemporaries etc. - little details and sudden flashes which, according to Vivekananda, reveal the greatness of a great man more than his deliberate thoughts and public actions. We are giving below an English version ...
... children to Christianity, in order to save their souls. But Mr. Drewett never consented to her wish. Once, when he asked Dr. Ghose about the religious life of the children, his reply was to wait till the boys attained the age of discretion, when they could choose their own religion. A rumour was once current that Aurobindo was converted to Christianity. This was probably due to his name being registered... Galway for his holidays on the invitation of a friend we have made in the Club." During his last year of study at St. Paul's, Aurobindo was a member of the "I. C .S. Class". This was a group of senior boys who were working for the Indian Civil Service examination. He passed the I. C .S. test, obtaining eleventh place and securing very high marks in classics. It may be noted that Benoybhushan also took... bound to pay the sum, firstly because Manmohan used to buy costly stuff and leave bills unpaid, and secondly because he knew the tailor was always charging double because he sold on credit, as the boys lacked hard cash. He knew that the tailor had more than his due already. The tailor wrote to the Bengal government and even to the Baroda state and when Sri Aurobindo explained the situation His ...
... Life Divine Cent. Ed., p. 818) "The object of birth being growth by experience, whatever reactions come to past deeds must be for the being to learn and grow, not as lollipops for the good boys of the class (in the past) and canings for the bad ones." (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 445) (Q. 40): Is the attainment of a human birth the last possible term in the progression of... of it while the parents of the new child are only the adventitious, purely physical agents." (CWM, Vol. 3, p. 145) (Q. 4): Do men retain their identities after the dissolution of their bodies? (A. 4): "Well, it depends. The ordinary mass of men are so closely identified with their bodies that nothing of them survives when the physical disintegrates.... What [little] survives has... bodies upon earth is not a simple affair. It is an issue bristling with many problems of understanding; man's rational mind becomes inquisitive to know more about many of the tricky factors involved in this mysterious phenomenon. We give below a representative list of questions which puzzles man's mind faced with the prospect of rebirths he may have to undergo in future. The questions have not been ...
... rationality. When the intellect of man is not severely trained to a clear austerity, one is apt to fall a prey to all sorts of perilous distortions and misleading imaginations. What one will then achieve is, in the significant words of Sri Aurobindo, only "illuminating confusion rather than clarifying truth". "Especially is this mixed functioning dangerous when men with unchastened minds and unpurified... realities, what a self-blinded imbecile! NB: To his beloved children created in his own image the Divine says with gusto, "I send you through this hell of a cycle of rebirths. Don't lose heart, poor boys, if you groan under the weight of your sins and those of your ancestors to boot, I will come down and take hold of a pure heredity with no coating around me and say unto you — come and follow my example... of defining "man". First they opted for the definition: "A man is a biped animal." But presently they came across a chicken. And they amended their definition to the new form: "A man is a feather less biped." But their problem did not end there. For Diogenes plucked off the feathers of a chicken and threw it over the wall into the Academy, shouting at the same time, "Here is a man according to ...
... like the male-female implications of the Purusha-Prakriti concept, and how she was against providing different courses of physical education for boys and girls. Reality is one, the human race is one, for the indwelling Divine makes no difference between man and woman, and hence all these forged discriminations and sedulously cultivated attitudes were at once mischievous and foolish: ...until this... nothing and no one can put an end to the misunderstanding that divides the human species into two opposite camps, and the problem will not be solved. What, after all, is the current position? Both men and women have become slaves of received notions and appetites and conventions: Yes, slaves; for so long as one has desires, preferences and attachments, one is a slave of these things and of the... you find it quite natural. What do you know of what Nature does, and what do you know of what the Spirit does?... The world will go on. Things will happen. And perhaps there will be a handful of men who will know how they were done. That's all. It was not with the ordinary consciousness that mistook the image on the screen for the reality (without any awareness of the antecedents and consequences); ...
... realms as if they viewed More conquests there and mightier monarchies. When we were boys and slumber came with noon, Often you'ld lay your head upon my knee Even thus. O little friend Antiochus, We are again in hundred-gated Thebes And life is all before us. THOAS O insupportable! Thou styled by men a king, no king of mine, Acquit thyself of this too kindred blood. No murderer sits... expects alone her husband's end And her release. Alas, the valiant man, The king, the trampler of the fields of death! He called to victory and she ran to him, He made of conquest his camp-follower. How He lies forsaken! None regard his end; His flatterers whisper round him, his no more; His almost widow smiles. Better would men, Could they foresee their ending, understand The need of mercy.... such princely men. Are you not Thoas? Page 203 THOAS Thoas of Macedon. ANTIOCHUS Thoas, we shall be friends. Will it be long Before we march together through the world To stable our horses in Persepolis? He turns to speak to Timocles who has just entered and goes into the house. MELITUS This is a royal style and kingly brow. THOAS The man is royal. What ...
... y clear and vivid; a temple and ghat and road—the same & high bank of a river. Other scenes longer and more detailed, but vague. Variety of human figures increased, women, children, young men, boys (youth & beauty predominate) in various postures, groups, scenes, action. Variety of birds and insects and fish is developing. A great variety of buildings of all forms and structures, chiefly in... objects, not yet variety of scenes & human figures. After swapna samadhi this has increased; already, all sorts of fourfooted beasts—the thing most resisted till now—while variety of figures (boys, a man's face and head with hat) has begun, variety of scenes is trying to manifest; old forms which were vague (horse with carriage) are now becoming clear and complete. These shapes have usually little... itself. Rupasiddhi is successfully developing variety in the crude. Formerly only a few types came with difficulty or easily only by repetition—the woman, the horse, the man on horseback or driving, sometimes groups of men [and] women, two horses and riders—the bird (crow or sparrow), butterfly or moth, one or two objects, a hill with figures or a building on it. Now many kinds of fourfooted animals ...
... wealth (before him). That huge heap (of wealth collected there) really presented a splendid spectacle. (27) With the help of Laksmana, that tiger among men then actually caused that wealth to be distributed among Brāhmanas who were (yet mere) boys, the aged, and to the afflicted(28) They say there lived in those days in the forest (near about Ayodhyā) a Brahmana, Trijata by name, born in the line... friends and relations, eulogizing him. (12) Even when Śrī Rāma (a scion of Raghu) had passed by, no man (much less woman) could turn his mind or eyes away from that jewel among men. (13) He who did not behold Śrī Rāma and whom Śrī Rāma did not notice was indeed despised in the eyes of all men; even his own self would reproach him. (14) Since that pious minded prince would show compassion, co... was crowded with men, Sumantra (who knew many old legends) next reached the inner gate, which was solitary and was guarded by young men wielding a Prāsa (a barbed missile) and a bow and adorned with ear rings of burnished gold, unfailing in their duty and single minded of purpose and fully devoted (to their master) (1-2) Here he saw stationed at the gate, staff in hand, aged men clad in ochre coloured ...
... she would say and send me packing." But what Mirra heartily detested was to be like a "public place," to be at the mercy of every passing breeze. Mother put it squarely to us, the Ashram boys and girls, men and women: "At any rate, I find it preferable to be the master than the slave. To feel oneself pulled by strings is a pretty unpleasant sensation. It's very annoying. Well, I don't know, but... the time; they had as teachers really highly com mendable men. The geography teacher, a reputed man, had written books (his books on geography were well-known) and was a very line man. So then we were doing geography 1 enjoyed enormously doing maps because they had to be drawn. One day, the teacher looked at me (he was an intelligent man), he looked at me. He asked me, 'Why are towns, the big cities... with your back against a tree, you can feel in your very body its sap rising." Mother added that some trees can even grow in friendship with men. "They have a very great affection," she said. "Their generosity in giving protection is probably far greater than man's." Through Mother's storytelling, we children learned to love trees; we learned about meditation, about identification, about consciousness ...
... paddy, Sudhir-da told me, “Please get three packets of puffed rice.” He gave me the needed money and I bought them. We were about to do justice to the contents when Sudhir-da said, “Look, those little boys are picking bits of food out of the dust-bin and eating them. Do one thing. Go and give them these packets of puffed rice. Poor chaps, let them survive this morning at least by taking some food.” ... life has been full of adventures and it is unbelievable how the Grace has plucked him out of all dangers. How brutally he and the others were tortured in the Andamans! It is beyond man’s imagination. What man has done unto man — and that too by supposedly civilised people. ( Recounted by Nolini Kanta Gupta to Mona ) 1908-1909 – Alipore Bomb Trial Sri Aurobindo’s sick attendant Arabindo was... who was about to collapse. We had developed a lot of fellow feeling among ourselves, but sometimes the officer in charge would have the tired man bound to the yoke and goad the others to run around dragging him along bruised and helpless. What man can do to man! For us those drops of oil trickling out as a result of the grinding were no more drops of oil but drops of our blood. The cellular ...
... unforgettable "I can give not what men call love." Perhaps the most unexpected and implicitly beautiful summary of it is in the Skylark . Oppressed by a sense of mortal finitude which serves as a bar against his spirit, condemned to care and piteous pining for "what is not", all his love and aspiration an exquisite pain, a cry of heart-shattering sweetness, the man in Shelley strains wonderingly up... empress prisoners... And thence to Nubia near Borno-lake And so along the Ethiopian Sea, Cutting the tropic line of Capricorn, I conquered all as far as Zanzibar... Look here, my boys; see what a world of ground Lies westward from the midst of Cancer's line Unto the rising of this earthly globe, Whereas the sun declining from our sight Begins the day with our... brows Pale death may walk in furrows of my face; A hand that with a grasp may gripe the world; A royal seat, a sceptre and a crown, That those that do behold them may become As men that stand and gaze against the sun. Is it not possible to catch Miltonic correspondences in lines like: There angels in their crystal armours fight A doubtful battle with my tempted ...
... queen, Sita? I had no knowledge of history or geography, but Father had told us stories from the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Near me stood a knot of boys and girls of mixed ages talking about the pilot. "He is French, you know," said one of the big boys who seemed to know everything. "French? What's that?" came from a very young fellow. "He comes from France." "France? Where's that?" ... candle wicks burned the skin. When they were torturing this man, Abdul Baha was there, apparently; and as they came to the place where they were going to kill the man, Abdul Baha Page 153 drew near him to tell his affection to the man . . . who was in an ecstasy of joy. Abdul Baha spoke to him about his sufferings, the man replied, 'Suffer! This is one of the finest hours in my life... Mother called me to play a set with her. What a joyous occasion for me! She always had the same partner. Her opponents were generally a pair of young men, or, less frequently, a mixed pair. She herself chose the couple she wanted to play with. The young men with whom she played regularly, more or less daily, were our best tennis players with a good control over the ball. These lads would come Page ...
... s of man is broken by the mighty invasion of Varuna, and Varuna is fulfilled in man, who ceases to be mere mental and consents to be supramental. But this is-not enough. Mitra, the lord of Harmony is also to be fulfilled. The seeker must learn the secret of relations, know the threads that bind each to all and all to each. He must learn to be the friend of all creatures, of all men, of all... ladles go to thee unceasingly, O perfect in thy birth, O presser out of the running richness. Thee all the gods with one heart of love made their envoy; O seer, men serve and adore thee in their sacrifices as the godhead. Let mortal man adore the Will, the divine, by sacrifice to the powers divine; but thou, O Brightness, shine out high-kindled; enter into the home of the Truth, enter into the... meaningful gate of entry for the physical mind of man to undertake the long journey of a true and balanced spiritual-material culture. The great achievement of the Vedic period was indeed the marvellous training that it provided to the physical mentality to admit the impress upon it of the brilliant rays of the spiritual light and to look upon men and the universe as a symbol of some deeper realities ...
... madness and demoniac Huge longings. Then the Power withdrew from him Leaving the broken incapable instrument, And all its might was spilt from his body. Better To be a common man mid common men And live an unaspiring mortal life Page 349 Than call into oneself a Titan strength Too dire and mighty for its human frame, That only afflicts the oppressed... quenched on high, For ages would its light, Still travelling downward from the sky, Shine on our mortal sight. So when a great man dies, For years beyond our ken, The light he leaves behind him lies Upon the paths of men. In the speeches of both Penthesilea and Laocoön Ajax is spoken of as having been slain by Penthesilea. In some other passages there is a... In construing These no longer. For our rose In her place they wreathed once, blows we have to remember that "rose" is personified and the lines are a compact version of: "The boys and girls (who had made love before us in the self-same garden) are now gone and their passionate pleasures are over. For now our rose is in bloom in place of the rose that they once wreathed." The ...
... have gathered their fleet near about." 16 On 15 April, when the disastrous happenings in Norway were the * Earlier, on 9 December 1939, Sri Aurobindo had described Daladier as "a weak man, and weak men go into unnecessary violence at times," the reference being to an intemperate speech against Russia. Page 697 theme of the conversation, Sri Aurobindo said: This... by the Ashram and the ancient spirit of strength and joy that pervades them. The Mother, the embodiment of grace, light and tenderness, ordered an exhibition of games and physical exercises by the boys and girls of the Ashram School. I said to myself, 'If all the schools were like this, won't India be unassailable by internal foes or external?' The parades were excellent. The exercises were gone... She [the Mother] told me that it was the Calcutta killings and the bestial abominations perpetrated on our helpless women and children that made her think of organising the students in her school - boys and girls - into a corps capable of self-defence. At the root is the great Vedic idea that without a strong body you cannot have a strong soul, undaunted in danger and ready to perform the great task ...
... over to the college premises to be photographed. [ The report here describes his reception by the students. ] The teachers then requested him on behalf of the boys to speak to them a few words of advice. In response to the desire of the boys to hear from him he delivered in a voice choked with emotion a soul-stirring address of which we proceed to give the substance: Page 1173 ... shorter periods of imprisonment. At least seven men wrote articles published anonymously in the editorial columns of the Bande Mataram : Bipin Chandra Pal, Sri Aurobindo, Hemendra Prasad Ghose, Shyam Sunder Chakravarti, Bijoy C. Chatterjee, Satish Mukherji and Upendranath Banerji. The following is known about the connection of these men with the paper: Bipin Chandra Pal . The... presumably those written by him, classified under subject headings. These lists are reproduced on pages 199 - 200. (It will be noted that an article in one of the surviving issues, "The Man of the Past and the Man of the Future", is not among those listed by Sri Aurobindo. The editors nevertheless consider this article to be Sri Aurobindo's on the basis of internal evidence.) The Doctrine of Passive ...
... cultivate, But on the plan that she has mapped. Give way, Give way to the inspired blood of youth And you shall have a man, no scrupulous fool, No ethical malingerer in the fray; A man to lord it over other men, Soldier or Vizier or adventurous merchant, The breed of Samson. Man with such youth your armies. Of such is an imperial people made Who send their colonists and conquerors Across the... becomes a man. MYMOONA And Balkis? Page 70 AJEBE True. MYMOONA Be safe, be safe. The rest Is doubtful, but one truth is sadly sure, That dead men cannot love. AJEBE I'll think of it. Mymoona, leave me; send your sister here. Exit Mymoona. The thing's too vile! and yet—honours and place, And to set Balkis on a kingdom's crest Breaking and making men with... My blade is sharp and what I do is sudden. ALZAYNI My gallant Turk! Thou shalt rise high, believe it. For I need men like thee. MURAD ( to himself ) But Kings like thee Earth needs not. VOICE WITHOUT Justice! justice! justice, King! King of the Age, I am a man much wronged. Page 110 ALZAYNI Who cries beneath my window? Chamberlain! Enter Sunjar. SUNJAR ...
... send you the two records just received: one on Mother, the other on yourself. They say my voice has come out very well but I am not satisfied with this rendering, because (and they also agree) the boys and girls have not sung as well as they might have. They got nervous. They have invited me to sing these in Madras which I will do (subject to your approval) next July with Manju, 25 Sahana’s... March 2, 1944 Please look at the Upadhi Patra – do – guru by Rasik Vidyabhushan. He is now the head of the Vaishnav Samaj of Bengal and is reputed to be one of the most learned men among savants. He is 105 now and he gave his blessings etc. of his own accord. I saw him at his residence in Calcutta. He looks still radiant and is very charming. Has written a number of books on... wondered and asked and ascertained that he did say something. Did he? What? Can you tell me? (I am telling things briefly to save your time.) People say that he did – on the authority of the men to whom he said it. Does N. R. deny his saying it? / told this to V. and said that why should N. have uttered what even the German Radio had not claimed? To that he sharply retorted that how ...
... the Padma. Like Sita’s entry into the netherworld. We used to collect all sorts of flowers during the few days of the Durga-puja: Shiuli , land-lilies, clitoria (especially the white variety). The boys used to get white and pink lotuses from the lotus ponds. These flowers are a must in the floral offerings for Durga-puja. It was after coming to the Ashram that I discovered that every flower had an... riding; on her right Lakshmi as Prosperity, on her left Speech, giver of learning and science, Kartikeya with her as Strength, Ganesh as Success. Come, let us both bow down to the Mother.”... The two men bowed down with awe and love; and when they rose, Mohendra asked in a broken voice, “When shall I see this image of the Mother?” “When all the Mother’s sons,” replied the Brahmacharin, “learn to call... That childhood memory returned while I was embracing the lion during Durga-puja and telling everybody: “The lion is my friend.” But I could not take my eyes off the Mother. Everything in a man’s life is preordained. I began to understand this slowly with time. When the Mother Herself said: “The lion is my vehicle. He is your friend”, my heart filled with joy. I cannot translate that experience ...
... between a spirituality, which assigns man ultimately to the very source of this primeaval energy and these sciences. It is the separative materialism that is the source of conflict within man and between man. It is the destruction of man's relationship with nature that is the source of the cultural destruction of love, trust and the ethics of sharing and caring between men. So again I return to a plea for... as curtains between man and his goal. 6 To sum up, it may be said that the ethical system of Islam is man-centric; it has a complete scheme for men to lead a moral life. The focus of Islamic ethics is on the individual; the individuals, then, create a society in which moral values are respected as well as implemented. Islam, in fact, creates an environment that helps man in developing an all... desirable values that Islamic ethics tries to develop in men are related either with inter-person relationship or man's dealings with fellow human beings. It may also be noted that the Islamic ethics strives to inculcate those virtues which Allah (SWT) likes very much. For example, God is compassionate and, therefore, it is desirable for men to be compassionate towards fellow human beings or fellow ...
... Education in Human Values because such steps will be detrimental to the cause of national integration and world brotherhood. 3.7While 'Dignity of labour' is a value, discrimination in assigning tasks to boys and girls need to be avoided (e.g., girls to clean classrooms, utensils, etc.) 3.8Religion is deeply rooted in the inner psyche of human persons. It is most important cohesive force for the society... that the great Indian values, some of which we have mentioned above, became dynamically vibrant during the period of India's struggle for freedom. In fact, this period was marked by the rise of great men and women who embodied these values and enriched them. Again, it was during this period that these values guided and shaped great movements and events. Thus a study of our nationalist movement provides... clarification. VALUE-ORIENTED EDUCATION INHERENT IN THE CONCEPT OF EDUCATION There are at least three fundamental assumptions of the educational process: a.There is, first, the pursuit of man to know himself and the Universe and to relate himself with the Universe as harmoniously as possible. This pursuit constitutes the very theme of human culture. And education derives its fundamental thrust ...
... ve, in which great minds would share the task of instructing all their children according to new methods. [... ] An era of excitement and intense amusement opened for some ten little monkeys, boys and girls, who, dispensing with school, went every day to hear one single lesson given by a chosen master. One morning they invaded the laboratory at the Sorbonne where Jean Perrin taught them chemistry... primitive peoples, but it is the resurgence of the barbarian in ourselves, in civilized man, that is the peril, and this we see all around us. For that is bound to come if there is no high or strenuous mental and moral ideal controlling and uplifting the vital and physical man in us and no spiritual ideal liberating himself into his inner being.'... people. Forty years later, Maria would remember those days in her Autobiographical Notes. Other means of instruction came to me through my being one of an enthusiastic group of young men and women of Warsaw, who united in a common desire to study, and whose activities were at the same time social and patriotic. It was one of those groups of Polish youths who believed that the hope of ...
... fortune. Too symmetrical to be true. The object of birth being growth by experience, whatever reactions come to past deeds must be for the being to learn and grow, not as lollipops for good boys in the class (in the past), and canings for the bad ones. The real sanction of good and ill is not good fortune for the one and bad fortune for the other, but this; that good leads us towards a higher... you of ordinary men living an ordinary life; for these it is like that. So the conclusion is that if you want to preserve your consciousness, it would be better to centralise it on a part of your being that is immortal; otherwise it will vanish like a flame in the air. And it is very fortunate, for if it were otherwise, there would be perhaps gods or types of superior men who would create... we come. We are the messengers, the occult gods Who help men's drab and heavy ignorant lives To wake to beauty and the wonder of things Touching them with glory and divinity; In evil we light the deathless flame of good And hold the torch of knowledge on ignorant roads; We are thy will and all men's will towards Light. O human copy and disguise of God Who ...
... in New Delhi was that of an intense concentration which marked my father’s being. We were surrounded by many books and by other men of learning and his favourite students who never left him. He was professor of Psychology and Philosophy at the University of Delhi and a man of total dedication. Even as a child one could feel that he was on a deep quest. My mother carried the atmosphere of utter femininity... she put these women, who were in their early thirties and only accustomed to wearing saris, in white shorts and shirts and a headgear called “kitty caps” for their playground activities. The younger boys and girls were organized into various groups under the overall care of Pranab with his team of group captains. A detailed and varied pattern of physical education gradually came into being as an essential... what should I do next?” She said, “You will know about it soon.” It was also about this time that I felt in a very concrete and unambiguous manner that a new curve of culture, a cycle of growth for man was beginning to discern itself on the horizon and that horizon spanned the work of Sri Aurobindo. It appeared that this work was to take place from where he was physically centered — around Pondicherry ...
... blessings. 16 October 1967 Mother, I heard the programme on the radio in which our boys took part. I think such programmes can be quite useful. But I was not happy about the performance of our boys. I do not know whether you give any importance to what is called general knowledge. All four boys were asked, "Who are the Arcot brothers?" None knew. They are very important people in Madras... Love and blessings. 6 March 1966 Mother, The Labour Inspector is coming to visit our Blanchisserie at 8:30 today. If we employ 20 men or more, Page 278 we come under the Factory Law. We have 23. Many or rather all wise men are advising me to declare only 19. But I believe that an Ashram department must not give false declarations, so I am going to declare the correct number... will not work. He is already trying to go to W Page 232 —one of the best persons with whom to be very busy doing nothing. This is just what I had said of the man. I refused to let him go to W. If he is a too big man to work, he can go. We have no need of "big people". However if he is truly useful in the Press, he can work there for full time (eight hours a day). With my blessings ...
... vital desires. ii)It should be so arranged that the boy does not go to the girl. Page 117 iii)I hope these things do not occur in our class rooms. iv)If names of such boys and girls are given to me I will not see them on their birthdays. I will not know them. v)If they do not get cured completely they will be asked to go Next day it was mentioned... the law of California, and also if it should be the same name. Mother approves of the registration and the same name. About three weeks ago two thieves were caught at Aspiration. They are boys from the villages. I was there and said that we will not give them to the police, and offered them construction job. Page 243 They didn't come and are again caught in thefts at Aspiration... Offering handed over. Weekly selection from Sri Aurobindo. The proposal to hold a Youth Conference on February 26, 27 and 28, 1973, in Auroville, on Towards a New Social Order', inviting two boys and two girls from each University in India, has come from Ramesh Vardya, Bangalore Branch of Sri Aurobindo Society. Sri Aurobindo's Action has published recently Towards a New Social Order. ...
... as it was the vital and the mental wanting to take advantage of the situation to satisfy their own desires. ( About Mother's playing tennis with sadhaks and students ) I was told that our boys (young or old) like to play with me (the exact words were "to give me a game") for some reason or Page 99 another, but to play truly and to learn to play they must play among themselves... into this consciousness where you see all things in a single look, the infinite multitude of relations between the Divine and men, you see how wonderful all that is, in all details. You can look at the history of mankind and see how much the Divine has evolved according to what men have understood, desired, hoped, dreamed and how He was materialist with the materialist and how He grows every day and becomes... capable of doing half a dozen things at the same time! 12 January 1932 Lord, I lament my limitations... but it is through them, by virtue of them, that men can approach Thee. Without them, Thou wouldst be as remote, as inaccessible to men as if Thou hadst not put on a body of flesh. Page 80 This is why each progress they make represents a true liberation for me, for each step they ...
... for example, who is at school, who has ordinary parents and has been ill-treated, his mind is very much i the forefront; there is something hard in him, the psychic being has gone behind. Such boys do not respond to the vibration. One would say they are made of wood or plaster. * It is quite evident that all evil - at least what we call evil - all falsehood, all that... manifest on earth, because it is already involved in the depths of Matter; from this stand- point it is interesting to look back or to look down below - not to know what happened, or to know what men have known: that is quite useless. The children should be told: There are wonderful things to be manifested, prepare yourself to receive them. Then if they want something a little more concrete... play with a match-box and he burns out his eyes, you understand, it is paying very dearly for a little knowledge! I have discussed this with... I don’t remember now who it was... an educationist, a man concerned with education, who had come from England, and had his ideas about the necessity of an absolute liberty. I made this remark to him; then he said, “But for the love of liberty one can sacrifice ...
... “Mother’s Agenda!” Fortunately, Laffont was enough of a good man to cable me: “They have sent me the first volume of the Agenda — what am I to do?” Yes! There is not one thing that man didn’t write to Laffont! Well, that’s a different matter. You see, such was the battle. Yes... (silence) I saw only those two men, Navajata and Barun, being brushed aside by Mother’s dress. Nobody... out through my skin. and I know . You understand, I know . There is a man who knows on the earth. It is awful and terrible. A man knows how one can undo the process of death, the process of illness, the process ... That whole abominable, inexorable and mathematical cage in which we keep bumping around like blind men. Truly, the deliverance of the Earth. And it is written black on white; we... out tomorrow. Eight days ago I narrowly escaped being murdered in the canyons where I go for a little walk everyday: a miracle. These three men were there, I was on the edge of a precipice. One of them grasped my right arm and took my watch; the second man seized me by the neck, while the third one — he had wide golden eyes in a bestial, butcherlike face, perhaps a Muslim — he was the killer. ...
... said that all is He – gods, devils, men, the earth, not just heaven – and whose entire Page 2 experience leads to a divine rehabilitation of matter. For the last half century, psychology has done nothing but reinstate the demons in man; it is possible, as Andre Malraux believed, that the task of the next half century will be "to reinstate the gods in man," or, rather, as Sri Aurobindo put... Dr. Ghose was indeed a peculiar man. He also ordered Pastor Drewett not to give his sons any religious instruction, so they could choose a religion themselves, if they so wished, when they came of age. He then left them to their fate for thirteen years. He believed his children should become men of character. Dr. Ghose may appear to have been a hardhearted man, but he was nothing of the kind; not... 126 and moral existence. It is self-evident that in the actual life of man intellectual, social, political, moral, we can make no real step forward without a struggle, a battle between what exists and lives and what seeks to exist and live and between all that stands behind either. It is impossible, at least as men and things are, to advance, to grow, to fulfill and still to observe really and ...
... you know the result? The Polish lady who is Ravindra's 1 friend wrote to Gandhi the account of the German oppression against the non-violent people. She cites 3 or 4 instances: 1) About 300 school-boys refused to salute Hitler. The result was that they were taken before their parents and shot down in their presence, 2) Some school-girls were taken to the soldiers' barracks and molested by them till... extraordinary things. People who have seen him at that time said how he thumped, cried and screamed. The Japanese ambassador said, 'This man is mad. It is dangerous to have any alliance with him.' It is strange how the whole German race was stupid enough to follow this man. Such a thing would not have been possible in France or other countries." Still there were others who dreamt of melting the heart... difficulties for us by his message to Cripps. He doesn't know the actual situation, we are in it, we know' better... and so on." Cripps flew back a disappointed man but with the consolation and gratified recognition that at least one great man had welcomed the idea. When the rejection was announced, Sri Aurobindo said in a quiet tone, "I knew it would fail." We at once pounced on it and asked him, "Why ...
... hathayoga asanas, and what not, boxing and horse-vaulting, and so on and so forth. There were the girls in white head-cloths and shorts (shorts in India, in 1950! scandalous! indecent!) together with the boys, in age-groups each with its own colour: the blue group, the khaki group, and green for the little ones, and white once they had become eighteen, gray, etcetera. It was all bright, joyful, it had a... long standing. Children are brimming with life; children never remain quiet for a long time and are noisy; children have no idea of yoga and but little reverence for its practitioners. An Ashram where men and women lived and moved freely among each other and were treated on equal terms had already caused many raised eyebrows in India. And now those children! One can deduce from many sources that most... Part Three: The Mother Alone Beyond Man Chapter Twenty: The Golden Day The world unknowing for the world she stood. 1 — Sri Aurobindo The period from December 1950 to December 1958 has no doubt been the most ‘visible’ in the life of the Mother. From before daybreak till after midnight she was up and about in the Ashram, resting not more ...
... obstructed countries in the world = India and America. ... If there were there a true statesman, I would try to make the Russians and the Americans converse through Bulgaria. But where is the man? I think that men hardly listen now to anything except crushing circumstances. I have the impression that Kennedy 30 is more open and would be more accessible, but what are his chances? And it is far... to become what Mother wanted of you, to create a truly new man, able to receive the new Force and to shape himself and his life according to this new Force and not according to his little mental ego. This is the time when the soul must come in front, not the tongue. Perhaps you don't fully realize that if only a few sincere men try, really try to change themselves, they can change the world... to act have little to do with the apparent reasons that make you decide. Other forces move men and circumstances. So, apparently there is this vicious circle of enemies and even friends (!). You know that on December 30, I had to give yet another interview to Jean de Beer, and when leaving, this good man, Page 283 sent by Jaigu [of France Culture] promised to come back with a team from ...
... are good for rich people's children. For people like us, the most difficult problem is Page 224 to find suitable boys for our daughters. And all suitable boys in our section of society demand from girls one or two degrees. This is unfortunate, but what can a poor man like me do about it?" I was thoroughly unhappy with the answer. I became impatient and said : "Father, we should... speaking is a ghost having no substantial reality. And the future of which we are so much afraid is also a ghost, which will never be like what we are imagining. We are worried about what "suitable boys" will demand; it is quite possible that the one who will be really suitable for my Mira will be a cultured person who will ask for nothing else than true culture from her. All your life you have criticised... those books. But between Nature and Super-Nature, man is an intermediary and he, too, is an agent of Nature, Prakriti. And man has the natural tendency to contrive and invent. Cooking is what that tendency has invented, and so you cannot banish all human cooking from your menu! Man improves upon Nature, and you have to learn to see how and how far man's improvements are right. And that brings me to your ...
... There was only one tap for the whole house and that too in the open courtyard, against a wall near the back staircase. The tap still exists and is used by our Green Group boys. Under this water tap — it was fitted up almost to a man's height — lay a big round stone resembling the lower part of a grind-stone. In the interior of the house, at one end of the verandah there was a wide staircase leading... people on the matter. It is said that Bharati also used to be in those meetings. Now, what does automatic writing mean? It is usually done at night only. In the dim light of a lamp sits a man — the right sort of man, it goes without saying — in deep quietude in a chair beside a table, with pencil and paper in front. He invites or awaits the coming of a spirit, most often the spirit of a dead person.... conduct at home. We would be alarmed if some family member chanced to see us taking part in a collective dinner. Along with Bharati we would make fun of caste distinction. The feeling that all were men had taken deep root in the heart of each of us. Now as we look back upon the past we come to realise how far we have progressed in our endless pilgrimage to Sri Aurobindo. Looked at from another standpoint ...
... shall try to develop later. P.S. The trait of Rama which you give as that of an undeveloped Page 104 man, viz., his decisive spontaneous action according to the will and the idea that came to him, is a trait of the cosmic man and and many Vibhūtis, men of action of the large Caesarean or Napoleonic type. That also I hope to develop some time. September 4, 1934 ... an example to men or showing new moral attitudes or giving new spiritual teachings. Those things may or may not be done, but they are not at all the essence of the matter. Also, I do not consider your method of dealing with Rama's personality to be the right one. It has to be taken as a whole in the setting that Valmiki gave it (not treated as if it were the story of a modern man), with the s... because it could not cope with it or conquer its Prizes; for it comes to Yoga as a kind of asylum for the maimed or weak and to the Divine as a consolation Page 55 prize for the failed boys in the world-class. The Vairagya of one who has tasted the world's gifts or prizes but found them insufficient or finally tasteless and turns away towards a higher and more beautiful ideal or the Vairagya ...
... economic conditions in the world worsening all the time, it may be long before things right themselves. * April 27, 1949 Much less than half the Ashram, the majority of them boys and girls and children, have taken up sports; the rest have not been pressed to do so and there is no earthly reason why any pressure should be put upon you. The Mother has never intended to put... to be a great help to us. With love and blessings * December 9, 1949 I don’t think there is much either in this man himself or in his teachings. It does not seem to me that he is a Yogi in the true sense of the word but rather a man with some intellectual ability who is posing as a spiritual teacher. His photograph gives an impression of much pretension and vanity and... but love and affection and a full appreciation of all you have done for us, your work, your service, your labour to make people over there appreciate our Ashram and what it stands for and to turn men’s minds favourably towards us and what we are trying to do. As for me, you should realise that the will to help you towards divine realisation is one of the things that has been constantly nearest ...
... all kinds and standings. The first ones had been allowed into the building a little after four. There was whispering and crying, and the atmosphere was one of deep dejection. Order was maintained by boys and girls of the Ashram led by ‘captains’ of the physical education. It did not take long before I too could enter the building and then the meditation hall. There she lay under humming electric fans... who are adequately prepared — in the ones from the supramental ship who set foot ashore, in the candidates of overmanhood, the mature souls present on Earth ( il y en a , there are some), in the new men among us referred to by Nolini. And the first essays to work out supermanhood in the sufficiently transformed terrestrial substance will result in the formation of intermediary links between the human... Part Three: The Mother Alone Beyond Man Chapter Twenty-eight: The Caterpillar and the Butterfly ‘Dying to death,’ in other words no longer being able to die because death has become unreal. 1 — The Mother And death shall have no dominion. — Dylan Thomas The Mother laid down her material body on 17 November 1973. A European ...
... a happy pilgrim march, Our will a force of the Eternal’s power, And thought the rays of a spiritual sun. A few shall see what none yet understands; God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep; For man shall not know the coming till its hour And belief shall be not till the work is done. 49 ... all kinds and standings. The first ones had been allowed into the building a little past four. There was whispering and crying, and the atmosphere was one of deep dejection. Order was maintained by boys and girls of the Ashram led by their “captains” of physical education. It did not take long before I too could enter the building and then the meditation hall. There she lay under humming electric fans... being, neither man nor woman. Then I said to myself (possibly it’s always so, I do not know, but here I noticed it very clearly) I said to myself: “But it’s the psychic being, it’s that which will materialize itself and become the supramental being!” ‘I saw it, it was so. There were particularities but these were not well marked, and it was clearly a being that was neither man nor woman, having ...
... perfected ones were no longer obliged, like other men, to purify themselves in new bodies." What is meant by "purify themselves in new bodies"? It is during one's physical life on earth that one has the opportunity to purify oneself, to make spiritual progress. 1 July 1935 "When we have passed beyond humanity, then we shall be the Man. The Animal was the helper; the Animal is the bar... is Page 152 never good to waste things—too many people in the world do not have what they need. 15 December 1936 Another remark: it seems that Z is very fond of the company of boys—and she is no longer a little girl. I don't know whether I am absolutely wrong in making this remark. I don't think that this kind of remark and the state of consciousness it implies can be very... It seems that women have a power of attraction which they throw upon men—a natural movement—and that men are caught like fish in a net and often unable to escape. Is this true? What is the way to avoid being touched by this power, or what must we do to escape from it? I think it is a mutual effect—and women complain that men do the same thing to them. The remedy is to turn the consciousness towards ...
... There was only one tap for the whole house and that too in the open courtyard, against a wall near the back staircase. The tap still exists and is used by our Green Group boys. Under this water tap—it was fitted up almost to a man's height—lay a big round stone resembling the lower part of a grindstone. In the interior of the house, at one end of the verandah there was a wide staircase leading... on the matter. It is said that Bharati also used to be in those meetings. Now, what does automatic writing mean? It is usually done at night only. In the dim light of a lamp sits a man— the right sort of man, it goes without saying—in deep quietude in a chair beside a table, with pencil and paper in front. He invites or awaits the coming of a spirit, most often the spirit of a dead person... conduct at home. We would be alarmed if some family member chanced to see us taking part in a collective dinner. Along with Bharati we would make fun of caste distinction. The feeling that all were men had taken deep root in the heart of each of us. Now as we look back upon the past we come to realise how far we have progressed in our endless pilgrimage to Sri Aurobindo. Looked at from another ...
... was only one tap for the whole house and that too in the open courtyard, against a wall near the back staircase. The tap still exists and is used by our Green Group boys. Under this water tap — it was fitted up almost to a man's height — lay a big round stone resembling the lower part of a grind-stone. In the interior of the house, at one end of the verandah there was a wide staircase... the matter. It is said that Bharati also used to be in those meetings. Now, what does automatic writing mean? It is usually done at night only. In the dim light of a lamp sits a man — the right sort of man, it goes without saying — in deep quietude in a chair beside a table, with pencil and paper in front. He invites or awaits the coming of a spirit, most often the spirit of a dead person... conduct at home. We would be alarmed if some family member chanced to see us taking part in a collective dinner. Along with Bharati we would make fun of caste distinction. The feeling that all were men had taken deep root in the heart of each of us. Now as we look back upon the past we come to realise how far we have progressed in our endless pilgrimage to Sri Aurobindo. Looked at from another ...
... fourteen, for example, who is at school, who has ordinary parents and has been ill-treated, his mind is very much in the forefront; there is something hard in him, the psychic being has gone behind. Such boys do not respond to the vibration. One would say they are made of wood or plaster.... When I was a child if I did something had immediately I felt uneasy and I would decide never to do that again... question of yoga or higher realisation, it is something which should be taught everywhere, in every school, every family, every home: man was made to be a mental being, and merely to be a man we are not speaking of anything else, we are speaking only of being a man life must be dominated by reason and not by vital impulses. This should be taught to all children from their infancy. If one is not dominated... reasonable from the point of View of that species, of each species. And those animals which for some reason or other become free of it as I was saying just a while ago, those which live near man and begin to obey man instead of obeying Page-202 the instinct of the species are perverted and lose the qualities of their species. But an animal left to its natural life and free from human ...
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