... took the papers back to Nolini Kanta Gupta and, while handing them over to him, told him about his feelings. Nolini Kanta Gupta at once grasped the situation and kept those sheets back in their place, with a piece of paper on top of the pile, marking “confidential”. In the course of time Jayantilal somehow came to know about these unknown papers and suggested to Nolini Kanta Gupta if the Archives could... that, in spite of this prominent part of Amal Kiran in those two editions, Nolini Kanta Gupta still chose to tell Jayantilal Parekh “… if Nirod approves” when he approached him vis-à-vis the changes proposed by the Archives team; this must have been much before March 1983. However it is significant to note what Nolini Kanta Gupta had said. He never said if “Amal and Nirod approve” or if “Nirod and Amal... place whatsoever in authorization of the Revised Edition. One then wonders how the officials go for that which has no official or moral basis. Nolini Kanta Gupta issues a Public Notice “… if Nirod approves”—that is the reported statement of Nolini Kanta Gupta put forward by Jayantilal Parekh. But we do not know when exactly this was made, when the consent was given by him—if at all it was given. There ...
... contained in that pregnant phrase of Nolini Kanta Gupta—“If Nirod approves”—then the suggestion that the Archival editing had the sanction of Nolini Kanta Gupta becomes somewhat dubious, misleading. Significantly, however, the occult responsibility vis-à-vis the approval was passed on by Nolini Kanta Gupta to Nirodbaran. That begs a question. If Nolini Kanta Gupta had the final authority among “these... edition was prepared under the supervision of Nirodbaran and KD Sethna (Amal Kiran), they taking the final decision regarding the recommended changes; further, technically it had the “sanction” of Nolini Kanta Gupta himself. “These three men were associated with Sri Aurobindo in his writing, revision and publication of the poem,” inform us the editors in their introduction. It states: “The present edition... soul. It is, to use Arjava’s phrase, a “Gesture that out of Brightness came”. Only one who is in contact with that Brightness can enter into the spirit of such poetry. By the way, calling Nolini Kanta Gupta, Nirodbaran, and Amal Kiran as “these three men” only displays the utter lack of simple courtesy for others, for those who had the direct association with the Master. It lacks dignified taste ...
... perception that can command a clear and comprehensive view of those worlds and the elements and energies, ¹ The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part VII, by Nolini Kanta Gupta. ² The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, by Nolini Kanta Gupta, Page 104 beings and forces abounding in them. And it is only the souls shepherded by divine Grace that can pass through them unscarred and safe... grows. It is in the physical life and in the physical body that the soul slowly builds itself until it becomes a fully conscious being.”¹ ¹ The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part VII by Nolini Kanta Gupta. Page 94 After-death Journey and the Process of Rebirth As I have already said, the Mother does not subscribe to the current notions about rebirth. According to her,... enter into the living hands that played. In the case that I saw the man used to play well enough normally, but quite in the ordinary way; ¹ The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part VII, by Nolini Kanta Gupta. Page 96 he became, however, as he continued to play, all on a sudden not only a virtuoso, but a marvellous artist; it was the hands of the other person which made use of him.”¹ ...
... in the Standard Bearer on 13 March 1921. Another partial text was included in Sri Aurobindo's Letters on Yoga . Draft of a Letter to Nolini Kanta Gupta . A young member of Barindra Kumar Ghose's revolutionary secret society, Nolini Kanta Gupta (1889 - 1984) was arrested and tried for conspiracy in the Alipore Bomb Case. Acquitted, he worked with Sri Aurobindo on the Bengali weekly Dharma... brought to Sri Aurobindo's attention, he dictated a final statement in which he tried to set the record straight. This was not published during his lifetime, but it was used by his disciple Nolini Kanta Gupta in writing an article that was published in Prabasi in Phalgun 1352. The first two letters by Sri Aurobindo referred to above were published in Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother... Purani wrote down Sri Aurobindo's conversations and bits of household news. [28] 8 May 1930. When Motilal wrote to Sri Aurobindo in April or May 1930, Sri Aurobindo wrote this draft and asked Nolini Kanta Gupta to reply in Bengali in his own name. This explains Sri Aurobindo's use of the third person. Draft of Letter to Saurin Bose. June 1914 . Saurin Bose, brother of Sri Aurobindo's wife Mrinalini ...
... × Nolini Kanta Gupta, Reminiscences, p. 72. × Arya, no. 1 (15 August 1914), p. 58. × Nolini Kanta Gupta, op. cit., p. 40. ... making a choice had not been necessary: some individuals had gathered around them, guided by their psychic instinct. The first of these were Sri Aurobindo’s companions, of whom the closest were Nolini Kanta Gupta, Bejoy Nag, Saurin Bose and Suresh Chakravarti. They had been joined by a young Tamil Brahmin from Pondicherry, K. Amrita. ‘With those who accompanied me or joined me in Pondicherry,’ wrote Sri... × K. Amrita, in Reminiscences, p. 180. × Nolini Kanta Gupta, op. cit., pp. 63-64. × The Mother, Prayers and Meditations, CWM 1 pp. 243-44. ...
... the new house I found Ramaswami with a big copy of the Ramayana printed in Devanagari script. He had started reading Sanskrit. Nolini Kanta Gupta was his tutor. Whenever Ramaswami spoke about his tutor, he spoke with love and respect. Nolini Kanta Gupta gave him lessons in the Bengali language also. In the new house Ramaswami rendered into Tamil Bankim Chandra Chatterji's short story... but where to go for the shikha? The shikha was offered as first fruit to Lord Sri Aurobindo. Was this not a scrupulously orthodox Brahmacharya? The shikha was scissored off clean by Nolini Kanta Gupta in obedience to Sri Aurobindo's order at about 2 a.m. on the altar of the temple at sacred Pondicherry in which Sri Aurobindo is the murti (deity). He performed this service when I... seemed improper. As I got more and more familiar with lyengar, the names of the inmates of Sri Aurobindo's house came to be known to me. Only one of them is still here. His name is Nolini Kanta Gupta. Of those who are no more, Bejoy Kumar Nag was one — his name became Vijayakantan in Tamil. In order to escape from the clutches Page 20 of the British ...
... standpoints and modes and angles of vision. Nolinida, as Nolini Kanta Gupta was universally known in his life-time, had that rare gift of getting at the heart of a problem and of seizing immediately the truth of things. As Deshpande puts it (in his "Nolini Kanta Gupta's Perceptions of Poetry" in Tributes to Nolini Kanta Gupta, Sri Mira Trust, Pondicherry, 1988): "There is a catholicity of... prepare the poem for publication, he could no longer do all the work unaided. He took the assistance of two disciples, one of whom, Nirodbaran, made the final hand-written copies and the other, Nolini Kanta Gupta, the typescripts." (Editor's Note: Supplement to the Revised edition of Savitri.) It is these typescripts which Nolinida had prepared that used to go to the press and the proofs of which were... Aurobindo's last composition, its translation was Nolinida's last composition. And I can affirm that the masterly translation has added a large dimension to the Bengali language." (Tributes to Nolini Kanta Gupta, p. 14) I am happy that the Sri Aurobindo Aurobindo Ashram is bringing out, in this slender volume, six of his essays on Savitri. These are by no means the only writings of his which ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Nolini Kanta Gupta – a brief life-sketch DREAMER and revolutionary, linguist, scholar, critic, poet, philosopher and man of deep spiritual realisation, Nolini Kanta Gupta stands foremost among the men of this century who are destined to leave their mark on generations to come. Born on 13 January... Education to which he was a constant inspiration. Any life-sketch of his would be incomplete if no mention was made and proper place given to his wife Srimati Indulekha Gupta. When Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta left his garhasthyajivan for good and joined his master, Sri Aurobindo, at Pondicherry in 1926, she took over the responsibilities that naturally developed on her and discharged them admirably... Nolinida once mentioned that when he left his purbashram he placed the entire situation and his family duties in Sri Aurobindo's hands and His Grace indeed took good care of them. Nolini Kanta Gupta passed away at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram on 7 February 1984 ...
... Incidents in His Life Part I A Life Sketch of Sudhir K. Sarkar Mona Sarkar Sri Sudhir Kumar Sarkar “one of the bravest and most fearless sons of the Motherland,” as Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta put it, was among the first batch of revolutionaries that, at the turn of this century, became active under the leadership of Sri Aurobindo. Born in Faridpur (Bogra, now in Bangladesh) on 21st... dangers. How brutally he and the others were tortured in the Andamans! It is beyond man’s imagination. What man has done unto man — and that too by supposedly civilised people. ( Recounted by Nolini Kanta Gupta to Mona ) 1908-1909 – Alipore Bomb Trial Sri Aurobindo’s sick attendant Arabindo was in the No. 1 ward of the hospital in the charge of the senior hospital assistant. Arabindo had... behind Nolini and told him to look directly at the identifier, while I made frightened gestures and avoided his eyes, pretending to be the guilty one. The ruse worked. The witness identified me as Nolini Kanta Gupta. To the utter chagrin of the honourable judge, the whole court burst out laughing. Even the lawyers and barristers on both sides could not suppress their merriment. Perhaps my expert acting annoyed ...
... and Heaven" dates back to around 1902, early drafts of "Kamadeva" and "Life" to around1913. A notebook containing these three early poems was uncovered by Sri Aurobindo's secretary, Nolini Kanta Gupta, in April 1932. He typed out copies and sent them to Sri Aurobindo with this note: "I have copied these poems out of a notebook that was being hopelessly eaten away by insects. I... contains drafts of "To the Ganges", "To the Boers", etc. (see above, Part Three). Around 1912 Sri Aurobindo copied the poem out by hand in a notebook. Twenty years later, his secretary Nolini Kanta Gupta typed this and the next two poems out from this notebook and presented them to Sri Aurobindo for revision. Fourteen years after that they were included in Poems Past and Present... n and one typed manuscript. One Day . Circa 1932. Sri Aurobindo wrote the first draft of this poem in the notebook containing drafts of the previous three poems, which Nolini Kanta Gupta uncovered and sent to him in 1932. This draft was lightly revised and later included in Poems Past and Present . There is one handwritten and one typed manuscript. Page 711 ...
... called at the new house I found Ramaswami with a big copy of the Ramayana printed in Devanagari script. He had started reading Sanskrit. Nolini Kanta Gupta was his tutor. Whenever Ramaswami spoke about his tutor, he spoke with love and respect. Nolini Kanta Gupta gave him lessons in the Bengali language also. In the new house Ramaswami rendered into Tamil Bankim Chandra Chatterji's short story ... but where to go for the shikha? The shikha was offered as first fruit to Lord Sri Aurobindo. Was this not a scrupulously orthodox Brahmacharya? The shikha was scissored off clean by Nolini Kanta Gupta in obedience to Sri Aurobindo's order at about 2 a.m. on the altar of the temple at sacred Pondicherry in which Sri Aurobindo is the murti (deity). He performed this service when I was asleep... As I got more and more familiar with Iyengar, the names of the inmates of Sri Aurobindo's house came to be known to me. Page 156 Only one of them is still here. His name is Nolini Kanta Gupta. Of those who are no more, Bejoy Kumar Nag was one—his name became Vijayakantan in Tamil. In order to escape from the clutches of the British Government he had assumed the pseudonym Bankim ...
... called at the new house I found Ramaswami with a big copy of the Ramayana printed in Devanagari script. He had started reading Sanskrit. Nolini Kanta Gupta was his tutor. Whenever Ramaswami spoke about his tutor, he spoke with love and respect. Nolini Kanta Gupta gave him lessons in the Bengali language also. In the new house Ramaswami rendered into Tamil Bankim Chandra Chatterji's short story "Jugal... forehead; but where to go for the shikha? The shikha was offered as first fruit to Lord Sri Aurobindo. Was this not a scrupulously orthodox Brahmacharya? The shikha was scissored off clean by Nolini Kanta Gupta in obedience to Sri Aurobindo's order at about 2 a.m. on the altar of the temple at sacred Pondicherry in which Sri Aurobindo is the murti (deity). He performed this service when I was asleep... to do so seemed improper. As I got more and more familiar with lyengar, the names of the inmates of Sri Aurobindo's house came to be known to me. Only one of them is still here. His name is Nolini Kanta Gupta. Of those who are no more, Bejoy Kumar Nag was one — his name became Vijayakantan in Tamil. In order to escape from the clutches Page 20 of the British Government ...
... succeeded or not we had to get ourselves registered according to the rules. We knew that these pinpricks were all due to the stay of the British Indian secret police in Pondicherry. From Nolini Kanta Gupta, Reminiscences (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1959) 55. Now let me say a few nice things, about some good people, for such people too had their abode here in Pondicherry... courage and magnanimity. It was on the strength of their signatures that we could continue to stay here without too much trouble. THE HOUSE SEARCH INCIDENT OF APRIL 1912 From Nolini Kanta Gupta, Reminiscences (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1969) 44-45. At one time, they [the British authorities] made up their minds that Sri Aurobindo should be kidnapped in a car... nick of time for the police to claim another two months' holiday in Pondicherry. However, I think their fangs have been drawn. THE INCIDENT OF BIREN ROY Extract from Nolini Kanta Gupta, Reminiscences (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1969), 52-53. The British Indian police set up a regular station here, with a rented house and several permanent men. They were ...
... cells we are not conscious of ? But those who have advanced a little know full well that, however difficult it may be, the conversion ¹ & ² The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part VII, by Nolini Kanta Gupta. Page 164 of the cells and their global turning to the Divine is a crucial stage in the process of the integral self-surrender demanded by this Yoga. Sincerity can become complete... spite of yourself as it were." But this is "an arduous and tortuous way”, as the Mother says, this way of suffering. The sun-lit ¹ & ² The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part VII, by Nolini Kanta Gupta. Page 166 path of the psychic direction, the steady infiltration and permeation of the central sincerity is the better way, and much more speedily effective. Sincerity makes... then, in the condition of perfect sincerity, it is the divine omnipotence that acts and achieves, and when the infinite divine Force ¹ The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part VIII, by Nolini Kanta Gupta, ² Words of the Mother, 4th Series, Page 169 acts freely and sovereignly in a nature rendered transparent and receptive, what is there that is impossible to it ? "When ...
... Shyam Sundar Chakravarty to communicate his permission to him. Upendra Nath did not take long to make his mark. He proved to be a talented writer and a dauntless, resourceful political fighter. Nolini Kanta Gupta writes about him in his Reminiscences : "Upenda was like a leader and teacher to us. It was he who taught us the Gita in the Maniktala Gardens. Living in his company in the jail I learnt many... Barendra Kumar Ghosh [Barindra Kumar Ghose] 2. Indu Bhusan Rai 3. UllaskarDutt Page 292 4. Upendra Nath Banerji 5. Sishir Kumar Ghose 6. Nolini Kumar Gupta [Nolini Kanta Gupta] 7. Sachindra Kumar Sen 8. Poresh Chandra Maullik 9. KunjaLalSaha 10. Bijoy Kumar Nag 11. Narendra Nath Buxi 12. Purna Chandra Sen 13. Hemendra Nath Ghose... documents filed, if counted individually, were over four thousand and the material articles exhibited, i. e, bombs, tools, revolvers etc. were between three to four hundred." 160. Nolini Kanta Gupta has given a vivid account of the jail life of the accused in his Bengali book, S m ṛtir Pātā. Page 294 We give below short extracts from the Foreword to the above book ...
... substantial contingent of British police were engaged, and permission obtained of the French government in Pondicherry to keep an eye on Aurobindo Ghose and other revolutionaries on the run. Nolini Kanta Gupta, one of Aurobindo’s first four companions, writes in his Reminiscences: The British Indian police set up a regular station there, in a rented house with several permanent men. They were of... Sri Aurobindo’s very first contribution, which would later be chapter one of his magnum opus The Life Divine, opens with the following splendid paragraph, once called a ‘living entity’ by Nolini Kanta Gupta: ‘The earliest preoccupation of man in his awakened thoughts and, as it seems, his inevitable and ultimate preoccupation — for it survives the longest periods of skepticism and returns after... × Sri Aurobindo Archives and Research 1985, 215 × Nolini Kanta Gupta, Reminiscences, 52 × Evening Talks (recorded by A.B. Purani), 20 ...
... any of the universities of India or abroad. Sri Aurobindo University should aspire to provide the training ground for youths who would build up a new personality in a new universe. Nolini Kanta Gupta too explained the ideal as "nothing less than the founding of a new mankind upon earth - with a new life and a new consciousness". The sense of the Convention was that the emphasis in the proposed... and each State walked up to the Page 775 urn - itself in the shape of a lotus bud - and deposited the earth they had brought. After the soil of Auroville too had been added, Nolini Kanta Gupta sealed the um and the inauguration - which had taken 75 minutes in all - concluded in an atmosphere charged with the fervour and hope of a battered world looking forward to the birth of a new... become thy instruments, thy sword slaying all evil, thy lamp dispelling all ignorance... Make thyself manifest.* * Translated from the original Bengali by Nolini Kanta Gupta. Page 786 Then, "in God's transforming hour", all things shall change - The Mighty Mother shall take birth in Time And God be born into the human clay ...
... form as an offering at his feet on 15th August, 1934 on the occasion of his birthday. Six sadhaks would translate these six poems. Nolini asked me to translate one of them. The five others were Nolini Kanta Gupta himself, Suresh Chakravarty, Anilbaran Roy, Dilip Kumar Roy and Behari Barua. The one I was to translate was “In Horis Aeternum” — a very difficult poem. I had much doubt if I could cope with... sense alone) that catches the eternal out of perishable hours in these things’.” At one time I used to write a lot of poems. That was one of the brightest periods as regards writing poetry. Nolini Kanta Gupta and Suresh Chakravarty had of course started long ago, Anilbaran also, Dilip, Nishikanta were going on with great speed. Behari Barua, Jatin Das of Chittagong were also on the list. Nirod’s niece... (29.10.35) Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother , ed. 1953, p. 208 × Nolini Kanta Gupta: from his eighteenth year since the time he was in Bengal, he has been Sri Aurobindo’s companion. He was arrested along with Sri Aurobindo in the Alipore bomb case. ...
... first place a being of power so that he may be able to defend himself.” This is it, it is that experience. It has come back as an experience.’ 2 The New Man is among us. 3 — Nolini Kanta Gupta Sri Aurobindo wrote in The Synthesis of Yoga: ‘It is impossible to rise into [the gnostic or supramental consciousness] at Once; if that could be done, it would mean a sudden and violent... thin veil covers it. It marches just behind the line [between the visible and invisible]. It waits for an occasion to throw off the veil and place itself in the forefront.’ This is a note by Nolini Kanta Gupta, who died in 1984, published above his signature in the Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual of 1987. Sri Aurobindo had foreseen the necessity of the transitional being; he had begun to work it out... atmosphere of our Earth to establish itself here. Since then it is a new element in the evolutionary process and seeks out the human instruments capable of embodying it. The Mother and also Nolini Kanta Gupta have expressed in unmistakable terms that, in the mass of the human species now populating the Earth, potential supermen are already present — a fact that moreover could be deduced from her narrative ...
... × Kireet Joshi, op. cit., pp. 87-88. × Nolini Kanta Gupta, Reminiscences, p. 69. × K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, op. cit., pp. 210-11. ... × Sri Aurobindo, op. cit., pp. 457-58. × Nolini Kanta Gupta, op. cit., pp. 82-83. × How They Came to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother 2, pp. 23-24. ... × Champaklal Speaks , pp. 16-17. × Nolini Kanta Gupta, op. cit., p. 78. × See The Mother, Questions and Answers 1955, CWM 7 p. 98-99. ...
... and ugliness of the external world to the beauty and truth and happiness of the veiled domains of our being, from the passing show of ¹ The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part VII, by Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta. Page 79 appearances to the ever-lasting, all-enfolding Reality, the Divine. We, who brag of our knowledge and culture, are so blissfully ignorant of the very essence of our being... him. ² The psychic is "the direct infusion of a purifying and redeeming agent into the most obscure and unconscious Matter ¹ The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part VII, by Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta. ² "...Beings from other worlds, worlds of what are known as demi-gods or even gods, beings from what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind, are anxious to take a physical body upon earth so... the psychic that inflames us with love and devotion for the Divine, and compels the discords of our life to dissolve into order and harmony. ¹ The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part VII, by Nolini Kanta Gupta. Page 83 The unity, equality, happy concord and cooperation which the progressive modern mind is groping after, the coordinated progress of mankind towards a nobler existence, a ...
... to look at them. Nolini Kanta Gupta, Sudhir Sarkar, Nolini Sarkar, Narendranath Dasgupta stood quietly on their spots as if absorbed in meditation. Had the repetition of this mantra stirred something in them? After all, this bija-mantra had been their constant companion. I was myself transported to the distant past by the story of their lives. Nolini-da (Nolini Kanta Gupta) had taken his vow... vow in a secret ceremony at the altar of Kali at midnight with blood drawn from his own chest: “I shall one-pointedly serve my Motherland with body and soul.” That same Nolini Kanta Gupta is standing now so quiet and poised, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s beloved child. Sudhir-da, who had to undergo terrible suffering and torture for a long time in the Andamans, was there too, his eyes aglow with ...
... This house belonged to one Sunder Chetty. He remained here until April 1911. In late September, just before the removal, Saurin Bose, a cousin of Mrinalini Devi, came to Pondicherry. In November Nolini Kanta Gupta came. There were now four young men in all: Moni, Bijoy, Saurin and Nolini. On 7 November 1910 Sri Aurobindo wrote to The Hindu , a Madras paper, about his retirement from politics: "I... sadhana. His sadhana was not interrupted even when he was writing the Arya ; in fact, the writing was a part of his yoga. Saurin Bose who had gone to Bengal did not return – he as well as Nolini Kanta Gupta got married in 1919. The "Aryan Stores", of which Saurin had been in charge, was sold to Partha Sarathy Chetty. (He wound up the business in 1932.) . ¹ B. Shiva Rao, "Early Days of Journalis... Anandamaya; he supports the evolution through the Overmind leading it towards his Ananda. " ¹ The names of those disciples who were present on 24 November 1926: (1) Bijoy Kumar Nag, (2) Nolini Kanta Gupta, (3) K. Amrita, (4) Moni (Suresh Chakravarty), (5) Pavitra (Phillippe Barbier Saint-Hilaire), (6) Barindra Kumar Ghose, (7) Datta (Miss Hodgson), (8) K. Rajangam, (9) Satyen, (10) Purani ...
... in the southern part of the town and lived 9. A friend of C.R. Das and a famous Tamil writer. 10. A.B. Purani: Evening Talks. Page 353 there till April, 1911. Nolini Kanta Gupta came from Bengal and joined them in November, 1910. Except for a few short visits to Bengal, Nolini Kanta, Moni and Be joy lived permanently with Sri Aurobindo as his disciples. Bejoy went... Purani. Page 361 when Sri Aurobindo settled in it and the dangers and hard- ships to which he was exposed. There cannot be a more authentic record than the Reminiscences of Nolini Kanta Gupta who was all along with Sri Aurobindo from November, 1910, onwards except for two or three short spells of absence, and we reproduce long extracts from it. "Sri Aurobindo came to Pondicherry... territory. He was held in detention for five long years and was released only after the War had ended. Motilal Roy received contributions from some patriotic 24. Reminiscences by Nolini Kanta Gupta. 25. The Life of Sri Aurobindo by A.B. Purani. Page 377 persons in Bengal and sent them to Sri Aurobindo from time to time. There were some men like Durgadas Seth of ...
... with her gleamings in the space of heaven, the Goddess has discarded her dark robes. Awakening all, Dawn comes with rosy steeds well yoked to her chariot. ( 14 ) (Translation by Nolini Kanta Gupta) या गोमतीरुषसः सर्ववीरा व्युच्छन्ति दाशुषे मर्त्याय। वायोरिव सूनृतानामुद ता अश्वदा अश्नवत् सोमसुत्वा ॥१८॥ माता देवानामदितेरनीकं यज्ञस्य केतुहती वि भाहि । प्रशस्तिकृद् ब्रह्मणे नो व्युच्छा... sacrifice, who gives the perfect expression — that is the Supreme Good, That may Mitra and Varuna, and Aditi, and the waters and Earth and Heaven protect us. ( 20 ) (Translation by Nolini Kanta Gupta) कृष्णं नियानं हरयः सुपर्णा अपो वसाना दिवमुत्पतन्ति । त आववृत्रन् त्सदनादृतस्यादिद् घृतेन पृथिवी व्युद्यते ॥४७॥ समानमेतदुदकमुच्चैत्यव चाहभिः। भूमिं पर्जन्या जिन्वन्ति दिवं जिन्वन्त्यग्नयः... the wideness. ( 47 ) The same waters flow upward and again flow downward, day by day. The divine showers give life to the earth; the fires give life to heaven. ( 51 ) (Translation by Nolini Kanta Gupta) ...
... of your nature. Sri Aurobindo × Sri Aurobindo wrote what follows to indicate how he wanted his secretary, Nolini Kanta Gupta, to answer a letter from Durgadas. Nolini's reply was apparently written in Bengali.—Ed. × ... × This is Sri Aurobindo's draft answer to a letter from Durgadas dated 16 July 1928. Sri Aurobindo did not complete the letter. Instead he wrote a note to Nolini Kanta Gupta in which he gave his thoughts on the points in Durgadas's letter, presumably for communication to Durgadas in Bengali. See the next item.—Ed. ...
... This press release was written by Sri Aurobindo and issued over the signature of Nolini Kanta Gupta.—Ed. × This letter was sent over the signature of Nolini Kanta Gupta. The recipient was Surendramohan Ghosh, a Bengal Congress leader who was then serving as a member of the ...
... of these letters have an impersonal tone and read more like brief essays than personal communications. The Publication of the Letters Around 1933, Sri Aurobindo's secretary Nolini Kanta Gupta began to compile selections from the growing body of letters in order to publish them. During Sri Aurobindo's lifetime, four small books of letters were published: The Riddle of This World ... in a given letter has no necessary relation to an X in another letter. Names of Ashram members to whom Sri Aurobindo referred not as sadhaks but as holders of a certain position — notably Nolini Kanta Gupta in his position as Sri Aurobindo's secretary — are given in full. Sometimes the names of people who played a role in the history of the period are also given. In his letters Sri Aurobindo ...
... the Centenary Edition of Savitri. When compared with Sri Aurobindo's manuscripts, a sadhak felt distressed that texts read out to Sri Aurobindo and passed by him had been tampered with. Nolini Kanta Gupta, whom he used to consult, had passed away. To whom was he to make an appeal now? He prayed to the Mother to intervene and heard her answer: "Go to Nirod." I knew nothing of this... intellectual accomplishments are a thing of wonder to us. Those who have read the essays in this compilation will agree with our assertion that Amal is one of them and the other is Nolini Kanta Gupta. They have written many books on various subjects from A to Z. Amal has many volumes still unpublished. One wonders how in one single life they could have achieved such a miracle ...
... Maniktola Garden community. Their chhota karta , Barin, was no longer there to look after them and direct them. Aurobindo had hardly known any of them before his imprisonment in Alipore Jail. Now Nolini Kanta Gupta, Bejoy Nag, Suresh Chakravarti, Saurin Bose and others sought shelter with him and solace from his presence. Practically all of them had been students before they became activists, and Aurobindo... who became a regular house guest. The small Calcutta group of young men re-formed around Aurobindo. Bejoy Nag had accompanied him; Suresh Chakravarti had prepared his arrival in Pondicherry; Nolini Kanta Gupta and Sauren Bose arrived a few months later. Nolini brought the good news that the third prosecution of Aurobindo, this time (like the first) for sedition, had resulted on appeal in the government ...
... AGNI IN THE RIG-VEDA AND ASWAPATHY IN SAVITRI (SOME REFLECTIONS APROPOS OF A TERM COMMENTED UPON BY NOLINI KANTA GUPTA) 1 In the Mother India of August 15, 1976 Nolini Kanta Gupta has given a very pointed and appealing interpretation of a term in Savitri which had puzzled Huta and me and led us to consult him. The term occurs ...
... revised draft prepared on the original manuscript page. Seeing the abruptness of III at this place, in the absence of I and II anywhere, perhaps a doubt had arisen in the mind of the typist, Nolini Kanta Gupta, and he must have sought clarification from Sri Aurobindo. The double tick mark is 77 Richard Hartz, Mother India, November 1999, p. 1072. 78 Ibid., August, 2000, p. .... compellingly brought out in them. A foundation for the appreciation of the future poetry with Savitri as its example has been laid and we should now approach it on that basis. Similarly, Nolini Kanta Gupta had been a long-time associate of Sri Aurobindo since his political days and was himself a person with high attainments. His writings are extensive, both in Bengali and in English, and provide ...
... called at the new house I found Ramaswami with a big copy of the Ramayana printed in Devanagari script. He had started reading Sanskrit. Nolini Kanta Gupta was his tutor. Whenever Ramaswami spoke about his tutor, he spoke with love and respect. Nolini Kanta Gupta gave him lessons in the Bengali language also. In the new house Ramaswami rendered into Tamil Bankim Chandra Chatterji’s short story “Jugal ...
... method on the physical plane.... I know that the Supramental Descent is inevitable — I have faith in view of my experience 1 Bulletin, Vol. XV, No. 4, p. 51. 2 See Nolini Kanta Gupta, The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo (Part Eight), p. 102. 3 Letters on Yoga, p. 1473. that the time can be and should be now and not in a later age." 1 To... savant and authentic exponent of Sri Aurobindo's vision of the future, for agreeing to write a Foreword to this book. How can I adequately express my gratitude to revered Nolinida (Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta, the life-long companion and the foremost disciple of Sri Aurobindo) for invoking on the most solemn and significant date, the seventeenth of November, the Blessings of the Mother for the author ...
... Almost all these pieces were first published in The Advent, a quarterly journal in English edited by Nolini Kanta Gupta and published by P. Counouma, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry. Most of them were subsequently published in the eight-volume Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta (English edition), published by the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry. A few pieces ...
... material object whatsoever if you do not take care of it. You must take care of it not because you are attached to it, but because it manifests something of the Divine Consciousness.² Nolini Kanta Gupta too has testified how she taught us to use our things with care .... She uses things not merely with care but with love and affection. For, to her, material things are not simply inanimate... settled in her mind. Everything was gone, all those fine and great ideas vanished and there was only a vacant imperturbable waiting for what was beyond mind. 32 There is also the report by Nolini Kanta Gupta about the Mother: The first time Sri Aurobindo happened to describe her qualities, he said he had never seen anywhere a self-surrender so absolute and unreserved. He had added a comment ...
... on Monday before the Commissioner, Sri Aurobindo, Abinash Bhattacharya and Sailen declined to make a formal statement, having already had some experience of legal procedures and quibblings. Nolini Kanta Gupta told Mr. Halliday that "he was oblivious of the reason for which he was charged". Barindra and some others, however, seem to have made a fairly full confession after their arrest, but only... Ullaskar received death sentences; some were exiled to the Andamans for life, some were sentenced to transportation or rigorous imprisonment for several years; and some fifteen, including Nolini Kanta Gupta, were acquitted along with Sri Aurobindo. Presently, C.R. Das appealed to the High Court on behalf of those who had been convicted, and as a result Barindra and Ullaskar had their death sentences ...
... and apprentice-overwomen? For those related to the Work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the first place to look for them is in themselves. Overman or overwoman may be in embryo there. As wrote Nolini Kanta Gupta, one of the close collaborators of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother: “Although we may not know it, the New Man – the divine race of humanity – is already among us. It may be in our next neighbour... Printed above his signature in Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual 1987. × In Homage to Nolini Kanta Gupta , p. 21. × Sri Aurobindo: The Life Divine, pp. 1042-43. ...
... prepare for his arrival and housing by the freedom fighters in Pondicherry; Saurin Bose, who had joined the small group in October 1914 and who was a cousin of Sri Aurobindo’s wife Mrinalini; and Nolini Kanta Gupta, who had arrived in November of the same year and who also had been a defendant in the Alipore case. The financial situation of the group was usually so desperate that Sri Aurobindo once wrote... Supplement to the Centenary Edition of Sri Aurobindo’s Collected Works, 426 and 427 × Nolini Kanta Gupta, Reminiscences, 59 × Idem, 63 ...
... Sri Aurobindo Archives and Research , December 1988, p. 201. × Nolini Kanta Gupta and Amrita, Reminiscences, p. 44. × Id. p. 43. ... The Mother, Questions and Answers 1956 , CWM 8 p. 150. × Nolini Kanta Gupta and K. Amrita, Reminiscenses , p. 165. × Sujata Nahar, The Mother’s Chronicles V, p. 580 ...
... part. In the Indian family the eldest brother holds the highest position; he is the head of the family and takes all important decisions. The role of Eldest Brother in the Ashram was held by Nolini Kanta Gupta, whose life had been closely associated with that of Sri Aurobindo since their time in the prison of Alipore and who as a sadhak was considered a paragon of the Integral Yoga. Therefore it... fact that, just like the necessity of the appearance on Earth of transitory beings, never crops up in the reasonings of K.D. Sethna and the other commentators. Neither do they ever mention that Nolini Kanta Gupta must have revised his opinion about the postponement, as can be deduced from the fact that he testifies to the presence of the superman among us. It is worthwhile here to repeat the words of ...
... environment, there is a constant precarious balancing and adjustment which may at any moment go wrong." 5 1 Letters on Yoga, p. 1480. 2 The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 507. 3 Nolini Kanta Gupta, The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo (Part Eight), p. 85. 4 The Life Divine, p. 191. 5 The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 509. Page 217 Thus, in the very nature of things... e," 4 — down to its very cells and functionings that the law of incapacity and consequent fatigue will be finally abrogated and with it the 1 The Life Divine, p. 196. 2 Nolini Kanta Gupta, op. cit., p. 87. 3 The Life Divine, p. 215. 4 Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, p. 12. Page 218 physiological compulsion for ...
... of Yoga, p. 837. 4 Kena Upanishad, p. 84. 5 The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 704. 6 The Mother as quoted by Nolini Kanta Gupta in The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo (Part Eight), p. 97. 7 The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 727. 8 Nolini Kanta Gupta, op. cit., pp. 96-97. Page 303 that our evolving body can expect to find the second way of obviating the ...
... higher or lower status of development. Readers interested in knowing more about these things are advised to go through the illuminating essay "Lines of the Descent of Consciousness" written by Nolini Kanta Gupta and included in his Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part Two. The names of these beings and creatures of the supraphysical worlds differ widely in different religious traditions. Some of these... long interview with Dilip Kumar Roy; the Mother too has narrated this particular event in one of her Class Page 62 Talks to the Ashramites assembled in the "Playground"; and Nolini Kanta Gupta has written about it in great detail in one of the chapters of his Reminiscences. Apart from this well-documented incident of brick-throwing in the "Guest House", behind which was the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 The Ashram, the World and The Individual* MOTHER told us long ago that our Ashram is an epitome of India. It represents all that is good in India and also all that is bad – all the bad qualities, her weaknesses, all that is crooked and false, dark and obscure. And the Ashram, being a concentrated centre... dominate or control them. Here, the change should be conscious and, as I said, from within. And each one of us who are here in the Ashram is in turn * Report of a private talk with Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta on 9 September, 1976. Page 26 an epitome of the Ashram and all the good and bad elements and movements are in one way or other represented in him – even in the best ones the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Deoghar THE scene was Deoghar, though not exactly the town itself. About five miles before you reach the town, there is the Jesidih Junction on the main railway line. Nearly a mile from there, close to the railway line there was a house with only a ground floor and quite neat and clean on the whole. All... eighteen and had just finished with my college life. The dramatis personae were (1) Barindra Kumar Ghose, (2) Ullaskar Dutt, (3) Prafulla Kumar Chakravarti, (4) Bibhuti Bhushan Sarkar, and (5) Nolini Kanta Gupta. The plot was to manufacture bombs. Hitherto, there had been only preliminary investigations and initial experiments and efforts. Now Ullaskar came out with his Eureka. "All is ready," he ...
... The Mother Abides - Final Reflections Life-Sketch of Nolini Kanta Gupta Nolini Kanta Gupta was born on January 13, 1889, in Faridpur, East Bengal (now Bangladesh). Raised in Rangpur, he went for higher studies to Presidency College, Kolkata. When the province of Bengal was partitioned in 1906, Nolini became increasingly involved in the movement to free India ...
... billion year sleep of parturition. 23 But the year 1971 was to be a Sweet Year, the year of "ananda", the year when the Mother Divine as Ananda - Anandamayi - would make herself manifest. As Nolini Kanta Gupta wrote: Page 790 It must be this goddess that has made herself more material now, she has infused herself into the very substance of matter, therefore the earth tastes sweet today... VIII In the Sweet Year of 1971, the year of man's hoped for "leap towards the Future", and as if divinely insuring that Future, the foundation stone of Matrimandir was laid at Auroville by Nolini Kanta Gupta. It was the Mother's ninety-third birthday, and her message for the day was: "A life consecrated to union with the Divine is the only life worth living." In 1970, the Mother had said that "Auroville ...
... that she had left her body, it should be undisturbed for a while, the body was left as it was till about eleven. Then it was cleaned with eau de Cologne, and was clothed in a spotless new dress. Nolini Kanta Gupta was informed, and when he joined them, the arrangements were finalised. Nirod and Bula too had come up and the Mother's body was gently carried and brought down at 2 a.m. on 18 November, and... hearts, people naturally enough looked up to Nolini - senior sadhak and Secretary of the Ashram - for a word of explanation, encouragement and fraternal love. In a simple and heartfelt prayer, Nolini Kanta Gupta, senior trustee of the Ashram, spoke at once for himself and for many of the Mother's children feeling terribly orphaned at the time: Sweet Mother, Your physical body belonged to the ...
... mystic hieroglyph, the call to a luminous future. —MM. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The Collected Works of the Mother, Birth Centenary Edition, Vol. 3. The Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta, Vol. 3. Sweet Mother: Harmonies of Light: Mona Sarkar. ...
... sufferings and your difficulties. Bulletin, November 1952 Page 47 × Hymn to Durga , translated by Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta from Sri Aurobindo's Bengali original. ...
... Yoga , were brought out. In February 1936, just before the publication of the latter volume, there was another push to bring out a collection of letters on poetry. Sri Aurobindo's secretary, Nolini Kanta Gupta, had by this time made a selection of literary letters, which he gave to Sethna for arrangement. On 25 February 1936, Sethna wrote to Sri Aurobindo asking him for advice on editorial categories ...
... (2)"Are the 'luminous interventions', which you have mentioned in your last letter, law-bound or do they have their own laws not to be understood by intelligence or in mental terms? Nolini Kanta Gupta, just after the Mother's passing away, said in his message that 'further was not possible'. Not possible even if Grace intervenes?" The Supramental Avatars come from the Transcendent — that ...
... where to go for the shikha ? The shikha was offered as the first fruit to Lord Sri Aurobindo. Was this not a scrupulously orthodox Brahmacharya? The shikha was scissored off clean by Nolini Kanta Gupta in obedience to Sri Aurobindo’s order that night at about two o’clock, on the altar of the temple at sacred Pondicherry in which Sri Aurobindo is the mūrti (deity). He performed this service ...
... ) There are different versions of Datta’s words. Rajani Palit writes: ‘Now Datta came out, inspired, and declared: “The Master has conquered death, decay, hunger and sleep!”’ According to Nolini Kanta Gupta, it went as follows: ‘Datta … suddenly exclaimed at the top of her voice, as though an inspired Prophetess of the old mysteries, “The Lord has descended. He has conquered death and sorrow. He ...
... Pericles, Caesar Augustus and Louis XIV. He may have been King Solomon, for, after all, the basic form of his symbol is that of Solomon. A disciple of whom some incarnations are common knowledge was Nolini Kanta Gupta, a great yogi. He himself has said that he was Yuyutsu in the war on which the Mahabharata is based; Virgil, the Roman poet and friend of Caesar Augustus; Pierre de Ronsard, the French poet ...
... intricate for the least thing — the least of our functionings is the result of such a complicated system that it is almost unthinkable. Certainly it would be impossible for the human 1 Nolini Kanta Gupta, The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo (Part Eight), p. 97. Page 316 thought to foresee and combine all these things — now Science is discovering it And one sees very clearly that ...
... the only life worth living . The Mother, Words of the Mother - III: Darshan Messages Hundreds of people witnessed the laying of the foundation-stone of the Matrimandir on this day. Nolini Kanta Gupta brought a small box with blessing-packets given by the Mother, to place in a recess between the site of the Matrimandir and the Banyan Tree. The holy fire, the symbol of man's aspiration, ...
... The New Year of 1974 began. Quite a number of people asked me to publish all that the Mother had told me and written to me about the Matrimandir and Auroville. I informed Nolini Kanta Gupta about it. He approved the idea. So I started writing from the file which had been given to Shyamsunder in November 1972, with the Mother's consent and blessings. ...
... 1972 by her son Monsieur Andre, she wrote and sent to me through him a message which conveys everything. This is the interesting story of how a being discovers the Divine Life. Nolini Kanta Gupta, the Mother's personal secretary went through the script and spontaneously wrote of it: It is a beautiful book well-written, elevating, illuminating, inspring. To read the book is to ...
... places and placing it in the urn. Soil from Sri Aurobindo's Samadhi was also brought and placed in the urn by young people from the Ashram school, also the soil of Auroville. After the ceremony Nolini Kanta Gupta, Secretary of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, sealed the urn, after putting in a copy of the Auroville Charter written by the Mother on parchment paper. This Charter was read out in sixteen languages ...
... pervading silence: "The Lord has descended into the physical today."² Rajani Palit writes: "Now Datta came out, inspired, and declared: 'The Master has conquered death, decay, hunger and sleep.' ³ Nolini Kanta Gupta tells us: "Datta...suddenly exclaimed at the top of her voice, as though an inspired Prophetess of the old mysteries, 'The Lord has descended. He has conquered death and sorrow. He has brought ...
... Visions and voices give us an intimate glimpse into the spiritual pilgrimage of this great soul. Old Long Since originally formed part of reminiscences of Nolini Kanta Gupta and Amrita. the present issue of Amrita's reminiscences is to commemorate his birth Centenary, September 1995. ...
... to do so seemed improper. As I got more and more familiar with Iyengar, the names of the inmates of Sri Aurobindo’s house came to be known to me. Only one of them is still here. His name is Nolini Kanta Gupta. Of those who are no more, Bejoy Kumar Nag was one — his name became Vijayakantan in Tamil. In order to escape from the clutches of the British Government he had assumed the pseudonym Bankim ...
... I say, the person who has such a spontaneous, candid, unquestioning reliance gets the best conditions under which an effective descent of Grace can occur; its action then is marvellous." (Nolini Kanta Gupta: The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part 8, pp. 104-05) A firm faith in the efficacy of the Mother's working behind all appearances, leading to sure victory and to what is spiritually good ...
... smaller house and belonged to one Sunder Chetty. Just before he changed residence, late in September, Saurin Bose (Mrinalini's cousin) came over from Calcutta to join Sri Aurobindo and in November Nolini Kanta Gupta arrived. There were now four young men around Sri Aurobindo: Bijoy, Suresh, Saurin and Nolini. The accommodation was barely sufficient for the five persons and from now on commenced a period ...
... earth's depths Kindles the first spark of the Word born of the churning. The eye of the waxing Moon at night-end Pours out of its blue the golden gleam of a dark collyrium. [Translated by Nolini Kanta Gupta from the Bengali.] 83 I don't know what this is driving at. I am afraid I don't know either. You have suddenly shot beyond Mallarmé, J and everybody else and landed yourself into the ...
... of Sri Aurobindo Vol 6-7 p926 6. Complete works of Sri Aurobindo Vol 6-7 p977 7. All material From Wikipedia on the internet Chapter 11 1.From Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta Vol 7 2. From Old Long Since by Amrita Page 133 Chapter 12 All material taken from Randour Guy's blog Chapter 13 1. Complete ...
... With my blessings 28 13 March 1954 × The two replies of this date were dictated by the Mother to Nolini Kanta Gupta. She signed the typed copies of them. ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Rabindranath and Modernism (I) BENGALI literature has reached the stage of modernism and even ultra-modernism. This achievement is, we may say point-blank, the contribution of Rabindranath. Not that the movement was totally absent before the advent of Rabindranath. But it is from him that the current ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Rabindranath, Traveller of the Infinite (I) IN Rabindranath, in his life as well as in his art, especially in his poetry, the thing that has taken shape is what we call aspiration, an upward urge and longing of the inner soul. In common parlance it is a seeking for the Divine, in philosophical terms ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 The Wise [1] If you meet someone who shows you a thing to be cast out, even like one who tells you of a secret treasure, seek such a ¹ Kusa grass has in India a sacred character. To eat food with the tip of Kusa blade is taken symbolically here as an act of asceticism ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Of the Just [1] One who comes hastily to a judgement, cannot be just. He indeed is wise who can distinguish between the just and the unjust. [2] Who judges others in full knowledge, according to law and equity; the wise one who guards the Law ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Punishment [I] All tremble at punishment: all are afraid of death. See others as yourself and do not strike or cause to strike. [2] All tremble at punishment: to all life is dear. See others as yourself and do not strike or cause to strike. ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Of Hell [1] One who says of a thing that was not that it was goes to hell, also one who does a thing and yet says he has not done. Both of them on leaving the world will share the same fate elsewhere, for they are men of vile action. [2] Many ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Thousands [1] Better than a thousand phrases built with meaningless words is one single meaningful word which brings tranquillity to the hearer. [2] Better than a thousand verses built with meaningless words is one single verse that brings tranquillity to ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Vigilance [1] Vigilance is the way to immortality. Negligence the way to Death. The vigilant never dies; the negligent is already dead. [2] They know this thoroughly well, the wise in vigilance and they rejoice in their vigilance, ever in the presence of ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 On Happiness [1] Let us live happily without enmity among enemies; Among men inimical let us dwell without enmity. Page 223 [2] Let us live happily without affliction among the afflicted; Among men afflicted let us ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Of the World [1] Do not follow the evil way. Do not cultivate a heedless mind. Do not choose the wrong view. Do not be of those who tarry in the world. [2] Arise. Do not be unmindful. Follow the Law of wise conduct. One who follows the Law knows felicity ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Of the Pleasant [1] One who yokes himself to things unworthy, one who unyokes himself from things worthy, One who abandons the goal for the sake of the pleasant, will envy those who are yoked to their soul. ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 The Adept [1] Pain exists not in him who has ended his journey, who has no grief, who is free in every way, released from all knots. [2] The heedful ever strive, they delight not staying at home. As a swan quits his pond, even so he moves away from home ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Alipore Jail IN Alipore Jail we spent a whole year, from 2nd May 1908 to 6th May 1909, as undertrial prisoners. This period might be divided into four distinct phases, according to the type of quarters we were allotted and the kind of life this gave us. These phases were however not of equal length. ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Greek Drama (I) IT seems that on listening to some Greek lines included in my talk the other day, many of you have expressed a desire to hear a little more about Greek poetry. This then will be my subject today. I am particularly reminded in this connection of a line from Sophocles, the dramatist ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Pondicherry Cyclone I HAVE once spoken to you of an earthquake and a small fire. Today I shall say something about two or three other inclement natural phenomena of which I have had direct personal experience. The first was when I was a child, it has left a clear imprint on my mind. Many of you, no doubt ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Subhash, Oaten - Ullas, Russell THE Subhash-Oaten encounter has attained some notoriety, as a number of people have on several occasions given an account of how Subhash Chandra once gave a thrashing with his shoes to one of his British professors, Oaten. But it seems to have almost been forgotten by the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 The Evolutionary Imperative MAN will grow into superman – in spite of himself, if necessary. Has not the animal grown into man? And did the animal try for it or even wish for it? Just so, the plant grew into the animal, willy-nilly, having had no inkling of its destiny. Out of the plant the animal ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Life and Self-Control (A Letter) THERE is no doubt that Europe knows very well the art of life which in our country is totally lacking. In the East it is only Japan that knows it and knows it well enough. Our country on the whole and most of the East is at present steeped in inertia. You have ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 A Letter IN simple words, in a plain manner you want to know the meaning of Yoga. You have asked me not to use highly philosophical terms, but just to make you understand the real purport of Yoga in a few words. I shall try my best, but before that I would like to tell you something. Difficult matters cannot ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Muraripukur - I AT last I made up my mind finally to take the plunge, that I must now join the Manicktolla Gardens in Muraripukur. That meant good-bye to College, good-bye to the ordinary life. A little while ago, Prafulla Chakravarti had come and joined. Both of us belonged to Rungpore, both were of nearly ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 ON UPANISHADIC THOUGHT Yama - Nachiketa (Katha Upanishad) VAJASRAVAS desired that he would give away all he had. He had a son named Nachiketas. As the boy saw the gifts being given, his heart was filled with respect and devotion, and he pondered: "The realm of undelight ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Ushasti Chakrayana (Chhandogya Upanishad) THIS is the story of Ushasti Chakrayana, Ushasti the son of Chakra. But could it be that the name means one who drives a wheel, like Shakatayana,the driver of sakata, the bullockcart? Or is it something similar to Kamalayana, one who tends ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Satyakama and Upakoshala (1) SATYAKAMA was now a Rishi, a brahmarsi , a sage and seer who had realised the Truth. He was himself a teacher now, had his own Ashrama where the seekers and aspirants came to receive his instruction and guidance. Today I shall tell you something of the aim and method ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 BENGALI ESSAYS AND POEMS OF SRI AUROBINDO Asceticism and Renunciation THE Discipline (Dharma) spoken of in the Gita can be followed by everyone; it is open to all. And yet the supreme status in this Discipline is not a whit less than that of any other. The Discipline of the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Indra - Virochana and Prajapati (Chhandogya Upanishad) PRAJAPATI, the Lord and Creator, once declared himself thus: "The Self is the sinless, ageless and deathless One; it has no sorrow nor hunger and thirst. The goal of all its desire is the Truth, Truth is the one thing worthy ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Hymns and Prayers THE seeker, the seeking and the sought are the three limbs that go to the making of the Quarternary – the Four Norms or Objects of life – the Right Law, Interest, Desire and Liberation (Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha). Seekers have different natures; therefore different ways of seeking have ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 The Sixth Sukta The theme of this sukta is to awaken the power of Indra with the help of his followers, the Maruts. Who are the Maruts? We find in the Puranas that Vayu (the Wind-God) in the womb of Diti (the consciousness of duality) had been divided into forty-nine parts by the Lord Indra. As a result ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 The Fifth Sukta The present sukta also tells us that we are to conquer all the terrestrial powers with the help of pure delight and establish in pure mind the foundation of Truth, the concrete manifestation of Force, Knowledge and the Good, the manifold fullness and perfection of Indra. The diversity in ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Mute EVER in the heart's core rings a faint strain, The ringing of His hidden flute: Its dumb utterance evokes a sweet pain, The ardent desire of a burning love. In the moonlight haze, in the love-game, steps around me Brush past to avoid eyes meeting: Half-seen the body, foot-fall ...
... brought out to commemorate his eightieth birthday, 13 January 1969. Dreamer and revolutionary, linguist, scholar, critic, poet, philosopher and man of deep spiritual realisation, Nolini Kanta Gupta stands foremost among the men of this century who are destined to leave their mark on generations to come. Born in 1889 of a cultured and well-to-do family in Bengal, he came early in his teens ...
... and had just finished with my college life. The dramatis personae were (1) Barindra Kumar Ghose, (2) Ullaskar Dutt, (3) Prafulla Kumar Chakravarti, (4) Bibhuti Bhushan Sarkar, and (5) Nolini Kanta Gupta. The plot was to manufacture bombs. Hitherto, there had been only preliminary investigations and initial experiments and efforts. Now Ullaskar came out with his Eureka. "All is ready," ...
... from where she used to work even when here—the same now as she was when in our midst. She is available in the same way—only we must know how to approach her, how to attune ourselves. —Nolini Kanta Gupta November 17, 1973 l The Mother's body belonged to the old creation. It was meant to be the pedestal of the New Body. It served its purpose well ...
... The Mother Abides - Final Reflections Publisher's Note These thoughts and reminiscences of Nolini Kanta Gupta were written or spoken during the final decade of his life— from the time of the Mother's passing in November 1973 until shortly before his own passing in February 1984. During that period they served as a source of guidance and consolation ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 On the Brink (I) One of its legs she Swan does not lift. as it soars upward out of the waters; if perchance it lifted that also, there would then neither today nor tomorrow, nor would there be day nor night nor would there be dawning any more. Atharvaveda, 11.4.21 THUS the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 The Double Ladder I HAVE said, at the very beginning creation was a mass of material particles, dust-particles as it were, millions and hundreds and thousands of millions of them strewn about and scattered in infinite Space. And these gradually condensed and gathered in volumes and masses, definite forms and ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Poetry and Mantra POETRY and mantra are not one and the same thing. I shall try to point out the difference between the two. Poetry can turn into mantra; not only that, poetry must needs be so. The highest form and the most perfect perfection of poetry lie in the mantra. Likewise a mantra can manifest itself ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Tagore the Unique IT is no hyperbole to say that Tagore is to Bengali literature what Shakespeare is to English, Goethe to German, Tolstoy to Russian, or Dante to Italian and, to go into the remoter past, what Virgil was to Latin and Homer to Greek or, in our country, what Kalidasa was to ancient Sanskrit. ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 The Obscene and the Ugly – Form and Essence OBSCENITY has its place in art, but not ugliness. Obscenity and ugliness are not the same, nor are decency and beauty. To maintain and hide the brute in man is a characteristic feature of the civilised world, and this is what is called decency ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 ACT II: THE PLAY ON EARTH SCENE I: THE MOTHER AND THE CHILD THE MOTHER You touch now the dome of your parents. You have reached your peak. Your tender body, my child, fills up the triumphal arc of its destiny. I ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 The Brahmin [1] O Brahmin! Struggle hard, seal off the stream, drive away desires. Knowing that all elements of existence have dissolved, you will know the Uncreated: [2] When the Brahmin has gone beyond the dualities, then he attains knowledge and all ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 A Small Talk So I am going to tell you a story or perhaps stories. These stories, many of them, I have narrated on many occasions to your elders, that is to say, your predecessors who are now quite grown up and are at present among gentlemen. Here is the story: Once upon a time there was a little girl ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 She is always there in that realm of the earth atmosphere from where she used to work even when here,- the same now as she was when in our midst. She is available in the same way – only we must know how to approach, to attune ourselves. She is accessible to our prayer in the same way, even to our ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 An Impression A frail aspiring flame flickers out, A little soul crosses over the other Shore, leaving its burning body. It reappears as a bud of light, a wave of music, a blissful smile, In the woodland of Heaven! A creeper damsel seeking its Kadamba-Shilter: ...
... sincerity and efficiency, a combined endeavour may create a wide and secure opening for the new Power and Presence to come into its own and possess a home in the material life here below. —Nolini Kanta Gupta Page 33 A Review of Our Ashram Life In its early days, quite at the beginning, we may now say long, long ago, for it is now almost half a century ago ...
... carry in you a portion, a spark of her Love; and that will save you from many difficulties, from much danger. If you can keep that in your active memory, it will be still more beneficial. —Nolini Kanta Gupta Page 67 Words, Words, Words While coming to you, I saw your beautiful display of excerpts and quotations from the writings of Mother and Sri Aurobindo ...
... Publishers' Note In this collection of essays only two were originally written in English ("The World War" and "The Situation of To-day"), the others are translations. The reminiscences of Nolini Kanta Gupta and those of Suresh Chandra Chak-ravarty were written in Bengali and those of Amrita (Old Long Since) in Tamil. All these essays, both in the original and in translation, were at the outset ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 The Canto of Desire [1] The desire of the man of deluded movements grows like the golden creeper. And as the monkey in pursuit of fruits in the forest leaps from tree to tree even so the man wanders from birth to birth ceaselessly. [2] For one who ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 The Bhikkhu [1] It is good to control one's eye, good to control one's ear, good to control one's nose, good to control one's tongue. [2] It is good to control one's body, good to control one's speech, good to control one's mind; it is good to ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Tagore VIGIL In the boundless heavens the Great Ascetic, Vast Time keeps vigil. He keeps vigil For a manifestation till now unconceived, unimagined, That none has yet known, That has revealed itself nowhere. In the air ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 The Awakened [1] His victory cannot be vanquished, a victory none can attain in this world. Which path can lead to the Pathless, the Awakened who dwells with the Infinite? [2] No desire – which is entanglement and poisonous drink – can Page 221 ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 The Fool [1] Long is the night to him who is awake, long is a league to the weary. Long is the cycle of life to the senseless person who knows not the true Law. Page ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 A Note On "The Mother Of Dreams" WHO is the Mother of Dreams? And what is a Dream, after all? Where is the world of dreams? Dreams simply mean possibilities, whatever has not happened physically, materially upon earth till now, but can happen one day. This when translated in the human mind is termed ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Songs of Ramprasad ( I ) SAY what does it mean: the eyes drip with tears (when one takes the name of Kali) ? You have seen much, your. wisdom is great, say for certain what it is. One sense I make out: the body is but a sunken log! The name Kali is a fire burning ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Forward FORWARD! ... March on, ever forward! Mother's army we are! On to the battle for her final self-revealing! If ourselves we do not fall back, Who can stop our drive? We are the bridge between earth and heaven, God's labour fulfilled. Hard is the path, ever harder, but ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 In love with darkness IT is all well, it is all well: If a speck of light from out of the sky Just flitted into my room, It were indeed a thing of unbounded joy. But when the whole earth Lies enveloped in darkness, I for myself need no light, Never into the tribe of jackals ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Hymn to darkness ONCE more I turn to the gloomy river bank, I turn to the embedded breeze here, To the dense and intimate shade of the Bo-tree, Once more I return to the darkness. I have, O Darkness, lighted lights Ever keener and keener; And I have found no comfort there, ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Soviet Gymnasts (I) As you know, sometime back – quite a few years now – we had a group of Soviet Gymnasts in our midst. And what a pleasant, perfect performance they gave! Their hammer-and-sickle floating against the wind, the first time they stepped in unison on our sports ground, marching to the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Alipore Court "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage" –Lovelace IT was as it were a wheel within a wheel, a circle within a circle, a play within a play. The comedy of our trial was being staged within the world-play ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 The Bride of Brahman RIGVEDA Mandala X: Sukta 109 (1) OF the stain in Brahman the first to speak were: God Varuna the Vast (shoreless), the Wind-God Matarishvan, Vayu, who blows away even a stronghold, The violent God, Agni, the Goddess Water (Apah), mother of Delight: these are the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 The Second Sukta The upward spirit, the conscious energising power, the aspiration-fire that resides at the root of all spiritual disciplines as their fount and primal inspiration has been invoked in the first sukta. The present sukta throws light upon the different steps and rungs of that upward spiritual ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 VEDIC HYMNS Hymn to Indra RIGVEDA Mandala I: Sukta 84 (I) O INDRA, the delightful wine (Soma) has been pressed out for thee, most powerful art thou and the smiter of foes. May this Indra-Power fill thee even as the sun fills the firmament with its rays. (2) The twin bright carriers ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Hymn to Sindhu (The Mother of Rivers) RIGVEDA Mandala X: Sukta 75 [These Rivers, named after the well-known ancient rivers of the Punjab, are here symbolic of the streamings, the forces of consciousness. They are, as it is said, solar powers, the radiant energies of the Sun – the Supreme ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 OTHER HYMNS AND PRAYERS Hymn to the Sweet Lord SWEET are his lips, sweet his mouth, his eyes are sweet, sweet his smile, Sweet is his heart, sweet his gait, of the lord of sweetness all is sweet. Sweet are his words, sweet his manners, his robes are sweet, sweet the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Who Seeks Holy Places? WHO seeks holy places Gaya and Ganga and Prabhas and Kashi and Kanchi and all, If I can tell to the end the countless count of the name of Kali? What need has one of rituals, if all the three holy hours one utters the name of Kali? The rituals pursue him in ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Hymn to Surya GLOWING like the red passion-flower, born of the Supreme Light, lo, the Mighty Splendour! He dispels darkness, he slays all ills, I bow to the creator of the Day. Page 57 ...
... all to That. This too is not achieved but simply happens— through the Grace. "Wherever you see hope, faith, courage, trust and tranquillity, there you will see Me." —Nolini Kanta Gupta Page 89 Not to Destroy but to Transform Up till now, spiritual life or discipline usually meant a division—a division between spiritual and unspiritual, between what ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 I Played Football (1) SOME of you have asked to hear about my performance in football. I have already told you something on an earlier occasion. Let us have a little more today. I have dabbled in football almost since my birth or, to be more exact, from the time I barely completed five. My hand ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 A P P E N D I X - I November 24, 1926 EVEN before that date for some time past, Sri Aurobindo had been more and more withdrawing into himself and retiring within. An external sign of this became visible to us as his lunch hour shifted gradually towards the afternoon. We used to have our meal together ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Great Time WHO art Thou, in the, vast Finite, Thou flowest, Great Time, from the Beginningless towards the Endless? ¹ I have seized your intent,² mighty Spirit of Time! Now the sky, irridescent in the cataract of sun-rays Created the magic city of limpid Eve-tide; I wandered along river ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 O, Wake Up from Vain Slumber I BRING no magic herbs, I bring only the blood of my veins— O, wake up from vain slumber! If I am struck blind, If these eyes see no more your face, If the whole earth is locked out utterly, Well, let it be so — If you only open wide your fiery eyes ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 APPENDIX - II Original Texts of Translations Vedic Hymns Page 213 Page 214 Page 215 Page 216 Page 217 Page 218 Page 219 Page ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Page 240 Page 241 Page 242 Page 243 Page 244 Page 245 Page 246 Page 247 Page 248 ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Page 235 Page 236 Page 237 Page 238 Page 239 ...
... Evolution and the Earthly Destiny Publishers' Note This selection of essays, drawn from the manifold writings of Nolini Kanta Gupta, is dedicated to the youth of India, to those among her children who cherish in some part of their being an aspiration, a living flame of light that yearns towards an ever-growing perfection, a truth of being and becoming as yet ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Index ACHERON, 103 Aditi, 131-2 Adityas, the, 144 Aesop, 21 Agastya, 74 Agni, 133, 138-40, 144 Ajdeb, 277 Algeria , 12 Amrita, 38, 192, 194 Andamans, the, II Androgyne, 296-7 Anu, 71n ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Translations I Ma soeur, qui donc a prononcé Ie Nom fatal? Ce Nom, dès que je l'ai entendu, a pénétré jusqu'au fond de mon coeur; II a remué mes entrailles dans des joies turbulentes. Que de délices sont enclosés dans ce Nom! Mes lèvres ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 In Her Company When the Mother was giving collective meditation, in the playground for instance, along with those people assembled there around Her, a different kind of people also joined in and gathered – beings from other worlds, gods and angels. The Divine in a physical human body upon earth – it ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Page 76 Tears of grief SHED not tears of grief, Creeper of the glade! Shall Heaven's salver simmering with fragrance' Cast the unsleeping moments of the New Revelation, as the rosy tint from a brush, Upon the counter of the hardened miser that has fallen from the Path? ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Page 82 WHEREFORE THIS HURRY? WHEREFORE this hurry? The last bus about to start? What does it matter? What is the harm? If the bus goes? there is the train; If the train goes, there is the plane. Even if that fails, where's the worry? Stay down! You will surely ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Page 80 CHILDREN'S SONG WE are Mother's children, We are Mother's children. No less are we, let Death come, we shall win at ease. Dangers we face on the way, and trample them under, Our battle-cry dries up oceans, sways over mountains. Sun and moon and stars move at Mother's ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Dhammapada 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Other Hymns and Prayers Page 100 Page 101 Page 102 Page 103 Page 104 Page 105 ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Rabindranath Tagore Page 113 Page 114 Page 115 Page 116 Page 117 ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Ramprasad Page 110 Page 111 Page 112 ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Modern Poetry ELIOT was perhaps the first to lay down the principle that the style of poetry should be like that of prose. By prose he means the current way of talk. According to him the language should be current, if not colloquial. Common words and sentences and the order of prose will satisfy this principle ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Sri Ramakrishna SRI Ramakrishna represents spirituality at its absolute, its pristine fount and power. In him we find the pure gold of spirituality at a time when duplicity, perplexity, deceit and falsehood on the one hand and atheism, disbelief and irreverence on the other reigned supreme. When spirituality ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Boris Pasternak PASTERNAK. His name and his novel Dr. Zhivago have leapt to the eyes of the world. This book has won him two things: high appreciation from the world, topped by the Nobel prize; and, as a paradox, stern censure from his own countrymen, those armed with political powers. I am not concerned ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 The Cause of India's Decline WHAT is the cause – the fundamental cause – of India's decline? The mighty nation that was once the vanguard of the world in the field of learning and culture, whose all-round genius had almost no equal, is now ruthlessly stricken with poverty, incapacity, weakness and stands ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Vivekananda VIVEKANANDA is the embodiment of the newly awakened, heroic and eternal soul of India. India forgot herself, forgot I what she was, what was her mission in the world. With the true nature of her psychic being gone out of her consciousness, India was sunk in slumber. India had lost her spirit ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Fit and Unfit (A Letter) You have written that you are only an ordinary man, not out of the ordinary like me. You do not dare to be above the average, for you believe that you are wanting in capacity and power that make a man extraordinary. And therefore you have to go through life as others. However ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 The Mother- Worship of the Bengalis BENGAL is the hallowed seat of Mother-worship in India. Generally, in India there are two modes of spiritual discipline which are popular. One is the Sakti-sadhana or Mother-worship; the other is Vedanta. There are two principles in the creation. At the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Shyamakanta I INTEND to write of another great Bengali who can be looked upon as a model of the Bengali race. He has shown the genius of the Bengalis in quite an unusual field. His name is Shyamakanta, later on known as So'ham Swami. I speak of the extraordinary capacity of Shyamakanta and not of So'ham ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Reason and Yoga NOTHING is proved by reason. Reason is only an instrument or a weapon. Any man can use it with the same skill for his own end. Satan, too, has his advocate. According to the demands and needs of our ideals, experience and inner impulses, and in order to furnish them with proofs, we engage ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 My Professors (I) My professors at college were giants, Olympian gods all. They are memorable names in the fields of scholarship, learning and teaching. Of these, J. C. Bose, P. C. Ray, Percival, M.Ghose and our Principal P. K. Roy were mature elderly men; among the younger group were Harinath De ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Physics or philosophy WHAT is the world that we see really like? Is it mental, is it material? This is a question, we know, philosophers are familiar with, and they have answered and are still answering, each in his own way, taking up one side or other of the antinomy. There is nothing new or uncommon ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 THE QUEST AND THE GOAL Man and the Gods 1 THE Earth symbolises and epitomises material Nature. It is the body and substance, the very personification, of unconsciousness-Ignorance carried to the last limit and concretised. It represents, figures the very opposite of the Reality at the summit ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Bypaths of Soul's Journey A POPULAR conundrum. Are the souls finite or infinite in number? Supposing they are finite, then a time is sure to come when there will be no more souls upon earth; for, as it is said, all souls are evolving and in the end will pass out of earthly life and get merged in their ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Observer and the Observed SCIENCE means objectivity, that is to say, elimination of the personal element-truth as pure fact without being distorted or coloured by the feelings and impressions and notions of the observer. It is the very opposite of the philosopher's standpoint who says that a thing exists ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Values Higher and Lower 1 THE problem in the final analysis is as ancient as man's first utterance. Which comes first, which is more important – Spirit or Matter, Body or Soul? Naturally, there have been always two answers, according to one's outlook. Some have declared Annam comes first, Annam is of primary ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 An Age of Revolution THERE has been a revolutionary change in the scientific outlook in recent times. A very fundamental principle – the very postulate on which the whole edifice of physical Science has been built up – is now being called in question. We thought that the unity and uniformity of Nature is a cardinal ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Matter Aspires MATTER holds and expresses material energy, the subtlest and highest form of which is electric energy. Should Matter be confined to that alone or can it express or create, by and out of itself, non-material energy also? What about mental energy and thought movements-can they too be made a function ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Place of Reason ANOTHER point in Sri Aurobindo's view of consciousness which troubles Prof. Das is about the exact nature and function of Reason. For while on one side Sri Aurobindo never seems to be tired of pointing out the inherent incapacity of Reason – in the good company of the ancient Rishis – as an ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Revealer and the Revelation How the horizontal view limits and maims one's spiritual perception is further illustrated in the case of the famous Gloomy Dean. Dean Inge is a divine and as spiritual a person as one can hope to be in the modern world. He has, however, voluntarily clipped his wings and in the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 T. S. Eliot: “Four Quartets" IN these latest poems of his, Eliot has become outright a poet of the Dark Night of the Soul. The beginnings of the new avatar were already there certainly at the very beginning. The Waste Land is a good preparation and passage into the Night. Only, the negative element ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 The Shakespearean Word THE Vedic rishi, says the poet, by his poetic power, brings out forms, beautiful forms in the high heaven. In this respect, Shakespeare is incomparable. He has through his words painted pictures, glowing living pictures of undying beauty. Indeed all poets do this, each in his own ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Rishi Dirghatama MANY of the Upanishadic rishis are familiar to you. Vedic rishis are perhaps not so. Today I will speak of one of the Vedic rishis. Some names of great Vedic rishis must have reached your ears-Vashishtha, Vishwamitra, Atri, Parasara, Kanwa (I do not know if it is the same Kanwa of whom ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Robert Graves ROBERT GRAVES is not a major poet, and certainly not a great poet. He is a minor poet. But in spite of his minor rank he is a good poet: here he presents up a jewel, a beautiful poem¹ both in form and substance. He has indeed succeeded, as we shall see, in removing the veil, the mystic golden ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 George Seftris SEFERIS is a poet of sighs. I do not know the cadence, the breath of the original Greek rhythm. But if something of that tone and temper has been carried over into English, what can be more like a heave of sigh than – Stoop down, if you can, to the dark sea, forgetting The ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 SEER POETS A Vedic Story (RIGVEDA – X. 51.) THE gods are in a great fix. Where is Agni? How is it that the comrade has disappeared all on a sudden? The Sacrifice – the great work has to be undertaken. And he is to be the leader, for he alone can take up the burden. There is no time to ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Aldous Huxley: "The Perennial Philosophy" THIS latest work of Aldous Huxley is a collection of sayings of sages and saints and philosophers from all over the world and of all times. The sayings are arranged under several heads such as "That art Thou", "The Nature of the Ground", "Divine Incarnation", ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Light, More Light LIGHT is its own authenticity. Modern knowledge has reduced the material universe to light particles: that is the ultimate reality which is cognisable to the human sense, beyond which there is no means to go. All other objects are reflections, measures or derivations of this ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Caesar Versus the Divine "RENDER unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." We do not subscribe to the motto. We do not admit that the world and the spirit are irreconcilables and incommensurables. On the contrary we assert their essential unity and identity. The spiritual force is not and need not ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Nicholas Berdyaev : God Made Human NICHOLAS Berdyaev is an ardent worker, as a Russian is naturally expected to be, in the cause of the spiritual rehabilitation of mankind. He is a Christian, a neo-Christian: some of his conclusions are old-world truths and bear repetition and insistence; others are ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 To the Heights To the Heights I UNWELCOME guests are prowling round about. At times they even knock at the door and try to peep through the windows. I have all the doors and windows bolted and barred. And I shall not open them, neither out of kindness nor curiosity. Let them howl in the chill night ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Human Destiny ANTHROPOLOGISTS¹ speak of a very interesting, if not strange biological phenomenon. A baby monkey's face, it seems, is much nearer to the adult human face than to its own form when adult and grown-up. Also the characteristic accentuations that mark out the grown-up ape come in its case too soon ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Of Some Supreme Mysteries THE Supreme is infinite, therefore He is also finite. To be finite is one of the infinite aspects of the Infinite. Creation is the de-finition of the Infinite. *** All creation is fundamentally an act of self-division. The multiplicity of the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Communism: What does it Mean? COMMUNISM, in India at least, has come to mean things which it was not the original or the main purpose of the word to imply. Communism meant "holding in common", that is to say, there is no private property, one can claim nothing as exclusively one's own-things ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Of Desire and Atonement WHEREVER you meet a ray of real light, a gleam of genuine beauty, a particle of true truth- go back with it to its original source. Follow the track to the end and you will find yourself in the embrace of the Divine. *** Close not your senses -however earthly they may ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 TOWARDS THE LIGHT Of Love and Aspiration THERE is a Light before which all other light is darkness. There is a Strength before which all other strength is weakness. There is a Joy before which all other joy is suffering. *** Forward to the Farthest! Upward to the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Towards the Future THE Buddhists consider being as a stream of consciousness, a ceaseless flow of sensations. An individual formation, a creature, a human person has no permanent self-identity. It is like the Heraclitean river where one does not bathe twice in the same water. Besides, .what is more ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 The Birth of Maya THE Divine is All-Light, All-Bliss, All-Power - in himself, in his essence and true being, always and for ever. But, somewhere, in a part of universal being the Divine chose to forget the Divine, a veil was allowed to interpose in front of the All-Light, the All-Bliss, the All-Power: ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Upgrading THE tempo is enhanced. Even so moves Life. The other way is towards Death. The infra-red may be the base, the starting; but the run is towards the ultra-violet. As you advance, you must quicken your steps. The bird flies quicker than the worm can crawl. The daring pilot would shoot ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Consciousness as Energy 1 A LIVE wire – through which an electric current, say of several thousand volts, is passing – looks quite innocent, motionless, inactive, almost inert. The appearance, needless to say, is deceptive. Even so the still life of a Yogin. Action does not consist merely ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 PART FOUR The Divine Man THE core of Sri Aurobindo's teaching, the central pivot on which his Yoga and his work rest is the mystery of the Divine Descent-Spirit descending into Matter and becoming Matter, God coming down upon earth and becoming human, and as a necessary and inevitable consequence ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness EVEN the Vedic Rishis used to refer to the ancients, more ancient than they themselves. "The ancients", they said, "worshipped Agni, we too the moderns in our turn worship the same godhead". Or again, "Thus spoke our forefathers"; or, "So have we heard from those ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Readings in “Savitri” 1 A guardian of the unconsoled abyss Inheriting the long agony of the globe, A stone-still figure of high and godlike Pain Stared into space with fixed regardless eyes That saw grief's timeless depths but not life's goal. Afflicted by his harsh divinity, Bound ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Sectarianism or Loyalty MODERN culture demands that one should not be bound to one creed or dogma, swear by one principle or rule of life or be led blindly by one man. Truth, it is said, has many facets and the human being is also not a Cyclops, a one-eyed creature. To fix oneself to one mode of seeing and ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Tragic Spirit in Nature THE wages of sin, it is said, is death. Well, it can, with equal if not greater truth, be said that the wages of virtue too is death! It seems as though on this mortal earth nothing great or glorious can be achieved which is not marred somehow or other, sometime or other. The ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Soul's Odyssey Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 True Humility IT is not by repeating mea culpa ad infinitum that one can show one's true humility. In owning too much and too often one's sins, one may be just on the wrong side of virtue. There lurks a strain of vanity in self-maceration: the sinner in an overdose of self-pity almost feels himself saintly ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Sincerity THE first condition of the spiritual life and the last condition as well, is sincerity. One must sincerely want the spiritual life in order to have it. The soul – the psychic being – is always sincere: it is made of the very stuff of sincerity, for it is a part, or a spark of the Divine Consciousness ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Towards a New Ideology INDIA must evolve her own political and social ideology; she must discover and establish in this domain also, as in all others that concern her collective life, her own genius and rule. This is what Swaraj really means and demands. Russia has her Sovietic Communism, Germany, for ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) "THE zeal for the Lord hath eaten me up." Such has indeed been the case with Pascal, almost literally. The fire that burned in him was too ardent and vehement for the vehicle, the material instrument, which was very soon used up and reduced to ashes. At twenty-four he was already ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 The Language Problem and India ENGLISH and French are the two languages that hold and express today the culture of humanity at its best and at its largest. They are the two international languages recognised as such and indispensable for all international dealings: and although to be internationally minded ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Jules Supervielle JULES SUPERVIELLE is a French poet and a modern French poet. He belongs to this century and died only a few years ago. Although he wrote in French, he came of a Spanish colonist family settled in South America (Montevideo). He came to France early in life and was educated there. He lived in ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Appendix I WORDSWORTH* I did not come to appreciate the poetry of Wordsworth in my school days, it happened in college, and to a large extent thanks to Professor Manmohan Ghose. In our school days, the mind and heart of Bengali students were saturated with the poetry of Tagore: ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Hymn to Darkness HERE is a modern poem in Bengali. It is characteristically modern, though perhaps not quite modernist. It is an invocation to Darkness: That darkness is no more, The darkness in which my heart plunged when you came, It is no more there. Many are the lights now around the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 The Mission of Buddhism BUDDHISM came as a blaze of lightning across the sky of India's tradition; it was almost a fiery writing on the wall, bearing the doom of a world. Buddhism opposed and denied some of the very fundamental principles upon which the old world rested. It was perhaps the greatest iconoclastic ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Rabindranath and Sri Aurobindo "TAGORE has been a wayfarer towards the same goal as ours in his own way." Sri Aurobindo wrote these words in the thirties and their full significance can be grasped only when it is understood that the two master-souls were at one in the central purpose of their lives. Also ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Brahmacharya BRAHMACHARYA means the storage of energy in the body and its sublimation. The energy in view is mainly physicovital energy, the vital energy based upon and imbedded in the physical body. Brahmacharya naturally meant a strict observance of certain rules and regulations involving a strenuous ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Two Mystic Poems in Modern Bengali Here is the first one as I translate it: BARITONE¹ Let us all move together, one and all, Together into the cavern of the ribs, Raise there a song of discordant sounds – Red and blue and white, kin or alien. Listen, the groan plays ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Lines of the Descent of Consciousness 1 THE world has been created by a descent of consciousness; it maintains itself, it proceeds and develops through a series of descents. In fact, creation itself is a descent, the first and original one, the descent of the supreme Reality into Matter and as Matter ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Nature's Own Yoga I SRI Aurobindo's Yoga is in the direct line of Nature's own Yoga. Nature has a Yoga, which she follows unfailingly, and inevitably – for it is her innermost law of being. Yoga means, in essence, a change or transformation of consciousness, a heightening and broadening of consciousness ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 PART TWO Our Ideal OUR ideal – the ideal of Sri Aurobindo – we may say without much ado, is to divinise the human, immortalise the mortal, spiritualise the material. Is the ideal possible? Is it practicable? Our task will be precisely, first of all, to show that it is possible, next that it is ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Body Human THE human frame is a miracle of creation. It would not be far wrong to say that the whole trend of physical evolution has been to bring out this morphological marvel. It has not been a very easy task for Nature to raise a living creature from its original crawling "crouching slouching" ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 PART ONE A Yoga of the Art of Lift 1 WHEN Sri Aurobindo said, "Our Yoga is not for ourselves but for humanity," many heaved a sigh of relief and thought that the great soul was after all not entirely lost to the world, his was not one more name added to the long list of Sannyasins that ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Sri Aurobindo and his 'School' A CONSIDERABLE amount of vague misunderstanding and misapprehension seems to exist in the minds of a certain section of our people as to what Sri Aurobindo is doing in his retirement at Pondicherry. On the other hand, a very precise exposition, an exact formula of what ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Arjuna or The Ideal Disciple WHAT makes a true disciple? For it is not everyone that can claim or be worthy of or meet the demands of the title. Disciplehood, like all great qualities, that is to say, qualities taken at their source and origin, is a function of the soul. Indeed, it is the soul itself ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Sri Aurobindo's Gita THE supreme secret of the Gita, rahasyam uttamam, has presented itself to diverse minds in diverse forms. All these however fall, roughly speaking, into two broad groups of which one may be termed the orthodox school and the other the modem school. The orthodox school as represented ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Spiritual Outlook THE spiritual outlook is a global view, unlike the mental which is very often the view from a single angle or in rare cases, at the most, from a few angles. The ordinary man, even the most cultured and enlightened, has always a definite standpoint from which he surveys and judges; indeed ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Soul and its Journey 1 WHEN a man dies, his soul or psychic being, after a time goes to the psychic world and takes rest there till the hour comes to take birth again in another body upon earth. There are then these two periods in the life after death. First, the passage and next the rest. The passage ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Varieties of Religious Experience THERE have been religions, approaches to the Divine, which did not believe in the divinity of man, the Chaldean line, the Semitic, for example. According to these, the Creator and the created are separate in nature and being; to call anything created as God himself is blasphemy ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Types of Meditation, THE first is to think on one subject in a continuous logical order. When, for example, you have to find the solution of a problem, you go step by step from one operation to another in a chain till you finally arrive at the conclusion. The thought is withdrawn from all other objects ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Soul of a Nation A NATION is a living personality; it has a soul, even like a human individual. The soul of a nation is also a psychic being, that is to say, a conscious being, a formation out of the Divine Consciousness and in direct contact with it, a power and aspect of Mahashakti. A nation is ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Physician, Heal Thyself IT is not that humanity does not know or feel the need of a radical change in itself. Everywhere man recognises that if the problems and difficulties that face him have to be solved satisfactorily, there must be a thorough overhauling of his outlook and nature; no mere tinkering ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Body Natural WITH regard to the food that man takes, there are two factors that determine or prescribe it. First of all, the real need of the body, that is to say, what the body actually requires for its maintenance, the elements to meet the chemical changes occurring there, something quite material ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Measure of Time WHEN it is said that the Realisation is decreed, is it meant also that the time for it has been fixed? If so, all individual effort and freedom of action seem to go out of the picture, being irrelevant-neither hastening nor retarding the process. The fact is somewhat different, not so ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Darshana and Philosophy THERE is a mental approach to spiritual truths and there is a direct and immediate approach or rather contact. The mind sees as though through a mist, a darkling glass, a more or less opaque veil, and the thing envisaged presents a blurred and not unoften a deformed appearance. The mind ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Man to be Surpassed "MAN is a thing that shall be surpassed". This burning phrase of Nietzsche has unsealed many eyes: it has also scalded and frightened others. It has been hailed by many as the motto, the mantra of the age to come; it has been denounced equally as a false light, a lead of arrogance and egoism ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Process of Purification THERE are three well-marked stages in the process of the purification of nature and surrender to the Divine. When one has made up one's mind finally to take to the path of spiritual life and to turn one's back on the life of ignorant nature, one enters at the outset into a phase of divided ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Sweet Adversity "So long we lived in anxiety, now at last we are going to live in hope." So said the delicious French playwright Tristan Bernard when the Germans came in, occupied Paris, arrested and imprisoned him (in the World War No. I). A noble truth nobly said by a noble soul thrown into the very midst of ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Success and its Conditions SUCCESS in any undertaking can come only by the application of a quiet force. A force that is restless, shaky, nervous always misses the mark. A steady, controlled, almost rigid hand alone can shoot the missile that hits the bull's-eye. The Upanishad speaks of being one and indivisible ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Sartrian Freedom THE poise of the ego, the consciousness of the psycho-vital Purusha as envisaged and experienced by Sartre leads to many other not less catastrophic conclusions. Here is something more on Freedom which seems to be almost the corner-stone of his system: "Freedom is not a being: it is ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Base of Sincerity THE great, perhaps, the greatest secret of life – uttamam rahasyam, to quote the familiar phrase of the Gita-consists in finding, in coming in contact with and remaining in permanent contact with this centre of our being, the nucleus of our living. And curiously, if we are alert and observant ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 There's a Divinity There's a Divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will. * That is what man can do at his best, and even at his worst, rough-hew. Ignorant as he is, crude as his instruments are, he can do no better (and happily, no worse either). The ideals he has do not ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Being or Becoming and Having AGAIN, in this ceaseless continuity of progression it is indeed not necessary at all to stop a while or somewhere and become something for one's perfection or fulfilment. The normal ideal that is placed before man or which he himself seeks is that he should become something, a definite ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Immortal Nation GIBBON'S Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire must have been the original source of the inspiration that moved later on Spengler and Toynbee and others to posit a life-line for nations and races and mark its various stages of growth and evolution. The general theory put in a nutshell would ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Spiritual Genius of India WHAT is it that we precisely mean when we say that India is spiritual? For, that is how we are accustomed to express India's special genius – her backbone, as Vivekananda puts it – the fundamental note of her cultute and nature, which distinguishes her from the rest of the world ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Divine Humanism A GOOD many European scholars and philosophers have found Indian spirituality and Indian culture, at bottom, lacking in what is called 'humanism'.* So our scholars and philosophers on their side have been at pains to rebut the charge and demonstrate the humanistic element in our tradition. It ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Tagore - Poet and Seer A GREAT literature seems to have almost invariably a great name attached to it, one name by which it is known and recognised as great. It is the name of the man who releases the inmost potency of that literature, and who marks at the same time the height to which its creative genius has ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Aspects of Modernism "Unity was the sheet-anchor of Science 'up to now. But the latest theories seem to break up the universe into a mass of independent constituents each acting for itself No doubt there is one Force still (if magnetism and electricity can be reduced to one formula as is sought to be done by ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Modernist Poetry A Modernist poet sings – O bright Apollo “Tin’ andra, tin' heroa, tina theon," What god, man or hero Shall I place a tin wreath upon! and a modernist critic acclaims it as a marvellous, aye, a stupendous piece of poetic art; it figures, ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 A Chapter of Human Evolution THE appearance of the Greeks on the stage of human civilisation is a mystery to historians. They are so different from all that preceded them. There does not seem to exist any logical link between them and the races from whom they are supposed to have descended or whose successors they ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness EVEN the Vedic Rishis used to refer to the ancients, more ancient than they themselves. "The ancients", they said, "worshipped Agni, we too the moderns in our turn worship the same godhead". Or again, "Thus spoke our forefathers"; or, "So have we heard from those who ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Art and Katharsis ART, we all know, is concerned with the Beautiful; it is no less intimately connected with the True; the Good too is in like manner part and parcel of the æesthetic movement. For, Art not only delights or illumines, it uplifts also to the same degree. Only it must be noted that the uplifting ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The World War ITS INNER BEARINGS THIS is a war to which even spiritual seekers can hardly remain indifferent with impunity. There are spiritual paths, however, that ask to render unto God what is God's and unto Satan what belongs to Satan; in other words, spirituality is kept apart from what ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Intuition of the Age ALL movements - whether of thought or of life, whether in the individual or in the mass-proceed from a fundamental intuition which lies in the background as the logical presupposition, the psychological motive and the spiritual force. A certain attitude of the soul, a certain angle ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Three Degrees of Social Organisation DECLARATION of Rights is a characteristic modern phenomenon. It is a message of liberty and freedom, – no doubt of secular liberty and freedom – things not very common in the old world; and yet at the same time it is a clarion that calls for and prepares strife and battle ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Parting of the Ways To be divine or to remain human — this is the one choice that is now before Nature in her upward march of evolution. What is the exact significance of this choice? To remain human means to continue the fundamental nature of man. In what consists the humanity of man? We can ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 THE COMING RACE The New Humanity THE world is in the throes of a new creation and the pangs of that new birth have made mother Earth restless. It is no longer a far-off ideal that our imagination ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Federated Humanity THE last great war, out of its bloody welter, threw up a mantra for the human consciousness to contemplate and seize and realise: it was self-determination. The present world-war has likewise cast up a mantra that is complementary. The problem of the unification of the whole human ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Independence and its Sanction INDEPENDENCE is not a gift which one can receive from another, it is a prize that has to be won. In the words of the poet Bhasa, used in respect of empire, we can say also of liberty: Talloke na tu yacyate na tu punardinaya diyate it is not a thing to be ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Mystic Poetry I WOULD like to make a distinction between mystic poetry and spiritual poetry. To equate mysticism and spirituality is not always happy or even correct. Thus, when Tagore sings: Who comes along singing and steering his boat? It seems a face familiar. He goes in full sail ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 The Poetry in the Making Is the artist – the supreme artist, when he is a genius, that is to say – conscious in his creation or is he unconscious? Two quite opposite views have been taken of the problem by the best of intelligences. On the one hand, it is said that genius is genius precisely because it acts ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Sri Aurobindo: “Ahana and Other Poems” WHAT is the world that Sri Aurobindo sees and creates? Poetry is after all passion. By passion I do not mean the fury of emotion nor the fume of sentimentalism, but what lies behind at their source, what lends them the force they have – the sense of the "grandly ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, A Great Man TAGORE is a great poet: he will be remembered as one of the I greatest world-poets. But humanity owes him another – perhaps a greater – debt of gratitude: his name has a higher value, a more significant potency for the future. In an age when Reason was considered ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 The Beautiful in the Upanishads WHEN the Rigveda says idam śrestham Jyotisām Jyotih āgāt citrah praketo ajanita vibhvā Lo! the supreme Light of lights is come, a varied awakening is born, wide manifest ruśadvastā ruśatī śwetyāgāt āraigu krisnā sadanānyasyāh The white ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 A Vedic Conception of the Poet 'Kavi' is an invariable epithet of the gods. The Vedas mean by this attribute to bring out a most fundamental character, an inalienable dharma of the heavenly host. All the gods are poets; and a human being can become a poet only in so far as he attains to the nature and ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Vivekananda A PERSONAL reminiscence. A young man in prison, accused of conspiracy and waging war against the British Empire. If convicted he might have to suffer the extreme penalty, at least, transportation to the Andamans. The case is dragging on for long months. And the young man is in a solitary cell ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Fatigue and Work FATIGUE, it is said, comes from overwork. The cure for fatigue is therefore rest, that is, do-nothing. But the truth of the matter is that most often fatigue is due not to too much work, but rather too little work, in other words, laziness or boredom. In fact, fatigue need not come too ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Ever Green! WHEN you have an inner experience, there is a natural tendency in you to have it again, to repeat it, and to repeat it, you go by the same way and in the same manner. When you sit in meditation, for example, you withdraw yourself from outward contacts and enter into a condition with which you ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Directed Change NEVER to be bound by the experiences of the past, never to try to recover and stick to the knowledge or realisation gained, even though it may appear particularly precious or unique. This is a motto you should always keep before your mind. When you try to repeat what you have once said, ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 PART FIVE At the Origin of Ignorance THE Divine Consciousness, basically and essentially one and unique, has inherent in it four cardinal attributes – principles of its modulation, modes of its vibration – developing into or appearing as four aspects and personalities. They are ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Individual and the Collective AN integral sadhana cannot. be confined to the individual alone; an element of collectivity must enter into it. An individual is not an isolated being in any way. There are, of course, schools of Yoga and philosophy that seek to isolate the individual, consider him as ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Body, the Occult Agent THE body has an individuality of its own. It is an organised formation and acts as a whole in each and all its parts. The human body is, par excellence, such a formation; for it is moved and controlled by the consciousness which overshadows or informs it, which is its master, whose ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Conscious Being THE conscious being in us is truly the psychic being. But it is at present behind and out of the picture. What is normally conscious then is the mind, a part of it which has got the light is illumined. Weare conscious through this portion, and even we identify ourselves with it, know ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Value of Gymnastics – Mental or Other INTELLECTUAL activity is a kind of gymnastics. What is the value of physical gymnastics? It develops the muscles, makes them strong, supple and agile. But simply to develop them, to make them grow as much as possible or to take delight in a mere muscle-bound body ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Darkness to Light THE Darkness is the measure of the Light. The world as it is is exactly the opposite of what it has to be and shall be. And in order to be what it shall be it had to become what it is now, just not that which it will be. The antipodes go together unavoidably: the depth of the precipice ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Earth a Symbol THE earth is the centre of the material universe. It has been created for concentrating the force that is to transform Matter. It is the symbol of the divine potentiality in Matter. As we have said, the earth was created through a direct intervention of the Divine Consciousness: it is on ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Identification of Consciousness THE Prayers¹ speak always of the identification of consciousness with the Supreme. There is also the other identification of the consciousness, on the other side, namely, with things and beings, with the world outside: to that also the Prayers refer constantly. In reality, however ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Towards Redemption As I have often said, creation is the self-objectivisation of the Supreme Divine; it is the supreme consciousness putting itself lout of itself so that it may look at itself. In so doing – in self-objectifying and self-dividing – it scattered itself abroad: the one infinite multiplied itself ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 This Expanding Universe THE universe is a manifestation, that is to say, the unfolding of infinite possibilities. The unfolding has not stopped, it is continuing and will continue, throwing out or bringing into physical expression all that lies behind and latent. The universe may be considered as a sphere ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Freedom and Destiny FROM a certain point of view whatever happens here in the material world is a reproduction or realisation of whatever has already happened or existed on another level of reality. In this world then there would be no free choice, everything being predetermined. From another standpoint ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Spiral Universe EVOLUTION does not proceed in a straight line, but in a spiral. That is to say, it is not a constant progress in one direction, but consists of progression, regression and an ultimate progression. The spiral movement means that all things must enter into the phenomenon of evolution ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Mother on Herself THERE are two things that should not be confused with each other, namely, what one is and what one does, what one is essentially and what one does in the outside world. They are very different. I know what I am. And what others think or say or whatever happens in the world, that truth ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Central Consciousness VERY often this was the experience: union with the Supreme is established, but as soon as the consciousness was about to settle and merge in the bliss of the union, it was called back and had to turn to the outside world to the ordinary affairs of ordinary consciousness. As if I was ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 This Mystery of Existence HAVE you ever asked yourself why there is this universe at all, at least this earth with which we are so much concerned and which seems to us so real, so authentic? It would perhaps be very wise on your part if you did not! I have often spoken to you of Theon. He was truly a sage ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Constants of the Spirit THE Divine exists in three modes: (I) Existence, (2) Conscious-ness and (3) Bliss. Pure existence, pure consciousness and pure bliss – Sat-Chit-Ananda – these are the three fundamental elements out of which the world is made; they are everywhere in all things, in all beings, in all ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Nature and Destiny of Art TRUE art means the expression of beauty in the material world. In a world wholly converted, that is to say, expresssing integrally the divine reality, art must serve as the revealer and teacher of this divine beauty in life. In other words, the artist must be able to enter ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Service Human and Divine To wish to serve humanity, to do good to it shows ambition and egoism? How? Why do you wish to serve humanity? What is your purpose? What is your motive? Do you know in what consists the good of humanity? And do you know better than humanity itself what is good for it? Or do ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 How to Feel that we Belong to the Divine How to feel that we belong to the Divine and that the Divine is acting in us ? NOT with the head, although one can always begin by it; for the light touches the head first. One must feel with one's sensation, that is, sense it in a flaming aspiration that ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Yogic Centres THERE are, of course, the seven well-known yoga-centres in the human body. They are, beginning from below, (1) the end of the spine, (2) the lower abdomen, (3) the navel, (4) the heart, (5) the throat, (6) between the eyebrows and (7) the crown of the head. But there are others extending ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Prayer and Aspiration THERE are many kinds of prayers. There is one external and physical, that is to say, simply words learnt by rote and repeated mechanically. It does not mean much. It has usually one result, however, making you quiet. If you go on repeating a few words or sounds for some time, it puts ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Homogeneous Being A THING is homogeneous when all its parts are similar, are like itself; in other words, when the whole being is under the same influence, moved by the same consciousness, the same impulsion, the same will. Normally a man is formed of many kinds of fragments, all disparate, each becoming ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Music - Indian and European THE difference is both in regard to the source and the expression and in an inverse way. In European music a very high – spiritual – inspiration is a rare thing. The psychic source also is very rare. But if at all, it is a very high spiritual source, or otherwise it is the vital ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Equality of the Body – Equality of the Soul EQUALITY of the external being means good health, a solid body, controlled nerves – when you are not shaken by the least shock, when you are calm, quiet, poised, balanced. In that condition you can receive into you a great force in yourself from above (or, ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Personal Effort and Will IN personal effort there is a feeling of effort, of tension: the effort is felt as personal i.e. you rely upon yourself and you have the impression that if you do not do at each step what is to be done all will be lost. Will is different. It is the capacity to concentrate upon what ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Story of Love (1) LOVE, in its essence, is the joy of identity. It finds its final expression in the felicity of union. Between the two there are all the phases that make up the universal manifestation. Love comes from the very origin of the universe. Love in its essence, I say, that is, before ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Psychic Being THE psychic is like an electric wire that connects the generator with the lamp; the lamp being the body, the visible form. Its function is likewise, that is to say, if the psychic were not there in Matter, it could have no direct contact with the Divine. It is because of the psychic presence ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Value of Religious Exercises What is the value of religious exercises (such as Japa etc.) ? THESE things, if they help you, are all right; if they do not, naturally they are of no use. The value is quite relative. It is worth only the effect it has on you or the measure of your belief in it. If ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Dealing with a Wrong Movement THERE is a great difference between pushing a thing away simply because you do not want it and changing the state of the consciousness so that the thing you do not want becomes completely foreign to your nature. Usually when you have a movement in you which you do not ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Value of Money THE more money one has, the more one falls into a calamity. It is indeed a calamity, my children. It is a catastrophe to have money. It makes you stupid, it makes you avaricious, it makes you wicked. It is one of the biggest calamities in the world. Money is a thing which one should ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Opening to the Divine You are to open yourself to the Divine and receive Him. Usually you open yourself in all directions to everything and everybody in the world. You open your surface being and receive there all sorts of influences from all quarters. So inside you there-comes about what we can call a ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Supramental Vision IN the supramental vision there is a direct, full and immediate knowledge of things, in the sense that you see all things at the same time totally, integrally; you see the truth of a thing in all its aspects simultaneously. But as soon as you want to explain or describe it, you ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Modern Taste FROM the standpoint of artistic and literary taste and culture, the present world is a thing of extremes. On one side, it is trying hard to discover something very noble, and on the other, it is sinking into a vulgarity which is infinitely greater than the vulgarity, say, of two or three ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The True Teaching You must have observed that my way of talking to you is not always the same. I don't know whether you are very sensitive to the difference, but for me it is considerable. Sometimes, on rare occasions, because of something read or for another reason, there comes to me in the wake of ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Steps of the Soul THE human individual is a very complex being: he is com-posed of innumerable elements, each one of which is an independent entity and has almost a personality. Not only so, the most contradictory elements are housed together. If there is a particular quality or capacity present, the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Mental Silence NORMALLY the mind is in turmoil; it is eagerly active. First of all it is preoccupied with its problems and wants their solution. It knows only to think, to see pros and cons, weigh, reason, deduce; it arrives at some kind of conclusion which brings success or failure almost at random. Apart ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 To Learn and to Understand IT is one thing to learn (apprendre), quite another to understand (comprendre). In learning you take in a thing by your surface mind and it is a thing that comes in from outside like a foreign body; it is put into you, almost driven and thrust into you. You do not absorb it, make ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Mind, Origin of Separative Consciousness THE world is one, indissolubly and solidly one: no part can be separated from any other. Any action anywhere affects the whole and nothing can be moved even by a hair's breadth without changing the entire balance. Each element literally lives, moves and has its being ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Personal and the Impersonal As you go up in your consciousness towards the origin of things you come finally at the end of things: you are beyond the names and forms that make up the universe, beyond even the subtle names and forms at the topmost. You arrive at something formless, impersonal,' unthinkable ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 When Imperfection is Greater Than Perfection A PERFECTED consciousness is attained in the highest status of being, when it is full of light and delight, peace and purity, one with the Divine Consciousness. Such a Consciousness, when it comes down upon earth in its original unmixed clarity, lives as a foreign ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 "I Have Nothing, I Am Nothing" THE state is that of utter commonplaceness. The feeling that I am doing Yoga, that I am something and have a special work to do, that something has to be achieved, that life has a purpose etc., etc. all that has left and left a blank, a void inside and an absolutely mechanical ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Coming of Superman Is it said that when the supramental descends, it will come with such an overwhelming and irresistible force that all humanity will be changed forthwith, that is to say, all men whether they wanted it or not, sought for it or not, would be automatically transformed? It cannot be so: it ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Individual and Collective Soul THE individual has a soul. Likewise a collection of individuals, a group too has a soul. When persons habitually meet together for a certain purpose, they form a set or society and gradually tend to develop a common consciousness which is the beginning of a soul. At school ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Wonder of It All THE ordinary consciousness takes for granted the things that exist as they are. It does not question; it finds everything very natural and as a matter of course. It sees and expects to see the same old familiar things repeated and is not struck by any extraordinary note in them ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Problem of Evil GOD has created the world, the material world as it is? Yes and No, more "No" than "Yes". For he has not created it directly. There have been many creators, rather formateurs, form-makers, in between the world and God, who joined in the work of creation. Who are they? They have been ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Meditation and Some Questions Why am I unable to meditate? BECAUSE you have not learnt it. A sudden fancy seizes you and you say, "Now I will sit down and meditate". But to sit down cross-legged, cross-armed, eyes closed is not doing meditation. You have to learn how to meditate, even as you learn ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Divine Suffering GENERALLY speaking, when one is unhappy, it is one more suffering added to the collective suffering of the Divine. The Divine acts upon Matter in a state of deep compassion: this compassion is translated in Matter and is figured there by what we call Psychic Sorrow. It is, as it were, a ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 This Ugliness in the World EVERYTHING in the world has at its source a supreme truth, how is it then that the world has become ugly in its expression? Why are things at all ugly? Because there are other things that intervene between the Source and the manifestation. For example, if I asked you: "Do you ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Divine Justice Why do people receive force from the Divine even when He knows that they are not sincere? Yau must understand once for all that the Divine, when he acts is not moved by human notions. Possibly he does things even without what we call reason. In any case the reasons are ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Why are Dreams Forgotten? IT is because dreams do not occur always in the same domain. It is not always the same part of the being that dreams nor is it the same place where one dreams. If one were in conscious communication with all the parts of one's being then one would remember all his dreams. But it ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Divine Disgust IT is a "disgust" filled with all compassion. It is something which takes upon itself the wrong vibrations in others to cure them. Instead of throwing a wrong movement back upon the wrong doer in a spirit of cold justice, it draws it within itself, absorbs it in order to eliminate it or transform ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Divine Truth – Its Name and Form THE divine truth at the heart of things, people have called by all kinds of names, everyone presenting it from his own angle of experience. But always it is the one Reality. There are millions of ways leading towards it; but one thing is certain, you can find ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Why Do We Forget Things? THERE are many reasons, of course. First and the most important is that we use the faculty of "memory" in order to remember. Memory is a mental instrument depending upon the formation and growth of the brain. Your brain is developing constantly unless, of course, it is already d ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 On Food I BELIEVE the primitive man was very near to the animal. He lived more by instinct than by intelligence. He ate when he was hungry without any kind of fixed rule. He might have had his own tastes and preferences, we do not know much about it; but we know that he lived much more physically, ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Will and Desire What is the difference between Desire or Wish and Will? THEY are not the same thing. When, for example, you see that a thing is to be done and that it is good to do it, then normally your reason decides and judges; then it is your will that sets to work and makes you do what is necessary ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Sleep and Pain How would one be able to sleep when one has extreme bodily pain? THAT requires some kind of yogic power. The best way, the absolute one, is to get out of the body. When the body suffers, when you have high fever, for example, when you are sick, sick to the last degree, the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Order and Discipline 1 You must become conscious of yourself, conscious in every detail. You must organise what you call yourself around the psychic centre, the divine centre of your being so that you can possess a single, cohesive, fully conscious being: as this centre is wholly consecrated to the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Are Not The Ascetic Means Helpful At Times? I DO not think so. You cure nothing in that way. You give yourself the illusion that you are progressing, but you are really freed of nothing. The proof is that as soon as you stop the practices, the old things come back violently with a vengeance. ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Poetry and Poetic Inspiration I HAVE said: "Poetry is sensuality of the mind". How is it so? It is because poetry is in relation with the forms and images of ideas – forms, images, sensations, impressions, emotions attached to ideas are the sensual or, if you prefer to call it, the sensuous side of things ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Organise your Life MORAL notions have nothing to do with the growth of the inner being. I regret to say it, but the two are ill-assorted mates and go opposite ways. You may fall totally sick by doing a very unselfish act, on the other hand you may continue to be hale and hearty while doing the most egoistic ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Thought the Creator HUMAN thought always creates forms in the mental world. It is a creative force. You are creating thought-forms constantly and sending them out into the atmosphere around; they go abroad to do their work. You are yourself surrounded always by such formations. No doubt there are people ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Origin of Desire FROM where does desire come? Buddha said that it came from Ignorance. It is almost that. Desire is something in the being which imagines that it requires an object other than itself for its satisfaction. This is sheer ignorance, proved by the fact that in ninety-nine cases out of ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 PART TEN Cycles of Creation THE present cycle of creation has for its goal the advent of the Supermind, the coming of a supramental race of beings. The world, it seems, moves in cycles. There are periods of creation with a hiatus or a gap in between of dissolution. Present-day ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Education of Girls THE question is about our physical education and, in a general way, the psychological basis of our activities here. These things have, of course, been written about and spoken of by me and by Sri Aurobindo very often, but evidently the idea does not seem to have entered your consciousness ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Mother on Herself (1) You must be very very persevering. I will tell you a story – my own story. When I began to practise occultism, as I started working with my nights, making them conscious, I found that between the subtle physical level and the most material vital there was a small region ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The World is One THE world is one, in fact and in potentia. There is already a realised unity; that unity runs as the fundamental chord in and through differing and discordant notes. These different and discordant and even denying notes have to be re-conditioned, blended, harmonised; that is the effective ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Transfiguration THE Divine attributes – such as Peace and Joy, Consciousness and Power, Freedom, etc. – each and all of them are self-existent realities, existing by themselves in their fullness and perfection. They are not mere qualities that are acquired by effort through gradual culture and development ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 How to Listen I HAVE begun to notice that many among you, perhaps a very large portion, do not listen to what I say. For not unoften you have put questions on a subject on which I had talked in detail just a moment before, as if nothing was spoken. The fact is surely this: each one of you is shut up in his ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Education as the Growth of Consciousness ALL knowledge is within you. Information you get from outside, but the understanding of it? It is from within. The information from outside gives you dead matter. What puts life into it, light into it is your own inner light. All education, all culture means drawing ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Education is Organisation EDUCATION is organisation. Mind's education means organisation of mental faculties. Organisation naturally involves development. The faculties in the normal and natural state are an undeveloped disorganised lot, a confused mass, – unformed, ill-formed ideas, notions, thoughts ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Divine Grace and Love THE MOTHER says that there can be Love without Grace as there can also be Grace without Love, although the two are essentially one and the same. Grace means gift, it is a gesture of the giving of boon from the Divine. The Divine gives out of His Plenitude what we want, what ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Savitri (1) SAVITRI, the poem, the word of Sri Aurobindo is the cosmic Answer to the cosmic Question. And Savitri, the person, the Godhead, the Divine Woman is the Divine's response to the human aspiration. The world is a great question mark. It is a riddle, eternal and ever-recurring. Man has ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Mystery of the Five Elements THE material world, as the ancient sages viewed it, is composed of five elements. They are, as we know, (I) earth (ksiti), (2) water (ap), (3) fire (tej), (4) air (marut), and (5) space or ether (vyom), mounting from the grossest to those that are more and more subtle. ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Love and Love THE Mother says: there is only one Love, there are not two. And it is Divine Love. The difference arises only in its expression, in its application. In its essential quality and substance it is always the same. Take for example human love; stripped of the mere human element, love remains the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Night and Day THE night is the background to the day or otherwise the day is the stage and the night the green room, that is to say, whatever is expressed in the day, all your activities physical or mental, are in a large part determined or coloured by your activities at night in sleep. The day represents ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 God's Debt Here is a line from Savitri.. And paying here God's debt to earth and man. What is this debt that God owes to earth and man? We understand the debt that man and earth owe to God, their creator. But how is God indebted to his creation? Besides we learn that God pays his ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 THE Mother says a professor, a true professor, must be truly a yogi. That is to say, a teacher, even a schoolteacher, one imparting what is called secular education, has to be nothing less than a yogi. The Indian term for teacher is 'guru' and 'guru' meant a teacher both spiritual and secular. This distinction ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Miracles - Their True Significance MIRACLES are happenings where we see the result only without the process that leads to the result. It is like a mathematical problem where the solution only is given and not the gradual steps leading to the solution. The steps may be shortened or altogether suppressed ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 India , the World and the Ashram India has become the symbol representing all the difficulties of modern humanity. India will become the land of the world's resurrection – the resurrection of a higher and truer life. 1.2.1968THE MOTHER A great revelation of a great truth that ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Moral and the Spiritual Is there anything essentially wrong, evil in its very being and nature? Some religious traditions say, there is: Satan is such a thing, Ahriman is such a thing, and what else is maya or mara ? However that may be, the sense of something essentially wrong is ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Mounting Fire THE seat of human consciousness, in fact of all consciousness, is the brain – the grey substance filling up the cranium. The brain constitutes man in his essential and characteristic substance and functioning. I am speaking specially of the physical and material basis of mind and ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Our Finest Hour THIS is an age of deluge and devastation and decomposition. Is this also the Doomsday? Nature herself has started the process and man has lent his hand to hasten it. Or did man start it and Nature is hastening the work? Perhaps it is a vicious circle, but the outcome is the same ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Cling to Truth THE Life Divine is the life of Truth. It is based on Truth, it is Truth, body and substance – Truth absolute, pure and simple. But it may be asked as we are actually in the ignorant and half-ignorant consciousness, in a world of almost total falsehood, is it not necessary, is it not ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Test of Truth THE test of Truth is its impossibility. I believe because it is impossible; Credo quia impossibile. That is Saint Augustine. There is a grain, why a grain, quite a lump of truth in this well-known saying of a great seeker of Truth. "Truth shall prevail? Is this true? Can it ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Triple Cord * SUNAHSHEPA, the human creature, says the Vedic Rishi, is bound to the stake with three cords: one on the top, the second in the middle and the third below. Sunahshepa cries out to God Varuna to be freed from the triple bondage. The God is pleased and cuts the topmost cord and throws ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Effort and Grace THERE are, we know, as Sri Aurobindo says, two powers which in their conjunction bring about the great consummation we aim at. It is personal effort from below and Divine Grace from above. The one prepares the field, the other fructifies and fulfils. It has, however, always been declared ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 How to Read Sri Aurobindo and the Mother WHY do we read the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother? And if we read them, how to read them? Do we read for the sake of study? to know things? to acquire knowledge? That is a secondary aspect, a profit gained by the way. The real purpose of coming in contact ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 “The Hero and the Nymph” A note on Kalidasa's "The Hero and the Nymph" (translated by Sri Aurobindo), staged at the Ashram Theatre on December 1st and December 3rd 1971. The story of Kalidasa's "The Hero and the Nymph" is the eternal legend of the marriage of heaven and earth upon earth ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Towards the Immortal Body To be immortal one must live in that which is immortal. One may be immortal outside and beyond the world and one may be immortal in the world upon the earth. The first is the immortality of Transcendence, of the Self, of Sachchidananda. The other is that of Immanence, of the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Liberty, Self-Control and Friendship WE are a larger assembly here today – we have increased in number.... Now, we all want to be good boys and good girls, is it not? Nobody wants to be a bad boy or a bad girl; but the problem is how to be a good boyar girl and how not to be a bad boy or girl. In ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 A Parable of Sea-gulls ON a sea-coast – a fairly large tract of land opening out on the vast sea and the infinite sky – among rocks and cliffs there lived a flock of sea-gulls, rather flocks of sea-gulls, – for they were almost innumerable, in hundreds and perhaps in thou sands – a whole colony ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Story of Dr. Faustus Retold DR. Faust, as you know, you must have seen him on our school stage, was a very learned man. His ambition was to acquire all knowledge, knowledge of all subjects, of all arts and sciences. But he wanted not only to be a doctor of theories but of practice also, not only ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 A Review of Sri Aurobindo's Life I PROPOSE to speak to you on a very interesting subject – about Sri Aurobindo. You know it is his centenary, that is to say, this August ¹ he completes a hundred years of earthly existence: I say earthly advisedly because although he has left ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 A Programme for the Second Century of the Divine Manifestation I IT IS Integration. I am using a much used, much abused word but it happens to be the word. We have reached a status of consciousness within as distinct units, individual or collective: our ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 EIGHT TALKS To Read Sri Aurobindo I LEARNED that you want to know something about Sri Aurobindo and the Mother from me. But then there are three lines of approach: you may want to know about them, know of them or know them. Of course the last is ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 A Note on Supermind I SUPERMIND is not a function, an extended function of the mind as someone seems to have presumed. Is Life then a function, an extended function of Matter? Is Mind also in its turn" a function, an extended function of Life? With equal reason one might conclude ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Index ADITI, 287 Agnl,189,221,280,327,371 Ahriman, 287 Akbar, 196 Algeria, 141 Amrita, 29 Arjuna, 206, 350 Aryama, 330 Ashram, the, 57, 118-9, 161, 269, 270, 390 Ashwapati, 237-41, 243, 246, 274 Asura, 250, 287, 368 Atris, 372 BEATRICE, 284 Beethoven, 273 ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Notes on Freedom MAN is born free, – in his spirit, not in his body. The body is bound and all that is there in its frame of reference – the life and even the mind with their multiple movements. The spirit alone is free with all else that is there in its frame of reference. The mind and the life bound ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 TRANSLATIONS From Sanskrit Bengali French Sanskrit HYMN TO DAWN Rishi Kutsa (Rig-Veda – Mandala 1, Sukta 113) Lo, the supreme Light of lights is come: ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Ashram: Inner and Outer I WILL tell you a story today, but of another kind. I will tell you of a dream, or a vision that I had sometime ago. It was an ashram, I say an ashram for it was not quite like our ashram although there was a great similarity between the two. In some respects it ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 "Words, Words, Words.. ."¹ WHILE coming to you, I saw your beautiful display of excerpts and quotations from the writings of Mother and Sri Aurobindo on the walls all around. Yes, it was a beautiful picture – and the sayings and mottoes and lines of poetry were, needless ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 The Mother Abides IF it is a 'pralaya', even a 'mahapralaya', all is not lost, all is not washed away. Something remains, untouched, deathless, the divine part in you, the Mother's part in you, the consciousness incarnate and articulate. Indeed it was your soul that she salvaged out ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Twin Prayers Lord, this morning Thou hast given me the assurance that Thou wouldst stay with us until Thy work is achieved, not only as a consciousness which guides and illumines but also as a dynamic Presence in action. In unmistakable terms Thou hast promised that all of Thyself ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Ramprasad (1) This time I have found the secret.¹ One who has the secret has taught me the secret. ² I have found a man who comes from a land where there is no night. Day or evening, both are equal to me now. Lo! Evening is a barren lady ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Bengali Padavali (1) Even like a drop of water into burning sands. Am I in the midst of sons and friends and women. I have turned my mind from you and bestowed it upon them. Of what earthly use shall I be now? ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 SWEET MOTHER The Mother, Human and Divine IN our human frailty we regard the Divine Mother as mother only, forgetting that she is also divine. We are apt to seize exclusively the last term of the great Name and ignore the other term which is equally important ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Maximes Devenir conscient, c'est devenir Toi-même: Car la conscience, c'est la lumière qui est Ta Presence. Devenir Toi-même, c'est I'unique joie: Car Tu es la Joie même. "Elle est à moi " – voilà Ie moyen Ie plus sûr ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Modern Poems O GODDESS, VENDOR OF LIBERTY O goddess, vendor of liberty! Bind me not in thy boundlessness; And in the unending path of destiny Happy be thy unmoving voyage. Goddess, veiling the Love Eternal, Come to our mortal land ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Ashram Poets HYMN TO THE MOTHER Goddess Supreme, Mira! Creator of the Worlds, Nourisher of the Worlds, Benefactor of the Worlds! Mother! Goddess Supreme, Mira! The infinite mother of the Gods, the universal Goddess! The Home of the Worlds ...
... ecstasy and an immortal change; He feels a Wideness and becomes a Power, All knowledge rushes on him like a sea: Transmuted by the white spiritual ray * Nolini Kanta Gupta describes symbols as "a translation in mental and sensual (and vocal) terms of experiences that are beyond the mind and the sense and the speech and yet throw a kind of echoing vibrations upon ...
... such high quality. In India, although some of the younger poets could not or would not see anything in Savitri, the epic nevertheless found more and more readers, and scholars like Nolini Kanta Gupta, K.D. Sethna, V.K. Gokak, Prema Nandakumar, M.P. Pandit, Rameshwar Gupta, Sisirkumar Ghose and Ravindra Khanna - steadily extended the frontiers of Savitri studies, and many a leading poet ...
... God’s secret purpose. ( Original in Bengali ) Four compatriots of the revolutionary era — A memorable meeting at Sri Aurobindo Ashram. From left to right Sudhir Kumar Sarkar, Nolini Kanta Gupta, Bibhuti Bhushan Sarkar, Biren Sen. ...
... threatening India and the world.' I944 February 21 : Publication of The Advent, 'a quarterly devoted to the exposition of Sri Aurobindo's vision of the Future,' edited by Nolini Kanta Gupta, Secretary of the Ashram and an authentic exponent of Sri Aurobindo's thought, I945 August I5: Celebrating the cessation of hostilities, Mother said: 'Thy Victory has come ...
... [ ↩ ] Referred to Chapter Six – Part Seven – “ I joined the Revolutionaries ”. [ ↩ ] Nolini-da himself has written about this incident in his reminiscences. See Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta, Vol. 7, pp. 371-72. [ ↩ ] Sudhir used to say with admiration, “Nolini Gupta is not Nolini Gupta he is Gupta Nolini (‘gupta’ means ‘hidden’). You need to look into his eyes to fathom the ...
... aspiration for the future. After the accredited children from these Nations and States had fulfilled their appointed roles, some of the soil of Auroville also was added to the mingled earth, and Nolini Kanta Gupta went up last and sealed the urn, thereby bringing the ceremony of inauguration to an auspicious close. That hour of dedication was also one of the Hours of God, and the ceremony was a solemn ...
... age. According to the Buddha, the extremes of asceticism and self-indulgence are to be shunned in favour of the Middle Path that leads to liberation and peace. *An English translation by Nolini Kanta Gupta was serialised in The Advent from November 1960 to February 1965. Canto 24 ("Craving"), omitted in the earlier series, was printed in the April and August 1973 issues of The Advent. This ...
... certainly accept these gifts, these offerings, made by a mind opened to knowledge, a heart turned to Love, and a body resilient for accomplishing works. Commenting on this crucial entry', Nolini Kanta Gupta - about whom Sri Aurobindo had once said, "If Nolini does not know my Yoga, who. does?" - has written: What is this banquet that she prepared for man and which man refused? It is nothing ...
... the organisation itself. There was the mass of correspondence between the Ashram and the outside world, and between the sadhaks and Sri Aurobindo or the Mother. As Secretary of the Ashram, Nolini Kanta Gupta, not only distributed the replies of Sri Aurobindo and of the Mother to the various sadhaks every morning, he also rode on a bicycle once a week to the French Post Office to get the Mother's ...
... ask, if there were any she answered them .... Our minds on these occasions became submerged in wonder at the touch of the light emanating from her vast and fathomless knowledge. 9 Nolini Kanta Gupta had written down fifteen of these talks based on his notes and later they were revised by Sri Aurobindo for publication. These fifteen talks, from 7 April to 4 August - the questions as well ...
... is coming to its close.... The age of synthesis is about to begin. And how could it begin if no high centre of perspective were provided for all the parts to fall in into harmony? And Nolini Kanta Gupta, Secretary of the Ashram, laid the right stress when he said that the ideal before the sponsors of the University would Page 534 The Mother at the Centre of Education be ...
... The Fetish of Reason Modem man has made a fetish of his intellect and reason, and that is why the evolutionary progress of his consciousness ¹ The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo by Nolini Kanta Gupta—Part VI. Page 215 has been arrested. According to the Mother "the intellect that believes too much in its own importance and wants satisfaction for its own sake, is an obstacle ...
... recorded ^and will be incorporated in the next book of the series. Page 15 Names of participants in the evening talks : From 1923-1926 1. Barindra Kumar Ghose 2. Nolini Kanta Gupta 3. Bijoy Kumar Nag 4. Suresh Ghakravarty – "Moni" 5. K. Amrita . 6. B. P. Varma −"Satyen" 7. Tirupati 8. K. Rajangam 9. Khitish Ghandra Dutt 10. A. B. Purani ...
... and we knew about the search that was going to be made with the object of arresting me. There were some people there [Ramchandra Mazumdar, Suresh Chakravarty (Moni), Biren Ghose, Bijoy Nag and Nolini Kanta Gupta]. Ramchandra was there preparing to give fight to the police and many other ideas were flying about when suddenly I heard a voice from above saying – No, go to Chanderangore.” ¹ After ...
... personal interests that the aspiration involved, the total surrender of everything (including one's life) at the altar of the Mother, all partook of a religious rite and a religious vocation. Nolini Kanta Gupta has recorded , how, as a mere boy, at dead of night in front of a picture of Kali, he took a vow written out in blood drawn from his chest that he would "dedicate his life to the whole-hearted ...
... the far heaven. ( 7 ) I rush like the wind as I drive all the worlds. That reaches beyond the heavens, beyond the earth, — such is the greatness that has manifested. ( 8 ) (Translation by Nolini Kanta Gupta) ...
... to the wideness. ( 47 ) The same waters flow upward and again flow downward, day by day. The divine showers give life to the earth; the fires give life to heaven. ( 51 ) (Translation by Nolini Kanta Gupta) ...
... regions behind; speeding deep He goes, the Mighty, the Perfect Leader. Where is Surya gone now, who knows it, which of the heavens does its Ray unroll? Rig Veda 1.35.7 Translation by Nolini Kanta Gupta (unpublished) त्वामग्न ऋतायवः समीधिरे प्रत्नं प्रत्नास ऊतये सहस्कृत । पुरुश्चन्द्रं यजतं विश्वधायसं दमूनसं गृहपतिं वरेण्यम् ॥१॥ त्वामग्ने अतिथिं पूयं विशः शोचिष्केशं गृहपतिं नि षेदिरे। ...
... ever adored by Brahma and Vishnu and Shiva and all the Gods. May Mira, the Goddess, save us, may She wipe out all our slothness unto the last. Sarasvatistotram Translation by Nolini Kanta Gupta CWNKG Vol. 8, p. 58 सर्वज्ञे सर्ववरदे सर्वदुष्टभयङ्करि । सर्वदुःखहरे देवि महामीरा नमोऽस्तु ते ॥३॥ सिद्धिबुद्धिप्रदे देवि भुक्तिमुक्तिप्रदायिनि । मन्त्रमूर्ते सदा देवि महामीरा नमोऽस्तु ...
... nourish all desirable things. That establishes felicity, discovers treasures, gives lavishly: O Saraswati; that do thou here affirm. Rig Veda 1.164.52 , 1.164.49 Translation by Nolini Kanta Gupta CWNKG Vol. 5, pp. 139-138 Prayer O Lord, Thou hast decided to test the quality of our faith and to pass our sincerity on Thy touchstone. Grant that we come out greater and purer ...
... the Peace and Grace. ( 10 ) Firm thou art, make me firm. For me may they with the eye of Mitra look at all beings. May we with the eye of Mitra look at all beings. ( 18 ) (Translation by Nolini Kanta Gupta) ...
... you do My debts. ( 7 ) Daughter of Heaven! A Herd of light is this hymn of victory that moves towards you. I have made it for your sake. Do thou Accept it, О Night. ( 8 ) (Translation by Nolini Kanta Gupta) ...
... Plants be Peace, the great Trees be Peace; may the all-Gods be Peace, may Brahma, the Supreme, be Peace, may all be Peace, may Peace be Peace, may that Peace come to us. ( 17 ) (Translation by Nolini Kanta Gupta) ...
... rising Dawn, They utter the right-minded word. Appear this day, O Goddess of Plenty, to him who expresses Thee, in me illumine a life rich with its fruitfulness. ( 17 ) (Translation by Nolini Kanta Gupta) ...
... the twisted locks and a body smeared with ashes; O, the Mother of the worlds! O, the Father! I bow to Ishwari (Shivā) and I bow to Ishwara (Shiv). Haragauryashtakam 2, 7 Translated by Nolini Kanta Gupta CWNKG Vol. 8, pp. 53-54 वन्दे वरदम् वन्दे वरदं शुभम् वन्दे श्रीअरविन्दम्। vande varadam vande varadaṁ śubham vande śrīaravindam. Salutations to the Giver of boons Salutations ...
... For me may they with the eye of Mitra look at all beings. May I with the eye of Mitra look at all beings. May we with the eye of Mitra look at all beings. Yajurvedah 36.18 Translated by Nolini Kanta Gupta CWNKG Vol. 8, p. 47 ॐ आयातु वरदा देवी अक्षरब्रह्मसम्मितम् गायत्री छन्दसां माता इदं ब्रह्म जुषस्व नः १५८ ॥ ॐ ओजोऽसि सहोऽसि बलमसि भ्राजोऽसि देवानां धाम नामासि विश्वमसि विश्वायुः ...
... embellishes the evil;She is one with Ishwara (Shiva), He is one with Ishwari (Shivā) I bow down to Ishwari (Shivā), and I bow down to Ishwara (Shiva). Haragauryashtakam 8 Translated by Nolini Kanta Gupta CWNKG , Vol. 8, p. 54 यं ब्रह्मा वरुणेन्द्ररुद्रमरुतः स्तुन्वन्ति दिव्यैः स्तवै- वेदैः साङ्गपदक्रमोपनिषदैर्गायन्ति यं सामगाः। ध्यानावस्थिततद्गतेन मनसा पश्यन्ति यं योगिनो यस्यान्तं ...
... the Fashioner whose chariot wheels move on unhurt, may he too bring to us the Supreme Welfare. And the same Supreme Welfare may Brihaspati establish in us. Rigveda 1.89.6 Translated by Nolini Kanta Gupta CWNKG Vol. 8, p. 8 3 Fafta 3 Falta Falta il om svasti om svasti om svasti. OM Peace OM Peace OM Peace ॐ मध्ये सुधाब्धिमणिमण्डपरत्नवेदी- सिंहासनोपरिगतां परिपीतवर्णाम्। ...
... appearance. There are signs that he looked at Page 770 it again around 1909, but he never gave it a thorough revision. In 1932 the manuscript was uncovered by his secretary Nolini Kanta Gupta, who wrote to Sri Aurobindo of his intention to copy it out. Sri Aurobindo replied on 23 April 1932: "Is this essay still in existence; if so, you can rescue it and I will see what can be done ...
... Pondicherry that the talk must have been mainly about the World War and Abdul Karim sought to know Sri Aurobindo's views about it. One or two months passed after the outbreak of the World War. Nolini Kanta Gupta and Saurindranath Bose who had gone to Bengal came back hurriedly to Pondicherry. Now Bejoykanta also grew Page 40 impatient to go to Bengal like them for a short visit. He ...
... forgotten. By the Grace of the Divine Mother, they may have taken a new birth in order to fulfil yet other brilliant and higher aspirations of their souls. I read the book. Reminiscences by Nolini Kanta Gupta and K. Amrita. It is a very interesting book. It gives us the idea how these Page 99 people worked together in perfect harmony and understanding fulfilling selflessly the vision ...
... in the Ashram during the first few years of its existence. The first short notice is by Sri Aurobindo, the last is by the Mother. The other two longer notices seem to have been formulated by Nolini Kanta Gupta, the Secretary of the Ashram, following the oral or written indications of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Some of he rules in them were written by Sri Aurobindo or else taken almost verbatim ...
... Him as the chief guest of honour upon this earth. Or, in the Vedic image, He is to come as the flaming front and leader of the journeying sacrifice that is this universal existence. NOLINI KANTA GUPTA Page 65 ...
... creation's entire past and shows in her life how that past is transformed through the alchemy of Divine Grace into glorious future — the inevitable destiny that awaits man and earth. NOLINI KANTA GUPTA Page 67 ...
... very pleasant. It was very pleasant. I said by myself: “Isn’t it funny how the humans draw a line somewhere and say: you’re now dead.”’ 33 (One of the persons the Mother often met there was Nolini Kanta Gupta, who was then still very much alive.) The dwelling of Sri Aurobindo, the ship from the New World, the living and the dead existing together – all that was located in what the Mother called ...
... Shakespeare, Milton and the Romantics - but also with that of Europe. And he appeared familiar not only with the literature but with the best of Western criticism, too. As was Nolini Kanta Gupta, Sethna has been encouraged and inspired by the example of Sri Aurobindo's exceptional and truly catholic range of interests. He has been able to develop the wide-ranging intellect and sympathy ...
... The Spirit of Auroville Later the Mother told Nolini Kanta Gupta, Counouma, Dyuman, André, Amrita, Champaklal, Vasudha, Navajata and others that I had received the correct vision. It was nice to read the Mother's talk of 23-6-65 in Mother India, Monthly Review of Culture , special issue of February 1967: Have you heard of Auroville? For a long ...
... gardens under the Banyan Tree. These verses of Savitri flashed into my mind: The voice that chants to the creator Fire, The symboled OM, the great assenting Word. || 80.9 || Nolini Kanta Gupta read out the following message given by the Mother. Let Auroville be the symbol of a progressive Unity. And the best way to realise this is a unity of aspiration towards the Divine Perfection ...
... brought down into life. But otherwise— Page 444 × Sri Aurobindo wrote this reply to his secretary, Nolini Kanta Gupta, who replied to the correspondent.—Ed. × In The Synthesis of Yoga Sri Aurobindo wrote: ...
... relation to an X in another letter. Names of Ashram members who were referred to by Sri Aurobindo not as sadhaks but as holders Page 857 of a certain position — notably Nolini Kanta Gupta in his position as Sri Aurobindo's secretary — are given in full, as are names of people who played a role in the history of the period. The editors have included the questions to which ...
... MS Bazaar × Sri Aurobindo wrote these two sentences to his secretary Nolini Kanta Gupta on the back of a letter from Motilal. He wrote the two paragraphs that follow on the back of the same letter, apparently after getting the required clarification.—Ed. ...
... This statement, dictated by Sri Aurobindo in response to an article written in Bengali by Ramchandra Majumdar and published in Prabasi in 1945, was used by Nolini Kanta Gupta as the basis of a rejoinder published in the same journal.—Ed. × MS (dictated) are known ...
... published in that newspaper on 6 June. This reply by Sri Aurobindo was published in the Sunday Times on 24 June with an introductory note stating that the information was provided by his secretary, Nolini Kanta Gupta.—Ed. ...
... ourselves to any conflict for the moment. × This letter, dictated by Sri Aurobindo, was sent over the signature of Nolini Kanta Gupta. The "spokesman's statement" was an interview that Nolini gave to a press agency on 14 June that was published in Mother India on 25 June. See Note on the Texts, pages 604-5 , for details ...
... Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life (1911-1928) Autobiographical Notes Draft of a Letter to Nolini Kanta Gupta Dear Nalini, Quorsum haec incerta? Do you really mean to perpetrate Page 295 the sexual union dignified by the name of marriage, or don't you? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you—to quote the language of the spider ...
... Ashram.—Ed. × Sri Aurobindo's correspondent had objected to a paragraph in an essay written by Nolini Kanta Gupta and published by the Ashram, in which Nolini compared the Allies to the Pandavas and the Axis powers to the Kauravas.—Ed. ...
... June 1945 × This press release was dictated by Sri Aurobindo and issued over the signature of his secretary, Nolini Kanta Gupta.—Ed. ...
... written.—Ed. × The reference is to the essay "Dharmakshetre Kurukshetre" written in Bengali by Nolini Kanta Gupta and published along with other material in a pamphlet entitled Sri Aurobindo o Bartaman Yuddha ( "Sri Aurobindo and the Present War" ) in Bengali year 1349 (1942-43). The title "Dharmakshetre ...
... The physical change is the last of these stages and is itself a progressive process. The inner trans- 1 The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 701. 2 Ibid., p. 702. 3 See Nolini Kanta Gupta, The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo (Part Eight), p. 102. Page 261 formation cannot be brought about by physical means either of a positive or a negative nature. On the contrary ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 On Social Reconstruction I IT is one of the great errors of the human mind to take equality as identical with uniformity. When Rousseau started the revolutionary slogan "Men are born equal", men were carried away in the vehemence of the new spirit and thought that there was absolutely no difference ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 New World-Conditions IT is a trite saying that one must change with the changing times. But how many can really do so or know even how to do so? In politics, as in life generally (politics is a part of life, the "precipitated" part, one may say in chemical language), the principle is well-known, though often in a ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Panacea of “Isms” COMMUNISM COMMUNISM cannot save humanity. For if it means the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, well, a healthy normal society will not bear or tolerate it long – no Dictatorship, whether of one or of many, is likely to endure or bring in the millennium. In that sense communism ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Malady of The Century The Malady of The Century I WHAT is the malady of our age? It is that man has lost touch with his soul. There were ages no doubt in the past, dark periods, when man's soul retired into the background, was obscured or veiled; but only today there seems to have ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Ideals of Human Unity THE unification of humanity is also a thing decreed. For it is the goal towards which Nature is proceeding slowly but inevitably, bringing into play factors and forces that work out that consummation. Man is a gregarious animal, a social being. He forms groups and collectivities ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Modernism - An Oriental Interpretation In the past we used to see the world, experience and express life, mainly if not exclusively, in terms of the mind and the heart. These were the two fundamental categories or basic forms in and through which we built up our universe. It was our ideas and ideals, our ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 India One and Indivisible INDIA is one and indivisible, culturally and spiritually; politically too she must be one and indivisible and is, as a matter of fact, already on the way towards that consummation, in spite of appearances to the contrary. It has got to be so, if India is to be strong and powerful, ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Way to Unity COMMON love, common labour and, above all, as the great French thinker, Ernest Renan,* pointed out, common suffering – that is the cement which welds together the disparate elements of a nation-a nation is not formed otherwise. A nation means peoples differing in race and religion, caste and ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Rationalism WHAT is Reason, the faculty that is said to be the proud privilege of man, the sovereign instrument he alone possesses for the purpose of knowing? What is the value of knowledge that Reason gives? For it is the manner of knowing, the particular faculty or instrument by which we know, that determines ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Creative Soul THE difference between living organism and dead matter is that while the former is endowed with creative activity, the latter has only passive receptivity. Life adds, synthetises, new-creates – gives more than what it receives; matter only sums up, gathers, reflects, gives just what it receives ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Nietzschean Antichrist NIETZSCHE as the apostle of force is a name now familiar to all the world. The hero, the warrior who never tamely accepts suffering and submission and defeat under any condition but fights always and fights to conquer – such is the ideal man, according to Nietzsche, – the champion of strength ...
... Pondicherry Nirodbaran notes: “Meanwhile word went round that a ‘big’ poet had come to the Ashram.” [12] Suresh Chakravorty alias Moni went to meet Nishikanto. The Mother on her part sent Nolini Kanta Gupta to Nishikanto; what follows is a gist of their conversation: Nolini: So you want to stay in this Ashram? Nishikanto: Yes, Sir. Nolini: But do you know this Ashram is not like other Ashrams ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Basis of Unity I A MODERN society or people cannot have religion, that is to say, credal religion, as the basis of its organized collective life. I t was mediaeval society and people that were organized on that line. Indeed mediaevalism means nothing more – and nothing less – than that ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 On Communism COMMUNISM is the synthesis of collectivism and individualism. The past ages of society were characterised more or less by a severe collectivism. In ancient Greece, more so in Sparta and in Rome, the individual had, properly speaking, no separate existence of his own; he was merged in the State ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 A Theory of Yoga YOGA is another form of a normal function in man, it is the consciously regulated and heightened process of a habitual activity of the mind. The recent science of Psycho-analysis has brought to light certain hidden springs and undercurrents of the mind; it has familiarised us with ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Principle and Personality IT is asked of us why do we preach a man and not purely and solely a principle. Our ideal being avowedly the establishment and reign of a new principle of world-order and not gathering recruits for the camp of a sectarian teacher, it seems all the more inconsistent, if not thoroughly ruinous ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Basis of Social Reconstruction ANY real reconstruction of society, any permanent reformation of the world presupposes a real reconstruction, a permanent reformation of human nature. Otherwise any amount of casting and recasting the mere machineries would not bring about any appreciable result, but leave ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Vansittartism GERMANY is considered now, and naturally with great reason, as the arch criminal among nations. Such megalomania, such lust for wanton cruelty, such wild sadism, such abnormal velleities no people, it is said, have ever evinced anywhere on the face of the earth: the manner and the extent of it ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Message of the Atomic Bomb THE moralist – the Christian moralist particularly – has dubbed the atomic bomb as the Devil's engine; while the practical politician retorts that the accursed machine has cut short the war, saved more lives on the whole and reduced the extent and duration of suffering and agony ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Right of Absolute Freedom A NATION cannot claim the right, even in the name of freedom, to do as it pleases. An individual has not that right, the nation too has not. A nation is a member of humanity, there are other members and there is the common welfare of all. A nation by choosing a particular line of action ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 National and International A LEADING Nationalist has opined that he does not understand the "slogan" of viewing the nation against a background of internationalism. We can only say that the patriot has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing always like the old guards attached to the old regime who do not see ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The March of Civilisation The March of Civilisation WE are familiar with the phrase "Augustan Age": it is in reference to a particular period in a nation's history when its creative power is at its highest both in respect of quantity and quality, especially in the domain of art and literature ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 God's Labour 1 SRI Aurobindo's Yoga, it has been said, begins where other yogas end. Other yogas end by the attainment of the Brahman or some form or mode of it or something akin to it, which means the transcendent Reality, the supreme status of the Spirit beyond name and form, beyond ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Eternal East and West I THE East and the West are two recognised wings of humanity. Only the relation between them is somewhat in dispute. According to one view the two are quite separate and irreconcilable entities, because they embody two outlooks that are contradictory to each other. The ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Standpoint of Indian Art INDIAN art is not in truth unreal and unnatural, though it may so appear to the eye of the ordinary man or to an eye habituated to the classical tradition of European art. Indian art, too, does hold the mirror up to Nature; but it is a different kind of Nature, not altogether this ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 A Global Humanity A GLOBAL view of humanity is becoming more and more insistent, unavoidable and inevitable. It is being forced upon the normal consciousness of mankind so that the ordinary life itself has to be conducted and lived according to the demands of that view. It is this that humanity is one, that ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The other aspect of European Culture Two cultures, one of Europe and the other of Asia, are now contending with each other to have sway over humanity; and it has been for some time past a moot problem with the best representatives of either, whether a synthesis, at least a reconciliation of the two is possible ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Hamlet - A Crisis of The Evolving Soul THE consciousness that rules over the tragedy of Hamlet, the destiny that works itself out in the play of the forces portrayed in that great drama, are the consciousness and the destiny of the human soul at a most fateful crisis, a crucial turning-point in the course ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Some Thoughts on the unthinkable GOD is not an autocrat – a despot like the Czar or the Shahan Shah, pedestalled high above and ruling over his subject-slaves according to his fancy and caprice, issuing ukases and firmans which suffer no delay or hindrance in their execution. God is, if he is at all to ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Basic Unity THERE is one unity which cannot be denied to India, because Nature has given it and man cannot withdraw or annul it. It is the geographical, the physical unity. It is so clearly and indelibly marked that it has always been looked upon as a definite unit by all outside its boundaries; one may call in ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 An Evolutionary Problem THE London Times Literary Supplement (July 27, 1946), in the course of a critical estimate of Bernard Shaw, writes: "Mr. Shaw pats Lamarck on the back and accepts his theory that 'living organisms change because they want to'. If you have no eyes and want to see and keep ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 In Quest of Reality THIS is, they say, the age of Positivism – no mystic obfuscation, but clear light in the open sun. Let us enquire a little into the nature of this modern illumination. Positivists are those who swear by facts. Facts to them mean naturally facts attested in the end by sense-experience ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Immortal Person THE whole purpose of man's life upon earth, it may be said, is to make an individuality of himself and to grow in that individuality and organise it perfectly. An ordinary man is a most disorganised entity and possesses no individual character. His mind is a conglomeration of thoughts ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Changed Scientific Outlook THERE is, of course, more than one line of scientific outlook at the present day. It is well known that continental scientists generally and Marxist scientists in particular belong to a different category from Jeans and Eddington. But the important point is this: a considerable ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Knowledge by Identity SRI AUROBINDO says, knowledge – true knowledge – comes always by identity, i.e., when you are identified with the object, when the knower and the known are one. He further adds that even ordinary knowledge, sense-perception, comes in fact by that way, although it may look otherwise, ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Sanctity of the Individual THE sanctity of the individual, the value of the human person is one of the cardinal articles of faith of the modern consciousness. Only it has very many avatars. One such has been the characteristic mark of the group of philosophers (and mystics) who are nowadays making a great ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Lone to the Lone THE quintessence of spirituality is said to consist in, as has been described in the famous phrase of the Alexandrine mystic philosopher Plotinus, the flight of the lone to the lone. God is a solitary and the other solitary is the soul: so when one solitary mingles with the supreme solitary ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 A Modernist Mentality ANDRE Gide, a very well-known name in French letter for the last half a century, is quoted, very appreciatively, in the editorial of the World Review (July 1950), as saying: "The world can only be saved, if it can be, by the rebels. Without them there would be an end to our ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Evolution or Special Creation THE point is still being debated and, it seems, is still debatable whether evolution is truly the fact behind the origin of species. or is it special creation. The latter, we know, was the old- world pre-Copernican theory advocated by theologians and religious minds. It was thoroughly ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Urge for Progression IN the process of the expression and embodiment of this innermost truth, the first necessary condition is, as we have said, sincerity, that is to say, a constant reference to the demand of that truth, putting everything and judging everything in the light of that truth, a vigilant wakefulness ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 The Approach to Mysticism MYSTICISM is not only a science but also, and in a greater degree, an art. To approach it merely as a science, as the modern mind attempts to do, is to move towards futility, if not to land in positive disaster. Sufficient stress is not laid on this aspect of the matter ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Index A. E. (George Russell), 45, 152,195,275 Adwaita, 139 Aesop, 97 Africa, 56, 101 Agastya, 281 Agni, 9, 247 Ajanta, 136, 179 Akbar, 93, 394 Alexander, 208, 394 Allies, the, 75, 88, 89 America, 56, 72, 81, 87, 89, 91, 103-4 ...
... Whatever be the explanation of the phenomenon, the fact remains that his outwardly shy and reserved nature greatly contributed to the vast impersonality that characterised Sri Aurobindo. Nolini Kanta Gupta, one of the earliest and closest disciples of the Master, once called him the 'Impersonal-personal Sri Aurobindo'. The designation is so very apt; for Sri Aurobindo was impersonal even in his ...
... "The transformation to which we aspire is too vast and complex 2.Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 701. 3.Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 702. 4.See Nolini Kanta Gupta, The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo (Part Eight), p. 102. Page 227 to come at one stroke; it must be allowed to come by stages. The physical change is the last of these stages and ...
... 1910. Thus Bejoy became the second young pilgrim of the Dawn. After a few months in the same year, two other young souls came to live with Sri Aurobindo: they were Saurin Bose in October and Nolini Kanta Gupta in November. The fifth person to join Sri Aurobindo's household was a Tamil youth Va Ra. After a few years, in 1919 to be precise, another local youth, K. Amrita by name, came to join the group ...
... (Words of the Mother, CWM Vol. 13, p. 4) And when in her turn the Mother too left her body in 1973 she made it a point to assure her children in advance through respected Nolini-da (Nolini Kanta Gupta) that if ever she would withdraw from her physical body, she would continue to remain with us. With this double assurance of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as regards their continued presence ...
... Books recommended: The Principal Upanishads Yoga Sutra Collected Works of Swami Vivekananda The Bhagavadgita The Synthesis of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta In addition to the above, the following may be suggested for those who are more deeply interested in the study of Yoga, leading up to a specialisation in this study: Schools of ...
... transportation for life; seven others to transportation or imprisonment for varying periods. The remaining seventeen, whose names were not read out, were acquitted. Among them were Sri Aurobindo and Nolini Kanta Gupta. Despite the severity of the sentences on the others (upon appeal the sentences on Barin and Ullaskar were reduced to transportation for life), there was widespread rejoicing at Sri Aurobindo's ...
... They read almost all the originals along with the available interpretations. Bharati translated some of the Veda mantras in Tamil, which is truly an extraordinary piece of work. Nolini Kanta Gupta, one of the close disciples of Sri Aurobindo writes: "At one time, one of our main subjects of study was the Veda. This went on for several months, for about an hour every evening ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Humanism and Humanism A GOOD many European scholars and philosophers have found Indian spirituality and Indian culture, at bottom, lacking in what is called "humanism."¹ So our scholars and philosophers on their side have been at pains to rebut the charge and demonstrate the humanistic element in our ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Index A. E. (GEORGE RUSSELL), 64, 286 -"Desire",64n -"Endurance", 286n Adam, 116 Addison, 79n -"Hymn", 79n Adityas, 28-9 Aeschylus, 86 Aesop, 258 Afghanistan, 284 Agni, 16, 19-20,22-3,28, 33-5, 45, 157 61, 164, 166, 180,214 America, 198,284 Ananda, 133 Andamans ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 An Aspect of Emergent Evolution THE theory of Emergent Evolution should be considered no longer as a theory, but as a statement of fact. The fact, at its barest, stripped of all assumptions and even generalisations, is the fact observed and implicit in all evolution, which can be denied only by the perverse ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Boris Pasternak THE portrait of the late poet (for he is more of a poet than a novelist, as has been pointed out) on the cover of the British edition of his novel Dr. Zhivago seems to be the very image of the tragic hero. Indeed he reminds one of Hamlet as he stood on the ramparts of the castle ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 PART THREE The New year Initiation 1944 0 Lord, the world implores Thee to prevent it from falling back always into the same stupidities. Grant that the mistakes recognised may never be renewed. Grant, lastly, that its actions may be the exact and sincere expression of its ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Goethe A perfect face amid -barbarian faces, A perfect voice of sweet and serious rhyme, Traveller with calm, inimitable paces, Critic with judgment absolute to all time, A complete strength when men were maimed and weak, German obscured the spirit of a Greek. SRI AUROBINDO ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Here or Otherwhere A QUESTION is often asked of us whether it is possible to do Yoga while remaining in the world. Some declare outright that it is not possible: world and Yoga are, like oil and water, absolutely different things, they do not go together. World means, to put it plainly, earning money ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Sunlit Path SRI AUROBINDO speaks of the sunlit path in Yoga. It is the path of happy progress where dangers and difficulties, violent ups and downs are reduced to a minimum, if not altogether obviated. In ideal conditions it is as it were a smooth and fair – weather sailing, as much of course as it is humanly ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Of the Divine and Its Help IT is the Divine alone that is capable of immediate and absolute surrender. But is there not in the human that which is divine? * * * Discover the centre of your being and hold fast to it; only from there can you describe the perfect circle of life rounded ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Of Beauty and Ananda TRUTH is Beauty's substance-it is Beauty self-governed. Beauty is Delight perfectly articulate. Love is Beauty enjoying itself. Knowledge is the light that Beauty emanates. Power is the fascination that Beauty exerts. *** All Art is the re-creation of Truth ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Life in and Through Death THE soul carries the body even like a corpse, says a scripture. It is a dead inert mass of inconscience weighing upon the conscious being that is behind. Such is the burden of life that the soul bears through its earthly existence. The image is beautifully delineated in the Indian ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Beyond Vedanta THE first step in the spiritual life is the Vedantic experience that the world is an illusion, an absolute illusion. Rather it is the Buddhist experience of nihil, nothingness, extinction that is the first step, the very basic realisation of all spiritual life. It is not the summit – the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Consciousness as freedom CONSCIOUSNESS is liberty, unconsciousness is slavery. When you are unconscious you are a prey to all kinds of forces and beings outside yourself and over which you have no control. You are a plaything in the hands of any power or influence that seeks to possess you and when you ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Mind and the Mental World THE world of the mind is a vast field, even vaster it seems than the physical world. The physical world extends, science tells us, to millions of light-years. We may say practically, it is an infinite extension and mind is a thing which surrounds, envelops this measureless extension ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Go Through IT is said one must be free from human love if one is to enjoy Divine Love. But to be free is usually taken to mean to reject, to reject naturally by force, that is to say, to coerce, to repress and suppress. "But who can coerce a force of Nature?" the Gita asks. Indeed a force of Nature like ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Health in the Ashram (1) THERE are people who come to me and say that they would like to go home, for their health does not permit them to continue here; it is gradually getting worse and worse and they ask for my permission. I wonder at their ignorance. Perhaps I should not wonder; human nature ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Beyond the Dualities IT is true that mind in its natural state seeks the truth, seeks to know the fact, know what is what. But the difficulty is, it has its own criterion of truth, it has a mould and whatever does not fit into that mould is brushed aside or doubted as untruth. The most simple and the most ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Evolution of Language HUMAN language was born out of the necessity of inter-communication among human beings living together. The necessity naturally related to the physical life and its demands and requirements. Man being a mental being sought intercommunication through his mind. So mind yoked to ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Beyond Love and Hate THE MOTHER says Love and Hate are at bottom the same thing. At the centre there is the same substance in both, it is the obverse and reverse of the same stuff. It is a vibration, it is a unique vibration, a vibration of extreme intensity, of extreme intimacy. At the centre there is ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Old Bengali Mystic Poems I The body is a tree; it has five branches.¹ The mind is a restless thing and Death has entered into it. Make the mind firm – that is the measure of the Great Happiness ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Gods and Men I BEGIN with a Sanskrit proverb: it is not exactly a proverb but a witty saying, half in jest, half in earnest. You will see however the significance it carries. Perhaps, there is a story hanging about it. You know that the Sanskrit pundits, perhaps all pundits, are proverbially supposed to be ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 The Mother - The Nature of Her Work IT seems I am to tell you something about the Mother – a bit of her life, a bit of her activities. Well, the first part of her life, as you all know, the Mother passed in France, she was born in France, in Paris. So, naturally it was very often pointed out to her ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 ACT III: THE RETURN SCENE l: TRANSCENDENCE SHE Fire and fire and fire and fire! Unnameable incandescence, towards which the universe bends even as a giant banyan tree with its ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 THE GOLDEN JOURNEY HE AND SHE THE MUSICIAN ANGEL FOUR GODS OR GODDESSES FOUR CHILDREN FOUR MAID SERVANTS Two INITIATES THE CROWD OF EARTHLY BEINGS THE NEW BEING The Two-in-One play all the roles ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 On Impurity [1] You are now like a yellow leaf. Death's emissaries are around you, you are about to make the exit. And you have no provisions for the way. [2] So make an island of yourself, hasten and work hard and gain wisdom. When you have wiped ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 The Path [1] Of all the Paths the best is the Eightfold one, of all the Truths the .best is the Fourfold one, of all the Rules of life the best is detachment and of all men the best is one who has eyes. [2] This indeed is the Path, none other exists for the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Of the Elephant [1] An elephant in battle endures arrows shot from a bow. Even so, shall it endure censures, for men in the mass are, by nature, prone to evil. [2] An elephant, when controlled, can be led to battle; him the king can ride ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Miscellany [1] If to give up a small pleasure is to find a vast pleasure, then it is wiser to give up the small in view of the vast. [2] If one seeks one's pleasure by inflicting pain upon others, then one is entangled in the meshes of enmity ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 East and West THE East is spiritual by nature, while the West is inclined towards materialism. The East seeks for the world beyond. The West wants to possess this mundane world. Every rule, however, admits of exception, but that does not make it a sham. The same principle holds good here. The East is not ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 The Novel Alchemy ACCORDING to the Bible, God said, "Let there be Creation", and the Creation came. God was pleased, not only because the Creation came but also because the Creation was all-perfect, with nothing to change: it was like an edifice firm and solid and flawless, it would endure eternally firm and ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Rabindranath the Artist (I) TO-DAY we just want to study Rabindranath the man and not the poet Rabindranath. The poet may raise a slight objection – he may say that if we want truly to evaluate him we must consider him as a poet. What he has done or not done as a man is insignificant; he has stored ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 The Human Body GOD dons a human form. But often it is not possible for the common run of men to recognise Him. In good many cases not only do we fail to know or recognise Him but we disbelieve and despise Him. Where has man the vision to see the inner truth? The human form is a unique thing. We have ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 The Culture of the Body THERE are, as we know, three elements in the culture of the body: first, the body must remain healthy; secondly, it has to become strong; and finally, it must be efficient. First, the question of health. The body must remain free from disease, which means that all its organs must ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 In This Crisis THAT the world has now pushed itself into the grip of a tremendous crisis admits of no doubt. And difficult it is to fathom the depth of deformation and depravity in which human nature and human society have sunk. The scriptures speak of the darkest days of Kali when even the last traces ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 The Unity of India INDIA is one. But wherein lies that unity, what is its nature? Many are of the opinion that India has no 'unity'; the condition that prevails at present and the possible development may at the most be termed 'union'. Union is the agreement and harmony of many antagonistic entities, but ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Jagadish Chandra Bose JAGADISH Chandra Bose is a scientist; his field is the world of matter, his function is to discover the truth of matter by material means. The truth has to be proved by demonstration and to be established. Science denies the truth that does not come within the purview of the senses ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 The Trinity of Bengal RAMMOHAN, Bankimchandra, Vivekananda – these three personalities represent the three steps in the process of evolution in modern Bengal. Like the three strides of Vishnu these three great souls have occupied three stages of the evolving consciousness of Bengal. The soul of modern Bengal ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 ON SPIRITUALITY Where is God? GOD you do not find? No God – not at all? But why should He be found? And to own Him, what right have you? How much of yourself have you offered to Him? Every moment, every limb of yours, how far have you consecrated? Your call is merely lip-deep. You have ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 The Two Chains of the Mother* Excuse me if I sit like this with my feet in the air. That's my way of making myself at home: I feel at home. ... So, you expect me to speak to you something? Well, I have talked a lot in my rather long life, have I not? I have talked a good deal, written much more. All ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Page 255 Page 256 Page 257 Page 258 Page 259 ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Walter Hilton: “The Scale of Perfection" FROM the twentieth century back to the fourteenth is a far cry: a far cry indeed from the modern scientific illumination to mediaeval superstition, from logical positivists and mathematical rationalists to visionary mystics, from Russell and Huxley to Ruysbroeck ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Second Sight WE know that animals generally possess sharp senses to an extraordinary degree. They can hear and smell at a distance far beyond what is normal to the human sense. Give a kerchief used by a man to a dog, it will spot the man among a thousand. An elephant will take you straight to a place miles ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 PART SEVEN Realisation, Past and Future THE whole material and physical world, the whole earth – I mention earth, because we are concerned directly and much more with it than other regions – has been till now governed by forces of consciousness that come from what Sri ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Sweet Holy Tears* THE tears that the soul sheds are holy, are sweet; they come bidden by the Divine and are blessed by His Presence. They are like the dew from heaven. For they are pure, they are spontaneous, welling out of a heart of innocent freedom. The feeling is infinitely impersonal, completely egoless: ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Page AofOccultHistory AT the beginning of creation, four individual formations-the first personalities-made their appearance. There were: (1) a Being of Light or Consciousness, (2) a Being of Truth or Reality, (3) a Being of Love or Ananda and (4) a Being of Life. And the first law of creation was ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Record of World-History ALL that has happened upon earth, everything from the beginning of creation till now, everything without exception has been recorded somewhere in some particular world or region of consciousness. All that man has thought, his researches and discoveries, his findings and conclusions ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Here or Elsewhere IT is easy and comfortable to go within and in an inner consciousness find and maintain a union, even a close union with the Divine. It is because of such a state of peace and bliss that many, nay, most who go there do not want to come back, to normal life upon this earth. And teachers, great ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The World Serpent THE universe is often conceived as a serpent coiling round and eating itself, the head turning about and swallowing the tail. The image is that of a sphere or globe enclosing the whole existence and that of something without end or beginning, infinite. It also gives the idea of a perpetual ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Symbolic Ignorance How can there be dark spots in the light of the full consciousness (the Mother's consciousness)? The darkness is only relative and depends upon the degree or status of conscious-ness. At the outset, on lower and narrower ranges, the light is dim and hedged in: it is surrounded by ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Selfless Worker THE Prayer says: "I look for my conscious mind and 1 find it no more. . ."¹ Normally one is conscious of oneself. Whatever one does or whenever one does something, the consciousness always remains behind, "I am here, I am doing". And if this sense of "I am" is not there, one can do nothing. ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 PARTS EIGHT AND NINE Choosing to do Yoga To DO Sri Aurobindo's Yoga means to seek to transform oneself integrally, to have this single aim in one's life: that alone exists, nothing else. You feel it in yourself whether you want it or not. If you do not, you can live a life of goodwill ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Index Aditi, 46 Africa, 272, 323 Agni,44, 52, 120, 151 Ahriman, 46, 110 Ahura Mazda, 46 Alexander, 56-7 Allies, the, 66 America, 133,214,421 Aniruddha, 44, 207-8 Apollo, 47 Ardhanarishwara, 84 Arjuna,9, 14,76-8,93, 112n., 116, 161 Arnold, Matthew, 92, 119 Aryaman ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Mind’ s Bazaar You can't imagine what a bazaar there is in the head. It is something terrible. If you look truly objectively at what passes there you will be shocked. You have then to put it in order, see into it clearly and arrange, you have to note that two contradictory ideas do not run c ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Specialisation You must extend, enlarge, enrich your mind. It must be full of thoughts and ideas. It must be stored with the results of your observation and study. It must not be a "poor mind", a mind, that is to say, that has not many ideas nor the capacity of reasoning and argument. Your mind must be ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Doing for Her Sake WHATEVER you do – study or sports – you must, think of the Divine in doing it. It is not a very difficult thing after all. At first you may do it as a kind of preparation to make yourself capable of receiving the divine force, and then as service to help in the collective work. You ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Spirits in Trees You told us the other day that there are spirits who remain bound to trees. How are they to get free? WHY should they get free? You told us how the spirits in the trees got freed when someone was kind to them and prayed on their behalf.. ... Yes, but that was in the story ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Are Not Dogs More Faithful Than Men? YES, for it is their nature to be faithful and they have not man's mental complications. What prevents men from becoming faithful is the complexes of their mind. Most men are not faithful because they are afraid of being dupes, afraid of being cheated, exploited. ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Work Here FROM the worldly standpoint, from the point of view of the result achieved, certainly things can be done better. But I am speaking of the effort put in, effort in the deepest sense of the word. Work is prayer done with the body. With that effort in your work the Divine is satisfied, the eye ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 A Sign and A Symbol It is said that if you see a shooting star and make a vow at that time, the vow is sure to be fulfilled. Is it true? IT means that you must be able to formulate your aspiration during the time the star is visible, that is to say, a very short time. Now, if an aspiration can be formed ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Prayers and Meditations of the Mother (1) THE Prayers and Meditations of the Mother. It is Life Divine in song, it is Life Divine set to music – made sweet and lovely, near and dear to us – a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. To some the ideal has appeared aloof and afar, cold and forbidding ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Golden Bridge THE Truth, the Supreme Truth cannot be expressed here below, neither in words, nor in mental ideas: It is inexpressible, indeterminable – anirvacaniy'am, anirdesyam. For, it exists, it is found only where the creation ceases to exist – prapancopasamam. If it is asked how does ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Golden Life – line As slow our ship her foaming track Against the wind was cleaving, Her trembling pennant still looked back To that dear isle 't was leaving. So loth we part from all we love, From all the links that bind us, So turn our hearts as on we rove, To ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Mystery of the Five Senses THE senses are the doors opening out on the external world for the consciousness to act and range abroad. That is the usual outward movement which is generally so much condemned by spiritual seekers. The doors and windows of the senses, whatever they are, all openings ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Consciousness I SPOKE of consciousness and dimensions of consciousness. What then is consciousness itself? Well, we may begin by knowing what it is not, what is not consciousness. Not consciousness means the absence of consciousness, otherwise unconsciousness. You are conscious, conscious of things when ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Short Notes (1) THE SENSE OF EARTHLY EVOLUTION Ignorance is usually equated with innocence. A child is ignorant, therefore he is innocent. Although it is said that ignorance of law is no excuse. Spiritually however, ignorance does not mean innocence. Ignorance or unconsciousness or inconscience – ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 On Discipline THE MOTHER says: "No big creation is possible without discipline". The true and original meaning of discipline is to be a disciple. And a disciple is one who learns, is ready to learn from a master. So the first requisite for a disciple or a learner is to obey. Obedience then is the beginning ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 PART ELEVEN The Opening Scene of "Savitri" "IT was the hour before the Gods awake". Only when the Gods awake, does the light begin to appear on earth. Otherwise it is all night here, black, impenetrable and unfathomable. Indeed the very creation begins with the awakening ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Relative Best WHATEVER happens is for the best – under the circumstances, it must be added, for the best is the resultant of many forces pulling in all directions for and against and sideways. The best means whatever leads to the goal, to the ultimate good, the final reality, the Supreme, the Divine ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Upanishadic Symbolism A certain rationalistic critic divides the Upanishadic symbols into three categories – those that are rational and can be easily understood by the mind; those that are not understood by the mind and yet do not go against reason, having nothing inherently irrational in them and may ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Diseases and Accidents If the body is ill, does the mind too fall ill? NOT necessarily, to .be sure. Illnesses are, as I have told you, generally a dislocation among the different parts of the being, a kind of disharmony. It may well be that the body has not followed the movement of progress ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Bad Thought-Formation A BAD thought is a bad act. You may not know it, but an evil thought is truly an evil act. If you think ill of a man and wish him ill, you are responsible for the mishaps that may befall him to the same degree as when you do him an ill turn. Unfortunately, an evil thought is not a ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 On Occultism IT has been often said and it is very true that as soon as you enter the domain of the invisible, the very first things you meet are literally frightful. If you have no fear, then alone you are safe; but the least fear means the utmost peril. It is for this reason that in ancient days the aspirant ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Sincerity is Victory To be sincere and to be candid are not the same thing. To be candid means a simplicity based, in a large measure, upon an ignorance of things. A child is candid, because he is simple and ignorant and hides nothing; he is incapable of it and has no will to deceive anyone. But sincerity ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Meditation and Meditation SOME people, when they sit for meditation, imagine they have gone into a remarkable condition and are proud of it. But most often what they do in meditation is simply to let loose their thoughts: it is a sort of kaleidoscope that moves in their head. There are some, however ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Mysticism and Occultism MYSTICISM is more or less an emotional relation with what one feels to be a Divine Power – it is a relation very intimate, emotive and intense with something invisible which one takes for the Divine. Occultism is the knowledge of invisible forces and the power to handle them. It is ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Offering and Surrender THEY are not quite the same thing: they are rather two aspects of the same thing. They do not belong altogether to the same level of consciousness. For example, you have resolved to make an offering of your life to the Divine. All on a sudden there happens a very unpleasant thing: ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 How to get Rid of Troublesome Thoughts THERE are several ways and also it depends upon the case. The first and the easiest way is to think of something else. Concentrate your attention upon a subject which has nothing to do with what troubles you. You can read something interesting or take up a work that demands ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Things Significant and Insignificant ALL things are insignificant in ordinary life. The thoughts you think, the actions you do, the feelings you experience, all your movements have no significance at all, they possess no value. They belong to the superficial part of your being, they come and pass away, like ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Sri Aurobindo I From a certain standpoint Sri Aurobindo's message is very simple, almost self-evident. The sum and substance of all he says is that man is growing and has to grow in consciousness till he reaches the complete and perfect consciousness, not only in his individual but in his collective ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 PART TWELVE This Great Earth, Our Mother MAN'S soul is man's inalienable possession. And also it is his exclusive possession. He is the only created being that has a soul. It is, strange to say, an earthly gift and belongs to no other creature either in this world or other worlds and levels ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Cosmonautics (1) MODERN science, modern applied science, has brought about and is bringing about more and more a big change in the earth atmosphere. It is not merely the dust and smoke, gases and fumes thrown out by the modern machineries from the earth into the sky that have been increasing ominously ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Labours of the Gods: The five Purifications NOWDAYS we hear much of brain-washing. The other day, instead of brain-washing, I spoke of brain-ignition. That is to say, for a total reconstitution of the brain, for a new building of the physique of the new man, one has to transform ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Body-Energy THE Mother spoke once of the body being like a fortress, a strong shelter protecting you against enemy-attacks, the forces that are around roaming in the open spaces, the forces of physical and even moral disruption. The ancients used to refer to the body as a walled city the gates of which ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Ladder of Unconsciousness CONSCIOUSNESS, the normal consciousness we know, has various degrees of potency: its familiar form is the rational consciousness or intellect; then at a higher level, there is the intuitive consciousness and at a still higher level the visionary consciousness, that is ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Ideal Centre ONCE when the Mother was asked by a group of disciples to give permission and blessings for opening a centre, She said in answer: "To open a centre is not sufficient in itself. It must be the pure hearth of perfect sincerity, in a total consecration to the Divine." This is the first motto ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 In these Fateful Days To destroy is easy; to create, it is difficult. The vital force destroys in its violence, it is the spirit that creates in its energy of consciousness. The vital force is easily available to man. The spirit is a far cry. And yet there is no other way out: if man is to ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Two Equations I Einstein's equation. E=mc² that is, Matter becomes energy when its mass is multiplied by the square of the velocity of light. The new equation: M=mc°° that is, Matter is transformed into spiritualised energy (not merely mechanical energy as in Einstein) ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 The Pact and its Sanction THE Pact if it is to be a success must be implemented at three levels. First of all, at the highest level, at the source itself, that is to say, between the Governments who initiated the move. The ministers and members at the top should themselves maintain an entente cordiale ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 William Blake: “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” THE ideal was Blake's. It will not sound so revolting if we understand what the poet meant by Hell. Hell, he explains, is simply the body, the Energy of Life – hell, because body and life on earth were so considered by the orthodox Christianity. The Christian ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Two mystic Poems in modern French Here is the first poem, I give only the text, followed by an explanatory paraphrase. (1) CHANSON DES ÉTAGES II fait jour chez la reine. C' est la nuit prés du roi Déjà chante la reine. A peine dart Ie roi. Les ombres ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Mysticism in Bengali Poetry BENGALI poetry was born some time towards the end of an era of decline in the Indian consciousness, almost towards the close of what is called the Buddhist period, but it was born with a veritable crown on its head. For it was sheer mystic poetry, mystic in substance, mystic in ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 The Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art I WONDER why Philosophy has never been considered as a variety of Art. Philosophy is admired for the depth and height of its substance, for its endeavour to discover the ultimate Truth, for its one-pointed adherence to the supremely Real; but precisely ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 A stainless steel frame CORRUPTION is the order of the day. In all walks of life, wherever we have to live and move, we come across the monster; we cannot pass him by, we have to accost him (even in the Shakespearean sense, that is) welcome him, woo him. It is like one of the demons of the Greek legends that ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Buddhism and Hinduism I BUDDHISM, or for that matter, Christianity or Mohammadenism or any credal and personal religion, is easy to understand. For they are each of them a single and simple entity, whereas Hinduism is a multiple and complex organism. The difference is that between a tree, a ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 From the Known to the Unknown? FROM the known to the unknown: that is a well-known principle of procedure in the matter of knowledge, of action and of life generally. It is a golden rule that one should never take a step forward unless and until the previous step has been held firm and secure. But after ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 The Democracy of Tomorrow THE great gift of Democracy is that of personal value, the sanctity of the individual. And its great failure is also exactly the failure to discover the true individual, the real person. The earlier stages of human society were chiefly concerned with the development of mankind ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 The World is One WE say not only that India is one and indivisible (and for that matter, Bengal too is one and indivisible, since we have to repeat axiomatic truths that have fallen on evil days and on evil tongues) but that also the whole world is one and indivisible. They who seek to drive in a wedge anywhere ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Divine Grace (1) WHEN you are in a certain set of circumstances and when certain things happen, these things often go against your desire or against what appears to you best. And you regret and say: "Oh! How much better it would have been had it been otherwise!" It does not matter whether the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Supramental Manifestation and World Change I HAVE been asked what difference the presence of the Supermind will make, in what way will it change the trend of events and how, since the Supramental manifestation, life has to be reviewed. I am asked to give practical examples. I do not know what this means ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 How Can Time Be a Friend? IT depends on the way you look at it. It depends on the relation you have with it. If you take it as a friend, it becomes a friend, if you consider it as an enemy, it becomes an enemy. But, perhaps, what you wanted to ask is how to feel when it is an enemy and when it is a ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Prayer and Aspiration (1) PRAYERS are of many kinds. There is a prayer, purely mechanical and physical, that is to say, merely words learnt by rote and repeated mechanically. It does not mean much and generally has only one effect, making the person calm who prays; if you repeat a prayer several ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 On Teachers and Teaching MASTERY means to know how to deal with certain vibrations. If you have the knowledge and can deal with the vibrations, you have the mastery. The best field for such an experience and experiment is yourself. First, you must have mastery over yourself and when you have it, you can transmit ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Origin ONE has forgotten. From the fact of separation from Sat-Chit-Ananda comes forgetfulness of what one is. You believe you are, does not matter what, a boy, a girl, a man, a woman, a dog, a horse, anything: a stone, the sea or the sun. You think you are all that, instead of thinking that you are ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Meditation COLLECTIVE meditation, of which the most external form is collective prayer, has been practised since ancient times for different reasons, in different ways, and with different purposes. Groups of persons, whether belonging to the same Church or not, come together to express a common feeling; ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 How to Become Indifferent to Criticism? IN one's own consciousness one must look at things from a wider, more general standpoint. If at any moment something holds you, holds you tight and you have to face it, if you are compelled to wrestle with a formidable obstacle and at that time you begin to feel ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Goal of Evolution You say it is obvious that evolution has a goal and that it cannot stop here or now. It seems to you obvious because you have read Sri Aurobindo's books. But if you take anybody you meet in the street and ask him what is the purpose of the universe or of the evolution, you will see ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Vision of Dante DANTE is known as a great poet and also as a great seer: Sri Aurobindo mentions him as one of the very greatest. He names three as the supreme poets of Europe, of the very first rank: Homer of ancient Greece, Dante in the Middle Ages, and nearer to us, Shakespeare. Along with these Sri Aurobindo ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 OBSERVATIONS AND NOTES Observations I GRACE is the Divine made earthly and human. And that is our Mother. The Mother's body was not meant to give us, to make a gift to us of a transformed human body, for our contemplation, our delectation. It had a more serious purpose. It was to ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Notes on “Savitri” NARAD's VISIT TO KING ASWAPATHY* DEV ARSHI Narad, as usual, was sailing through the spaces, with his Vina, singing songs of innocence and joy. He was in the higher luminous heavens, the world of happiness, of light and delight, his heart full of divine felicity and his music echoing ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 The Golden Chain You have been here for many many years, isn't it? – many many years. From your childhood you are here, isn't it? perhaps all of you. Some of you are going out, Some are likely to stay, some still undecided. If you are asked: 'What have you gained here by your long stay, for some, a very ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Hymn to dawn Lo, DAWN, the Beloved, appears in her gleaming young body. She impels all life on the path towards the goal. Fire, the Divine Force, is born to be kindled in man. Dawn drives away all Darkness and fulfils herself in creating Light. She, the Goddess rises lifting her forward gaze towards ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 NEW TRANSLATIONS WITH ORIGINAL TEXTS MA non so qual divin romor benigno vada tonando nei mortali cuori come canta divinamente il cigno, lasciando il suo corpo nei freschi fiori. Puri pensieri, d'un gran impeto il segno, speranze benvenute, come cori di voci amabili, fan ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Page 84 Ego SUNKEN deep down I lie, with my ego Yet you ask where's the ego? But it is the ego that has been since my birth the glory of glories! It is the mounting plenty to the penniless: The more you buy up, the more it multiplies… I am, I am, I am ! The great ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Page 78 Thy grace THY Grace I pray for, a Mother, Within my heart, Thy fadeless light Upon my life's pathway. O Infinite! O Eternal! Golden image of love! With Thy moonglow Make my night blameless. I pray for thy grace, a Mother, Within my heart. ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Yogic Initiation and Aptitude IN the practice of Yoga a condition precedent is usually laid down: it is called adhik ara , aptitude, fitness or capacity. Everybody does not possess this aptitude, it is urged, and; cannot take to a life of Yoga at one's sweet will. There must be a preparation, certain ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Some Conceptions and Misconceptions A QUESTION is asked, where, at what stage or level of Involution does the principle of exclusive concentration (the principle of Ignorance) come in? If, as Sri Aurobindo says, it comes subsequently at a later stage, where was it then before? Was it not in the Absolute Reality ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 To Be or Not To Be A MORAL problem, un cas de conscience (a case of conscience), as they say in French. To defend yourself against your attacker and kill him who comes to kill you or stand disarmed and let yourself be killed-which is better, which has the greater moral value? To fight your enemy is ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Man the Prototype THE earth has been created for a special purpose; it has a divine role to fulfil. And so there is only one earth and not many, in spite of what the scientists may say. The earth is not a mass of dead matter, not merely the dwelling-place of the growths that have occurred upon it, of ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Mater Dolorosa SUFFERING, Distress and Death today hold the earth in thrall. And yet can there be any other issue in temporal life? That seems to be the ineluctable fate for mankind. Ages ago it was declared, the wages of sin is death. Doubters ask, however, if sinners alone suffered, one would not perhaps ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Freedom and the Force of the Spirit THE first thing that has to be learnt in life is that circumstances are not all in all: however powerful and overwhelming they may appear to be at a given moment, man can always react against them. If there is not an immediate success externally as desired, ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Origin and Nature of Suffering SUFFERING there is, some say, because the soul takes delight in it: if there was not the soul's delight behind, there would not be any suffering at all. There are still two other positions with regard to suffering which we do not deal with in the present context, namely, (1) ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Dynamic Fatalism The supramental change is a thing decreed and inevitable ¹. IF it is so, then what is the necessity at all of work and labour and travail – this difficult process of sadhana? The question is rather naive, but it is very often asked. The answer also could be very simple. The change decreed ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Spirit of Tapasya TAPASYA (Asceticism) is usually understood to mean the capacity to undergo physical discomfort and suffering. We are familiar with various types of Tapasya: sitting in summer with blazing fire all around and the fiery noonday sun overhead (Panchagnivrata), exposing one's bare limbs ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Rôle of Evil THE advent or the presence of evil upon earth has introduced certain factors in human life that have enriched it, increased even its value. Certain experiences would not have been there, intimate and revelatory experiences, but for this Dark Shadow. One can, of course, conceive a line ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 To Melt into the Divine How to melt into the Divine? That is to say, how to get dissolved in the Divine, lose one's ego? FIRST of all, one must wish for it, will for it, aspire for it with perseverance. Every time the ego shows itself, you must give it a blow on the nose, until it receives ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Buddha and Shankara (1) To escape from life is a teaching based on the view that life is an illusion. The teaching began with Buddha. Buddha said that life or existence is the fruit of desire and that there was only one way of getting out of the misery, namely, to go out of existence. Shankara ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Love Divine "THE intensity of Divine Love does not produce any perturbation in any part of the being".¹ Why should it? If there is a perturbation, it is more likely that a different kind of love was in question. If it is Divine Love, there can be no perturbation, for each one receives it according ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Faith and Progress When one makes an effort, makes a little progress, one gets satisfied and is proud of it. That spoils everything. How to get rid of this fault? IT is because one looks at oneself while doing a thing. It is the habit of constantly observing oneself as one works or lives. Certainly ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Significance of Dates Does a particular date or a series £if dates carry any special significance? THE way of framing a calendar is a convention. If the convention is made general, as there is an attempt now to do, it can become a very powerful formation. But in order to become significant ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Personal Effort and Surrender THERE is no difference in the end between the two if the goal to be attained is the Impersonal Divine, that is to say, if you want to unite and identify yourself with the Impersonal Divine, merge into it. But if your aspiration is to reach what is beyond, what Sri Aurobindo ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Surrender of an Inner Warrior IT means the vital when it is converted. The converted vital is for the Divine like a warrior. The vital in man is the region of power and it is that which drives him to fight, to fight and conquer. It is the most difficult element to deal with: for it is this capacity ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Meditation and Wakefulness To have good meditation or contact with the inner world, if you are obliged to go into Samadhi, then your normal consciousness will remain always the same without changing. In other words, people who have a higher consciousness only in deep meditation, once they come out of ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 A Review of Our Ashram Life IN its early days, quite at the beginning, we may now say, long long ago, for it is now almost half a century ago, the Ashram from its very start and quite spontaneously and inevitably grew into a community life. That is to say, the individuals ceased ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 More of Yajnavalkya LAST time I told you the story of the great Rishi Yajnavalkya. But that was about the later Yajnavalkya when he had become a full-fledged rishi, a guru with an Ashram and disciples. Today I will tell you something of the earlier Yajnavalkya, the beginning of his rishihood ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 FRENCH AVE MATER Amor mi mosse che mi fa parlare . . . -Dante Et je devins poète en étant amoureux . . . ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 The Golden Rule TODAY I shall speak to you of the golden rule. When we were children we were taught, specially at school, at home too, certain golden rules. If you observe these rules you become good, good boys and good girls, you are loved and appreciated by all. These rules are simple ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Janaka and Yajnavalkya I KING JANAKA was a great king and a great sage. He wielded an empire without and equally an empire within: he had realised the Truth, known Brahman. He was svar āt and samr ā t. A friend and intimate of his was Rishi Yajnavalkya, who also was a ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Soul's Freedom THE pressure from above has been withdrawn and normalcy restored to the earth-consciousness. Pressure meant a separation: something foreign acting from elsewhere, an interference . As a process, a passage needed for a time, for a special purpose and under special ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 A Canadian Question Question: IT is written in A Practical Guide to Integral Yoga ¹ : The physical nearness to the Mother is indispensable for the fullness of the sadhana on the physical plane. Transformation of the physical and ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 One Day More IN her “Prayers and Meditations” (Prières et Méditations) Mother wrote under the date 25 September 1914: A new light will break upon the earth, A new world will be born, And the things promised will be fulfilled.¹ Subesquently ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 November I7, I973 THE Mother's body belonged to the old creation. It was meant to be the pedestal of the New Body. It served its purpose well. The New Body will come. This is a test, how far we are faithful to Her , true to Her Consciousness. The revival of the body would ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Nicholas Roerich Ex oriente lux. Out of the East the Light, and that light is of the nature and substance of beauty, of creative and dynamic beauty in the life the spirit. This, I suppose, is Roerich's message in a nutshell. The Light of the East is always the light of the “ample consciousness” that dwells ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Soul in Anguish IT is very interesting to observe how in the modern epoch depths of consciousness. are being dug up and laid bare to the common gaze, even like the archaeological finds of great antiquity and of immense value that are springing surprise after surprise upon our present-day civilisation. In ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Mystic symbolism THE Mystics all over the world and in all ages have clothed their sayings in proverbs and parables, in figures and symbols. To speak in symbols seems to be in their very nature; it is their characteristic manner, their inevitable style. Let us see what is the reason behind it. But first who ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 POETS AND MYSTICS Sri Aurobindo : The Age of Sri Aurobindo SOMEONE has written to this effect: "This is not the age of Sri Aurobindo. His ideal of a divine life upon earth mayor may not be true; at any rate it is not of today or even of tomorrow. Humanity will take some time before it ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 God Protects THE protection that man naturally needs and asks for is that of life and property. It is, in the ordinary course of things, the duty of the State and society to give this protection. But sometimes the State or society is unable to do its duty as it should. 'In revolutionary epochs, when storm and ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Yoga as Pragmatic Power PEOPLE ask about the practical value of Yoga, but do not always wait for an answer. For, according to some, Yoga means "introversion", escapism – illusion, delusion, hallucination. And yet the truth of the matter is that Yoga is nothing but a downright practical affair, that its proof ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Divine Intervention WHAT we have named Intervention is also known popularly as Providence. It is the element of the incalculable and the unforeseen in Nature. Nature, in one respect, seems to be a closed circle: it is a rigid mechanism and its movements are very definite and absolutely fixed admitting of no change ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 Vengeance is Mine ONE who seeks to live in God's consciousness cannot take the law into his own hands; he must leave it all to God. When he takes up the self-appointed task of remedying the situation, "resisting evil" as Christ termed it, he invites resistance from the other side which takes up its own count ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2 Two Sonnets of Shakespeare ON the occasion of the 400th birth anniversary of Shakespeare, I present to you today two of the great Shakespearean sonnets. The sonnets, as you know, are all about love. They are however characterised by an incredible intensity and perhaps an equally incredible complexity, for ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Nature of Perfection PERFECTION is often understood to mean the highest or the utmost possible development, even if it be in one particular line or direction. That, however, can better be called success or achievement. True perfection is not an extreme growth, however great or commendable it may be: it is ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Psychic Being – Some Mysteries Does the psychic being progress always? THERE are two kinds of progress in the psychic and they are very different. One consists in its formation and building and organisation; for the psychic begins by being only a little divine spark hidden in the inner ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Body and the Psychic 1 You ask why the body has a limited receptive power. The reason is that in the physical world things must not get mixed up, they must remain somewhat stable, in shape and position. For example, if your body suddenly began to melt and flow towards another, it would be rather ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Music - Its Origin and Nature MUISIC, you must remember, like any other art, is a means for expressing something-some idea, some feeling, some emotion, a certain aspiration and so on. There is even a domain where all these movements exist and from where they are brought down under a musical form. A good ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Past Lives and the Psychic Being MOST people are not at all conscious of what is happening in them. Their consciousness or being is a mixture of mental, vital and physical elements, a kind of hotchpotch. There are a few, very few indeed, who are conscious – conscious of what is beyond the three, viz ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Divine Family WHEN people, far separated from one another, belonging to different parts of the world or pursuing most diverse professions, meet and gather and work for a common purpose, it means that they are kindred souls, and have met together and worked together before in other lives. They felt ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Force of Body-Consciousness THERE is a state of consciousness in which you perceive that the effect of things, circumstances, movements, all the activities of life upon yourself depends almost exclusively upon your attitude towards them. You become then conscious, conscious to the extent of realising ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Images of Gods and Goddesses Are the usual images of gods and goddesses true to reality? WELL when a little child draws a picture of an object, is there any likeness? It is about the same or even worse here. For the child is simple and sincere, while the image-maker is full of prejudices and pr ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 And this Agile Reason REASON is an agility gymnast. It can move in all varieties of ways, make infinite twists, the most impossible contortions with equal ease and skill. It does not seek the truth, although it may pretend to do so; for it cannot find the truth. The law of uncertainty or indeterminacy ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Inner and the Outer THE external part of the being is turned to the Divine: you are conscious of your ideal and as much as possible you conform your behaviour to it. You appear what you want to be. But just behind the line, on the other side of your consciousness – in the subconscious, as it is called ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Occult Experiences IT seems my predecessors were telling you stories ― stories of their own lives; their experiences, so I thought I should follow in their footsteps. But I am not going to tell you about my own experiences, I am going to tell a story, rather a history, that happened ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 LIGHT OF LIGHTS A Century’s Salutation to Sri Aurobindo THE GREATNESS OF THE GREAT I THE greatness of a person is the greatness of the Impersonal in him. He has little concern about himself ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Stress of the Spirit THE universe is a close-knit pattern in which each part, each point is inextricably linked with every other part and point. Each element acts and reacts upon every other: the karma of one is echoed and re-echoed in the karma of all others. An inevitable, inescapable mutuality ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 The Human Divine THE PASSING OF SATYAVAN This was the day when Satyavan must die. THE day is come, the fateful day, the last day of the twelve happy months that they have passed together. She knew it, it was foretold, it was foreseen ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The World Tragedy SHAKESPEARE in giving expression to a most poignant experience of human life says – we all know the most familiar and famous lines – in a most poignant manner: The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right! – ¹ The poignancy comes not ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Sorrows of God THE Son of Man – the Avatar – suffers with and suffers for the suffering humanity. The Christ with his cross, Ramakrishna with his cancer, Socrates with the hemlock creeping up and benumbing his limbs and Mohammed being hunted from place to place are familiar and poignant pictures. "Verily ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Love and Death ONE of the earliest poems of Sri Aurobindo – a juvenile work – has the title Love and Death. This is indeed the central theme, the core of the inspiration running through the whole of his poetic world culminating in the grand symphony of Savitri. As a matter of fact his vision and the mission ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Sunlit Path THE modern, particularly the western mind captured by the rational or scientific spirit cannot but pursue the same line even in the domain of other and higher realities. The father and the great representative of the movement was Descartes, the very famous French thinker. To find the pure ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 The Double Trinity The human being is composed of three beings, his person is made of three persons – it is a trinity, a triptych as it were. The first is the external person whom we recognise by his name and form. It is indeed the physical body in and through which nature and character express themselves ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Human Progress CREATION has evolved. That is to say, there has been a growth and unfoldment and progress. From nebulae to humanity the march cannot but be called an advance, a progress, in more senses than one. But the question is about man. Has man advanced, progressed since his advent upon earth? If so ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 PART SIX The End of a Civilisation THE world has been going down in its course of degradation with an increased momentum since the very beginning of the present century. One of the great symptoms of the decline is the prevalence of wars. It can be said in fact that there has been no ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Man and Superman WHEN we speak of the superman we refer to a new race – almost a new species – that will appear on earth as the inevitable result of Nature's evolution. The new race will be developed out of the present humanity, there seems to be no doubt about that; it does not mean however ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Children and Child Mentality, CHILDREN are often found to be very cruel to animals. Why is it so? Their treatment of birds especially is notorious. To seek out nests and pull them down, to capture nestlings and put them to all kinds of torture, to pick up eggs and dash them to pieces are for children ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Expanding Body-Consciousness THE field of our physical activity is very limited. If you look at it closely you will find it indeed extremely narrow and our capacities confined within a small circle. Weare bound by the outline of our material body. I cannot, for instance, be sitting in my room and ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 True Charity CHARITY is commonly understood to consist in rendering material help to your fellow men, giving alms to the poor, medicine to the sick, money or material to those who need them and physical service also where that is required. All this is well and good. The world is ridden with diseases and ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Story of Creation CONSCIOUSNESS is the source and basis of creation. Even the most material object, apparently unconscious, the stone, for example, has inherent in it a vibration of consciousness. Where there is absolutely no consciousness, it is the Inconscient. If you ever descend into the Inconscient ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 Total Transformation Demands Total Rejection To a positive side in the sadhana, there must also be a negative one. Realisation or experience, on one side, must be accompanied by rejection of things that oppose it, on the other. People wonder' why a beautiful experience fades away too soon or does not ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 The Integral Realisation ENDLESS are the ways to the Divine. Each one followed with sincerity and earnestness and persistence to the end leads to the same goal. Now, if the end were solely to reach the highest summit, the point beyond, the transcendent God and settle there, anyone line would be quite sufficient ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3 How to Wait "IF you know how to wait, you gain time". Usually, when you are about to do a thing, the impulse is to rush towards it and rush it through; between the idea and the execution you do not want to leave any gap. You are in a haste to see the thing done. You do not care to pause and look about ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Perfection and Progress PERFECTION is a relative term. A thing may be perfect in relation to the present or the past; it may not be so in relation to what is to come. Creation is a perpetual movement, a perpetual progression. Each time a new consciousness manifested upon earth, it was very natural ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Psychological Perfection THERE is a flower to which we have given this name. It is the familiar Champa. The flower has five petals. Each petal represents a quality or movement of consciousness, the five qualities or movements making up the psychological perfection. In the beginning I named them-(l) Surrender ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Thought and Imagination WHEN you think of a person or a thing you are immediately I there and come into contact with the object of your thought. But this happens in the thought world only; you know nothing of the vital or physical context of the object. Thought is conscious of thought only in the mental ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Human Birth LAST week I spoke of birth and how a soul enters into a body. I told you that the body is formed in a very unsatisfactory manner almost in the case of every person, the exceptions are so rare that one need not mention them. I told you that because of this obscure birth man is made to carry ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Regarding the Body THE fatigue of the body comes from an inner disharmony. There may be many other apparent reasons, but all amount to that fundamental circumstance viz. a want of balance among the different parts of the being. That may occur on a day when, for example, you had a lot of energy and you ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Meat-Eating What happens when one eats meat? I WILL tell you then a story. I knew a young woman, Swedish, who was doing Sadhana. Normally she was a vegetarian, by habit as well as by inclination. One day she was invited to a dinner. She was given fowl to eat. She did not like to make a fuss and quietly ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Sadhana Must be Done in the Body THERE are people who are disgusted with life. They want to go away in the hope that it will be better the next time. But we tell you: It is no use running away from your body, it will not be easier without a body. On the contrary, it will be much more difficult. The body ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Asceticism You have seen Sannyasins lying upon nails. Why do they do that? Perhaps to prove their saintliness. But when they do so in public, well, the suspicion is legitimate that it is something like a pose. There are some perhaps who do the thing sincerely and seriously, that is to say, they do not do ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4 Divine Living WE always give the name "Divine" to all that we are not and want to become, all that seems infinitely higher than not only everything we have done but everything we can possibly do, all that is beyond our present capacity and conception. I am perfectly sure that if we went back into ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 DHAMMAPADA Pali The Twins [1] Mind is the foremost of all movements, mind is the highest of all movements, mind enters into all movements. If with an evil mind you speak or act, suffering ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Mater Gloriosa I J'adore la femme. . . . C'était ma faiblesse, c'est mon salut. Dans mon ignorance, lorsque je n'étais qu'un adolescent – en âme et en esprit – je suivais la forme humaine du féminin et je désirais les délices terrestres qu'elle verse ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 The Flowers [1] Who will conquer this Earth and this world of Death and the world of the gods as well? Page 204 Who will find out and show the Right Path even like an expert florist? [2] The Disciple will conquer the Earth ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Distiques "Accours, ma mie , accours ! que chez nous t'emmène!" C'est Ie Seigneur qui prie une frêle âme humaine. J'ai soif d'or et d'azur, de tout ce qui s'irise La terre est un trou nair , Ie corps une hantise. La chair ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 On Anger [1] Abandon anger; reject egoism; overcome all bondage. No suffering assails him, who has no attachment for name and form, who possesses nothing. [2] I call him a charioteer who controls his anger that is like a straying chariot; the others merely ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 On Evil [1] Hasten towards the Good , turn the mind away from evil; if you do good in sloth, the mind will indulge in evil. [2] If a man does an evil thing, he must not repeat it, he must not indulge it. Painful is the accumulation of evil. ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 The Mind [1] The trepidating restless stuff of the mind is hard to guard, hard to control. The intelligent man straightens it even as an arrow maker straightens an arrow. [2] Born of water, the fish strains and struggles when thrown on land from out of ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Old Age [1] Why this laughter? Why this merriment? When there is always this fire that consumes you are enveloped by darkness and you do not seek the light. [2] Look at this decorated image, the body full of sores, a heaped mass, diseased, full of ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 5 Of the Self [1] If you consider the self dear to you, guard it well and protect it. In one or other of the three vigils, (youth, ripe age, old age), keep awake. [2] Establish yourself first in the right way, then you may instruct others. Thus the wise ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 The Human Touch Divine In what does the human touch consist? What is the thing that is specially and particularly human and is not found elsewhere, what makes man human – not merely animal and not solely godly? Well, it is the mortal element in immortality, mortality immortalised. An animal is mere mortality ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 The Great Holocaust – Chhinnamasta* Throughout the ages whenever there has been a new creation on earth, or manifestation of a new consciousness in earthly atmosphere, it was always preceded by a stage of destruction and dissolution of the old. The dance of Shiva has its two aspects ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 SUPPLEMENTARY I SWEET MOTHER (New Series) The Golden Harvest The poet-saint Ramprasad says: “O my man, you do not know how to till! If you knew! Oh, you have such a piece of land – This human life of yours! You could have reaped gold from it.” Indeed this ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Page 86 Agni WHEN Agni, the Flame awakes, all other gods awake – Vayu and Soma and Indra and Aditi – Aditi, the Mother, one and indivisible, and the Word inviolate. All is burnt, burnt, burnt to ashes! It is the same, the Fire and the offering and the offerer; It is the same ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Modern Poets 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 TEXTS OF TRANSLATIONS IN VOLUME FIVE Vedic Hymns Page 91 Page 92 Page 93 Page 94 Page 95 Page 96 Page 97 Page 98 Page 99 ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Ashram Poets Page 141 Page 142 Page 143 Page 144 Page 145 Page 146 Page 147 Page 148 Page 149 Page 150 Page 151 ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Charyapda Page 199 Page 200 Page 201 Page 202 Page 203 Page 204 Page 205 Page 206 Page 207 Page 208 Page 210 ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 Page 106 Page 107 Page 108 Page 109 ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 ORIGINAL BENGALI WRITINGS (In English Translation) ON ART AND LITERATURE World-Literature (I) ‘REAL poetry, the acme of poetical art,’ says Victor Hugo, ‘is characterised by immensity alone.’ That is why Aeschylus, Lucretius, Shakespeare and Corneille ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 SWEET - MOTHER (New Talks) In Her Company ALL of you, I suppose, sometime or other attend the meditation, the evening meditation at the Playground. If not all, at least a good many or most of you. Perhaps a few of the younger ones do not. When the. Mother was giving this collective ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Spirituality in Art Is there any natural opposition between art and the spiritual life? The Puritans had cast aside poetry and music like poison. In the Talmud (the scripture of the Jews) there is the total prohibition to draw the picture of anybody, be he a man or a God. Plato in his Republic refused ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6 (Poème dansé par Yvonne Artaud) L UI ET ELLE L' ANGE MUSICIEN quatre DIEUX ou DÉESSES quatre ENFANTS quatre SERVANTES deux INITIÉS LA MULTITUDE L’ÊTRE NOUVEAU Le Deux-en-Un dans le cycle d'éternel retour d'une Manifestation qui s'enrichit sans cesse, – le Périple ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 ON THE VEDA An Introduction to the Vedas (I) WHAT is it that we call Veda? It is already known to us that the Vedas are the perennial fount of Indian culture and education, the foundation of Hinduism and the basis of the Aryan civilisation. He who defies Veda is an atheist, a non-Hindu, an ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Pondicherry – 2 I HAVE said that this cemetery that was Pondicherry had been infested by ghosts and goblins. These had a special category known ordinarily as spies. The word "spy" carries with it, as you know, an association of all that is low and disgusting and unspeakable, things of dark import. ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 The Third Sukta Life needs pure, calm and effectuating delight. It is through delight that knowledge, work and truth at revealed. The Page 100 more the inspiration of life-energy becomes divinely blissful and lasting, the more the aspirant is endowed with the pure intelligence, divine ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 A Commentary on the First Six Suktas of Rigveda THE FIRST SUKTA COSMIC creation is a great and sublime sacrifice. Sarvagatam Bramha...¹ (The all-pervading Brahman is established in the sacrifice), says the Gita. Each and every object offers itself into this sacrificial fire. Why? Sacrifice ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Hymn to Earth ATHARVAVEDA Kanda XII: Sukta 1 [This is a selection from the original Hymn which is somewhat longer. There is here a double series of numbering of the slokas, put side by side – except those that have the same number in the original as well as the selection; the first one gives ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 THE FOURTH SUKTA The gradual progression of the spiritual discipline takes place by virtue of the bliss-power in the pure mind. It is with that power that a spiritual seeker overcomes all the obstacles and the downward pull of ignorance symbolised by Vritra and creates beautiful forms full of knowledge ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Hymn to Peace and Power (Sam yoh) YAJURVEDA Chapter 36 (1) I SEEK the Grace of Rik, the Word. I seek the Grace of Yajur, the Mind. I seek the Grace of Sam a, the Life-Force. I seek the Grace of the Eye and the Ear; may the energy that is Speech, the Energy that is Power and the Life-Force ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Hymn to Bhavani NOR father nor mother, nor friends nor brothers, Nor son nor daughter, nor servants nor master, Nor bride nor learning nor profession have I: Thou art the refuge, thou the sole refuge, O Bhavani! In this world, this shoreless ocean brimming with its dread suffering, ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Hymn to Hara-Gauri SHE is anointed with camphor and sandal And He with ashes of the funeral pyre; She wears true ear-rings And He rings of swaying snakes; I bow to Her, I bow to Him. She is decorated with garlands of Mandara And He with garlands of ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Hymn to Saraswati WHITE-hued — white as the Kunda flower or the moon or the snow-range, robed in white She bears in her arms the marvellous vina, seated on the lotus. She is ever adored by Brahma and Vishnu and Shiva and all the Gods. May Saraswati save us, the Goddess, may she ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 My Athletics THERE is in the Upanishad a description of the stage in man's life when he becomes so old and decrepit that he cannot walk except on a stick, tvam jίrņo daņdena vañcasi. At precisely that stage in our life, we in the Ashram received a call to plunge into the activities of our Playground. I was ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Lines of Tantra (Charyapada) AT least the names, "Natha-yogis" and "Siddhacharyas" must have been familiar to you, perhaps you may have heard about their writings too, the body of poetry known as caryapadavali . Today I would like to say something on this subject. This introduces us to a particular ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 Two Great Wars (I) WE have been through two great World Wars in the course of our life in Pondicherry. This was quite an experience. The two Wars were identical in their inner nature and import. From our point of view, they were both of them a battle of the gods and titans. On one side were the ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7 I Bow To The Mother THOSE of you who came to the Ashram as children recognised the Mother and called her by that name practically from your birth, that is, from the moment you began to recognise things. We the grown-ups did not have that privilege. It has taken us a long long time to open our eyes and know ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Hymn to the Pillar (Skambha) ATHARVAVEDA Kanda X: Sukta 7 [The ritualistic or the naturalistic symbolism. of the Veda is at its minimum in this hymn of the Atharvaveda, translated almost literally. The Pillar, it is explicitly said, is the Brahman, the Supreme Reality. It is sarvadhara, ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Hymn to Dawn RIGVEDA Mandala I: Sukta 92 (I) Lo! These Dawns bringing forth knowledge (consciousness): in the eastern hemisphere they spread out light; like assailants with sharpened weapons, the gleaming Mothers move forward. (2) Easily they rise up, the glowing rays; they yoke ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Hymn to All-Gods RIGVEDA Mandala I: Sukta 89 (I) MAY the happy (blissful) Sacrifices come to us from everywhere, indomitable, invincible, upsoaring. May the Gods be there for our increase, may they never abandon us, may they protect us day after day. (2) May the perfect, the happy Mind ...
... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 8 Hymn to Forest-Range RIGVEDA Mandala X: Sukta 146 (I) FOREST-Range! Range of Forest! Ever forward you seem to move! Wherefore do you not enquire for a village? Are you not afraid? (2) Here bellows the bull, there in answer chirps a grasshopper – A musical chord ...
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