... Historical Impressions: Napoleon 21-December-1920 The name of Napoleon has been a battle-field for the prepossessions of all sorts of critics, and, according to their predilections, idiosyncrasies and political opinions, men have loved or hated, panegyrised or decried the Corsican. To blame Napoleon is like criticising Mont Blanc or throwing mud at Kinchinjunga... same order of beings as Napoleon. The Rakshasa is the supreme and thoroughgoing individualist, who believes life to be meant for his own untrammelled self-fulfilment and self-assertion. A necessary element in humanity, he is particularly useful in revolutions. As a pure type in man he is ordinarily a thing of the past; he comes now mixed with other elements. But Napoleon was a Rakshasa of the... to do these things, but I am Napoleon". The Rakshasa is not an altruist. If by satisfying himself he can satisfy others, he is pleased, but he does not make that his motive. If he has to trample on others to satisfy himself, he does so without compunction. Is he not the strong man, the efficient ruler, the mighty one? The Rakshasa has kama, he has no prema. Napoleon knew not what love was; he ...
... 16. Two Poems Hitler and his God “The Dwarf Napoleon” Sri Aurobindo wrote two poems about Hitler and Nazism; both poems are reproduced in extenso below. The first, called “The Dwarf Napoleon – Hitler, October 1939”, is written in a polemical, scathing vein; it is an ad hominem attack on Adolf Hitler shortly after his invasion of Poland. The poetic quality... quality of these lines is of secondary importance. The writing of “The Dwarf Napoleon” was much more a yogic act, an act of yogic magic, to counter the aggression of a dictator who had already annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia and was therefore, now that Poland’s turn had come, frequently compared with Napoleon. Sri Aurobindo has often stressed the importance of standing up against a spreading negative... knowledge … but the differences are still more substantial.” 1039 Thomas Mann saw Napoleon as the man who had to secure the ideals of the Enlightenment as formulated by the French revolutionaries, and who had to divulge these ideals everywhere in Europe. 1040 Sri Aurobindo was very strongly of the same opinion. “If [Napoleon] had not risen at the time, the [reactionary] European powers would have crushed ...
... their passions, the birthmark came out and showed itself in acts of often insane tyranny. This was especially the case with Alexander; but Napoleon was not free from the same taint. Alexander, we know, strove consciously to mould his life into an Iliad; Napoleon regarded his as a Titanic epic and when facts would not fit in ideally with his conception of himself as its great protagonist, he would alter... impassive calm & insensibility to human misfortune & grief was one of the necessary "belongings" of the great demigod, the human Jove which Napoleon thought to be his destined role. If that vast, flaming and rushing mass of genius & impetuosity which we call Napoleon was incompatible with stoical calm & insensibility, so was the ardent mass of sensuousness & imagination which Kalidasa portrayed in Pururavus... temperament should be by its nature absolutely unfitted for practical action & regal power. Nero & Charles I were artistic temperaments cursed with the doom of kingship. But Alexander of Macedon & Napoleon Buonaparte were poets on a throne, and the part they played in history was not that of incompetents & weaklings. There are times when Nature gifts the poetic temperament with a peculiar grasp of the ...
... its passion, its fierce demand on the world, its colossal impetus. Through four of them chiefly it helped itself, through Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre and Napoleon. Mirabeau initiated, Danton inspired, Robespierre slew, Page 513 Napoleon fulfilled. The first three appeared for the moment, the man in the multitude, did their work and departed. The pace was swift and, if they had remained,... the French Revolution lies not in what it effected, but in what it thought and was. Its action was chiefly destructive. It prepared many things, it founded nothing. Even the constructive activity of Napoleon only built a halfway house in which the ideas of 1789 might rest until the world was fit to understand them better and really The ideas themselves were not new; they existed in Christianity and before... and rang with the hunkara and the attahasyam. It was only when She found that She was trampling on Mahadeva, God expressed in the principle of Nationalism, that She remembered Herself, flung aside Napoleon, the mighty Rakshasa, and settled down quietly to her work of perfecting nationality as the outer shell within which brotherhood may be securely and largely organised. The Revolution was also ...
... read out to Sri Aurobindo some passages from Aldous Huxley's Ends and Means. They were on war, passive resistance, non-attachment, the Jacobins, Caesar, Napoleon and dictators in general. The last was: "More books have been written about Napoleon than about any other human being. The fact is deeply and alarmingly significant. . . . Duces and Fuhrers will cease to plague the world only when the majority... Caesars and Napoleons will duly rise and make them miserable." SRI AUROBINDO: All that is shallow, it is mere moralising. If Caesar and Napoleon are not to be admired, then it means that human capacity and attainment are not to be admired. Caesar and Napoleon have been admired not merely because they were successful: plenty of successful people are not admired. Caesar has won admiration because it... admire Napoleon because he was a great organiser and he stabilised the French Revolution. He organised France and, through France, the whole of Europe. His immense powers and abilities—are these things not great? PURANI: I suppose men admire them because they find in them the realisation of their own potential greatness, SRI AUROBINDO: Of course. But Huxley speaks of Caesar and Napoleon as if ...
... direct or indirect Yogic discipline, several quite different things? I was told that Napoleon used to do this. Yes, Julius Caesar also — he could dictate 5 letters on different subjects at a time to 5 secretaries without losing the thread of any of them for a moment. It is said about Napoleon that whenever he wanted to think or talk he used to open a particular drawer of his... only virtuous men are great men and those who have vices are not great, which is an absurd contention. All of them went after women,— two were ambitious, unscrupulous. Napoleon was most arrogant and violent. Shakespeare stole deer. Napoleon lied freely, Caesar was without scruples. Page 251 ... his mind. And when he desired to be quiet he just closed it. How did he manage it? Napoleon had a clear and powerful mind and a strong will—that is how. One part of R seems to have turned beautifully towards the Mother and that is why she is able to use him as an instrument in curing cases of illness. The remaining parts seem to be still egoistic. Perhaps if his vital ...
... that it was myself. EVENING DR. MANILAL: Could Hitler be called as great as Napoleon, Sir? SRI AUROBINDO: What? How can he be compared with Napoleon? He can't stand any comparison with Napoleon. Hitler is a man of one idea; he has no other capacity or activity except that he is also a house-painter, while Napoleon had many sides: he was not only a military general, but also an administrator,... policies which some call cautiousness. And all his power comes from the Asura by whom he is possessed and guided while Napoleon was a normal human being acting through the power of his brain which reached the highest development possible in a human being. DR. MANILAL: Napoleon is said to have been immoral. SRI AUROBINDO: If you mean that he was not chaste, it is true. As I said, he was a normal... whom he murdered later on. PURANI: And you can see in Europe the type of New Order and civilisation he wants to establish. NIRODBARAN: But as regards military genius they say he is as great as Napoleon. SRI AUROBINDO: How? One can say that he has developed a new technique which he has pursued with great audacity. Even that new technique is not his. It was discovered by a Frenchman and was passed ...
... the mouth of Napoleon. Napoleon, before he was banished to the God-forsaken island of St. Helena far out in the southern wastes of the Atlantic ocean, had been exiled to the frequently man-visited isle of Elba in the Mediterranean. This happened after the Battle of Leipzig, known as the Battle of the Standards because the flags of five or more nations were flying in it against Napoleon who had returned... "What news of Napoleon?" Napoleon himself answered back from his boat, "The Emperor is in excellent health." Yes, the Emperor was in high spirits and fighting fit, but his stay in Elba had altered a good deal of the European situation. A Bourbon had been placed on the French throne, the Army had gone over to the new king, the British and the Prussians had consolidated their positions. Napoleon, of course ...
... the service of the new regime. A substantial contingent was sent to check Napoleon before he could approach Paris. It came in sight of his small group and made him out at the head of it. The soldiers were ordered to train their rifles on him and frighten him out of his supposedly hare-brained ambition to effect a coup. Napoleon, instead of being stopped, broke away from his group and kept striding towards... has been enriched not only by its employment but also by its being put at the service of a profound peace in the midst of life's vicissitudes. I believe that master-strategists and commanders like Napoleon could somehow tap resources above their own natural movements. Napoleon's victories were like little miracles as if he were an instrument of some superforce. Even against heavy odds he could make... shouted: "Where is the Frenchman who will shoot his emperor?" That single cry was enough to turn the tables. The entire contingent rose as one man and throwing away its rifles ran frenziedly towards Napoleon, exclaiming "Vive l'empereur.'" The soldiers knelt down at his feet, catching his hands and kissing them. The tremendous personality and genius of the man who had started as "the Little Corporal" ...
... shone out from the small island of Santo Domingo, a rival of quintessential quality to the great Napoleon. Napoleon who could stand no rivals planned to ruin him. All the more a cause of annoyance to the mighty Emperor was this Negro because he had styled himself "Bona-parte of Santo Domingo". Napoleon sent an offer to discuss terms, guaranteeing safe conduct. Toussaint who never broke his word put... his championship of Toussaint we might expect Words-worth to have strengthened all the more his old ideal of political liberty. But the growing resentment he felt against Napoleon led him to believe that a phenomenon like Napoleon would have been impossible if the French Revolution had not occurred and under-mined the ancient order of feudal Europe. Liberalism he saw as a danger everywhere, a potential... movement. Napoleon rose as the organiser of his country. France had initiated a liberal order but could not hold it together. The forces of the French Revolu-tion were in practice more destructive than constructive: they could make their hatreds take effect but not their loves get rea-lised. The slogans of Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite were a divine music hanging over a human chaos. If Napoleon had not ...
... automatic writing and particularly in communicating with spirits. Now, there are garrulous spirits. They come to many places at the same time, especially people like Napoleon (I do not know why they have a partiality for Napoleon), everywhere Napoleon arrives and tells you extraordinary stories of his life and usually very contradictory stories and perhaps all at the same time! These are really very active ...
... thing—lines of Force. In the universe there are many lines of Force on which various personalities or various achievements and formations spring up—e.g. the line Pericles-Caesar-Napoleon or the line Alexander-Jenghiz-Tamerlane-Napoleon—meeting together there—so it may be too in poetry, lines of poetic force prolonging themselves from one poet to another, meeting and Page 546 diverging. Yours seems... should have been a Bhakta or a Jnani. One like Shelley or like Plato for instance could be said to have a developed mental being centred round the psychic—of the vital the same can hardly be said. Napoleon had a strong vital but not one organised round the psychic being. What you suggest [ that certain forces from a past life or lives may "stick" to a person in the present life ] is true—that ...
... 1800s,' we can watch the road and see the march of Time. Shall we? There goes Napoleon Bonaparte. From being the First Consul of the First Republic —established after the French Revolution of 1789 which abolished monarchy —he has crowned himself Emperor in 1804. Emperor Bonaparte's armies run all over Europe; and Napoleon sows everywhere the new ideas that had sprouted with the Revolution: Liberty,... founds the Bank of France, and so forth. Page 17 All these institutions stand right up to this day, testifying to the broad range of Napoleon's genius. We may say, in a word, that Napoleon is the bringer of Order to his country, the giver of Law. Law paves the way for her sister, Science. Science rides triumphant. "Horses of steam were bitted and the lightnings made a team to ...
... paper by themselves like water.' In the same context Dada spoke about Napoleon. 'Once Napoleon is said to have remarked to his wife Josephine: "The mirror reflects without talking, you talk without reflecting!" (Le miroir réfléchit sans paroles, vous parlez sans réfléchir.) On hearing these words from Napoleon Josephine retorted at once: "This proves that I am polished like ...
... or destiny or whatever you may call it. Napoleon III used to say : "So “ong as something is necessary to be done by me it will be in any case; when that necessity will cease, I shall be thrown on the wayside like an outworn vessel." An” that is what exactly happened to him. Napoleon I also believed in fate. Disciple : When somebody asked Napoleon I, why did he plan if he believed in fate ...
... Aldous Huxley says Napoleon and Caesar were bandits. SRI AUROBINDO: Nonsense. NIRODBARAN: He also says all evil, economic and otherwise, of the modern age are due to Napoleon.. PURANI: That is going too far. SRI AUROBINDO: If he does say so, it shows a mind that is pedantic and without plasticity. PURANI: Anatole France, though not an imperialist, says Napoleon gave glory to France... the Rhine were unwilling to give up the Code Napoleon and the institutions he had brought into existence. SATYENDRA: They say his Russian Campaign was a proof that he was not a military genius. It is Tolstoy who belittles him in his War and Peace . SRI AUROBINDO: War and Peace is a novel after all. SATYENDRA: There Tolstoi says that Napoleon blundered by burning Moscow. SRI AUROBINDO:... successful because he was supported by all the trading agencies who badly wanted safe commercial highways along the banks of rivers. It is true about Napoleon that his physical capacity failed towards the end owing to his disease. NIRODBARAN: Napoleon had a pituitary tumour, as a result of which his mental powers declined. SRI AUROBINDO: History says it was cancer of the stomach. But who says he ...
... granting that there is destiny, why could it not be changed ? He says about Napoleon that the results of his rise would have followed inevitably. It is a very debatable proposition I believe the results would have materially varied. If Napoleon had not come at that time the European powers would have crushed the French Democracy. Napoleon stabilised the revolution, so that the world got the ideal of democracy... mere moralising. If Napoleon and Caesar are not to be admired then it means that human capacity and attainment are not to be admired. They are not to be admired because they were successful; plenty of successful people are not admired. Caesar is admired because it was he who founded the greatness of imperial Rome which is one of the greatest periods of human civilization; and Napoleon because he was a... by Aldous Huxley. A long quotation from Ends and Means was read out to Sri Aurobindo . He did not seem impressed. Then the following passage was read : "More books have been written about Napoleon than about any other human being. The fact is deeply and alarmingly significant. .. Duces and Fuehrers will cease to plague the world only when the majority of its inhabitants regard such adventurers ...
... colossus we call Napoleon Bonaparte, gathering up the new France into a scourge of God and lashing out at the Europe united to crush her, and shattering the entire balance of the old world to the sound of the mighty mantra plucked from the heart of the Revolution - La Marseillaise. Through the personality of Napoleon revolutionary France let loose the spirit of modern times - Napoleon who was born on... fraternity, he too precipitated a continent-wide clash of arms and was intensely influenced by the Napoleonic fury. Not only did he start in 1941 his campaign against Russia in the name of Napoleon and on the very day Napoleon had marched against Tsar Alexander I; he also fixed in 1940 the 15th of August as the day on which he would complete his conquest of Western Europe by broadcasting from Buckingham Palace ...
... him. SRI AUROBINDO: No, they won't. NIRODBARAN: Already he is being hailed as greater than Napoleon. . SRI AUROBINDO: That he is not. Napoleon did not have Hitler's resources. If he had had them, he would have conquered England. SATYENDRA: Ludwig writes in his biography of Napoleon that Napoleon was the first to conceive of a federation of Europe under France. SRI AUROBINDO: No, Henry IV... IV and his minister were the first to conceive of federated European states. SATYENDRA: Napoleon of course wanted the federation to be under France. SRI AUROBINDO: Under himself. SATYENDRA: He was France. PURANI: Even the Germans favoured the idea. Goethe welcomed it. SRI AUROBINDO: Goethe was not a patriot. He said that the Germans were barbarians and would always be barbarians. ...
... life of Napoleon. I was told that Sri Aurobindo had asked some older sadhaks in the Ashram to read Abbott's Life of Napoleon. I found a copy of the book and I would read it daily in Mother's room. One day at noon while Mother was resting, I was reading the book in a corner near the window. Mother suddenly woke up from her rest and asked me: "What's happening? I suddenly saw Napoleon get into... showing me his maps and charts of the war." I said: "I don't know anything about that but I'm reading here a book on the life of Napoleon." Mother asked: "Who's the author?" "It's by Abbott." "But Abbott's an Englishman. The English don't like Napoleon," said Mother. I said: "Mother, that's true, but this writer writes beautifully." And I read the entire preface out to Mother ...
... stomach cancer officially, though arsenic poisoning has often been alleged. Page 167 After several pendulum swings from monarchy to republic to monarchy we come to Napoleon III (1808-73). Nephew of Napoleon I, he was elected president of the Second Republic in 1848. Like his uncle, he too proclaimed himself emperor in 1852. This is the same Emperor whose Empress Eugenie joined the f... imagination of the world. The first Republic came into being. In 1791 the French Company's privileges were abolished. On 30 October 1792 the slave trade was prohibited. Then the First Consul, the Corsican Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), soon put an end to the Republic by founding the First Empire in 1804. He conquered large parts of Europe, then after several meanders of destiny, was finally defeated at Waterloo... festivities at Alexandria, when the Suez Canal was opened in 1869, and its builder Ferdinand de Lesseps invited Mother's grandmother, Mira Ismalun. Remember? Recently I read a charming story about Napoleon III and how he came to build in Pondicherry a monument to Aayi, a lady of the night. 1 To escape the wrath of Emperor of Vijayanagar, Krishna Deva Raya (reign: 1509-1529), who mistook her house for ...
... on its many sides. But there was no question of Avatarhood or consciousness of a descent or pressure of spiritual planes. Mysticism was no part of what he had to manifest. Napoleon I don't think it can be said that Napoleon had little of ego. He was exceedingly ego-centric. He made himself a dictator from Brumaire, and as a dictator he should always have acted—but he felt the need of support and... great personality on the usual level. But from the point of view of Avatarhood I would no more think of defending his moral perfection according to modern standards than I would think of defending Napoleon or Caesar against the moralists or the democratic critics or the debunkers in order to prove that they were Vibhutis. Vibhuti, Avatar are terms which have their own meaning and scope, and they are... have been an entire failure. His hesitations were due to this defect—if it can be called one. He could not have dealt successfully with parties or a parliamentary assembly. I never heard that Napoleon failed at Waterloo for want of self-confidence. I have always read that he failed because he Page 502 was, owing to his recent malady, no longer so quick and self-confident in decision ...
... As for Napoleon, Caesar and Shakespeare, not one of them was a virtuous man, but they were great men—and that was your contention, that only virtuous men are great men and those who have vices are not great, which is an absurd contention. All of them went after women—two were ambitious, unscrupulous. Napoleon was most arrogant and violent. Page 505 Shakespeare stole deer, Napoleon lied freely... freely, Caesar was without scruples. But do you really believe that men like Napoleon, Caesar, Shakespeare were not great men and did nothing for the world or for the cosmic purpose? that God was deterred from using them for His purpose because they had defects of character and vices? What a singular idea! Why should he [ the Divine ] care [ about the vices of great men ]? Is he a policeman ...
... effect a transformation of the Vibhuti [ p. 35 ]. I would like to know the difference. Take for example, Christ, Chaitanya, Ramakrishna, Confucius, Zarathustra, Buddha, Shankara, Mohammed, Alexander, Napoleon—among these well-known figures which are Vibhutis of the Mother and which are Vibhutis of the Ishwara? And what about the Mother's action in Avataras like Rama and Krishna? The Mother's Vibhutis... If you mean the divine personalities of the Mother—the answer is yes. It may even be said that each Vibhuti draws his energies from the Four, from one of them predominantly in most cases, as Napoleon from Mahakali, Rama from Mahalakshmi, Augustus Caesar from Mahasaraswati. 31 October 1935 "Four great Aspects of the Mother, four of her leading Powers and Personalities have stood in front... also can the vital, provided they are organised by and centred around the true psychic being; they share the immortality of the psychic" [p. 18]. Does this mean that the vital of strong persons like Napoleon is carried forward in the future lives? But how can it be said that their vital was centred around the psychic being? It is only about the Bhaktas and the Jnanis that we can say that their vital was ...
... to the left ); always quite straight up but with all their force here ( pointing to the stomach ), and so this makes them very powerful!" And he always spoke of Napoleon. He used to say, "Napoleon, you see..." ( Mother shows that Napoleon had a big stomach. ) And he had a visit from Tagore when Tagore was in Japan and he told me, "Have you observed how Tagore stands quite upright, like this, with his... "Haven't you noticed that all men who have great power have a big belly? ( Laughter )—Because they concentrate their forces there, so this makes their stomach big!" He always used to give the example of Napoleon; and he said, "These people stand up quite straight, always straight with their head erect, never like this ( Mother bends the head forward ), never like this ( Mother bends the head to the right ...
... was dazzled by the glamour of Hitler's victory and considered him greater than Alexander and Napoleon, when others were groaning under the iron wheels of his war-machine, and still others hoped to change his heart by non-violence, Sri Aurobindo's vision of Hitler never wavered for a moment — he, a dwarf Napoleon with a rudimentary psychic being whose heart was beyond any possibility of change, became... long before any other person, Sri Aurobindo had seen this dark Asuric Power rising in Germany and striding over Europe, making Hitler its demoniac instrument, a pseudo-colossus, a self-acclaimed Napoleon. Therefore he supported the Allies and warned India of the forthcoming peril, much to the chagrin and indignation of our blind countrymen. Future events proved his forecast right to the letter. ... admiration from Europe, even from the whole world? Sri Aurobindo calls it his asuric māyā that cast a spell upon the nations to such an extent that he was considered superior even to Alexander and Napoleon! Sri Aurobindo tore the veil from the face of that deception and showed us the dire truth. History has no parallel of a maniac using all kinds of falsehood, hypocrisy, perversity to capture the i ...
... plan, a canal - Panama! Example 3: Here is a palindrome of seven words supposed to have been uttered by Napoleon. He was, as we know, first exiled to the isle of Elba before he was finally banished to the island of St. Helena. During his reminiscent spells at St. Helena, Napoleon is supposed to have said to his British attendant there: "Able was I ere I saw Elba." 32 14.Ingenuity:... appreciate the humour involved in this second example let us bear in mind that Napoleon Bonaparte's coat of arms bore the insignia of an eagle. "Lord John Russell sat at a city banquet next to a civic dignitary who taking a very beautiful snuff box from his pocket said: 'This was given to my father by the first Napoleon; there is a hen engraved on the top of it.' 'Surely,' said Russell, 'it cannot ...
... Magionot Line. It was at this time that Sri Aurobindo wrote "The Dwarf Napoleon: Hitler, October 1939". Military commentators were at the time given to comparing glibly Hitler with Napoleon, but only Sri Aurobindo with his synoptic view of the past, present and future could know the abysmal difference between the two. Napoleon, after all, had been cast in a heroic mould: Napoleon's mind was... His will dynamic in its grip and clasp. His eye could hold a world within its grasp And see the great and small things sovereignly. But who was this cruel Hitler, this "Dwarf Napoleon", that would bestride the agitated earth like the Colossus of old? There was all the difference between the sun-god and a satyr: Far other this creature of a nether clay, Void of ...
... inherited tact, needs a teacher or a Messiah to initiate it in the art of politics. In England the burgess was taught almost insensibly by the nobility; in France he found a Messiah in the great Napoleon. We had no Napoleon, but we had a nobility. Europeans, when the spirit moves them to brag of their superiority over us Asiatics, are in the habit of saying that the West is progressive, the East stationary ...
... the vital, provided they are organised by and centred around the true psychic being; they share the immortality of the psychic." (P. 18) Does this mean that the vital of strong persons like Napoleon is carried forward in the future lives? But how can it be said that their vital was centred round the psychic being? It is only about the Bhaktas and the Jnanis that we can say that their vital was... should have been a Bhakta or a Jnani. One like Shelley or like Plato for instance could be said to have a developed mental being centred round the psychic - of the vital the same can hardly be said. Napoleon had a strong vital, but not one organised round the psychic being. * "The ego is a formation of Nature; but it is not a formation of physical nature alone, therefore it does not cease ...
... Olympian type like Shankara, or Asuric, of the Titanic type like Napoleon; only the Asura, his Jnana being limited and muddied, is always confusing the Eternal with the grosser & temporary manifestations of Prakriti such as his own vital passions of lust & ambition; the Deva, being sattwic & a child of light, sees clearer. When Napoleon cried out, "What is the French Revolution? I am the French Revolution ...
... by the grace of God, goes Sir Philip Sidney." 28) God is a great & cruel Torturer because He loves. You do not understand this, because you have not seen & played with Krishna. 29) One called Napoleon a tyrant and imperial cut-throat; but I saw God armed striding through Europe. 30) I have forgotten what vice is and what virtue; I can only see God, His play in the world and His will in humanity... destroy her. 77) Genius discovers a system; average talent stereotypes it till it is shattered by fresh genius. It is dangerous for an army to be led by veterans; for on the other side God may place Napoleon. Page 431 78) When knowledge is fresh in us, then it is invincible; when it is old, it loses its virtue. This is because God moves always forward. 79) God is infinite Possibility. Therefore ...
... Among the Vibhutis may be counted: Veda Vyasa, Hatshepsut, Moses, Pericles, Socrates, Alexander, Confucius, Lao Tse, Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus, Mohammed, Joan of Arc, Leonardo da Vinci, Napoleon, Shankara, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, and undoubtedly many more in all times and climes. All of them were concretely aware that they had a specific, superhuman mission to fulfil and so they did. It... might be the outcome. Kings, queens and other scions of the feudal nobility that had been ruling over Europe since Charlemagne were still on their thrones, a century after the French Revolution and Napoleon, but it was generally felt that most of them were colossi with clay feet and could topple over at any moment. The historians agree that the overall situation at the turn of the 19th into the 20th ...
... made at the end of his poem "The Dwarf Napoleon". This poem ridiculed Hitler's pretensions to equal "the immense colossus of the past" who had arisen as a master-militarist to save the results of that progressive uprising, the French Revolution, from being submerged by the old-world powers ranged against it in all Europe outside France. Indeed, Napoleon was an autocrat, but Sri Aurobindo ...
... sources of the Nile, and he gave funds generously for a variety of scientific inquiries. Whether a longer life would have brought him to Caesar's clear intelligence, or the subtle understanding of Napoleon, is to be doubted. Royalty found him at twenty, after which warfare and administration absorbed him; in consequence he remained uneducated to the end. He could talk brilliantly, but fell into a hundred... endeared himself to his soldiers by his kindliness; he risked Page 86 their lives, but not heedlessly; and he seemed to feel all their wounds. As Caesar forgave Brutus and Cicero, and Napoleon Fouche and Talleyrand, so Alexander forgave Harpalus, the treasurer who had absconded with his funds and had returned to beg forgiveness; the young conqueror reappointed him treasurer to all men's ...
... great personality on the usual level. But from the point of view of Avatarhood I would no more think of defending his moral perfection according to modern standards than I would think of defending Napoleon or Caesar against the moralists or the democratic critics or the debunkers in order to prove that they were Vibhutis. Vibhuti, Avatar are terms which have their own meaning and scope, and they are... storm nor has his soul ridden upon the whirlwind. For his particular work this was a real advantage. Valmiki has drawn for us both the divine and anarchic in extraordinary proportions; an Akbar or a Napoleon might find his spiritual kindred in Rama or Ravana, but with more ordinary beings such figures impress the sense of the sublime principally and do not dwell with them as daily acquaintances. It was ...
... understanding! 10 (10)NB: For this Yoga, one must have the heart of a lion, the mind of a Sri Aurobindo and the vital of a Napoleon. Sri Aurobindo: Good Lord! Then I am off the list of the candidates - for I have neither the heart of a lion nor the vital of Napoleon. 11 (11)NB: You have made them believe that medicines and doctors are no good, but at the same time could not infuse into ...
... that the whole path is like that. For this Yoga, one must have the heart of a lion, the mind of a Sri Aurobindo and the vital of a Napoleon. Good Lord! Then I am off the list of the candidates—for I have neither the heart of a lion nor the vital of Napoleon. You may say that when the psychic comes to the front, the path becomes a grand Trunk Road of Roses. But it may take years and years ...
... this precious thing is his individuality, I mean, his speciality. You will be a great personage, but that does not mean that you will grow into a Napoleon or a Buddha. And even if you could, I think, you must not try to be so. For to be a mere Napoleon or a mere Buddha is not the ideal of the world. Everybody must be his own self. Your whole greatness lies in what you should be. You have to recognise ...
... explained. It said Mrs. Kamal had a great love for her parents, she did not love her husband. Secondly, she had in her the masculine complex which made her a suffragist. The writer also explained how Napoleon divorced Josephine because he loved his mother and Queen Elizabeth had a masculine complex but those who came in contact with her had not the feminine complex in them strong enough to keep her to... something which is false. The Europeans have got a fixed idea about these sciences. They observe some abnormal phenomena, study them, find out a general law and then try to apply it everywhere. Napoleon, Elizabeth, Begum Samru all behaved in particular ways because they had complexes. It means that a man has a certain character and his actions are determined by that character. This we knew ten thousand ...
... the B.E.F. were territorials, they have been trained for a long number of years. When Napoleon was thinking of attacking England and was preparing the navy, a general said to him, "It is very well to talk like that. To train a sailor requires many years, while a soldier can be trained in just six months." Napoleon said, "Don't talk like that. A soldier requires at least two years' training." PURANI: ...
... people who have believed in fate, destiny or whatever else you may call it. Napoleon III used to say, "So long as something is necessary to be done by me, it will be done in any case and when that necessity ceases I shall lie thrown by the wayside like an outworn vessel." And that is exactly what happened to him. Napoleon Bonaparte also believed in fate. SATYENDRA: Yes. When somebody questioned ...
... it is said, just by this mental will-power. Not only that! I have helped others to become brave, and seen so many youngsters go smiling to the gallows for love of their motherland. "Caesar and Napoleon never knew the meaning of the word 'fear'. There is a widely known story about Caesar. Once he was on a ship which was caught in a terrific storm. All the sailors were filled with fear. But Caesar... also thought that for the lonely book-worm that I was, who never enjoyed fun, games or companionship, it was natural to think thus. Though, to be fair, they never really disliked me as a person. "Napoleon anticipated my opinion of the English when he called them a nation of shopkeepers! (Laughter) Anyway, I left England, though not its literature, and sailed homewards, to a land that was still ruled ...
... 655ff; human-divine life, 693ff; at the time of cyclone, 693; resumed talks, 694; on Spengler, 694; on modem art and poetry, 695; on his biographers, 696; deep interest in the war, 696ff; Hitler & Napoleon, 696-7; spiritual intervention in the war, 697, 704-5; on Quisling, 697-8; on Churchill's Government, 698; 'The Children of Wotan', 699ff, 707; on Nazi rule, 700, 707; on the resignation of the Congress... Nair, Sir Sankaran, 530 Nammalvar, 497 Nandakumar, Prema, 112fn, 133,134fh, 140, 148,152m, 341, 383m, 640, 646, 690 Naoroji, Dadabhai, 11, 190, 227, 228, 273 Napoleon, 20 Narayana Guru, 16 National Value of Art, The, 337, 353, 354-55 Navajata, 775 Nava Sakti, 284, 308 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 490,728,735 Nehru ...
... all her forests and the result is there is flood every year. Disciple : There are so many Maharajas, Chiefs, Nawabs all over India. Sri Aurobindo : Germany was like that at one time. Napoleon swept away half of the number and the last war swept off another half. Japan also had many princes but they voluntarily abdicated their power. The Japanese are not greedy for money. They can easily... all her forests and the result is there is flood every year. Disciple : There are so many Maharajas, Chiefs, Nawabs all over India. Sri Aurobindo : Germany was like that at one time. Napoleon swept away half of the number and the last war swept off another half. Japan also had many princes but they voluntarily abdicated their power. The Japanese are not greedy for money. They can easily ...
... Maurya, Rana Pratap, Mazzini, Garibaldi, and Napoleon. When he was in England Iyer had become an 'extremist'—especially after the Curzon Willie 1 episode—and in France he came close to Madame Bhaicaji Cama, Shyamji Krishna Verma and Veer Damodar Savarkar, revolutionaries all. In France WS Iyer learnt French and read in the original the War Memoirs of Napoleon. At Pondicherry, based on Napoleon's method ...
... they have never or only for a short time been part of an empire. This is the real secret of the invincible resistance which England has opposed to all Continental schemes of empire from Philip II to Napoleon; it is the secret of her fear of Russia; it is the reason of the singular fact that only now after many centuries of great national existence has she become imbued with the imperial idea on her own... attachment to their independence of small nations like the Dutch, the Swiss, the Boers is traceable to the same cause; the fierce resistance opposed by the Page 297 greater part of Spain to Napoleon was that of a nation which once imperial & central has fallen out of the main flood of civilisation & is therefore becoming provincial & attached to its own isolation. That the nations of the East... nor has his soul ridden upon the whirlwind. For his particular work this was a real advantage. Valmekie has drawn for us both the divine and anarchic in extraordinary proportions; an Akbar or a Napoleon might find his spiritual kindred in Rama or Ravana; but with more ordinary beings such figures impress the sense of the sublime principally and do not dwell with them as daily acquaintances. It was ...
... like Mustafa Kamal. Some are fortunate like Browning and are very happy all their life. What about Napoleon and Josephine? Isn't that relation psychic? Not entirely; it is half and half. Something in Josephine's luck helped Napoleon. Josephine had a better chance of being an Empress than Napoleon had of being an Emperor. It was by marrying her he made his chance secure. The spiritual bond is ...
... intervened in the affairs of the universe? Perhaps you may know what Napoleon was told by the famous French physicist Laplace. When the latter was explaining to Napoleon his theory of the way in which nebulas cooled down and contracted into solar systems according to strict mathematical Page 232 laws, Napoleon asked: "Monsieur Laplace, where does God come in?" The reply rang out: ...
... Napoléon Bonaparte, much admired and not less hated, riding through Europe at the head of his armies and implementing the ideals of the French Revolution, which were the ideals of the Enlightenment. “Napoleon burst upon the Germans like a hurricane. He dissolved the Holy Roman Empire, replacing hundreds of separate sovereignties with thirty-eight; outraging clergy, he abolished ecclesiastical states, church... church property. Nobles fumed as he abolished their feudal states, feudal dues, and tax exemptions, broke up large estates, and cut their power over their peasants. Decreeing equality before the law, Napoleon opened public office to the middle class, guaranteed private property, established modern economic laws and institutions, and built public works, roads, canals, and bridges. He created secular public... this “Welsh” imperialism grew vehement and became an important step in the evolution of the German self-consciousness. “The German wave of liberation against the French conqueror and ruler by force, Napoleon I, definitively awakened the national awareness in the German people. It awakened such a plenitude of national enthusiasm, force and longing … that whole future generations would be nurtured by its ...
... Alexander the great Alexander Alexander the Great But Alexander of Macedon and Napoleon Buonaparte were poets on a throne, and the part they played in history was not that of incompetents and weakling. There are times when Nature gifts the poetic temperament with a peculiar grasp of the conditions of action and irresistible tendency to create their... of the world. Such men become portents and wonders whom posterity admires or hates but can only imperfectly understand. Like Joan of Arc or Mazzini and Garibaldi, they save a dying nation or like Napoleon and Alexander they dominate the world. They are only possible because they only get full scope in races which unite with an ardent and heroic temperamenat, a keen susceptibility to poetry in life... said that the greatest blessing in Alexander's life was his early death, and his greatest good fortune was that the practical common sense of his followers prevented him from crossing the Ganges. Had Napoleon been similarly forced to recognise his limits, his end might have been as great as his beginning. In Alexander's case, it is remarkable that one of the greatest thinkers in world history, ...
... not be true. What an absurd statement! Self-confidence is an inborn thing; it does not rest on knowledge and experience. If Napoleon had been a little less self-confident, he might have been a victor at Waterloo. Who says that? I never heard that Napoleon failed at Waterloo for want of self-confidence. I have always read that he failed because he was, owing to his recent malady, no longer... decision and so supple in mental resource as before. Please don't rewrite history unless you have data for your novel version. About Kemal Pasha, well, I hear you pumped into him a lot of force. Napoleon had a lot of force pumped into him also. Even then these personalities had the stratagems of war and current politics at their finger-tips, like Japan which is reaping a golden harvest out of ...
... 691 Muhammad (Mahomet), Prophet 180, 317, 482, 485 Mukherjee, Dr Shyamaprasad 533 Munshi, K.M. 426, 490, 536-7 Mussolini Benito 395ff, 403-4, 430 Nag, Dr Kalidas 534 Nandini Satpathy 778 Napoleon Bonaparte 405 Narayan Prasad 244, 320, 349, 354-5, 359, 434, 691 Naresh Bahadur 362, 652 Navajata (Keshavdev Poddar) 686, 691, 726, 816 Nehru, Jawaharlal see Jawaharlal New Age Association... Mother's words 372, 771 (cf 636) coming spiritual revolution 376, 672, 707, 782 (cf227) Hitler 208, 394ff and the Iron Dictators 396 and Chamberlain 403 threat of Asuric forces 403 the Dwarf Napoleon 405 traitor Quisling 409-10 and children of Wotan 410-1 menace of Hitlerism 414 sadhaks desiring Nazi victory 414-5 missing the bus 415 fascination for 15 August 415, 441 the Japanese threat... Pilgrim of the Night 387 Urvasie 387 Uloupie 387 Chitrangada 387 Love and Death 387 The Cosmic Man 394 The Children of Wotan 396, 410-1 The Iron Dictators 396 The Dwarf Napoleon 397, 405 In the Battle 406 Perseus the Deliverer 406 Collected Poems and Plays 429 Assignation with the Night 490 Hymn to Durga 535, 539, 706 The Blue Bird 595 The Descent ...
... throne), was now declaring the Canal open. Mira Ismalun knew how tenaciously Ferdinand de Lesseps had held on to his project through many ups and downs. Had he, perhaps, inherited Napoleon Bonaparte's dream? In 1798 Napoleon had discovered Page 22 the ancient canal of the Pharaohs, lost in the mists of time. Now it was 1869. How long dreams take to mature! So Mira Ismalun must have... which many crowned heads of Europe had sailed to the inauguration of the Suez Canal. But the pride of place went to the magnificent l'Aigle which had brought from France Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III, along with Ferdinand de Lesseps. For it was indeed thanks to the royal backing that de Lesseps could complete his project. But as they rode, M. de Lesseps' thoughts must have turned to his ...
... Russia, and ordered his troops to attack Poland on 1 September. Hitler had his admirers even in India, and it was not unusual to bracket him with Napoleon. Sri Aurobindo saw how foolish the comparison was, and he expressed this in a poem 'The Dwarf Napoleon', written on 16 October 1939, six weeks after the war had started, and about a month after Poland had been overrun: Napoleon's mind was swift... times and sees the Asuric maniac in Hitler will still feel surprised that, as early as 1939 and even earlier still,** Sri Aurobindo should have so correctly measured up the menace of the "Dwarf Napoleon" and the Fuehrer of the "Children o Wotan". And wasn't Sri Aurobindo thinking of Hitler, and of the Nazis, and of the concentration camps, and of the gas chambers, when he projected * In ...
... nor truth. It was the British fair-play which in mediaeval times burned Joan of Arc at the stake and then for some centuries vilely slandered her character. It was British fair-play which pursued Napoleon during his lifetime with a campaign of slander and abuse of the most extraordinary vileness and then interned him in St. Helena and embittered his last days by the meanest pettiness and persecution... salute with reverence this fresh exhibition of British fair-play and generosity. But if the man was such a poor and inconsiderable specimen, how is it that you have treated him as if he were a second Napoleon, thinking even distant Mandalay not remote enough or strong enough to hold the mighty rebel? All this foul-mouthed brutality is a measure of the extraordinary panic into which the ruling race has ...
... of the nineteenth century after her triumph over Napoleon and her amazing expansion in India, she felt too strong to need extraneous assistance. Mistress of the seas, enormously wealthy, monopolist almost of the world's commerce, she followed on the Continent a policy of splendid isolation broken only by the ill-starred alliance with the third Napoleon. She fought for her own hand everywhere and felt ...
... Germans “sin against the blood” through sexual intercourse with the depraved race of the Jews or with other subhumans? Fichte was “the philosopher of the German war of national liberation against Napoleon”, in which quality we have met him before. His famous Addresses to the German Nation (1808) were delivered while French troops still occupied Berlin. In these addresses he said as one of the very... cut off all their heads in one night, and to set new ones on their shoulders, which should contain not a single Jewish idea’.” 565 Lucy Dawidowicz sees the Jewish emancipation progressing from Napoleon onwards in cycles, closely connected with the heightening waves of nationalist feelings and German self-assertion. Every gain of freedom by the Jews was paralleled by a more intense and outspoken ...
... is not much more than documented highbrow journalism. And therefore ‘objective’ historians sometimes write such ‘reasonable’ but inane psychological dissections of personalities like Joan of Arc, Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and of ancient cultures — in brief, of everything that really mattered on the wearisome and tortuous road of the human pilgrimage. The norms of rationalistic ... × The Mother no doubt means the Berghof , Hitler’s villa in Obersalzberg. In his polemic poem about Hitler, The Dwarf Napoleon, Sri Aurobindo writes: × A typical Aurobindonian passage from the same ‘blood and tears’ speech: ...
... a generation that seems to take a delight in trampling with an almost Nazi rudeness on the bodies of the Ancestors, especially the immediate ancestors. I have read with an interested surprise that Napoleon was only a bustling and self-important nincompoop all whose great achievements were done by others, that Shakespeare was "no great things" and that most other great men were by no means so great as... great personality on the usual level. But from the point of view of Avatarhood I would no more think of defending his moral perfection according to modern standards than I would think of defending Napoleon or Caesar against the moralists or the democratic critics or the debunkers in order to prove that they were Vibhutis. 39 Vibhūti, Avatar are terms which have their own meaning and scope, and they ...
... with the Allied cause during the Second Great War in spite of admitting that the Allies were far from spotless and were but the Imperialists of yesterday. On October 16, 1939 he wrote The Dwarf Napoleon, a diatribe on Hitler, exposing his false and futile ambition to be Even as the immense colossus of the past. Sri Aurobindo, with the Yogi's eye, discerned an occult reality at... here, the difference lying only in the existential aspect, the special mood and mould adopted. Nor can this mood and mould be cut apart entirely from Sri Aurobindo the Yogi. As with The Dwarf Napoleon, the date of the sonnet is worth attending to: it is September 25, 1939, three weeks before that poem. And yet the Atom Bomb, which at that time was regarded as almost impossible of realisation ...
... combination in them of active power with an immense drift of originative thought devoted to practical realisation. They have been great executive thinkers, great practical dreamers. Such were Napoleon and Alexander. Napoleon with his violent prejudice against ideologues and dreamers was himself a colossal dreamer, an incurable if unconscious ideologist; his teeming brain was the cause of his gigantic force ...
... effect a transformation of the Vibhuti [p. 16]. I would like to know the difference. Take for example Christ, Chaitanya, Ramakrishna, Confucius, Zarathustra, Buddha, Shankara, Mohammed, Alexander, Napoleon—among these well-known figures, which are Vibhutis of the Mother and which are Vibhutis of the Ishwara? And what about the Mother's action in Avatars like Rama and Krishna? The Mother's Vibhutis... If you mean the divine Personalities of the Mother—the answer is yes. It may even be said that each Vibhuti draws his energies from the Four, from one of them predominantly in most cases, as Napoleon from Mahakali, Rama from Mahalakshmi, Augustus Caesar from Mahasaraswati. 31 October 1935 ...
... Lines of Force. In the universe there are many lines of Force on which various personalities or various achievements and formations spring up — e.g. the line Pericles-Caesar-Napoleon or the line Alexander-Jenghis-Tamerlane-Napoleon — meeting together there — so it may be too in poetry, lines of poetic force prolonging themselves from one poet to another, meeting and diverging. Yours seems to be a third ...
... Roman Empire as in Germany in the age of Napoleon." No doubt, a nation does feed the secret springs of an individual and the age in which he lives does colour and shape him, but he is not altogether a Page 43 national product nor is he grooved in contemporary conditions. Beethoven's Eroica drew its inspiration from the age of Napoleon and his other compositions bear signs ...
... to power dictatorially. To overlook the existence of a Power which is infinitely greater than any human power, single or combined, is to invite danger and disaster. This we have seen in the case of Napoleon, Hitler and Tojo. We do not really know the source of their defeat but attribute it to adverse circumstances and a combination of forces against them. This is only a superficial and therefore... Nazis after their resounding success at Narvik and Dunkirk ? It is said that whom God wants to destroy, He first makes mad. Is it not true in the case of the ill-fated invasion of Russia by Napoleon and Hitler and of the bombing of Pearl Harbour by Tojo's air-arm, a bombing, which was but a brilliant passage to a terrible doom ? To deny this is to evince lack of the most elementary knowledge ...
... (laughing): Natural defences! Natural defences are no defence nowadays. One can't sit comfortably behind natural defences in modem warfare. SATYENDRA: He says even Napoleon couldn't take up such adventures. SRI AUROBINDO: Napoleon existed long before the advent of modern warfare. SATYENDRA: Even Finland with her strong army and equipment stood only a few days against Russia. SRI AUROBINDO: ...
... creativity is an aristocratic virtue, that it belongs only to the chosen few. A great poet or a mighty man of action creates indeed, but such a creator does not appear very frequently. A Shakespeare or a Napoleon is a rare phenomenon; they are, in reality, an exception to the general run of mankind. It is enough if we others can understand and follow them – Mahajano yena gatah – let the great souls initiate... strength of the soul-divinity create his universe. It does not matter what sort of universe he- creates, so long as he creates it. The world created by a Buddha is not the same as that created by a Napoleon, nor should they be the same. It does not prove anything that I cannot become a Kalidasa; for that matter Kalidasa cannot become what I am. If you have not the genius of a Shankara it does not mean ...
... Germans would find it difficult to cross it. Of course, it is all Daladier's work—the most indefensible War Minister. He seems to have done nothing. It is like the story of the general of Napoleon III. When Napoleon asked him, "Is everything prepared?" he replied, "Yes, up to the last button," and when the attack began everything broke down at once! As for Gamelin, he seems to know only the names of ...
... juice, milk of the spirit. Myself: For this yoga one must have the heart of a lion, the mind of a Sri Aurobindo, the vital of a Napoleon. Sri Aurobindo: Good Lord! Then I am off the list of the candidates — for I have neither the heart of a lion nor the vital of Napoleon." Myself: What will be the nature of the physical transformation? Change of pigment? Mongolian features into Aryo-Greek? Bald ...
... whole path is like that. N: For this yoga, one must have the heart of a lion, the mind of a Sri Aurobindo and the vital of a Napoleon. SRI AUROBINDO: Good Lord! Then I am off the list of the candidates — for I have neither the heart of a lion nor the vital of a Napoleon. N: You may say that when the psychic comes to the front, the path becomes a Grand Trunk Road of Roses. But it may take years ...
... creativity is an aristocratic virtue, that it belongs only to the chosen few. A great poet or a mighty man of action creates indeed, but such a creator does not appear very frequently. A Shakespeare or a Napoleon is a rare phenomenon; they are, in reality, an exception to the general run of mankind. It is enough if we others can understand and follow them— Mahajano yena gatah— let the great souls initiate... strength of the soul-divinity create his universe. It does not matter what sort of universe he creates, so long as he creates it. The world created by a Buddha is not the same as that created by a Napoleon, nor should they be the same. It does not prove anything that I cannot become a Kalidasa; for that matter Kalidasa cannot become what I am. If you have not the genius of a Shankara it does not mean ...
... the Brahman or the Void. Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon are the ideal men of action in the West, while Krishna, Arjuna and Bhishma are the representatives 'of the ideal of the East. The European heroes display daemoniac restlessness and exuberance. The Indian heroes possess the godly virtues of calmness and poise along with clear insight. Napoleon is a mighty Vibhuti of the Divine Power. But Sri ...
... purity, so long as they remain loyal to it in the depths of their being. Pythagoras and Plato, Zoroaster and Christ and Mohammed, Leonardo, Galileo and Newton, Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre and Napoleon, Mazzini and Garibaldi, Marx and Lenin etc., in the West, and Rama, Sri Krishna, Mahavira and Buddha, Shankaracharya and Chaitanya, Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda etc., in India, all have... urge but by the amorphous opinions of the people he is leading, and lets his egoistic ambition get the better of his loyalty to the inner Light, he falls, as Luther fell, or is flung aside, as Napoleon was flung aside. The secret of his success lies in his absolute fidelity to the Light within him, even when it seems obscured for a moment by the swirling dust of Time's passage. In short, the central ...
... ashes, is a creed I hold to be still unproved and unprovable. I believe that nothing in this world is made, but everything grows; that body cannot create soul and that a mass of cells is not Buddha or Napoleon. And if you ask for my ground of belief, I shall still refuse to base it on the logical reason, which can only argue and cannot see, and I shall give the answer of the visionary, the victim of ha ...
... ss which, starting from an electron, can build up a world and, using "a tangle of ganglia", can make them the base here for the works of the Mind and Spirit in Matter, produce a Ramakrishna, or a Napoleon, or a Shakespeare. Is the life of a great poet, either, made up only of magnificent and important things? How many "trivial" things had to be dealt with and done before there could be produced a ...
... 169 , 181 , 203, 222, 223, 227 , 228, 245 their sense of separateness. 31 , 64, 169 (fn) see also Hindu-Muslim question Mussolini, 193 , 229 (fn) N Naoroji, Dadabhai, 35 , 40(fn) Napoleon, 77 Nationalism, 13, 32, 64 its call, 44 is Sanatana dharma, SO Nation alit movement party, 17,32·33, 36,44,45,47, 50,54,59,60, 93,21 5, 246 see also Swadeshi Nazis Nazism, 2 11, 214 ...
... On Thoughts and Aphorisms Aphorism - 28 28—One called Napoleon a tyrant and imperial cut-throat; but I saw God armed striding through Europe. Are all these wars necessary for the evolution of the earth? At a certain stage of human development, wars are inevitable. In prehistoric times the whole of life was a war; and to the present ...
... obliged to play the leading parts. The conception is admirable. An inoffensive pleader sitting among his briefs, to all appearance harmless, unmilitary, civilian, but in reality a masked Tamerlane, Napoleon or Shivaji, full of dark and tremendous schemes; a disarmed and helpless mob of workmen and peasants who are really a dangerous, well-equipped and well-organised army of a hundred thousand Jats capable ...
... stagnation of the society, and justify it by some mystical falsity about the divine right of kings or monarchy a peculiarly divine institution. Even exceptional rulers, a Charlemagne, an Augustus, a Napoleon, a Chandragupta, Asoka or Akbar, can do no more than fix certain new institutions which the time needed and help the emergence of its best or else its strongest tendencies in a critical era. When ...
... legislative, fiscal, economic, judicial, social was the goal towards which French absolutism, monarchical or democratic, was committed by its original impulse. The rule of the Jacobins and the regime of Napoleon only brought rapidly to fruition what was slowly evolving under the monarchy out of the confused organism of feudal France. In other countries the movement was less direct and the survival of old ...
... and absorbed, in Spain the succession of the Roman, Goth and Moor, in Italy the overlordship of the Austrian, in the Balkans 3 the long suzerainty of the Turk, in Germany the transient yoke of Napoleon. But in all cases the essential has been a shock or a pressure which would either waken a loose psychological unity to the necessity of organising itself from within or would crush out, dispirit or ...
... × E.g. Christ and his twelve apostles are, a great scholar assures us, the sun and the twelve months. The career of Napoleon is the most perfect Sun-myth in all legend or history. × R.V. I.164.46 and 170.1. ...
... the higher consciousness and force. Will is will whether it is calm or restless, whether it acts in a Yogic or unyogic way, for a Yogic or an unyogic object. Do you Page 718 think Napoleon and Caesar had no will or that they were Yogis? You have strange ideas about things. You might just as well say that memory is memory only when it remembers the Divine and it is not memory when it ...
... ss which, starting from an electron, can build up a world and, using a "tangle of ganglia", can make them the base here for the works of the Mind and Spirit in Matter, produce a Ramakrishna, or a Napoleon, or a Shakespeare. Is the life of a great poet, either, made up only of magnificent and important things? How many "trivial" things had to be dealt with and done before there could Page 672 ...
... s: he alone knew that the Grace of Sri Aurobindo did all the talking. This Grace, fashioning a new mind from poor or no materials, worked in many modes at its job which was like that of Napoleon who was said to have made generals of genius out of mud. Sri Aurobindo not only put from afar his mighty spiritual force to the task of "politicising" the Editor's grey cells. He also got every ...
... leaves him for another. When a man who has carried out a great work is destroyed, it is for the egoism by which he has misused the force within that the force itself breaks him to pieces, as it broke Napoleon. Some instruments are treasured up, some are flung aside and shattered, but all are instruments. This is the greatness of great men, not that by their own strength they can determine great events ...
... erected a temporary form or given a secular impetus. An empire has been created, an age or a century organised, but the level of humanity has not been raised nearer to the secret of a Caesar or a Napoleon. Love fails because it hastily rejects the material of the world's discords or only tramples them underfoot in an unusual ecstasy; Power because it seeks only to Page 156 organise an external ...
... Indus shall flow, there Ganges pace yellow and leonine to the sea. Therefore we find that the greatest men of action the world has known were believers in Fate or in a divine Will. Caesar, Mahomet, Napoleon, what more colossal workers has our past than these? The superman believes more readily in Destiny, feels more vitally conscious of God than the average human mind. A saying of Napoleon's is pregnant ...
... mighty for its human frame, That only afflicts the oppressed astonished world, Then breaks its user. This passage may be compared with the slightly earlier poem entitled The Dwarf Napoleon, Baji Prabhou, though not written on the whole in the strictly epic style which blends amplitude and poise with power, is epic in substance and suggestion everywhere and makes without the ...
... bless thee, O Father of Heaven & Earth! that ever I saw Flaxman's face.... 299 In a letter to Flaxman of October 19, 1801, Blake expresses the faith that, with the peace concluded with Napoleon, the millennium itself is dawning: "The Kingdoms of this World are now become the Kingdoms of God & his Christ..." 300 Here Christ is spoken of in distinction from God to whom, as if Son to Father ...
... emanated from France and that he lost his Romanticism when he lost his ideal of political liberty as a result of his disillusionment 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 ...
... Revolution promoted the careers of naturalists like Cuvier and Lamarck. Generally speaking, it was a great time for new ideas in science, as is proven by the numerous discoveries and innovations. (Napoleon took a platoon of scientists with him on his military expedition to Egypt.) But the historical context had also its negative consequences for the acceptance of that science, especially in Great Britain ...
... the Mother called the ‘three-penny romances’ often woven around it, the cheap and for the most part totally imaginary romanticization of putative former lives. How many reincarnations of Cleopatra, Napoleon, Alexander the Great, or of some mysterious Egyptian, Babylonian or Celtic priests or priestesses have dwelt unnoticed among ordinary mortals! Sri Aurobindo warned his disciples: ‘Seriously, these ...
... a period of peace, prosperity and stabilization. It was the basis upon which Thutmosis III, when he finally became Pharaoh in his own right, expanded the kingdom. He became known as ‘the Egyptian Napoleon’ and waged no less than seventeen victorious campaigns. Hatshepsut’s work in reviving the prosperity of the land would render Tiy and Akhenaton’s astounding reformation possible. Who has hacked away ...
... . But it was the Enlightenment which had prepared the French Revolution and the emancipation of the Jews, and in the Napoleonic Code they had acquired an equal status with all others, something Napoleon implemented in the countries he conquered. From then onwards the Jews were identified with “the French spirit” and would remain so, even when later on they were vehemently opposed by the nationalist ...
... better if one writes them. My hand often gets tired while writing. You can simply rest a minute or two and then continue. 18 October 1936 Yesterday X told me that she doesn't like Napoleon 1st, that he was not a good man, that he destroyed France. And You, Mother, what do You think of him? He was a great and exceptional figure. Of course he had his faults and made mistakes—but far ...
... world preaching, to go about fighting with ideas, like, for instance, the great sages here who fought through speech—that, of course. But not as the general-in-chief of an army! No! Not a Napoleon, I mean. But the urge to fight! Because I feel so strongly the Evil hidden there.... Oh! And a vicious evil—a vicious evil hidden there. Page 207 Under the cloak of charity ...
... and 346 thinking 234 transformation of 69 Mother birthday 272 experiences, described in Savitri 330 recording Savitri 282 N Naidu, Sarojini 147 Napoleon 150,152 Nature achievement of 273 and Supernature 12,208,315 divine manifestation 95 doings of secret 285 domain of 88 field of scientists 163 Goddess of Light ...
... actually Samudragupta to deal with and it sounds very much like a variant of Samitracottus and may be equated with Samudragupta. However, what fits the king whom Vincent Smith called "the Indian Napoleon" hardly goes well with Chandragupta Maurya's son Bindusāra. Doubtless, the Tibetan writer Taranatha writes that Bindusāra's minister Chānakya helped his monarch to be master of a vast territory ...
... situation. And I could deliver confident statements as though I were inevitably inspired. Within me I couldn't help laughing. Sri Aurobindo could make a political thinker out of me as Napoleon could make generals out of mud, as it were. But I must say that there has to be a line drawn to Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's power in such things — because once during a visit of mine to the ...
... worked out by a play of forces—spiritual, mental, vital and physical forces—and in that plane of forces there is no absolute rigidity discoverable. Personal will or endeavour is one of those forces. Napoleon when asked why he believed in Fate, yet was always planning and acting, answered, "Because it is fated that I should work and plan," in other words, his planning and acting were part of Fate, contributed ...
... ss which, starting from an electron, can build up a world and, using "a tangle of ganglia," can make them the base here for the works of the Mind and Spirit in Matter, produce a Ramakrishna, or a Napoleon, or a Shakespeare. Is the life of a great poet either made up only of magnificent and important things? How many "trivial" things had to be dealt with and done before there could be produced a "King ...
... THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT, by Gustave Dové The Crucifixion Introduction -Jesus and the Theme of Love II. —Jesus and the Theme of Love In his famous speech at St. Helena, Napoleon exclaimed: "I know men, and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ, and the founders of empires and the gods of other religions. That resemblance ...
... that the greatest blessing in Alexander's life was his early death, and his greatest good fortune was that the practical common sense of his followers pre-vented him from crossing the Ganges. Had Napoleon been similarly forced to recognise his limits, his end might have been as great as his beginning. In Alexande's case, it is remarkable that one of the greatest thinkers in world history, Aristotle ...
... undertaken, the obstacles in the way, and the means at her disposal. Cesar carried conquest far, but he did it with the trained and confident veterans of Rome, and was a trained soldier himself ; and Napoleon swept away the disciplined armies of Europe, but he also was a trained soldier, and he began his work with patriot battalions inflamed and inspired by the miracle-working new breath of Liberty breathed ...
... all the things upon which her renown rests while she was still a young girl, we recognize that while our race continues she will be also the Riddle of the Ages. When we set about accounting for a Napoleon or a Shakespeare or a Raphael or a Wagner or an Edison or other extraordinary person, we understand that the measure of his talent will not explain the whole result, nor even the largest part of it; ...
... with a regular life. I was different. I felt there was more to life than just plodding through an average existence. I'd always been impressed by stories of greatness and power. Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon were names I knew and remembered. I wanted to do something special, to be recognized as the best. I saw bodybuilding as the vehicle that would take me to the top, and I put all my energy into it. ...
... rare value were the reward extracted from his supramental quarry, though at the cost of being dubbed a "wooden head" and many other complimentary epithets. Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Napoleon, Virgil, Shaw, Joyce, Hitler, Mussolini, Negus, Spanish Civil War, General Miaja, romping in, oh, the world-theatre seen at a glance exhibiting many-coloured movements for the eye's, the ear's and ...
... movement that swept across Europe in the nineteenth century and inspired the poetry of Wordsworth. Thomas Jefferson derived the Declaration of Independence partly from Rousseau, and it is said that Napoleon ascribed the French Revolution more to Rousseau than to any other writer. Not least significant, education still feels repercussions from Emile. The book's educational ideas stimulated Pestalozzi ...
... Wilde is the ultimate ideal of Europe. When the famous novelist Balzac used to sit down to write he would do so in a lonely place in a monk's tunic in order to help his one-pointed concentration. Napoleon, Caesar and Alexander were no Page 312 helpless slaves of their senses. In fact, no country or race can build its greatness except on the foundation of self-control. It is not ...
... practice on scientific lines, they developed a skill Page 456 in the game through an inner urge or influence. Perhaps all men of genius are creatures of this type. They say this about Napoleon too. He went on winning his victories without end and no one could stop his onward march. The old experienced generals of the enemy Powers, the Austrians for example, practically gave up trying ...
... persons and even give a detailed description of their past lives. There are also the well-known spirit communications through a medium at spirit sittings. Someone comes and tells you he was Napoleon, another was Shakespeare and so on. How many Shakespeare and Napoleons and Caesars have manifested in this way, there is no counting! There are spirits who are extremely talkative and bewitch you ...
... for itself and does not limit itself down to the material conditions. To the vital being, nothing, however fanciful and even idiotic, seems impossible. That is the grandeur of the vital being. When Napoleon said, "Nothing is impossible, erase the word 'impossible' from the dictionary", it was the vital being that was speaking through him. And it is true that the vital plane does not admit anything as ...
... it is said that the manner in which each one received his message was reported to him. He cursed the Sultan of Turkey saying that Turkey would be ruined and his throne would be destroyed. Emperor Napoleon III did not receive the message well and he was also cursed. The Shah of Persia caused the messenger to be killed. I don't know what he said with regard to him. But some of his prophecies and curses ...
... their own land. SRI AUROBINDO: Of course. Otherwise there would be a great danger. No, no, it is all French over-sensitiveness and suspiciousness. This is exactly what happened during the reign of Napoleon III - different political parties playing at governing the country and that is how he was defeated. PURANI: There is still a notion among people that England will fight to the last Frenchman. ...
... the modern ones, Hardy's are better, though he does not hesitate to write flat prose. (Laughter) PURANI: The Dynasts is about Napoleonic times. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, it is a caricature of Napoleon. It makes him a tyrant—it is pacifist poetry. ...
... asked, how is it that in the history of the world we find men of action, great dynamic personalities to be mostly not spiritual but rather mundane in their character and outlook? Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Chandragupta, Akbar, even Shivaji, were not spiritual personalities; their actions were of the world and of worldly nature. And the force they wielded cannot be described as spiritual, and yet how ...
... although it is a rather" dangerous game and may tend to put into a too rigid and' mathematical formula something that is living and variable. Still it will serve to give a clearer picture of the matter. Napoleon. evidently was a child of Mahakali; and Caesar seems to have been fashioned largely by the principle of. Maheshwari; while Christ or Chaitanya are clearly emanations in the line of Mahalakshmi. C ...
... would have followed inevitably because they were destined. SRI AUROBINDO: I don't quite understand. Even granting that there is destiny, why can't it be changed? How can Spengler say that even if Napoleon had not existed the results of his rise would inevitably have followed? It is a very debatable proposition. I believe the results would have naturally varied. If he had not risen at the time, the ...
... It is believed that the epic poet comes only once in centuries. Look at the world's epic poets, How many are they? As for subject, what subject could be more suitable to an epic than the career of Napoleon? It is surprising—the large number of epic poets in Sanskrit. The very language is epic. Valmiki, Vyasa, even classical poets like Kalidasa, Bharavi and others have all achieved epic heights. ...
... interminable activity, I should be called an Avatar!" My aim in drawing this picture of the Mother is not merely to demonstrate her dynamism. There have been quite a number of people in the world, Napoleon for example, who had a magnificent vital energy, but they are of a different category. Here all her actions are symbolic, they are the expressions of the Divine Force, chit shakti , she embodies ...
... try to save our souls by attending to rules and regulations, codes and codicils of conduct, even so a like habit and practice we have brought over into our æsthetic world. But we must remember that Napoleon became the invincible military genius he was, not because he followed the art of war in accordance with laws and canons set down by military experts; neither did Buddha become the Enlightened because ...
... quiet. Gandhi is disturbed by the incidents, etc. SRI AUROBINDO: Generals get excited by violence? If so, they could never win battles. Gandhi doesn't seem to know much about human psychology. If Napoleon and Marlborough had got excited they could never have been successful. SATYENDRA: Gandhi doesn't say he can stop an invasion but he says that non-violent non-cooperation can make it impossible ...
... forests and there is a flood every year. NIRODBARAN: There are so many Maharajas, Chiefs, Nawabs and other rulers dotting India everywhere. SRI AUROBINDO: Germany was like that at one time. Napoleon swept away one half and Hitler the other half—not Hitler exactly but the post-war period. Japan also had the same thing, but the princes voluntarily abdicated their powers and titles for the sake ...
... , Christ, Muhammad, Sankara, Ramanuja, Nanak - punctuated the march of the human consciousness by precept and example. There were also heroic figures like Arjuna and Achilles and Alexander and Napoleon, and there were the great poets and artists, the great scientists and inventors, and the great statesmen and nation-builders, but now there is need for the invocation, or eruption, of Page 180 ...
... Till now it has guided him correctly. One mistake, it seems, it has made it to think that when he attacked Poland he thought that England will not go to war. Otherwise he has direct guidance which Napoleon did not get. The question was put to Sri Aurobindo whether the Asuras can have the power of vision. Sri Aurobindo : Yes, they have. Vision is not only on the spiritual level. It can ...
... presents to the harsh discords and gnawing cares of the ordinary human life ! What a poignant and illuminating contrast the life of a Buddha or a Christ or a Ramakrishna presents to the life of a Napoleon or a Bacon, a Voltaire or a Schopenhauer ? An untroubled peace and tranquillity, a calm and comprehensive vision of the Truth and its manifold working, and a steady, silent, impersonal will fulfilling ...
... Spanish Inquisition, in a span of fifteen years, between 1483 and 1498, a single Dominican priest who was the Inquisitor-General, sentenced over 114,000 victims—of which 10,220 were burned. When Napoleon conquered Spain in 1808, the battle- 1 History of Hindu-Christian Encounters, by Sita Ram Goel (Voice of India). All quotes from this book are with the kind permission of the author ...
... you are then, not knowing any longer whether you are becoming so fabulously wise or going mad." Mad? She had already found out who in reality were mad. "From the sublime to the ludicrous," said Napoleon, "is but one step." Hardly had she alighted from the train that brought her to Madras from Pondicherry and had taken but a step or two, when she was brought up short. Who was it waiting for her ...
... in Florence and Rome and Naples of the ancient Page 479 Roman, Etruscan and Samnite that Cavour should have relied, not on the false-hearted huckster of states and principalities, Louis Napoleon. MAZZINI Italy is one, Italy is free, but in the body, not in the soul. Garibaldi, you gave united Italy to a man, not to the nation. GARIBALDI I gave it to the King and hero, Italy's rep ...
... these, I believe, are the chief triumphs of the European enlightenment to which we bow our heads. For these Augustus created Europe, Charlemagne refounded civilisation, Louis XIV regulated society, Napoleon systematised the French Revolution. For these Goethe thought, Shakespeare imagined and created, St. Francis loved, Christ was crucified. What a Page 545 bankruptcy! What a beggary of things ...
... version of this piece was published in The Standard Bearer on 28 November and 5 December 1920, and subsequently in The Hour of God and Other Writings (1972). Historical Impressions: Napoleon. 1910. CMS III: 8-11. A defective version of this piece was published in The Standard Bearer on 21 December 1920, and subsequently in The Hour of God and Other Writings . In the Society's ...
... Lyrical Poems from Manuscripts (Circa 1934-1947) Collected Poems The Dwarf Napoleon Know more > ( Hitler. October 1939 ) Behold, by Maya's fantasy of will A violent miracle takes sudden birth, The real grows one with the incredible. In the control of her magician wand The small achieves things great, the base things grand. This puny ...
... handwritten manuscript. The Island Sun . 13 October 1939. Three handwritten manuscripts. Despair on the Staircase . October 1939. Three handwritten manu-scripts. The Dwarf Napoleon . 16 October 1939. Three handwritten manu-scripts. The Children of Wotan . 30 August 1940. Two handwritten manu-scripts. The Mother of God . One handwritten manuscript, undated ...
... Divine Sense 24 Divine Sight 623 The Divine Worker 612 A Doubt 186 The Dream Boat 576 A Dream of Surreal Science 614 The Dual Being 610 The Dwarf Napoleon 639 Electron 600 The End? 643 Envoi 37 Epigram 189 Epiphany 279 Epitaph 188 Estelle 31 Euphrosyne 187 Evening 216 Evolution [1] ...
... It is doubtful whether in the pure human mould Nature can go much farther than she has gone at present; that she can for instance produce a higher mental type than Newton, Shakespeare, Caesar or Napoleon, a higher moral type than Buddha, Christ or St Francis, a higher physical type than the Greek athlete or to give modern examples, a Sandow or a Ramamurti. She may seek to bring about a better combination ...
... operation we must find another explanation than the teleological? or rather [one that] will at once contain and exceed the teleological? If it had only been Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Edison, Beethoven, Napoleon, Schopenhauer, the creators in poetry, art, science, music, life or thought, who possessed imagination, we might then have found an use for their unused imaginations in the greater preparatory richness ...
... its secret sense that it is the Lord of the universe, yet must it deny & transform itself, if it is to effect its grandiose object. The mighty Asura, Hiranyakashipu or Ravana, Attila, Alexander, Napoleon or Jenghiz, reaching out to possess the whole world physically as the not-self, is the Godhead in man aiming at self-realisation, but a godhead blind and misdirected. The Seer seeks instead to possess ...
... absolutely in accord with the roles they had assumed — and it was a continuation or development of the subtle and occult process which Sri Aurobindo had hinted at in the concluding lines of The Dwarf Napoleon. I hope I have clarified the doubt you had expressed saying that the Mother could not have acted in the manner I have depicted and that this could not be her way of action. Page ...
... and finished in form." (17.12.32) Toussaint L'Ouverture [I wrote: " You must have read of the heroic fight of Toussaint L'Ouverture and his negrozs against the armies sent by Napoleon to Haiti to reintroduce slavery there. Below is a ballad describing one of its most memorable incidents, with of course, the license of poetic imagination. What would be your criticism of it?" Sri ...
... represents our highest intelligence are bound to be born in the coming decades. Geniuses? If one wishes, although the term refers to the notion of exceptional individuals—Plato, Leonardo da Vinci, Mozart, Napoleon, Einstein—in whom the collective unconscious culminates, without the individual members of the collective being able to equal them. In this case, on the other hand, the men of a new kind will be the ...
... of higher ideal, they generally remain single. Some of them find their mate late in life like Mustafa Kamal. Some are fortunate like Browning and are very happy all their life. K.D: What about Napoleon and Josephine? Isn't that relation psychic? Sri Aurobindo: Not entirely; it is half and half. Something in Josephine's luck helped Napolean. Josephine had a better chance of being an Empress than ...
... grappling with the tragedy at the heart of things, with the age's Angst. The Dynasts of Hardy echoes the age's scepticism "that refuses everything but the general tragic fatality of existence. Napoleon appears as an insect on a leaf, armies look like caterpillars, earth a microscopically verminous mote and man a mere puppet jerked in heedless drama, while the unconscious Will, — the tragically ...
... is a generation that seems to take delight in trampling with an almost Nazi rudeness on the bodies of the ancestors, especially the immediate ancestors. I have read with an interested surprise that Napoleon was only a bustling and self-important nincompoop all of whose great achievements were done by others; that Shakespeare was 'no great shakes' and that most other great men were by no means so great ...
... the consequences should not be underestimated.” 529 The first effects of the specifically German idea of a nationalism based on race and Volk came about as a reaction to the stormy conquests of Napoleon and his imposition of the guiding principles of the French Revolution. The Germans fell back on what they considered their true origins, the rural, and the military temperament of their elders, thus ...
... condemned it unjustly!” 563 Thus resounded the voice of a Deputy in the French National Assembly during the Revolution. The Jews, not without wrangling, were legally emancipated on 27 September 1791. Napoleon based his Napoleonic Code (1804) on the principle that all citizens were equal before the law and implemented it in the lands he conquered, breaking with the tradition of ages and giving their peoples ...
... that which is possible on the spiritual planes. Of course they are not always infallible. But Hitler committed only one mistake: when attacking Poland he thought that the Allies would not intervene. Napoleon did not have such guidance.” 1116 This was how, on the Western front, “the phoney war” began, both sides occupying their positions from the North Sea to Switzerland, making loud propagandistic noises ...
... Its hatred had focused more and more upon neighbouring France, especially when France became the culturally dominant nation in Europe whose language replaced Latin as the European lingua franca . Napoleon conquered and abolished the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in 1806. The shock of his presence and drastic reforms was, as we have seen, the direct incentive to Germany’s revival. Hitler ...
... and a Bible exegete, but his model of the universe was a kind of clockwork, put in motion by God Almighty, but afterwards left to its own automatic movement. And Laplace, in a legendary answer to Napoleon, had declared that he no longer needed the hypothesis of a God to explain the workings of the universe. As a reaction against this increasing materialism, religiously inclined persons, in the first ...
... many-mooded multitude which is our common self. A few minor questions remain. One is: "What should be my sleep-requirements? 6-6 1 / 2 hours or more?" Let me quote you an authority: Napoleon. I label him as an authority because he had complete control over his sleep. He could go into the land of Nod any time. Even in the midst of a battle, with cannonading all around, he could snatch ...
... Don Juan" which he was strictly forbidden to read at home. 4. Autobiographical Note written in 1951. Sethna's Papers. Page xviii Then followed the lives of Shivaji and Napoleon in verse form, plus an imaginary account of a Utopia in verse, a few plays, "thousands of gnomic couplets", twenty-six novelettes each with an interesting alliterative title like "The Sign of the ...
... Winnetou book printed for the soldiers, this notwithstanding the undeniable fact that May’s heroes belonged to a foreign race, for they were ‘Redskins’, [American] Indians.” 147 “He might well mention Napoleon and Old Shatterhand in one sentence”, writes Speer. 148 Karl May belonged to the Christian faction of the German völkisch movement. He gave in March 1912, shortly before his death, a talk in Vienna ...
... and the yellow race has a place somewhere in between. The nobleman Gobineau was a devout Catholic, shocked by the turn things were taking because of the French Revolution, the titanic actions of Napoleon and the industrial revolution. He, like so many others still deeply rooted in the ancient régime , felt like a fish out of water in a century which ideals had become secular and centred on the well-being ...
... worked out by a play of forces,—spiritual, mental, vital, physical forces—and in that plane of forces there is no absolute rigidity discoverable. Personal will or endeavour is one of those forces—Napoleon when asked why he believed in Fate, yet was always planning and acting, answered, "Because it is fated that I should work and plan"—in other words, his planning and acting were part of Fate, contributed ...
... seems to take a delight in trampling with an almost Nazi rudeness on Page 385 the bodies of the Ancestors, especially the immediate ancestors. I have read with an interested surprise that Napoleon was only a bustling and self-important nincompoop all whose great achievements were done by others, that Shakespeare was "no great things" and that most other great men were by no means so great as ...
... sun also sets in a glory of flame behind the mountains. Such proofs seem hardly substantial enough for so strong a conclusion. By the same reasoning Page 189 one could prove the emperor Napoleon a sun myth, because he was beaten & shorn of his glory by the forces of winter and because his brilliant career set in the western ocean and he passed there a long night of captivity. With the same ...
... or by the use of force if need be. If less crude, this solution is not for that any more satisfactory than the other. It is an old idea, the idea Metternich put into practice after the overthrow of Napoleon; only in place of a Holy Alliance of monarchs to maintain peace and monarchical order and keep down democracy, it was proposed to have a league of free—and imperial—peoples to enforce democracy and ...
... must have seemed the date of dates to the men of the day whose minds were filled with the view of the long struggle between the ancient regimes and revolutionary France and then between Europe and Napoleon. But when we look back at present, we see that it was only a stage, the end of the acutest phase of struggle, the commencement of a breathing-time, the date of a makeshift which could not endure. ...
... The phenomenon is easily capable of renewal on a more formidable scale. Nor was the failure of Germany any more a proof of the impossibility of this imperial dream than the previous failure of Napoleon. For the Teutonic combination lacked all the necessary conditions except one for the success of so vast an aim. It had the strongest military, scientific and national organisation which any people ...
... the Ashram Remarks on Public Figures in Europe Kaiser Wilhelm II The Kaiser gave up at the last moment when he could have assumed a dictatorship. Napoleon did the same after Waterloo. In Napoleon's case they say it was the result of his disease, he was no longer quite his old self. The Kaiser was a man without any real strong stuff in him to face ...
... history tells are known as conquerors: Alexander the Great who conquered Western Asia and Egypt, Julius Caesar who conquered France and England, the emperor Baber who conquered the North of India, Napoleon who became for a time the master of Europe. But there are other ways of being a conqueror. You also can be a conqueror. There are things in the world which need to be known and learnt. Ask, ...
... 77—Genius discovers a system; average talent stereotypes it till it is shattered by fresh genius. It is dangerous for an army to be led by veterans; for on the other side God may place Napoleon. 78—When knowledge is fresh in us, then it is invincible; when it is old, it loses its virtue. This is because God moves always forward. Sri Aurobindo is speaking here of knowledge by inspiration ...
... these, I believe, are the chief triumphs of the European enlightenment to which we bow our heads. For these Augustus created Europe, Charlemagne re founded civilisation, Louis XIV regulated society. Napoleon systematised the French Revolution. For these Goethe thought, Shakespeare imagined and created, St. Francis loved, Christ was crucified. What a bankruptcy! What a beggary of things that were rich ...
... next? 77—Genius discovers a system; average talent stereotypes it till it is shattered by fresh genius. It is dangerous for an army to be led by veterans; for on the other side God may place Napoleon. I don't think we can speak of this one either. No, I don't think so. What we should actually do is make a selection and only talk about aphorisms that give us an opportunity to explain a ...
... say, "But our real enemies" (as a child, just like that, between us), "our real enemies aren't the Germans: it's always been the British." And then I had, like Sri Aurobindo, a great admiration for Napoleon, so I had quite a grudge against them for the way they treated him. Oh, no! The British... ( laughing ) the only thing that rehabilitated them in the world's history is that Sri Aurobindo went ...
... indeed the one who has told him those things. And among the things I am supposed to have told him, I seem to have declared that he is a combined reincarnation of Buddha, Christ, Archangel Gabriel, Napoleon and Charlemagne!... I am going to answer him that those five characters belong to different "lines of manifestation" and therefore they are rather unlikely to be combined in a single being (a single ...
... Excerpts from "Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?" Harvard Business Review, May-June, 1986. 2.Drucker, Peter F. The Practice of Management. New York: Harper and Row, 1955. 3.Hill, Napoleon. Think and Grow Each. Greenwich: Fawcet Publishing Inc., 1958.. 4.Bennis, Warren and Burt Nanus. Leaders. New York: Harper and Row, 1985. 5.Bass, Bernard. Leadership and Performance ...
... the sea was the world's last great frontier where a man alone could test and expand his limits. Now Steven was about to attempt a trans-Atlantic crossing in a small sailing hip appropriately named Napoleon Solo. This was not an unheard-of feat, a few others had made similar crossings, but nonetheless a daunting one. "I was not interested in setting a record, " Steven wrote later. "For me, the crossing ...
... Ocean to England. Steven had been sailing since the age of twelve. "I fell in love with sailing instantly," he writes, "everything about it felt right." Steven named his twenty-one foot long boat Napoleon Solo. Not many boats this size had made the crossing, but there had been a few as small as 12 feet. "I was not interested in setting a record," he says. "For me the crossing was more of an inner ...
... agent in controlling the activities of the nature. Will is will whether it is calm or restless, whether it acts in a yogic or unyogic way, for a yogic or an unyogic object. Do you think Napoleon and Caesar had no will or that they were Yogis? You have strange ideas about things. You might just as well say that memory is memory only when it remembers the Divine and it is not memory when it ...
... would have been bogged down there. NIRODBARAN: Churchill was for it, but the military advisers were not. SRI AUROBINDO: Military advisers are always like that. They go by routine. It is like Napoleon against his generals. They lose in the right way! PURANI: Now the ministerial crisis will recede. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, Chamberlain is a lucky beggar, but England is unlucky. NIRODBARAN: Hitler ...
... The British air force and navy give correct news. It is the army that doesn't. NIRODBARAN: Are the Dutch good fighters? SRI AUROBINDO: I don't know. They have not fought since the time of Napoleon. SATYENDRA: That is a long time. PURANI: If they had made some treaty or pact with the Allies - SRI AUROBINDO: The neutrals wanted to have the best of both worlds. If Germany does not attack ...
... him, he took it very cheerfully. Henry IV of France had a great physical fear, but by his will-power would force himself to rush into the thick of the battle and he became known as a great warrior. Napoleon and Caesar had no fear. Once when Caesar was fighting the forces of Pompey in Albania, his army was faring badly. He was at that time in Italy. He jumped into the sea, took a fisherman's boat and ...
... development and fulfilment. At times a remedy was tried: the social pattern was sought to be constructed upon the principle of "Career open to talents"; this was a motto which the great Napoleon endeavoured to carry out in practice. Instead of claims of birth, age or position, he looked for real merit as the "Open Sesame" to the highest ranks involving the gravest. duties and responsibilities ...
... er of a strong centralised invincible spirit of France, one and indivisible and inexorable, that worked itself out through Jeanne d'Arc and Francis the First and Henry the Great and Richelieu and Napoleon. But all nations have the same story. And it is too late now in the day to start Page 90 explaining the nature and origin of nationhood; it was done long ago by Mazzini and by Renan ...
... night and finish it in a week. On the 26th the preparation and on the 27th the triumphal entry into London. PURANI: But there is no sign yet anywhere of the attack. Nolini was saying that just as Napoleon was scratching his head at Boulogne thinking about how to invade England, Hitler also must be doing the same. (Laughter) SRI AUROBINDO: During the reign of King Harold, the last invader crossed ...
... possible on the spiritual planes. Of course they are not always infallible. But Hitler committed only one mistake: when attacking Poland he thought that the Allies wouldn't intervene. (Smiling) Napoleon did not have such guidance. NIRODBARAN: Had Hitler's Asura anything to do with your accident? SRI AUROBINDO: I don't think so. NIRODBARAN: Do the Asuras know about their own destruction? ...
... their respective epoch crystallises as a peak culture unit. They are not creators or originators; they are rather organisers. Page 207 A Buddha, a Christ or a Mohammed or even a Napoleon or Caesar or Alexander are truly creators: they bring with them something – some truth, some dynamic revelation – that was not there before. They realise and embody each a particular principle of ...
... Mysteries, -Christian, 153 -Druidic, 151, 153 -Eleusinian, 150, 151, 153 -Kabalistic, 153 -Platonic, 153 Mythic Age, 221 NACHIKETAS, 381 Napoleon, 7, 8.. 90, 1l5, 195,208,394 Nazism, 127 Nyaya,338 Neo-Realists,317 New Testament, the, 214, 244 Newton, 301, 308, 356 Nietzsche, 16, 18-19,21-24 ...
... that foster normal sleep. Some pills abolish the deepest stages of REM sleep, and most suppress much-needed REM sleep. Then there are those who simply do not need to sleep as much as most people. Napoleon and Winston Churchill are famous examples. Churchill always insisted on an afternoon "siesta" of about one hour, but then would work until two or even three in the morning, only to rise again by six ...
... army believed in Alexander's wonderful luck, and was of the opinion that there was nothing he could not dare and do. It was that mystical faith of an army in its leader, which Caesar also and later Napoleon were able to evoke. It is more difficult to understand or even to judge the statesman in Alexander than the general; for his views as a statesman were in a state of flux, 3 when he was called ...
... don't believe it was the affection that did it. It is the dominating vital force in X. People who were not affectionate by nature, have attached people to them and dominated their minds and lives—e.g. Napoleon. He also says that he has been betrayed often by friends and suffered much. Is it then his robust optimism that upholds him? It is a difference of temperament and vital expansiveness. ...
... improving the lives of handicapped persons all over the world. She travelled extensively, met hundreds of people, charming everyone with the radiance and purity of her soul. Mark Twain said that she and Napoleon were the two most interesting characters of the nineteenth century. Her whole life was a series of attempts to do what other people do as well as they do it. That she succeeded to the fullest is in ...
... which their respective epoch crystallises as a peak culture unit. They are not creators or originators; they are rather organisers. A Page 97 Buddha, a Christ or a Mohammed or even a Napoleon or Caesar or Alexander are truly creators: they bring with them something—some truth, some dynamic revelation—that was not there before. They realise and embody each a particular principle of being ...
... appears to be a very difficult and even an impossible problem. The union of Europe is an armed peace. One kind of union was attempted at times in the past, but the union which Caesar, Charlemagne and Napoleon wanted to bring about was but the sole supremacy of a particular country and nation; that means the union of the devourer and the devoured. Another type of union too is at present visible in Europe ...
... 29In., 319 Page 432 -Prayers and Meditations, 266, 270, 282-3n., 285n., 289n., 291n., 336 Mozart, 427 Mysteries, 192 -Orphic, 192 -Eleusinian, 192 NAPOLEON, 116,209,406 OFFERTORY, the, 82 Olympians, 46, 253 PANDAVAS, the, 76 Pani, the, 164 Pantheon, 299 Paris, 242, 287, 356, 376 Pashu, the, 80 Petrarch, 209 Pharaohs, the, 200 ...
... such persons and even give a detailed description of their past lives. There are also the well-known sprit communications through a medium at spirit sitting. Someone comes and tells you he was Napoleon, another was Shakespeare and so on. How many Shakespeares and Napoleons and Caesars have manifested in this way, there is no counting! There are spirits who are extremely talkative and bewitch you ...
... although it is a rather dangerous game and may tend to put into a too rigid and mathematical formula something that is living and variable. Still it will serve to give a clearer picture of the matter. Napoleon evidently was a child of Mahakali; and Caesar seems to have been fashioned largely by the principle of Maheshwari; while Christ or Chaitanya are clearly emanations in the line of Mahalakshmi. Constructive ...
... systematic training or practice on scientific lines, they developed a skill in the game through an inner urge or influence. Perhaps all men of genius are creatures of this type. They say this about Napoleon too. He went on winning his victories without end and no one could stop his onward march. The old experienced generals of the enemy Powers, the Austrians for example, practically gave up trying ...
... er of a strong centralised invincible spirit of France, one and indivisible and inexorable, that worked itself out through Jeanne d'Arc and Francis the First and Henry the Great and Richelieu and Napoleon. But all nations have the same story. And it is too late now in the day to start explaining the nature and origin of nationhood; it was done long ago by Mazzini and by Renan and once for all. ...
... line of development and fulfilment. At times a remedy was tried: the social pattern was sought to be constructed upon the principle of "Career open to talents"; this was a motto which the great Napoleon endeavoured to carry out in practice. Instead of claims of birth, age or position, he looked for real merit as the "Open Sesame" to the highest ranks involving the gravest duties and responsibilities ...
... can't oppose Hitler. Sri Aurobindo : It is as Mother says that Hitler does not want to give his terms before he destroys the French army. It seems the same condition that was in time of Napoleon III when France lost the war. It is due to party quarrels and jealousies. Politicians trying to meddle in the Page 274 government instead of doing their own work. Their dissatisfaction ...
... 1909, "The Power that Uplifts" ( Karmayogin, August 21, 1909), and three "Historical Impressions" which had been written for the Karmayogin but were first published in the Standard Bearer : "Napoleon" (November 20, 1920) and "The French .Revolution" (November 28 and December 5, 1920). In SABCL the first five of the above essays are included in Section Seven of Volume 3; "The Need in Na ...
... must manifest itself in life, and in action upon large masses of men. It is not merely a question of power. The question is what Power is manifested, from where does one bring it ? For instance, Napoleon had a certain power but that does not mean that he had a spiritual consciousness. So there may be power or powers but no spiritual Consciousness. The higher up one g06 one finds that the ordinary ...
... he took it very cheerfully. Henry IV, King of France, had a great physical fear but by his mental will he would compel himself to rush into the thick of the battle and was known as a great warrior. Napoleon and Caesar had no fear. Once when Caesar was fighting the forces of Pompeii in Albania, Caesar's army was faring badly. Caesar was at that time in Italy. He jumped into the sea, took a fisherman's ...
... whole thing is so much dominated by the machine. It may be illusion. But the men of the past looked so much higher in comparison with the leaders of the present crisis. Even look at the generals. Napoleon and his generals you find the human character there dominating. The leaders do not come off so high. Whether the machine can be used to help men to good? It can help to make life more comfortable ...
... yogis it is no use attempting a biography, because they do not live in their external life. Their real life is inner and how can anyone else know that life? It is different with men of action like Napoleon or Julius Caesar, men who develop themselves through action, but even in their cases it would be best if they wrote their biographies themselves." 22 November. In the evening Sri Aurobindo said: ...
... Not only in my case but in that of poets, philosophers and yogis it is no use attempting a biography, because they do not live in their external life.... It is different with men of action like Napoleon or Julius Caesar...." 38 What do we know of Valmiki, for instance? Only this and what more do we want? that he was the kind of man (or superman) who could have written (because he did in fact ...
... conclusion .... 21 The papers no doubt talked of exciting happenings, of offensives and counter-offensives, of withdrawals and forced marches, of pinchbeck men of destiny and latter-day Napoleon Bonaparte's - but these 'men of the moment' were but so many pathetic thistle downs at the mercy of every random gust of wind. But the people's sufferings in the mass were a whole Himalaya of pain ...
... Whatever I undertook seemed to become successful. This is how I became almost a legendary figure, a demi-god who had created a new way of life, an example to follow.... This might be a modern Napoleon of industry like Henry Ford speaking. But this success is, after all, akin to that of a man who rides a tiger. Faster and faster must the business grow, farther and farther its tentacles extend, - ...
... understands that one can become the great Energy of life and merge with the universal Dynamism (even though there is hardly any terrestrial example of this, except, perhaps, on a very small scale, Napoleon, Alexander or Genghis Khan). But corporeally, how can one little body become all bodies and enter all the miseries of the world without dying from it? How can it even physiologically broaden its cellular ...
... one may be surprised to see him set out on the “spiritual" path, but our conception of the "Spirit" is probably as erroneous as our perception of Matter, and for the same reason. When speaking of Napoleon, Sri Aurobindo saw God armed striding through Europe, 5 and this “evolution of consciousness,” which was also one of Theon's themes ("if only humanity understood its role as evolutionary agent ...
... produce monsters and caricatures, or perhaps improved super-brains, that is, if they succeed, but these will be variations of the same thing and woven of the same substance. One can put the molecules of Napoleon, Dante and Shakespeare together—it would be amusing to behold—but it would still be of man all the same, perhaps even worse. What follows man will possibly (certainly) produce itself from man but ...
... ser, Sennacherib and the Egyptian Pharaohs, Pompey's head hewn off on the sands of Egypt and Caesar bleeding at Pompey's sculptured feet, Napoleon's mighty legions thundering victorious at the bidding of that god of war on the field of Austerlitz and Napoleon's panic legions fleeing disordered with pursuit and butchery behind them from that last field of Waterloo,—Time, the Kala Purusha, drunk with ...
... organization, but no military genius and, in this organization, there is no room for initiative. It reminds me of the Italian historian who said that organization is the only thing that matters. Napoleon's successes were considered to be due to sheer luck. PURANI: And any individual initiative is likely to be crushed under organization. If the Allies can't do anything, they will lose all the moral ...
... also that is working. I am almost getting sympathy and admiration for the British which I never had before. They are standing up alone against Hitler's power without allies – just as they did in Napoleon's time. Page 278 Disciple : You wrote in a letter to Dilip that your will never fails. Sri Aurobindo : No, I did not say that. What I said what the I have not seen my ...
... called I. Matter insists and matter makes reply. Shakespeare was this; this force in Jesus yearned And conquered by the cross; this only learned The secret of the suns that blaze afar; This was Napoleon's giant mind of war." Page 205 I heard and marvelled in myself to see The infinite deny infinity. Yet the weird paradox seemed justified; Even mysticism shrank out-mystified. But the ...
... family. He wrote between 1863 and 1877 his two great masterpieces. War and Peace and Anna Karenina. War and Peace is an immense panorama of Russian life in the early nineteenth century, including Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia. The two major characters, Andrey and Pierre exemplify the major moral conflicts of the book: between romantic self-realisation and service to others. The inner tensions ...
... g multitudes to yield. It was no secondary power you faced, But she who has the whole wide world embraced, England whose name is as the thunder, she Whose navies are the despots of the sea, Napoleon's conqueror whose fair dreadful face Great nations loathe and fear and choose disgrace Rather than meet in wild and dangerous war Victors of Waterloo and Trafalgar. But you, a band of armèd herdsmen ...
... is in our inmost recesses one would awake completely refreshed. It is not the length of time spent in sleep but the quality of the time spent that relieves and refreshes one. Somebody mentioned Napoleon's capacity to snatch a short spell of sleep even in the midst of the loudest cannonading on the battlefield. The Mother said: "The great actress Madame Sarah Bernardt had the same remarkable ability ...
... testimonies of Hitler’s occult powers are written in history, however much academic historians try to overlook them. In his Hitler and Stalin – Parallel Lives , Alan Bullock writes: “In the copy of Napoleon’s Thoughts found in his library, Stalin had marked the passage: ‘It was precisely that evening in Lodi that I came to believe in myself as an unusual person and became consumed with the ambition ...
... of mediaeval Christendom. Page 316 The example of Rome has haunted the political imagination of Europe ever since. Not only has it been behind the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne and Napoleon's gigantic attempt and the German dream of a world-empire governed by Teutonic efficiency and Teutonic culture, but all the imperial nations, including France and England, have followed to a certain ...
... insists and matter makes reply. Shakespeare was this; this force in Jesus yearned And conquered by the cross; this only learned The secret of the suns that blaze afar; This was Napoleon's giant mind of war." I heard and marvelled in myself to see The infinite deny infinity. Yet the weird paradox seemed justified; Even mysticism shrank out-mystified. 1 Quoted ...
... sufficiently formed to be immortal. The soul descending makes a new vital formation suitable for the new life. Could the vital of a worldly man whose vitality was very strong, like Napoleon's, be immortal, or only that of him who was far advanced in Yoga? Only if it is consciously developed and connected with the psychic being. It is said that when one has ...
... Notes on Images - VI Three images of the fourth in descent from the Chief of the Barbarians; the first showing him standing meditating on the great ghaut of the river, a figure & face like Napoleon's clad in a dress resembling the modern European; the second, his mother & stepmother, descendants of the captives of the first image; the third, the emperor again with his halfbrother, irreproachably ...
... mystical element is there and the sole Indianism is an allusion to the Bo-tree in the midst of four allusions from which three touch on European things: the epics of Homer, Shakespeare's Hamlet and Napoleon's career. The other poem is wittily quizzical about a cat. There just one phrase - "fur-footed Brahman" - brings India in. And that phrase too is not exactly a key-expression. On the score of the... insists and matter makes reply. Shakespeare was this; this force in Jesus yearned And conquered by the cross; this only learned The secret of the suns that blaze afar; This was Napoleon's giant mind of war." I heard and marvelled in myself to see The infinite deny infinity. Yet the weird paradox seemed justified; Even mysticism shrank out-mystified. ...
... mystical element is there and the sole Indianism is an allusion to the Bo-tree in the midst of four allusions from which three touch on European things: the epics of Homer, Shakespeare's Hamlet and Napoleon's career. The other poem is wittily quizzical about a cat. There just one phrase—"fur-footed Brahman"—brings India in. And that phrase too is not exactly a key-expression. On the score of the non-mysticism... makes reply. Shakespeare was this; this force in Jesus yearned Page 441 And conquered by the cross; this only learned The secret of the suns that blaze afar; This was Napoleon's giant mind of war." I heard and marvelled in myself to see The infinite deny infinity. Yet the weird paradox seemed justified; Even mysticism shrank out-mystified... By ...
... secret lies of man... Shakespeare was this; this force in Jesus yearned And conquered by the cross; this only learned The secret of the suns that blaze afar; This was Napoleon's giant mind of war" 15 This may be compared with a later sonnet, A Dream of Surreal Science, in which the same idea is expressed in even more pointedly satirical terms: One dreamed ...
... the moon. In short, we are some perfected protoplasm with greater swallowing capacity and smarter (?) tropisms, and soon we shall be able to calculate all that is required to produce biological Napoleons and test-tube Einsteins. All the same, our earth would hardly be a happier place with legions of Page 63 blackboards and supergenerals, who would not know which way to turn – they would ...
... otherwise, it is like a blind king. Then, and only then, can we begin to speak of reincarnation and memories of past lives, which will not necessarily be memories of garish or glorious deeds (how many Napoleons and Caesars there have been if we believe the scribblers of reincarnation!), but memories of soul-moments, 91 because for the psychic nothing is glorious or inglorious, high or low; the conquest ...
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