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The Signature Of Truth [1]
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English [178]
A Follower of Christ and a Disciple of Sri Aurobindo [1]
A Greater Psychology [2]
Alexander the great [1]
Amal-Kiran - Poet and Critic [2]
Among the Not So Great [4]
Arguments for the Existence of God [1]
Arjuna's Argument At Kurukshetra And Sri Krishna's Answers [1]
Autobiographical Notes [1]
Bande Mataram [4]
Beyond Man [2]
Blessings of the Grace [1]
Catherine the Great [1]
Champaklal's Treasures [1]
Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II [1]
Classical and Romantic [2]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 [9]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 [4]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 [1]
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 [1]
Early Cultural Writings [2]
Essays Divine and Human [3]
Essays in Philosophy and Yoga [1]
Essays on the Gita [1]
Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo [3]
Evolution II [1]
Evolution and the Earthly Destiny [5]
Evolution, Religion and the Unknown God [4]
Finding the Psychic Being [1]
From Man Human to Man Divine [1]
Hitler and his God [14]
I Remember [1]
Indian Poets and English Poetry [2]
Inspiration and Effort [1]
Joan of Arc [2]
Lectures on Savitri [1]
Letters on Poetry and Art [2]
Letters on Yoga - I [1]
Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 1) [1]
Life-Poetry-Yoga (Vol 3) [1]
Memorable Contacts with The Mother [1]
Mother or The New Species - II [1]
Mother's Chronicles - Book Five [2]
Mother's Chronicles - Book Four [1]
Mother's Chronicles - Book Six [2]
Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960 [3]
Mother’s Agenda 1962 [1]
Mother’s Agenda 1969 [1]
Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth [3]
Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body [3]
Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo [1]
Notebooks of an Apocalypse 1973-1978 [1]
Notebooks of an Apocalypse 1978-1982 [1]
On Education [1]
On Sri Aurobindo's Savitri [2]
On The Mother [2]
Our Light and Delight [2]
Overman [1]
Patterns of the Present [4]
Philosophy of Value-Oriented Education [1]
Preparing for the Miraculous [3]
Problems of Early Christianity [1]
Questions and Answers (1929-1931) [1]
Questions and Answers (1953) [2]
Questions and Answers (1957-1958) [1]
Record of Yoga [1]
Reminiscences [2]
Sri Aurobindo - A dream-dialogue with children [1]
Sri Aurobindo - The Poet [1]
Sri Aurobindo - The Smiling Master [1]
Sri Aurobindo - some aspects of His Vision [1]
Sri Aurobindo And The Mother [1]
Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness [1]
Synthesis of Yoga in the Upanishads [1]
Talks by Nirodbaran [1]
Talks on Poetry [2]
Talks with Sri Aurobindo [5]
The Aim of Life [2]
The Future Poetry [1]
The Good Teacher and The Good Pupil [2]
The Human Cycle [3]
The Inspiration of Paradise Lost [2]
The Mother (biography) [4]
The Practice of the Integral Yoga [1]
The Psychic Being [1]
The Renaissance in India [4]
The Revolt Of The Earth [1]
The Role of South India in the Freedom Movement [1]
The Signature Of Truth [1]
The Synthesis of Yoga [1]
The Veda and Indian Culture [1]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 4 [2]
The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 7 [1]
Towards A New Society [1]
Words of the Mother - III [1]
178 result/s found for Middle Ages

... literature such as the Middle Ages rarely provided, was not notable for its intellectuality - at least for a revival of the Graeco-Roman intellect. What the return of Classical literature fundamentally did is stated with accuracy by Sri Aurobindo. 12 different countries, but one thing above all everywhere, the discovery of beauty and joy in every energy of life. The Middle Ages had lived strongly... the subconscious and break through the control of the reason, either healthily or morbidly, he applies even this somewhat narrow definition in a rather restricted way. He 6 looks upon the Middle Ages as the Golden Age of Romanticism and there the goldenest height is for him the romance-cum-fantasy of Aucassin and Nicolette with its dei- fication of love at once intensely, tenderly, unsophisticatedly... a cousin to Polonius, without being aware of the relationship; and his daughter remains a pretty poppet, beginning to fade into a Spenserian decline." 9 We need not deny Romanticism to the Middle Ages. As Lucas 10 period. It is in the eighth century that there grew up, beside official Latin which was called lingua Latina, a vernacular known as lingua Romanica. From its adverb Romanice ...

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... consumers of every possible species – that is our third barbarism. We devour everything, but who devours what? We know everything but who knows what? The religious Middle Ages have been followed by the scientific Middle Ages. And one isn't sure which is the worst. Yet it's simple – and very difficult. The evolution of a species does not lie in what it thinks of itself, although the ability... consciousness. If a peasant of the Middle Ages had been told that “the Earth is round,” he would have scratched his head and said, “Well, maybe, but my field is still flat; and, at any rate, whether round or square, I can walk on it, and that's all that matters to me.” I spend some twenty years beside Mother and, like the peasants of the Middle Ages, there was something fundamental I had... very narrow ridge between the Marvel and the disaster. S. To Sri Aurobindo to Mother who have given me all to my mother and the sea gulls of la Cote Sauvage 1 The Scientific Middle Ages Through a wonder cleft in the bounds of birth... Sri Aurobindo When a species fails to find its own sense, it dies or it self-destructs. We think of ourselves as French, Chinese or Russian ...

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... mould, seems about to disengage itself and reveal through poetry the Spirit in things". 24 The Celtic intensity of the new Romanticism is sometimes sought to be affined to the temper of the Middle Ages. Lucas 25 says that the mediaeval is no essential part of the Romantic, but what he means is that the essence of the Romantic is the mind taking a holiday from the rational and the restrained and... and letting loose the Unconscious and that this need not always take a mediaeval form. Mediaevalism, however, he does regard as a main affinity of the Romantic, for, as he 26 says, the Middle Ages, besides idealising passion, were "mystical, Page 153 mysterious, and remote". But these adjectives connote for him 27 the Mediaeval man's abeyance of the critical faculty, inordinate love... insupportable in thee Of light and love and immortality! Sweet benediction in the eternal Curse! Veiled glory of the lampless Universe! Even the religious consciousness of the Middle Ages cannot be said to reincarnate in the spirituality that shines through Wordsworth and Shelley. Shelley had to deny the Christian God in order to reach the Divine. Wordsworth, like Coleridge, conformed ...

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... Body The Renaissance is the period of European history which is marked by a break with the Middle Ages. Renaissance means re-birth. The first people to speak of the birth of a new and luminous age, who saw the previous period, the Middle Ages, as Dark Ages, were the Italians. While the Middle Ages had lived strongly and with a sort of sombre force, but always under the burden of an obligation... ancient Greek and Roman manuscripts, by the finding of antique statues, by their passion ate study of ancient "pagan" civilizations, the Italians aspired to free themselves from the burden of the Middle Ages. They looked at life in a new way, and they loved it; it had lost its taint of sin. And this finding reawakened in them the passionate curiosity of the Greeks; they eagerly turned to study nature ...

... being the way in which Nature, the universal Creatrix, encompasses whole peoples and civilisations, thus including them in the upward spiral of the evolution of mankind. This is how the European Middle Ages came into existence. Their closed universe was geographically based on the western half of the former Roman Empire, which they tried to revive in one form or another; their world view was a grandiose... the Church was a stern demand; nonconformity and a direct approach to the Godhead were branded as heresy, punishable by excommunication and death. Humanism and Individualism The European Middle Ages, with their feudalism, Catholic institutions, crusades, cathedrals, monasteries, universities and scholasticism, was a civilisation that lasted for centuries. Gradually and inevitably, however, the... their bearings and Reason itself, the main tool of disassembly and destruction of the medieval inheritance, would be questioned and even ridiculed. Why is there this persistent obsession with the Middle Ages? Because they are supposed to have been an Age of Faith in which life had an established and universally accepted meaning, up to a degree justified by rational systems borrowed from the ancient Greeks ...

... As pointed out in the preceding chapter, the whole of the modern period can be seen as a reaction of the human reason against the “unreasonable”, irrational period of faith we call the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages there was a generally accepted system of belief concerning the conception of man, of the world, and of God. This system, the world view of Catholic Christianity in Western Europe, had ... beautifully) about reason. And as we have tried to show previously: reason (the mind, the intellect) has played a crucial role in the development of humanity by subjecting the whole civilisation of the Middle Ages to rational examination, by constructing an instrument for the rational investigation of nature, 18 and above all by developing the humanistic values and the realisation of the individual, which ...

... the discovery of America (1492) and the beginning of the Protestant Reformation (1517). The Renaissance, which means a "rebirth " of ancient Greek and Roman culture, marked the decline of the Middle Ages and laid the foundations of modern times. This 1. Even though there is no direct connection between Leonardo and these early modem scientists, because none of his writings were published before... of man s earthly existence as a mere preparation and test for the promised life after death. Simultaneously, the Aristotelian scholars who constituted the scientific community during the Middle Ages began a critical reflection on their traditional approach to science. Aristotelian science was based on daily-life experience and common sense and operated in a closed world — the earth as its centre... of biology and physics based on reason, experiment and mathematics replaced the old Aristotelian concept of human knowledge. The third movement contributing to the cultural change from the Middle Ages to modern times involved the Renaissance artists and craftsmen who were originally 1. The first scientific academy, the Academla Secretorum Naturae, was founded in Italy by the natural p ...

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... with these words he fell asleep. (New Testament, "Acts of the Apostles", VII. 54-60) Let us now come to the classic instance of the famous martyr, Mansoor Al-Hallaj. This Sufi saint of the Middle Ages, after having attained spiritual self-knowledge, publicly declared, "Anal Haq, I am the Truth." Because of this so-called heresy, he was sentenced to death by the Calif of Baghdad. And was it a... because of this I dread physical death so much. Page 21 So, it is attachment which is the root cause of this second type of fear. Bellecius, a Catholic 'man of God' of the Middle Ages, wrote in this connection: "That death, even the very thought of death, is so much full of sadness and bitterness is solely due to the fact that a man feels and believes that he has to lose... Mother too paradoxically remarks: "One does not suffer while yet suffering." We are reminded, in this connection, of the case of the mystic Suarez about whom it is written in a Latin book of the Middle Ages: "The illustrious Suarez joyfully cried out amid the excruciating suffering which preceded his physical dissolution: 'I should never have thought that it was so sweet to die.' How many other ...

... layer after layer, with an increasingly deeper mystery. What I did not understand at the time is that the medieval fortress not only represented the (religious) Middle-Ages of the eleventh century, but the scientific Middle-Ages of the twentieth century. Which means the whole West. And what I did not know either at the time, is that the formidable white horse, in Indian tradition, is the mount... the motorcyclists going past — three of them escaped the “accident”.... I don’t know all they tried to do; it is such a tissue of incredible blackness that we could think we are in some Asiatic Middle Ages. Ruthless forces want to be the masters of Auroville — why so ruthless? For the sake of these few huts in the middle of red lands cracked by the sun? The Grace sent a man to help us, just when ...

... asking you because the answer would be different according to the instances.... I had thought of someone who can draw. For instance, there were in the Middle Ages—there still are today, but they were already there in the Middle Ages—men who made stained-glass windows, designs with pieces of coloured glass and in various forms. In the churches, in cathedrals, there were always stained-glass ...

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... the sheer occult. Can we say that Shakespeare, even if he may not be a mystic properly speaking, has some familiarity with or understanding of the sheer occult? Page 427 In the Middle Ages the presence of devils and angels was an accepted fact. People even claimed to meet angels and devils. Martin Luther records his own experience. Once at midnight when he had fallen asleep over his... insubstantiality could dance on the point of a needle. The tradition of presences behind the physical scene persisted down to Shakespeare's day although by then the great movement which swept the Middle Ages off had already come to pass, the Renaissance. The Renaissance had a great vital gusto and a sense of things of the earth and also a humanist enthusiasm which refused to take interest in religious ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Talks on Poetry
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... in their crinolines. This was an explosive age, the more so for the pressure exerted by the formal restrictions on its surface. It was in fact the end of the centuries’ long transition from the Middle Ages to an age yet to come, announced and prepared by the wars and global upheavals of the twentieth century – an age of which our Earth as a whole is in labour. Spiritism and Science In the context... of the knowledge and practice of true spirituality in the West has gradually led to the negation of anything non-material, to gross materialism. And rightly so! The civilization of the European Middle Ages was, like all other civilizations, based on imagination, myth and superstition, covering a modicum of real spirituality. The long and painful process of the Renaissance, Enlightenment, industrial ...

... during the Middle Ages held in such high esteem that he was referred to as The Philosopher ( ille philosophus ), “who chiefly suggested to naturalists and philosophers of later times the idea of arranging all animals in a single graded scala naturae according to their degree of perfection. … The result was the conception of the plan and structure of the world which, through the Middle Ages and down ...

... future is a constant threat and the present a problem that is never solved, while the past becomes more and more embellished, “gilded”, the farther it drops away. “O what a delightful time the Middle Ages were, when everything was learned under the guidance of masters”, mused Paul de Lagarde 472 – when knights in shining armour lived in draughty, crowded castles and died of the most common illnesses... back to the Greeks”, Hitler said. 476 Everything belonging to this exalted but fictitious past shared in the völkisch adulation. The runes, used from the second century CE till the end of the Middle Ages, and brought back into the focus of völkisch attention by Guido von List, were widely studied as symbols and sacred signs of power. Most (in)famous would become the double sig rune which the SS ...

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... concentration, if we are to understand them properly. Even then it is difficult to penetrate into the inner meaning of the Upanishads. There have been numerous commentators, and during the middle ages, there have been sharp differences of opinion even as to the fundamental principles of the philosophy of the Upanishads. This has given rise to at least 5 major schools of the Upanishadic interpretation... of various sciences including arithmetic, algebra, geometry, astronomy and astrology. Bhaskarācharya of 12 century A.D. is regarded as the first among the mathematicians and astrologers of the middle ages. Jyotish is even today prevalent all over India, and it is even now a developing science. Panchānga, which gives detailed information regarding the tithi, vāra, nakshatra, yoga and karana, is commonly ...

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... they think it must be, those who only vaguely know about her. But she is real. She did exist. She did become at seventeen— seventeen!— the commander of the royal army of France, at a time in the Middle Ages when women were strictly confined to domestic chores. Indeed, difficult to believe. How could it happen? And, further, how could this totally inexperienced girl conduct herself creditably... she earned the title of Liberator of France even though she died quite a long time before the English were finally vanquished. Such an extraordinary story, happening at a time, in the high Middle Ages, around 1430, when recording of facts was. not particularly precise, could have been by now shrouded in some mystery by default of much hard evidence. But something remarkable happened, as a result ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Joan of Arc
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... did rebel reveals the despair and the tendency to violence that marked the end of the Page 116 Middle Ages. (taken from: The Mainstream of Civilization, by Joseph R. Strayer & Hans W. Gatze, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich publishers, 1979, USA) France in the later middle ages The monarchy in France also had its troubles during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The sons ...

Kireet Joshi   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Joan of Arc
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... first is the modern or scientific thinking, the second the old-world mythoposic thinking. These two lines of mental movement mark off two definite stages in the cultural history of man. Down to the Middle Ages man's mental life was moved and coloured by his libido— desire soul; it is with the Renascence that he began to free his mind from the libido and transfer and transform the libido into non-egoistic... and adventure on its own account. This was the age of speculation and of scholasticism in philosophy and intellectual inquiry and of alchemy in natural science—a period roughly equated with the Middle Ages. The Scientific Age coming last seeks to re-establish a junction and co-ordination between the free and dynamic self-consciousness and the mode and pattern of its objective field, involving a greater ...

... time and history that Western man of the last two hundred years has been committing the most disastrous sin of them all: the sin of the intellect. The intellect has left behind the grace of the Middle Ages and the ancient times in order to be like God. It has left the magical soil in which rest the primitive ones … It has enthroned the ratio which lives in the conscious mind and only in the conscious... only political and social: we stand before an enormous change in the moral concepts and the intellectual orientation of the people. It is only now, with our movement, that the middle period, the Middle Ages, are brought to a conclusion. We put an end to a wrong path taken by humanity. The tables of Mount Sinai have lost their validity … A new era of a magical interpretation of the world is commencing ...

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... the time which put him on a par with Thomas Aquinas” – and he was invested with some of the highest offices within his order. Eckhart’s example was Albert the Great, another towering figure of the Middle Ages, and he was an exponent of a mystic peak which, in its broadest context, produced luminaries like Hadewych and Dietrich von Freiburg. His experience, expressed not only in Latin but also in his ... ways. 731 His person narrowly escaped condemnation as a heretic, but some of his mystic assertions did not. Meister Eckhart became part of “the longing for the supposedly integral culture of the Middle Ages … The endeavour of the Old Romantics was much learning and a universal humanity, and they animated their knowledge because they tried not only to think out their ideals but also to live them. The ...

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... reinforced over centuries, does not crumble from the first bolt of lightning or the impact of a new idea, in this case Darwinism. The remnants of the bulwark of Christianity, built up during the Middle Ages, are still standing in the Western world. Darwinism was one of the phenomena of scientific rationalism trying to de-construct that bulwark – after the Renaissance, the Reformation, the scientific... remained heavily influenced by Lamarck. Of course, the objections from the Christian side never diminished in number or clamour. Copernicus’ theory had undermined the Aristotelian universe of the Middle Ages and caused it to collapse, resulting in a general sense of insecurity and doubt. And see, now this Charles Darwin dared to assert in print that the human being, made in the image of God and therefore ...

... eye. The bourgeois society of the nineteenth century was the successor of a European caste society, which was as sharply divided as that in India. During the Ancien Régime, with its roots in the Middle Ages, society had consisted of the classes of the clergy (brahmin), the nobility ( kshatriya ), the merchants (vaishya) and the common workers (shudra), most of whom had been serfs, in other words... mentioned mainly because of these murals. The principal place of veneration of St James the Great was Santiago de Compostela, like Rome and Jerusalem the goal of a famous religious pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. Santiago de Compostella is a town near the northwest coast of Spain, and legend has it that the body of St James the Great, brother of St John the Evangelist and a major apostle of Christ, had arrived ...

... cataracts were removed; then my "beauty" might not have been spoiled by these focussing appurtenances from outside! But I must remember that they suggest the wisdom of God if some philosophers of the Middle Ages are to be believed. For surely in anticipation of the need of specs God created the bridge of the human nose! The pantheist thinker Spinoza may have been particularly struck with this wisdom, for... intimation of a Divine Power and Love overarching the world and at the same time looking after it and guiding it onward. In Dante we have the Aristotelian notion transmitted by Thomas Aquinas to the Middle Ages that all creation moves towards its Creator - who is Himself unmoving - by a love born in all things because of His transcendent Beauty. Dante is not figuring God's love as urging onward the sun ...

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... religiously or politically, and that some paid with their lives for the refusal to bow to any particularism. It was still a time of dungeons, gallows and pyres. The Christian age which we call the Middle Ages was coming to an end; the age that followed, sub-divided by the historians in various periods, is not over yet. The Renaissance rediscovered the courage and art of thinking for oneself in the way... which the self belonged: patriotism became part of the consciousness. The complete edition of Tacitus’ Germania was published in 1510. “A codex containing Tacitus’ Germania had survived the Middle Ages in a monastery at Herzfeld and had been taken to Italy in the fifteenth century. The effect of the discovery of this manuscript on the image the Germans would form of themselves can hardly be ov ...

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... Diderot held long conversations with Catherine II of Russia, emphasizing his words with forceful taps on her thigh. But Reason was a newcomer on this scene, in the sense that previously, in the Middle Ages, it had been no more than “the handmaid of faith”, whereas now it showed pretences to the throne of absolute ruler. True, Reason, after its long sleep since the heydays of classical Greece and Rome... mostly fought out on the battlefield (and so was its spiritual growth). The role of the emotions or life-forces in humanity can be followed, in their dialectical battle with reason, from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance into the Romantic period. The importance of all this for our story is that this development leads directly to the völkisch movement, Fascism in general and Nazism in particular ...

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... knight, your knight, and go off in search of a treasure that I could bring back to you. The world has lost all sense of the wonderful, all beauty of Adventure, this quest known to the knights of the Middle Ages. It is this that calls so relentlessly within me, this need for a quest in the world and for a beautiful Adventure which at the same time would be an adventure of the soul. How I wish that the two... things, inner and outer, be JOINED, that the joy of action, of the open road and the quest help the soul's blossoming, that they be like a prayer of the soul expressed in life. The knights of the Middle Ages knew this. Perhaps it is all childish and absurd in the midst of this 20th century, but this is what I feel, this that is summoning me to leave—not anything base, not anything mediocre, only a need ...

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... neither by the senses nor by the reasoning intellect; according to them, truth is given to us through God's revelation. Truth by revelation became a preponderant concept in the West during the Middle Ages. The great theologians of the Christian religion propounded the theory of revelation and pointed out that there was a clear distinction between reason and revelation. However, with the advent of... physical and the mental world, society, human institutions, and religion itself were explained by natural causes. What characterised the higher intellectual life of the period following the Middle Ages was an abiding faith in the power of human reason, an intense interest in natural things, a lively yearning for civilisation and progress. Knowledge, however, was esteemed and desired not only ...

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... march of the Arabs across two continents — the renaissance of Indian I culture and its decay — the little-known Maya and Aztec civilizations of America — the vast conquests of the Mongols — the Middle Ages in Europe with their i wonderful Gothic cathedrals — the coming of Islam to India and the Moghal Empire — the Renaissance of learning and art in western Europe — the discovery of i America and... that faith are gone, and gone with them is that magic touch in stone. Thousands of temples and mosques and cathedrals continue to be built, but they lack the spirit that made them live during the Middle Ages. There is little difference between them and the commercial offices which are so representative of our age. Our age is a different one; it is an age of disillusion, of doubt and uncertainty and ...

... first is the modern or scientific thinking, the second the old-world mythopoeic thinking. These two lines of mental movement mark off two definite stages in the cultural history of man. Down to the Middle Ages man's mental life was moved and coloured by his libido – desire soul; it is with the Renascence that he began to free his mind from, the libido and transfer and transform the libido into non-egoistic... and adventure on its own account. This was the age of speculation and of scholasticism in philo­sophy and intellectual inquiry and of alchemy in natural science – a period roughly equated with the Middle Ages. The Scientific Age coming last seeks to re-establish a junction and co-ordination between the free and dynamic self-consciousness and the mode and pattern of its objective field, involving a greater ...

... "there were hardly any at first in his entire realm who were literate, so thoroughly had the rudiments of learning been forgotten since the decay of Roman city life." 2 That was the onset of the Middle Ages, as that dismal period came to be known. It lasted a whole millennium. During most of the times people lived in abject poverty and ignorance. It was almost a slave-like condition for the populace... Page 124 so much took place. As the epitome of the Renaissance culture, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) springs to mind. Sri Aurobindo puts it all neatly. "After the interlude of the Middle Ages, this civilisation [Graeco-Roman] was reborn in a new mould in what is called the Renaissance, not in its life-aspects but in its intellectual aspects. It was therefore a supreme intellectual, Leonardo ...

... ent and energy, will not help a nation to rise but rather depress it and push it back into the past. Moreover, Dr. Ray makes the same mistake which European writers made when they condemned the Middle Ages wholesale because they were a period of contraction and not of expansion. That mistake has now been recognised in Europe and justice has been done to that which was praiseworthy as well as to that ...

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... spices and drugs; diamonds, ivory and gold. In return we received brass, tin and lead, coral, glass, antimony; woollen cloth and wines from Italy, and also specie and bullion. All through the Middle Ages, our manufactures and industries were at a very high level. Every traveller attests the existence of large and flourishing towns (a sure index of industrial prosperity), and praises the skill and ...

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... utility of the immediate visible world. The Greek and the Roman looked on religious cult as a sanction for the life of the "polis" or a force for the just firmness and stability of the State. The Middle Ages when the Christian idea was at its height were an interregnum; it was a period during which the Western mind was trying to assimilate in its emotion and intelligence an oriental ideal. But it never ...

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... the European mind, such as it has become after having abandoned not only the philosophic idealism of the highest Graeco-Roman culture from which it started, but the Christian devotionalism of the Middle Ages; these it has replaced by or transmuted into a practical idealism and social, patriotic and philanthropic devotion. It has got rid of God or kept Him only for Sunday use and erected in His place ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Essays on the Gita
[exact]

... received was mainly classical and had a purely intellectual and aesthetic influence; it did not stimulate any interest in spiritual life. My attention was not drawn to the spirituality of Europe of the Middle Ages; my knowledge of it was of a general character and I never underwent its influence. ...

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... schools of initiation were established and were highly esteemed and respected, as in ancient Egypt, ancient Chaldea, ancient India, and even to some extent in Greece and Rome. Even in Europe, in the Middle Ages, there were institutions that taught occult science, but they had to conceal themselves very carefully, for they were pursued and persecuted by the official Christian religion. And if by chance it ...

The Mother   >   Books   >   CWM   >   On Education
[exact]

... architecture more utterly beautiful than the Taj Mahal, the Parthenon or Borobudur or St. Peter's or of the great Gothic cathedrals? The same may be said of the crafts of ancient Greece and Japan in the Middle Ages or structural feats like the Pyramids or engineering feats like the Dnieper Dam or inventions and manufactures like the great modern steamships and the motor car. The mind of man may not Page ...

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... light and power. That will not be done by any rule of infrarational religious impulse and ecstasy, such as characterised or rather darkly illumined the obscure confusion and brute violence of the Middle Ages, but by a higher spiritual living for which the clarities of the reason are a necessary preparation and into which they too will be taken up, transformed, brought to their invisible source. These ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Human Cycle
[exact]

... sorrow and suffering and austere mortification and the gospel of the vanity of things; in its exaggeration it leads to such nightmares of the soul as that terrible gloom and hopelessness of the Middle Ages in their worst moment when the one hope of mankind seemed to be in the approaching and expected end of the world, an inevitable and desirable Pralaya. But even in less pronounced and intolerant forms ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Human Cycle
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... the great aspirations refused to be brushed off as being "wishful thinking". A poem of Laurence Binyon asked very pertinently the question: Eternity! how learnt I that strange word? In the Middle Ages there was the famous Ontological Argument that the very idea of God the Perfect Being entailed His existence since one could not be perfect if one did not exist. Kant is said to have refuted Anselm's ...

... thoroughly devastated - even Innocent III said nothing about moral licence or social interests and, according to all authorities, the sternest critics of the vices of the Christian clergy in the Middle Ages Page 103 were the Albigensians. P. Alphandery, 16 who has made the most serious attempt in our day to understand the ideas and conduct of the Albigensians, shows that the ...

... too early to foresee the final denouement, but unformed lines of it show themselves, obscure masses arise. Mysticism is growing obscurely in strength, as Science grew obscurely in strength in the Middle Ages. We see Titanic & mystic figures striding out of the East, building themselves fortresses & points of departure, spreading among the half-intellectual, capturing even the intellectual—vague figures ...

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... We have had recently in India a great abundance of speculations on the real causes of that gradual decline and final arrest which Indian civilisation no less than European suffered during the Middle Ages. The arrest was neither so sudden as in Europe nor so complete; but its effect on our nation, like the undermining activity of a slow poison, was all the more profoundly destructive, pervasive, hard ...

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... n of the Graeco-Roman civilisation to Europe—he came for that work and the writings of Virgil and Horace and others helped greatly towards the success of his mission. After the interlude of the Middle Ages, this civilisation was reborn in a new mould in what is called the Renaissance, not in its life-aspects but in its intellectual aspects. It was therefore a supreme intellectual, Leonardo da Vinci ...

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... element of Meister Eckhart and Jakob Böhme … West-Europeans feel inclined to situate ‘German irrationalism’ next to demonism, to relatedness with death, and to sense behind all that a relapse into the Middle Ages, into ‘diutisc’ barbarism … This relates to the layer of ‘the day before yesterday’ in the German mentality, the ‘age-old neurotic base’, the ‘secret relation of the German nature with the demonical’ ...

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... However, true spirituality, fulfilling all the requirements, could be found where the great Romantics had looked for it and where “the new romanticism” followed in their tracks: in the (idealized) Middle Ages. The monastic orders, more specifically the military monastic orders, peopled the dreams of a youth riding in trains and working in a chemical laboratory, a bank, or a watchmaker’s shop. On most ...

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... actually sounds totally insane? 2 – Ken Wilber Science is certainly one of the great accomplishments, not to say the main accomplishment, of reason in the centuries subsequent to the Middle Ages. It has changed the world to an enormous degree and seems to be triumphant everywhere. And not only has it changed our world: it is considered by many to be the only reliable instrument and even ...

... the official religion of the Roman Empire. This organization, because of its hierarchical structure and its faith, survived the collapse of the Empire and became the dominant institution in the Middle Ages. Its holy book, the Bible , was supposed to be the Word of God and therefore indubitable truth, together with its interpretations by the Church Fathers. What remained of the former Greek and Roman ...

... bread and barley and wine and oil at a low price … All property shall become one common property; then there will indeed be one shepherd and one sheepfold”. These were the common expectations of the Middle Ages, a time of misery unimaginable, when the poor were at the mercy of illness, pest and famine, and of the greedy clerical and secular hierarchy pressing down upon them. “But”, writes Cohn, “in one ...

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... ’ write Francis King and Isabel Sutherland in The Rebirth of Magic, published in 1982. 5 The works of the occult ‘masters’ of the last one hundred years and even of the Renaissance and the Middle Ages are now generally available in the bookshops — treatises by Eliphas Lévi, Stanislas de Guaita, Papus, Fulcanelli, Eugène Canseliet, Armand Barbault, or by John Dee, MacGregor Mathers, Alister Crowley ...

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... vulnerable, and at no time had harboured any aggressive designs against Germany”, writes Robert Wistrich. 617 Léon Poliakov, looking for the causes of such acquiescence, finds them already in the Middle Ages when, after the slaughter by the crusaders at Worms, Mainz, and many other places, “martyrdom became what one could call an institution … Each new victim of Christian furor was a combatant fallen ...

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... the author of the thesis should know, was familiar with Italian sufficiently to read the Divina Commedia in the original. But nothing really links up Savitri with this mighty product of the Middle Ages of Europe in an organic and inevitable manner. I go to the length of asserting that even if Dante had never lived and his epic had never reared its "towering fantasy" the tale of Love and Death ...

[exact]

... of the Graeco-Roman civilisation to Europe - he came for that work and the writings of Virgil and Horace and others helped greatly towards the success of his mission. After the interlude of the Middle Ages, this civilisation was reborn in a new mould in what is called the Renaissance, not in its life aspects but in its intellectual aspects. It was therefore a supreme intellectual, Leonardo da Vinci ...

... of thought-power, the growth of ignorance in the Motherland of knowledge. Everywhere I see inability or unwillingness to think-thought incapacity or thought-phobia. Whatever may have been in the middle ages this state of things is now the sign of terrible degeneration. The middle age was the night, the time of the victory of ignorance. In the modern world it is the age of the victory of knowledge. Whoever ...

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... light and power. That will not be done by any rule of infrarational religious impulse and ecstasy, such as characterised or rather darkly illumined the obscure confusion and brute violence of the Middle Ages, but by a higher spiritual living for which the clarities of the reason are a necessary preparation and into which they too will be taken up, transformed, brought to their invisible source. ...

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... with the importance of literary discipline, the need to mould deliberately a fitting diction of choice word and resonant rhythm. The poet as "maker" bulked larger than the poet as "seer". In the Middle Ages the poems of Virgil constituted a book of inspired wisdom: we hear of the sortes Virgilianae, divination by chance selection of passages from Virgil. The Renaissance did not neglect the Latin poet's ...

... them properly. Even then it is difficult to penetrate into the inner meaning of the Upanishads. As a result, there have been sharp differences of opinion among numerous commentators, who during the middle ages of Indian history, interpreted in different ways. There are at least five major schools of Upanishadic interpretation. These are: Advaitavāda or Monism of Shankarācharya, Vīshishtādvaitavada, or ...

... the European mind, such as it has become after having abandoned not only the philosophic idealism of the highest Graeco-Roman culture from which it started, but the Christian devotionals of the Middle Ages; these it has replaced by or transmuted into a practical idealism and social, patriotic and philanthropic devotion. It has got rid of God or kept Him only for Sunday use and erected in His place ...

... of this chiefly in terms of technology, Catherine thought of it principally in terms of culture; by the force and courage of her personality she drew the literate classes of Russia out of the Middle Ages into the orbit of modern thought in literature, philosophy, science, and art. She was ahead of her Christian compeers (excepting the un-Christian Frederick II) in establishing religious toleration ...

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... and the severity of the ensuing punishment. Readers interested in knowing more of the affair are advised to go through the indicated portions of the two following books written in Europe in the Middle Ages: (1)Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book One, chapter XXIV; (2)Bellecius, Solid Virtue, Part III, chapter 2; some of the subject-titles of this second book are: (i)"The ...

... explained by our keeping all culture as a sex-monopoly to ourselves, that they have been in constant subjection, that they have never had a fair chance." Then he adds that in Greece and Rome during the Middle Ages women had great freedom and a superior form of instruction, yet they did nothing outstanding. In his own profession, though there have been women professors since the 17th century in famous Italian ...

... present struggle and have expressed it in no uncertain terms. Here is what Jules Romains, one of the foremost thinkers and litterateurs of contemporary France, says: "Since the end of the Middle Ages, conquerors did harm perhaps to civilization, but they never claimed to bring it into question. They ascribed their excesses and crimes to motives of necessity, but never dreamed for a moment to ...

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... the purest luminous noble substance of the perfectly organised superconscient reality. Page 48 Indeed that is the mystic alchemy which the philosophers experimented in the Middle Ages. In this context, the Inner Consciousness, we may note, serves as a medium through which the action of the Inmost (as well as that of the Uppermost) takes place. We can picture the whole ...

... crude and base and unformed as the purest luminous noble substance of the perfectly organised super-conscient reality. Indeed, that is the mystic alchemy which the philosophers experimented in the Middle Ages. In this context, the Inner Consciousness, we may note, serves as a medium through which the action of the Inmost (as well as that of the Uppermost) takes place. We can picture the whole phenomenon ...

... present struggle and have expressed it in no uncertain terms. Here is what Jules Romains, one of the foremost thinkers and litterateurs of contemporary France, says: "Since the end of the Middle Ages, conquerors did harm perhaps to civilization, but they never claimed to bring it into question. They ascribed their excesses and crimes to motives of necessity, but never dreamed for a moment to ...

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... psychic is to give without making any demand. 21-12-1938 Disciple : There was a time when barbers occupied a respectable place in medicine. Sri Aurobindo : Why, during the middle ages, it seems, most of the surgeons were barbers. (After a pause) I understand there are Kavirajas – physicians, who can by examining the pulse, state the physical condition the disease of the patient ...

... talking again about medicine—homoeopathy, allopathy, ayurveda, etc. Somebody remarked how barbers came to occupy a place in the history of healing in India. SRI AUROBINDO: In Europe also during the Middle Ages, most of the surgeons were barbers. I understand there are Kavirajas who can, by examining the pulse, state the condition and disease of the patient. Then some of us referred to reports about ...

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... crude and base and unformed as the purest luminous noble substance of the perfectly organised superconscient reality. Indeed, that is the mystic alchemy which the philosophers experimented in the Middle Ages. In this context, the Inner Consciousness, we may note, serves as a medium through which the action of the Inmost (as well as that of the Uppermost) takes place. We can picture the whole phenomenon ...

... materialism can offer, and that man's supreme ideal lies there, let us throw a comparing glance on the two types of spirituality, – the one that India knows and the other that Europe knew in the Middle Ages.   To say that Europe was once as religious and spiritual as India herself is not precisely incorrect, but it is to view the matter from too general a stand-point, almost, we may say ...

... mark out their respective ages. Fanaticism, for example, the corruption of a good and noble thing, fidelity, means a unilateral mind carried to its extreme; it is a characteristic product of the middle ages in the West as in the East. The modern world in its stead has given us dilettantism and cynicism, corruption of largeness and catholicity. Consciousness has two primary movements. In one it ...

... as elaborated, formulated, codified by the Aristotelian system was the light that shone through the Gr æ co-Latin culture of the Roman days; that was behind the culture and civilisation of the Middle Ages. The changes and revolutions of later days, social or cultural, did not affect it, rather were based upon it and inspired by it. And even today our scientific culture maintains and continues the ...

... present struggle and have expressed it in no uncertain terms. Here is what Jules Romains, one of the foremost thinkers and litterateurs of contemporary France, says: "Since the end of the Middle Ages, conquerors did harm perhaps to civilization, but they never claimed to bring it into question. They ascribed their excesses and crimes to motives of necessity, but never dreamed for a moment to ...

... descend from your height and oblige us with a smile, ( teasingly ) to condescend to come down to our level; have the kindness, sir,… ( gesture of the hands and the body, like the courtiers of the middle ages ) to favour us with a big smile, — but let it be honest and surging from the heart…. Oh, nothing can move him. He is firm, decided…. What, why don’t you speak? What forbids you? ( I stretch my ...

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... work was done in an urge of aspiration towards expressing a higher beauty, above all with the idea of preparing a dwelling fit for the deity whom one invokes. In Europe in the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, things were done in the same spirit. There too at that time works were anonymous and bore no signature of the author. If any name came to be preserved, it was more or less by accident. However ...

... visited Hyderabad and called it "marvellous". PURANI: If he finds Hyderabad marvellous then one wonders what Egypt may be like. SRI AUROBINDO (laughing): Yes, Hyderabad is still half in the Middle Ages! You know Dara's story? One of two brothers from there came for Darshan. After going back the brothers had some quarrel over property and the one who had been here filed a suit and asked our help ...

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... have arranged that "exit" when we were still at an early mental stage, still living as instinctively intuitive beings, open, malleable. The Vedic age, the Mysteries of ancient Greece, or even the Middle Ages, would have been more appropriate for that "exit" than as we are now. If such was the goal of evolutionary Nature, and assuming evolution does not proceed haphazardly but according to a Plan, that ...

... has come for teaching you something, teaching you an attitude to understand, and immediately the sharpness goes out of it. This was demonstrated very powerfully in the Middle Page 84 Ages, particularly in spiritual women who had great ability to organize; and in almost every case these women didn't go off into a private ecstacy of their own. They did go into ecstasy ...

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... for him. This we could never have in India ; Japan was more feudal in its past than any other Asiatic nation. Disciple : Is there no similarity between the political insti­tutions of the Middle Ages and the organisations of Chandragupta in India ? Sri Aurobindo : There is only a superficial resemblance.; We had no feudalism as it was practised in Europe. Disciple : Was there no penal ...

... Pondicherry on the mouth of Gingee river, like Nagapattinam further down south on the estuary of Kaveri, had carried on a brisk trade with the Far-East since antiquity, and certainly during the Middle Ages. As we know, a profound Buddhist influence 1 had spread over the entire eastern coast of India from the Bay of Bengal to the island of Sri Lanka, spilling over to the east from the second century ...

... received was mainly classical and had a purely intellectual and aesthetic influence; it did not stimulate any interest in spiritual life. My attention was not drawn to the spirituality of Europe of the Middle Ages; my knowledge of it was of a general character Page 232 and I never underwent its influence." Sri Aurobindo "never once" attended the weekly meetings of the Fabian Society. Nor ...

... of despotism but of weakness. It is a confession of guilt. To dethrone reason, wisdom, truth and justice and substitute brute force in their place is to appeal from the twentieth century to the Middle Ages, to confess oneself a stumbling-block in the way of human progress and an enemy of Heaven, and to array all the silent forces of civilisation, enlightenment and progress, the justice of Heaven and ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Bande Mataram
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... He does not try to justify his blunders,—that would be hopeless—but he does try to excuse them. He practically admits that his Italian republics are a blunder and that he was thinking of the Middle Ages when he was writing of the nineteenth century. But he pleads that Burke uses the word commonwealth in the sense of state and therefore Mr. N. N. Ghose can use the word republic in the same sense ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Bande Mataram
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... be the future people of India. In the course of another fifty years men will look back to the times when such ideas were possible in the same spirit that the nineteenth century looked back to the Middle Ages, as a period of absolute ignorance and darkness when the national mind and consciousness were in a state of total eclipse. The blessings of British rule have all been weighed in the balance and found ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Bande Mataram
[exact]

... begun in India what no Tory statesman could have lightly undertaken, the attempt to stifle Indian aspirations by sheer force and put back the clock of progress from the nineteenth century into the Middle Ages, could not find a fitter heaven in which to spend his old age than the House of Lords. If anything could add to the just felicity of his translation, it is that there will be no Cottons and Rutherfords ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Bande Mataram
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... them in things temporal. Even devout Catholics writhe uneasily under the shower of Papal encyclicals and feel what an embarrassment it is to have modern knowledge forbidden by a revenant from the Middle Ages or opinion fixed by a Council of priests no more spiritual, wise or illustrious than the minds they coerce with their irrational authority. Europe is certainly not going to exchange a Catholic for ...

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... Indianism as a graceful decoration in the background,—than the great catastrophe of the war proves that Europe's science, her democracy, her progress were all wrong and she should return to the Middle Ages or imitate the culture of China or Turkey or Tibet. Such generalisations are the facile falsehoods of a hasty and unreflecting ignorance. We have both made mistakes, faltered in the true application ...

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... regards any subjective state or experience that departs from the ordinary operations of our mental and psychical nature as a morbidity or a hallucination, Page 292 — just as the Middle Ages regarded all new science as magic and a diabolical departure from the sane and right limits of human capacity; finally, the error of objectivity which leads the psychologist to study others from ...

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... thought-power, the growth of ignorance in the Motherland of knowledge. Everywhere I see inability or unwillingness to think — thought incapacity or thought-phobia. Whatever may have been the middle ages this state of things is now the sign of terrible degeneration. The middle age was the night, the time of the victory of ignorance. In the modern world it is the age of the victory of knowledge. Whoever ...

... the whole body of modern Western thought: the distorted picture of the human being constructed by modern Western philosophy and psychology as a consequence of and a reaction against the Christian Middle Ages. If the Chain of Being – the universal hierarchy or gradations of being – was recognised at all, it was only felt as theoretical, never as real. The West took an instrument of consciousness, rational ...

... “the cardinal event of modern history and of the contemporary world, the ghost that looms behind his every important thought”. 686 What this pronouncement meant fundamentally was that the European Middle Ages, with their Christian civilization, were coming to an end. As a thinker and critic of the formerly established but now disintegrating values, religious and moral, Nietzsche could not disregard ...

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... different parts of the world according to the bent of the community and its circumstances, but the initial principle was almost identical.” 3 This is, for instance, the reason why in the European Middle Ages we find society dominated by the clergy ( brahmins ) and the knights ( kshatriyas ), a social order soon expanded with the merchants ( vaishyas ). So strong became the presence of the latter, rightly ...

... the evolution from primitive hunter-gatherers to agricultural civilization. Then there is the remarkable case of Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi (1207-1273), the great Sufi poet who, at the time of the Middle Ages in Europe but of a great cultural flowering in the Muslim world, wrote his Spiritual Couplets. Although orthodox Islam is creationist, we find in Rumi the following lines expressing a distinct ...

... gradation has indeed been the general way of viewing existence practically all over the world. “… [It] was [in the West that] the conception of the plan and structure of the world which, through the Middle Ages and down to the late eighteenth century … most educated men were to accept without question – the conception of the universe as a ‘Great Chain of Being,’ composed of an immense, or … infinite, number ...

Georges van Vrekhem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Overman
[exact]

... India and fossilized backwardness. Little does the common awareness in the West realize that caste did and to a considerable extent still does determine the patterns of its social structures. In the Middle Ages – not so very long ago – caste was a fact of life. There was the Catholic Church with its clergy ( brahmins) ; there was the nobility with its feudal hierarchy ( kshatriyas ); there was the upcoming ...

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... metropolis. But to enter the Jardin du Luxembourg from her house, Mirra had to cross the busy Boulevard Saint-Michel, a street on the Left Bank which has been well-known and even notorious since the Middle Ages. One day she was so inwardly absorbed that she forgot to look about her when stepping down from the pavement into the traffic: only at the last moment did she avoid being hit and run over by a tram ...

... out from some Yogi in India the meaning of the symbol which goes by the designation "Seal of Solomon", popularly called also "Star of David". Sometimes it is taken to be a pentagram such as the Middle Ages of Europe employed in magical practices and such as is supposed in India to cure the scorpion-sting if not the snake-bite too. But really it is a hexagram and, under its second name, it is at ...

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... associations. They do not mean what we take as prostitution, the selling of one's body for money. Their significance is anticipated by contrast with the word "wife" in the very first line. In the Middle Ages what is meant now by "mistress" was subsumed under "whore" and "harlot". At the same time the two latter words had no necessary connection with the sale of sexual pleasure. A woman having sex-relations ...

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... the author of the thesis should know, was familiar with Italian sufficiently to read the Divina Commedia in the original. But nothing really links up Savitri with this mighty product of the Middle Ages of Europe in an organic and inevitable manner. I go to the length of asserting that even if Dante had never lived and his epic had never reared its "towering fantasy" the tale of Love and Death out ...

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... the bitter cry wrung from Milton by the still unforgotten miseries of his first marriage...." Adam we find also talking at times "like a weary scholar" or like a student of the Schoolmen of the Middle Ages or "like a doubting Christian in an age of speculation". Raphael once breaks in with a question proper to a Platonic philosopher; and Milton, the chronic sufferer from gout which is one of the ...

... the Graeco-Roman civilization to Europe - he came for that work and the writings of Virgil and Horace and others helped greatly towards the success of his mission. After the interlude of the Middle Ages, this civilisation was reborn in a new mould in what is called the Renaissance, not in its life-aspects but in its intel- lectual aspects. It was therefore a supreme intellectual, Leonardo da ...

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... r, the growth of ignorance in the Motherland of knowledge. Everywhere I see inability or unwillingness to think, thought-incapacity or thought-phobia. However the situation may have been in the Middle Ages, this state of things is now the sign of a terrible degeneration … We are not worshippers of Shakti. We are the worshippers of the easy way … Our civilization has become an acalayatana [something ...

... the intoxication of grandiose disasters, now underwent unlimited extension in an ignorantly blissful shudder before the Nibelungen and the Last of the Goths, before the Lost Warrior Bands of the Middle Ages, before Langemarck, Koltschak and the samurai ideal … All this was not merely the expression of a historicizing hero-worship but also a symptom of a deep-rooted tendency of German educational tradition ...

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... the presence of a materialist science and held down by the claws of the unsocial people of the Jews, still at the bottom of the German heart the Christian spirit has remained as vivid as in the Middle Ages. At least, it fights nowhere so forcefully against the adverse forces as in Germany. There is no other Volk that has realized ‘the fruits of the Kingdom of God’ in more beautiful ways than the Germans ...

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... Revolution had been for the ancien régime , in the first place for the nobility and the clergy, and how firmly they were still anchored in the religious, social and cultural structures of the Middle Ages. The new rationalist philosophers no longer had faith in the Word of God and some of them put it outright into question or even ridiculed it. A world based on such principles of theistic, atheistic ...

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... economic and materialistic civilisation which mankind has been forming for the last few centuries from once new materials now growing rapidly effete pieced out with broken remnants of antiquity and the middle ages. The period of military conflict just at an end came to breach that which thought had already been sapping, an era of revolutions has opened which is likely to complete the ruin and prepare the building ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Human Cycle
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... France. The Renaissance meant many things and it meant too different things in different countries, but one thing above all everywhere, the discovery of beauty and joy in every energy of life. The Middle Ages had lived strongly and with a sort of deep and sombre force, but, as it were, always under the shadow of death and under the burden of an obligation to aspire through suffering to a beyond; their ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   The Future Poetry
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... n of the Graeco-Roman civilisation to Europe—he came for that work and the writings of Virgil and Horace and others helped greatly towards the success of his mission. After the interlude of the Middle Ages, this civilisation was reborn in a new mould in what is called the Renaissance, not in its life-aspects but in its intellectual aspects. It was therefore a supreme intellectual, Leonardo da Vinci ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Letters on Yoga - I
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... n of the Graeco-Roman civilisation to Europe—he came for that work and the writings of Virgil and Horace and others helped greatly towards the success of his mission. After the interlude of the Middle Ages, this civilisation was reborn in a new mould in what is called the Renaissance, not in its life-aspects but in its intellectual aspects. It was therefore a supreme intellectual, Leonardo da Vinci ...

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... overcome, pass beyond and leave behind. It is this possible relation of the human being with the powers of the life-world which occupied to so large an extent European occultism, especially in the Middle Ages, as well as certain forms of Eastern magic and spiritualism. The "superstitions" of the past—much superstition there was, that is to say, much ignorant and distorted belief, false explanations and ...

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... distrust and recoil which regards any subjective state or experience that departs from the ordinary operations of our mental and psychical nature as a morbidity or a hallucination,—just as the Middle Ages regarded all new science as magic and a diabolical departure from the sane and right limits of human capacity; finally, the error of objectivity which leads the psychologist to study others from ...

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... as the most important factor; they considered their work as an offering to the Divine, they tried to express by it their relation with the Divine. This was the avowed function of Art in the Middle Ages. The "primitive" painters, the builders of cathedrals in Mediaeval Europe had no other conception of art. In India all her architecture, her sculpture, her painting have proceeded from this source ...

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... the most important factor; they considered their work as an offering to the Divine, they tried to express by it their relation with the Divine. This was the avowed function of Art in the Middle Ages. The "primitive" painters, the builders of cathedrals in Mediaeval Europe had no other conception of art. In India all her architecture, her sculpture, her painting have proceeded from this source ...

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... posterity or not. All was done in a movement of aspiration to express a higher beauty, and above all with the idea of giving an appropriate abode to the godhead who was evoked. In the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, it was the same thing, and I don't think that there too the names of the artists who made them have remained. If any are there, it is quite exceptional and it is only by chance that the name has ...

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... manifestation, one has a vision that plunges down upon the way traversed and one remembers. But this memory is not a thing of the mental kind. Those who claim to have been such a baron of the Middle Ages or such a person who lived at such a place and such a time, are fanciful, they are simply victims of their own mental imagination. In fact, what remains of past lives are not beautiful pictures in ...

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... of thought-power, the growth of ignorance in the motherland of Knowledge. Everywhere I see inability or unwillingness to think—thought-incapacity or thought-phobia. Whatever may have been in the middle ages, this state of things is now the sign of a terrible degeneration. The middle age was the night, the time of the victory of ignorance. The modern world is Page 274 the age of the victory ...

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... manifestation, one has a vision that plunges down upon the way traversed and one remembers. But this memory is not a thing of the mental kind. Those who claim to have been such a baron of the Middle Ages or such a person who lived at such a place and such a time, are fanciful, they are simply victims of their own mental imagination. In fact, what remains of past lives are not beautiful pictures in ...

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... manifestation, one has a plunging view of the path already traversed, and one remembers. But that does not mean remembering in a mental way. Those who claim to have been this or that baron in the Middle Ages or such and such a person who lived at such and such a place during such and such a time are fantasizing; they are simply victims of their own mental fancies. For what remains of past lives are not ...

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... for failure in them, will you hold back a boy so bright in finding his way in the subject?" The Principal was so stunned by the originality and acuity of this argument, which any Schoolman of the Middle Ages might have envied, that he broke a minute's silence with the sporting words: "Oh well, let him go up with his master mind and tackle the trivialities later." Your reference, apropos of your surprise ...

... also very fine—his Sigurd ihe Volsung and Earthly Paradise, especially the latter. I read them a number of times in my early days. There is a tendency to belittle him, because he wrote about the Middle Ages and Romanticism, I suppose. NIRODBARAN: You said the other day there has not been any successful blank verse in England after Shakespeare and Milton. What about Shelley's Prometheus Unbound? ...

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... didn't know how to achieve the malady unity. Porus, after being defeated, allied himself with Alexander and fought against his own countrymen. In Europe also the same thing happened during the Middle Ages, and continued even up to the early part of the reign of Louis XIV. Some provinces of France were at one time fighting for France, and at another time against her. PURANI: Yes, a part of France ...

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... manifestation, one has a vision that plunges down upon the way traversed and one remembers.       But this memory is not a thing of the mental kind. Those who claim to have been such a baron of the Middle Ages or such a person who lived at such a place and such a time, are fanciful, they are simply victims of their own mental imagination. In fact, what remains of past lives are not beautiful pictures in ...

... consciousness, viz., that of unconsciousness or infra-consciousness, ignorance, fear, superstition. The domination of the religious sense reached its apogee Page 144 in the Middle Ages when it almost swallowed up and annihilated all other faculties and movements in man. The end of that epoch and the first beginnings of the Modern Age were signalised by the Mind, i.e., the Reason ...

... Christianity. For without that European civilisation loses more than half of its import and value. After the Roman Decline began the ebbtide, the trough, the dark shadow of the deepening abyss of the Middle Ages. But even as the Night fell and darkness closed around, a new light glimmered, a star was born. A hope and a help shone "in a naughty world". It was a ray of consciousness that came from a secret ...

... wisdom and understanding. By wisdom was meant an intuitive apprehension of truth, and the attitude involved was receptive or contemplative! Intellectus was the name given to this faculty in the Middle Ages. Understanding, on the other hand, was always a practical or constructive activity, and ratio its name..." 20 We may note too in this connection that the Indian term for philosophy is ...

... man's general health was stated to depend entirely on the proper harmony of these four humours. The physician's task was thus perceived to be to 'keep a man in good humour'. With the advent of the Middle Ages 'humour' lost this specific sense and acquired instead a general meaning of 'disposition' and 'temperament'. In course of time the expression branched off in two different directions, acquiring in ...

... difficult for us to receive the bounty of divine Grace in a free and uninterrupted flow nor can we in that case expect to grow in genuine love for the Divine. A Christian mystic of Europe of the Middle Ages has succinctly stated the same truth: "As soon as one begins to seek oneself in one's spiritual life, he ceases to love the Divine at that very moment." Indeed the co-existence of self-love ...

... formal cause and final cause. The final cause, he argued, must exist in order to have a causal series in the world, and it is the final cause which explains all causations in the world. In the middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas inferred prime movement from motion and towards efficient or secondary causes to a first cause and towards contingent existence to a necessary Being. Saint Anselm (1033-1109 ...

... Christianity. For without that European civilisation loses more than half of its import and value. After the Roman Decline began the ebb-tide, the trough, the dark shadow of the deepening abyss of the Middle Ages. But even as the Night fell and darkness closed around, a new light glimmered, a star was born. A hope and a help shone "in a naughty world". It was a ray of consciousness that came from a secret ...

... anything materialism can offer, and that man's supreme ideal lies there, let us throw a comparing glance on the two types of spirituality,—the one that India knows and the other that Europe knew in the Middle Ages. To say that Europe was once as religious and spiritual as India herself is not precisely incorrect, but it is to view the matter from too general a stand-point, almost, we may say, grosso ...

... 225 Mahasaraswati, 44, 207-10, 225 Mahashakti, 67, 198 Mahavira, 44, 207 Maheshwari, 44, 207, 209-10, 225 Manicheism, 127 Mary, 82 Matariswan, 44 Michael Angelo, 210 Middle Ages, the, 134, 139, 149, 421 Milton, 156n. – Paradise Lost, 156n Mimansakas,137 Mitra, 207 Morgan, 56-7 Mother, The, 63, 65-6, 270, 282-3n., 285n., 289n., 29In., 319 ...

... poet and also as a great seer: Sri Aurobindo mentions him as one of the very greatest. He names three as the supreme poets of Europe, of the very first rank: Homer of ancient Greece, Dante in the Middle Ages, and nearer to us, Shakespeare. Along with these Sri Aurobindo mentions also Valmiki of India. However I shall speak of Dante not so much as a poet but as a seer: as such he was a Traveller of the ...

... is the modern or scientific thinking, the second the old-world mythopoeic thinking. These two lines of mental movement mark off two definite stages in the cultural history of man. Down to the Middle Ages man's mental life was moved and coloured by his libido —desire-soul; it is with the Renascence that he began to free his mind from the libido and transfer and transform the libido into non-egoistic ...

... ". From the vast literature he has created, it is possible to get an idea of his philosophy and his interpretation of Indian culture. The Upanishads, the works of the saints and mystics of the Middle Ages like Kabir, and aspects of Vaishnavism have influenced his outlook. He was a firm believer in international peace and Shantiniketan was started to promote it; he pointed out the dangers of exclusive ...

... is a very good poem; it is an exercise in Epic. I remember his Earthly Paradise which is exceedingly fine. There is a tendency to run down Morris, be­cause he derived his inspiration from the Middle Ages as the Victorian age did not give him any subject. Shelley and Keats both tried to bring in the epic with the subjective element, but they failed because they tried to put it in the old forms. ...

... ecclesiastical authorities of the time. × 5 Francois Villon, great accursed and tender poet of the Middle Ages (1431-?), who knew the dungeons of a certain bishop and was thrown into prison many times, enough to discover the woe of his “human brothers.â€� After he was condemned to be hanged, his sentence ...

Satprem   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Evolution II
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... The last sedition. And in order that the evolutionary endeavor may hold on to something "concrete" according to human norms, in the manner of the ancient Pharaohs, or perhaps the knights of the Middle Ages who had to go through a "test," those Aurovilians received as a first task to build a symbolic center around Sri Aurobindo's symbol, like an enormous lotus bud ("Aurobindo" means lotus) rising from ...

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... the Dark Age, into the gloom of Mystic superstitions and Churchian dogmas?" Now, one cannot deny that there was much of obscurantism and darkness in that period of Europe's evolution. And the revolt launched against it by the heralds of the Modern Age was inevitable and justified to some extent; but to say that unadulterated superstition was what constituted the very substance of Middle Age Culture... become the worst. The truth of the matter is that in its decline the Middle Age clung to and elaborated only the formal aspect of its culture, leaving aside its inner realisation, its living inspiration. The Renaissance was a movement of reaction and correction against the lifeless formalism, the dry scholasticism of a decadent Middle Age; it sought to infuse a new vitality, by giving a new outlook and... Heraclitus and the initiates to the Orphic and the Eleusinian mysteries continued to live in and through Plotinus and Anselm and Paracelsus and the long line 'Of Christian savants and sages. The Middle Age had its own spiritual discoveries and achievements founded Page 150 on the Cult of the Christ; to these it added what it could draw and assimilate from the mystic ...

... On the whole, the people were young; there were very few children, and their ages were around fourteen or fifteen, but certainly not below ten or twelve (I did not stay long enough to see all the details). There were no very old people, with the exception of a few. Most of the people who had gone ashore were of a middle age—again, except for a few. Several times before this experience, certain individual... people capable of being supramentalized are examined; I had then had a few surprises which I had noted—I even told some people. But those whom I disembarked today I saw very distinctly. They were of a middle age, neither young children nor elderly people, with only a few rare exceptions, and this quite corresponded to what I expected. I decided not to say anything, not to give any names. As I did not stay ...

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... XIV Eternal Youth This is about the time when you, the young, the children had not arrived here. The few of us who were here had grown up, many had become aged, even old, that is to say, had passed the middle age. I often wondered, well, we were here, had been growing up and becoming old, what would be the nature of this institution long after, 20 or 30 years after? Would it not... the contribution of old age. With long experience comes wisdom, with wisdom knowledge—consciousness progressing gradually becomes settled understanding. It goes without saying, that simply age does not mean wisdom, similarly simply youth does not mean progress—that is, not always or everywhere. Bankim has said, "Are years only the measure of time?" So youth or old age cannot be judged merely... merely by years. It is seen that old age has come in youth, that youth is retained in old age,—such instances are not rare. Certainly you will remember the picture drawn by the Mother—the picture of the supramental boat. There the Mother could not find the well-known old people—all there were tender or young, the old could come there only by becoming young. But one should remember that supramental ...

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... even a sceptic like me could not brush aside. Now, a new and more subtle danger was laying its trap in the guise of spirituality. My old friend Chand who belonged to the same town brought to me a middle-aged woman, first as a patient, then as some sort of a spiritual seeker. She had abandoned her family life and was looking for a shelter where she could pursue her "sadhana without any hindrance". Candid ...

... self-transmutation in a farther process of God's self-unfoldment in world and Nature. To return to our main theme, we should point out, however, that in Europe too at one time (during the whole Middle Age, the Age of Scholasticism) philosophy was considered only as a handmaid of Religion, it had to echo and amplify and reason out the dogmas (which were sometimes real spiritual experiences or revelations); ...

... mutation in a farther process of God's self-unfoldment in world and Nature. To return to our main theme, we should point out, however, that in Europe too at one time (during the whole Middle Age, the Age of Scholasticism) philosophy was considered only as a handmaid of Religion, it had to echo and amplify and reason out the dogmas (which were sometimes real spiritual experiences or revelations); ...

... the people who went ashore were middle-aged, except a few. Already, before this experience, some individual cases had been examined several times at a place where people capable of being supramentalised were examined; I had a few surprises and noted them; I even told some people about it. But the ones whom I put ashore today, I saw very distinctly; they were middle-aged, neither young children nor old ...

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... should be examined with reference to his age which represents the state of his body depending upon the length of the time that has passed since birth. Age is broadly of three types, viz. young age, middle age and old age. Young age is again of two types, viz. (i) immature stage lasting upto 16th year of age and (ii) maturing stage lasting upto the 30th year of age. During immature stage various organs... year of age, the mental faculties are not properly developed. During the middle age lasting upto the 60th year of age, there is well manifested strength, energy, manliness and valour, power of understanding, retention, memorizing, speech and analyzing facts and the qualities of all dhatus; there is the dominance of pittadosa. Thereafter during old age lasting upto 100th year of age, there... , speech and analyzing facts. There is gradual diminution in the qualities of dhatus and dominance of vata during this age. During this kali age, the span of life is hundred years. Of course, there are people who live for a longer or shorter period than this. This age should be classified by determining the life-span with the help of factors described above, viz. prakriti (physical constitution) ...

... The work was done in an urge of aspiration towards expressing a higher beauty, above all with the idea of preparing a dwelling fit for the deity whom one invokes. In Europe in the cathedrals of the Middle Age, things were done in the same spirit. There too at that time works were anonymous and bore no signature of the author. If any name came to be preserved, it was more or less by accident. However... Empire in France, the age of the practical successful bourgeoisie, of snug contentment and dull mediocrity, of death in life. As I say, the movement of progress follows a curve. In a certain epoch some fine things are expressed in a fine way. Then follows an epoch which is tired of the old things, wants to find new things and Page 176 express in a new way. The age of Louis XIV, for example... example, was an age dominated by the sense of artistic creation and it represented the peak of a certain type of the truly beautiful in art and life. In the course of social evolution other ideas, other needs appeared—those of a commercial age. So the curve took a downward course. For there is nothing so antagonistic to art as commerce. For the association of commerce with art means the popularisation ...

... a mentor for life. In the transition from adolescence to young adulthood, mentors e supremely important. Several years ago a Yale University research team studied the life cycle of "successful" middle-aged American males and concluded that every one of them had an early mentor who nourished their lively but inarticulate childhood dreams of the kind of life they wanted to live as adults. According... unruly grey hair, wore glasses, and was hard of hearing. But there was more to him than met the eye. He possessed a sharp Irish tongue and a wry sense of humour. Although he was precisely the same age as Jesse's own father, he seemed boundlessly enthusiastic and energetic. "I grew to admire and respect his words and his actions and everything else," the still-mesmerized Owens recalled thirty years... one time held every important sprint record. At the Antwerp Olympics in 1920, he won the gold medal in the 100-meter dash; from Paris four years later he came away with a silver medal. In that early age of journalistic hype, he was one of the first runners to be dubbed "the world's fastest human."... In 1928 Riley arranged for him to address the youngsters at Fairmount Junior High. After his speech ...

... Shamakanta got up, caught hold of the soldiers and began to knock their heads against each other. At the next station they walked out. I remember once when we were practising shooting, there was a middle-aged Bengali in the company. When he was asked to shoot, he became very nervous, said he didn't know how to shoot, closed his eyes and then fired. After firing, he opened his eyes, smiled and said, "I ...

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... feel some vibration! The following incident occurred when Birenda was quite old, past 70. He sat hunched, chin sunk on his chest. He was very deaf too. His fingers were all crooked and bony. A middle-aged couple came. The husband was bent to one side (fixed in that position). He had suffered a stroke. Birenda asked the husband to recount his woes, and closed his eyes and sat looking small and helpless ...

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... to Chandpal Ghat, for Amar was waiting there with Sejda, Bejoy and Manmatha. Upon his return, a relieved Nagen found his porter waiting near a closed carriage, and inside were the three men. The middle-aged porter told the twenty-year-old Babu to hurry up. "I have already spoken of Page 538 you to the doctor, but if you delay longer he won't be available, as he will retire to bed."... he was discovered by Motilal's wife I During the five to six weeks that Sri Aurobindo remained in Chandernagore, his hideouts consisted of a thatched hut —in the 'coolie line' —a garden-house in the middle of the town, and the last was a dilapidated shed near a temple of Jagannath. The shed was kept locked during the day, and at night, the revolutionary responsible for him brought dried fruits and nuts ...

... him (1945), I think he had no regular job. That first time was at the Ashram Gate. The image of him that remained stuck is of a middle-aged man, well-built, knee-length khaki shorts (Bermudas of yesteryears) held up by a leather belt. The belt was necessary, for the middle-age paunch was beginning to assert itself. He was of medium height, deep-chested, and stood on two solid legs. The face was remarkable... volunteered or been recruited — whatever the means — came to replace Gerard. So started an interesting, long and fruitful partnership between us. He was nearly 65 years of age, experienced, having seen and suffered much and I was half his age, green, having seen very little and suffered nothing — though seemingly so disparate, we got along well till he retired and much later till his last days. He was... Yogananda would not take that sitting down. He jumped up, raised his umbrella to strike, found it awkward, — with Pranab-da in between pulling him down and trying to pacify him. But he shot back, “Dui din age eshe amake Mayer kaj bujhachche?” (He has come two days back and he is trying to teach me what the Mother’s work is!) Pranab-da saved the day. The meeting was over. Each one knew the other a little better ...

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... English. This trialogue worked well, must have, for we watched from afar all three in smiles! Monsieur was not only a music teacher for us. He was a great friend too. He played, even in his past-middle-age, football with us. He was, understandably, slow, but tough and hard as nails. He kicked the ball with his toes, toes turned back upward i.e. the ball of the foot made contact with the ball. No dribbling ...

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... 361, 381 Mayavada,326 Mazzini, 59, 91 Mephistopheles, 83 Michelson-Morley experiment, 315 Middle Age(s), 69, 145, 150, 152, 155, 213, 221, 346 Mill, 140 Milton, 194, 251 Minerva, 222 Mitra, 9 Modem Age, 145, 152 Moghuls, 58, 239 Mohammed, 208,215 Mohenjo-daro, 238, 243 Moliere, 197 Moloch... 255, 306, 320, 325, 337, 340-2, 344, 363, 367-8 Upanishadic Age, 222 -Kena, 393 - TaittiriYa, 376 V AISHESHIKAS, 327 Vansittart, Lord, 88 Varona, 9, 270 Varus, 88 Vedas, the, 5, 54, 63,70, 162,217-18, 221 2, 242, 247, 249, 272, 276, 281, 296 Vedic Age, 241 . Venizelos,239 Venus, 177 Versailles Treaty... 195 Asura, 18, 69-74, 186, 201, 234, 267, 272, 291, 376, 382-3, 386 Aswatthama, 298 Aswins, 9 Athena, 222 Atlantic, 210 Atlantis, 223 Augustan Age, 205, 212 Augustine, St., 150 Augustus, 207 Australia, 106 Avatara(s), 49, 55, 69, 161, 205, 261, 277, 286, 390 BAAL,220 Babylon, 223 Bacon, 16 ...

... extraordinary joy. Most people were young. There were very few children and their age was something around fourteen and fifteen, certainly not below ten or twelve. (I did not stay long enough to see all the details.) There were no very old people, apart from a few exceptions. Most of the people who went ashore were of middle age, except a few. Before this experience, certain individual cases had already... being supramentalised were examined. There were a few surprises and I took note of them. I even talked to some of them about it. But the ones I made disembark today I saw very distinctly: they were middle-aged, neither young children nor old people, apart from some rare exceptions, and this agreed very well with my expectations. I decided not to tell anything, not to give any names. As I did not remain... July 1957. 3 The film gave a vivid picture of the religious life, perhaps as lived by Ramakrishna Paramhamsa at the highest and purest level. But even to him, one of the precursors of the New Age, religion, even in its most unselfish and ecstatic devotion, could not but be directed towards a world hereafter — just like all religion, all spirituality, all yoga formerly. The Mother, now permeated ...

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... each instance was the basic law for whoever aspired to be a part of the New Life they had come to create on earth. A surprise akin to the young sadhak's but in another context awaited a middle-aged Sannyasi who wanted to join the Ashram, He offered as his credentials the ascetic regime he had followed for years. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, while appreciating the capacity for discipline ...

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... loses his heart in sheer rapture. The blood flows leaping and gurgling, In the twinkling of an eye thy girdle gives way At the far horizon, O naked Beauty! In the next phase, in his middle age when the poet arrived at a mature consciousness, when he wrote his 'Ferry Boat', he seems to have come down to a more normal, ordinary and homely tune in his expression, suited to the movements of ...

... distinct signs of two men who came and took her away." The Brahmin added in desperation, "I must have my wife back, Sire." "Is she young, your wife?" "No, Sire, she is about my age," replied the middle-aged man. "Is she beautiful?" the King asked curiously. "No, Sire. Not at all. She may even be called ugly." "Sweet-tempered, is she?" asked the envious King. "No, Sire. In ...

... sense. You might think Words-worth was rather a contrast to Hugo. We have been accustomed to picture him as a sedate and philosophic solitary of Nature. But we must not allow our notion of him in middle or old age to colour or discolour the reality of him in his youth. Wordsworth learned his lesson in Romanticism not in England but in France. He was there just after the outbreak of the Revolution and had... lopment of Wordsworth. I mention it in order only to contradict the importance attached to it by some critics in connection with the sudden decline in Wordsworth's poetic powers a little past his middle age. Herbert Read is the chief exponent here, and he takes his cue from the fact that, although Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy did all they could to help Annette and the baby-girl, Wordsworth instead... any political party but with a very young person. Himself very young, he seems to have mixed up Romanticism with Romance. Some years ago it was discovered that the Archbishop-like Wordsworth of old age had in his youth a love-affair with a French girl named Annette Vallon and, just as Rousseau was the father of Anglo-French Romanticism, Wordsworth the Romanticist was the father of an Anglo-French baby ...

Amal Kiran   >   Books   >   Other-Works   >   Talks on Poetry
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... blears articulate monotony". Though he subscribes to the common notion that there was a sudden decline Page 280 in Wordsworth's poetic powers a little past his middle age, he rejects the reason given by Herbert Read for this catastrophe. Read's psychoanalytic reading of the phenomenon leads him to conclude that Wordsworth's love-affair with the French girl Annette... with the French Revolution when it gave rise to a dictator like Napoleon. The visionary poet and Nature-lover in him yielded place to the dry intellectual and prosaic moraliser of the Augustan age; the beautiful blend of Pantheism and Transcendentalism that had grown in him was replaced by a faith in the Orthodox Christian Church. He became obsessed with the role of a teacher and ceased ...

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... likeable and mild-mannered day with him — 32 years later. He was all of a Telugu gentleman, a Brahmin (pukka). He was of medium height and build, rather on the slimmer side. Later, the all-too common middle-age paunch asserted itself. He did not do much to fight it. He was soft-spoken and his eyes too were soft and tinged with kindness. He wore a lush crop of hair and a beard — not too long but respectable ...

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... 'British democracy to the cause of Indian freedom'. The various publications issued from the house of Natesan in the form of political biographies, speeches and writings served as 'an eye-opener to the middle-aged and an inspiration to the young'. Besides making such literary contributions Natesan played a significant role at all levels of political life in the Presidency. In the annals of the Indian National ...

... ascertainable history which comes in with the striking figures of Chandragupta, Chanakya, Asoka, the Gupta emperors and goes down through the multitude of famous Hindu and Mahomedan figures of the middle age to quite modern times. In ancient India there was the life of republics, oligarchies, democracies, small kingdoms of which no detail of history now survives, afterwards the long effort at empire-building... able to do anything much of any great value, but that vast national structure, the Mahabharata, gathering into its cycle the poetic literature and expressing so completely the life of a long formative age, that it is said of it in a popular saying which has the justice if also the exaggeration of a too apt epigram, "What is not in this Bharata, is not in Bharatavarsha (India)," and the Ramayana, the greatest ...

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... child; but now when I am a grown-up man, Sri Aurobindo has proved it to me by my own example. In the former days of the Ashram, there was a lady - though she was not much of a lady -a woman of middle age. At that time, I was the doctor in charge of the Ashram Dispensary. She used to come to the dispensary and bother me much. She was a quarrelsome woman, she used to fuss over nothing; she was fat... both a poet and an artist. I think he does some sketches even now; if you are interested, when you go to Corner House, you can pay him a visit and look at his face. Well, he was a poet even at a young age, he was a born poet. You know what a born poet is ? Right from his mother's womb, he was into poetry. That's what we call a born poet. I'm not a born poet, I have been made into a poet. There is a big ...

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... of whom were from the Ashram. They were mostly young - the few children were between fourteen and fifteen and very few were very old - but the majority of those that were permitted to land were middle-aged people. As she did not remain until the end "the picture was not absolutely clear or complete". For just when the Mother was straining her faculties to observe everything, she had the feeling... Aurobindo had left his body; now he had come to Delhi, the heart of India, not like the military conquerors of old, but as a conqueror of spiritual realms, as the master-builder of the coming supramental age. The gods themselves seemed to welcome him to Delhi, for although it was a bleak winter morning, there was a brisk shower following the installation, and then, as the AIR commentator, Melville de Mello ...

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... safe basis of wise method and order. The ripe result of this effort was the Shastra. When we speak of the Shastra nowadays, we mean too often only the religio-social system of injunctions of the middle age made sacrosanct by their mythical attribution to Manu, Parashara and other Vedic sages. But in older India Shastra meant any systematised teaching and science; each department of life, each line... of a still greater importance. For it is that which, always surviving, has coloured permanently the Indian mind and life. It has remained the same behind every change of forms and throughout all the ages of the civilisation it has renewed its effectiveness and held its field. This second side of the cultural effort took the form of an endeavour to cast the whole of life into a religious mould; it multiplied... concealed truth and their psychic value and are indispensable in this stage for the development and difficult awakening of the soul shrouded in the ignorance of material Nature. Page 221 The middle stage, the second type starts from these things, but gets behind them; it is capable of understanding more clearly and consciently the psychic truths, the conceptions of the intelligence, the aesthetic ...

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... from the exhausting preoccupations of earning and spending, but assured of the material necessities of life - food, clothing, shelter - so that they could turn towards the higher life. And in her middle age she was actually to be in a position to organise such a community life for a large group of spiritual aspirants. Thus, in the wider background 'of the inspiring epic of her divine ministry and... giving to the world again "the eternal word under a new form" , 't was to be "the synthesis of all human knowledge". The Word, Logos, the source of all knowledge is the same, it is eternal; but age after age there is need for a new reading, a new formulation, of the eternal Word in the collective experience and intelligible idiom of the present time. When Richard saw Sri Aurobindo in 1910 and they ...

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... “As for the people I saw on board the ship, I recognized them all. Some were from here, from the Ashram, others were from elsewhere, but I know them too. … Most of the people who went ashore were middle-aged, except a few … “When I came back I knew, simultaneously with the recollection of the experience, that the supramental world is permanent, that my presence there is permanent, and that only a... to happen. The Preparatory Work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother What do we, Aurobindians, stand for? Is the vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother just another of those well-intentioned New Age fancies, or does it have a basis in fact which can be spelled out? In the first place there are their abundant writings and transcribed sayings covering a period of nearly a century; this literature... material and the occult worlds always take place against a background where time and space are quite different from the dimensions we move in. The supramental manifestation, or the beginning of the new age, in 1956, should be seen in this kind of perspective. One could interpret the preceding centuries as leading up to it, and in the succeeding decennia things have undoubtedly accelerated under its influence ...

... bauley 'my dear', Bapkey boley 'damn shuar', Ma hoey jhiyeyr shathey tulona. Dadarey - Bangali manush ar holo na .... Occasionally, a Baul used to come too. He was a middle-aged man, his head covered with long, salt-and­ pepper hair, wearing a white robe and carrying an ektara in his hand. And as soon as we asked him to sing, he would tunefully sing this favourite song... Soon I became his favourite student. Along with physical development, Biren-da taught me how to build an ideal character and love the country. This is what gave a new direction to my life. At the age of 14-15 I resolved that the ordinary life was not for me and that I would consecrate my life for some greater purpose. Biren-da taught me that to have a beautiful, strong body and to be a champion ...

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... back, I decided not to mention any names … Most people were young. There were very few children and their age was something around fourteen or fifteen, certainly not below ten or twelve … There were no very old people, apart from a few exceptions. Most of the people who went ashore were middle-aged, except a few … ‘What I can say is that the appraisal, the assessment [about their readiness to go ashore]... began to promise that one day there would be a new consciousness, a new world, something divine which would manifest upon Earth, but they said: “It will come, it will come” in the future – they spoke of ages, aeons, thousands and millions of years. They did not have this feeling which we have now: that it is bound to come, that it is very near. Of course, human life is very brief and there is the inclination... yesterday evening … ‘What has happened, what is truly new, is that a new world is born, born, born! It is not the old world being transformed, it is a new world that is born! And we are right in the middle of the transitional period in which the two are still entangled in each other – when the old one still persists all-powerful and entirely dominating the ordinary consciousness, but when the new one ...

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... some kind of example of how to write in a non-Aurobindonian manner: The Parrot's Death When rains fall Is all astir My green soul, My prisoner. November. Middle age Struggles, needing More than a cage. Soul is to cage As love to foe. My loved one, my bird, Take heart and go! Where is any modernism, Indian or otherwise... Aurobindo as a whipping-post. His own personal preference is for "realistic poetry reflecting... the din and hubbub, the confusion and indecision, the flashes of goodness and beauty of our age". There is nothing intrinsically objectionable in this penchant, provided it does not deprive one of response to other kinds of poetry. But there must be no particular philosophical shade attached ...

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... bequests laid down by law, left his disciples seventeen camels, with this order: "You will divide the camels among the three of you in the following proportions: the oldest shall have half, the middle in age one-third, and the youngest shall have one-ninth." As soon as he was dead and the will was read, the disciples were at first amazed at such an inefficient disposition of their Master's assets... contemporary needs of mankind than the knowledge and power of reason. In Western history, Plato's philosophy marks a great transition between the age of supra-rational knowledge, represented by the mysteries, occultism and mysticism, and the age of reason. Plato made a distinction between perception and reason and argued that the true source of knowledge is reason. Reason, he taught, is made up... the pupil during the journey. Sufism is neither religion nor philosophy; it is neither belief nor a set of rituals; it is a discipline and a process of supra-rational knowledge. Throughout the ages, the teachers of Sufism have all said essentially the same thing, yet their words are different. As pointed out by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, "They are creations suited for the different people addressed ...

... example of how to write in a non-Aurobindonian manner: Page 444 The Parrot's Death When rains fall Is all astir My green soul, My prisoner. November. Middle age Struggles, needing More than a cage. Soul is to cage As love to foe. My loved one, my bird, Take heart and go ! Where is any modernism, Indian or otherwise, here... verse. Even when a Tennysonian influence may be traced, it is just the passion and the poignancy and the true poetic tone that render him non-Tennysonian. Consider this passage of Tennyson's in the middle of the Enid-story: 1 We may note, in passing, that C.R.M. is wrongly informed about Stephen Phillips having been at Cambridge with Sri Aurobindo. Phillips was in touch with the group at Cambridge... Sri Aurobindo as a whipping-post. His own personal preference is for "realistic poetry reflecting ...the din and hubbub, the confusion and indecision, the flashes of goodness and beauty of our age". There is nothing intrinsically objectionable in this penchant, provided it does not deprive one of response to other kinds of poetry. But there must be no particular philosophical shade attached ...

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... Alexander was delighted with their progress, but the Macedonians were disheartened and deeply disturbed for their own future, because \ ________________ 1 Matron: a married woman, esp. a middle-aged woman with children. 2 Cyrus the Great was a conqueror who founded the Acheamenian Empire. The figure of Cyrus has survived throughout history more than as a man who founded an empire. He became... joyful or jubilant, esp. because of triumph or success; rejoice. 2 Sophocles was born in Athens in 496 B.C. He was one of the most farnous writers of dramatic tragedy. Until his death, at the age of ninety, he was one of the authors most loved, respected and awarded. He wrote more than 2oo plays. 3 Rudder: anything that guides or directs. 4 Curb: something that restrains or holds back... them neglected. He sat long over his wine because of his fondness for conversation. And although at other times his society was delightful and his manner full of charm beyond that of any prince of his age, yet when he was drinking he would sometimes become offensively arrogant and descend to the level of a common soldier, and on these occasions he would allow himself not only to give way to boasting but ...

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... his easy chair, he suddenly passed away due to cardiac arrest. The Mother revealed to his sister, another Ashramite, that his soul had ascended to the 'solar world'. (4)'D' and 'E' were two middle-aged sadhikas of the Ashram. They were knit together by a very close bond of friendship. When 'D' died in the Jipmer Hospital due to a perforation in her heart, 'E' broke down and complained to the Mother... may perhaps establish some communication with him by some non-scientific means. In order to satisfy these two demands of the human heart, a new line of serious research has sprung up since the middle of the nineteenth century. This has been given the name of "Psychical Research"; and in its earlier phase even reputed orthodox scientists like Sir Oliver Lodge, Dr. Wallace and Dr. Crookes got associated... findings: "nāsau munir yasya mataṁ na bhinnam", "There are no two sages whose opinions are riot different." Therefore the riddle remains intact as ever, defying all solution. In ancient India, in the age of the Upanishads, the young aspirant Nachiketa put this very question before Yama, the Lord of Death: "This debate that there is over the man who has passed and some say 'This he is not' and ...

... On the whole, the people were young; there were very few children, and their ages were around fourteen or fifteen, but certainly not below ten or twelve (I did not stay long enough to see all the detail). There were no very old people, with the exception of a few. Most of the people who had gone ashore were of a middle age—again, except for a few. Several times before this experience, certain individual... people capable of being supramentalized are examined; I had then had a few surprises which I had noted—I even told some people. But those whom I disembarked today I saw very distinctly. They were of a middle age, neither young children nor elderly people, with only a few rare exceptions, and this quite corresponded to what I expected. I decided not to say anything, not to give any names. As I did not stay... whole. But to live in Auroville one must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness. 2. Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages. 3. Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within, Auroville will boldly spring towards future realisations ...

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... same face, a modern Teutonic face reappearing always as one of the leaders, recognisable especially by the helmet, moustache & small aquiline face (middle-aged). Period Kaliyuga; a war of great historic importance. 2) A dancing girl of the same age, strong aquiline face, in loose transparent draperies. This seems to be a Roman period of the Kali. A handsome & imperial race, but already weakening... European womanhood in the future earth-destiny. 3) Also in the clouds. Certain scenes of a pursuit in the early Manwantaras of a race of divinised Pashus by Barbarians. Also, animals & arms of other ages. (The latter are common). The whole of 3, which is recorded elsewhere, 6 was an instance expressly given of the way in which the Theosophists arrive at their results & shows both their sincerity... often than those of the active mind & confuse the thought-perception. False perceptions, however, always turn out to be true perceptions, true in essence, false in incidence. Eg (1) a dog paused in the middle of the road, three tendencies were seen, one in the direction it was originally [taking] 15 became a vain effort of the pranamaya to persist & was soon forgotten by the dog, but remained in its ...

Sri Aurobindo   >   Books   >   CWSA   >   Record of Yoga
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... turned thirteen—an age when most girls still play with dolls— when your mother died after putting me in charge of this household she had grown to love so much. She can judge from where she is how I have acquitted myself. You know I have borne and brought up children, done my duty to society and guests and run this household myself. At twenty-six I feel quite worldly-wise and middle-aged. If you try to... nearly as juvenile as his master, being actually of about the same age. Narayani rippled with laughter. With her mother's indignation and anxiety on the one hand and Ram's tomfoolery on the other, the whole affair appeared to her exquisitely comic. Next she assumed a serious tone and asked, "What will you do with a tree in the middle of the courtyard, Ram?" Ram was amazed. "What will I do? Why... infinite within her. She lavishes her riches because she must, as the Infinite fills every inch of space with the stirring of life and energy because it is the Infinite. India of the ages... India of the ages is not dead... All that was in India's past is still dormant, it is not destroyed; it is waiting there to assume new forms... The third power of the ancient Indian spirit was ...

... dashed government that spoiled the lovely game I had been playing in secret! "Suren Banerjee was the undisputed leader of the Bengal Moderates and known as the uncrowned king of Bengal. He was middle-aged, short and thin; his scholarship was vast, his intelligence sharp. He was a fiery speaker and easily held sway over the minds of the Congressmen. As the leader of the Nationalist Party, I had quite... having to shed blood? That wars, killings and violence are only a cruel human game? Look, have you read the Gita? Then you know what Sri Krishna says. He says that He is born, that God is born, age after age, to uphold the Good and to destroy the Evil. Was it not Sri Krishna who turned Kurukshetra into a huge playfield of death, who destroyed the Kauravas? And what about Mother Durga, Kali? No, no.... Quietly they filed out of the room, their heads bowed. * Today Sri Aurobindo began on his own: "Yesterday I spoke to you about the young men of the New Age. Now, when I look at you, I feel that you are children of a still newer age. Many of those same young people must have been reborn in you in order to participate in the Mother's work." "But we don't feel anything!" admitted two or three ...

... the trustees of the Ashram during her absence and on her return she had to spend the night outside. Who is Sujata? A child of 9 who came to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and spent her youth and middle age serving Them. Nolinida, Dyuman, Harikant, trustees all, knew this Sujata from her childhood, she has worked intimately with them, but they colluded with Counouma to lock her out. Yet they knew... beings, but who understand . And I could see the whole story, all those human attempts throughout the ages, all those never-achieved legends: there were the Cathars and the Knights of the Round Table, Rimbaud, Jules Verne and Treasure Island — a thousand legends from all countries and all ages. And all those sorrows and pains, those closed doors and dashed hopes, because Page 274 the... Recherches Evolutives . × 58 Our age of darkness and falsehood, at the end of a cycle that sees the truth increasingly diminishing before the advent of a new age of truth. × 59 See Notebooks of ...