... spirit; it lies in their immediate power for inner truth, for self-enlargement, for liberation. But in other spheres of life, in the spheres of what by an irony of our ignorance we call especially practical life,—although, if the Divine be our true object of search and realisation, our normal conduct in them and our current idea of them is the very opposite of practical,—we are less ready to recognise... universal truth. We take a long time to admit it even partially in theory, we are seldom ready at all to follow it in practice. And we find this difficulty because there especially, in all our practical life, we are content to be the slaves of an outward Necessity and think ourselves always excused when we admit as the law of our thought, will and action the yoke of immediate and temporary utilities... principle and power of existence. All life is only a lavish and manifold opportunity given us to discover, realise, express the Divine. It is in our ethical being that this truest truth of practical life, its real and highest practicality becomes most readily apparent. It is true that the rational man has tried to reduce the ethical life like all the rest to a matter of reason, to determine its ...
... example, charity and service and philanthropy. Nothing higher than ideas and ideals confined to the moral, that is to say, the mental plane, could be brought into play in the world and its practical life—even, the moral and mental idea itself has often been mistaken for true spirituality. Thus the very ideal of governing or moulding our worldly preoccupations according to a truly spiritual—a... that Science which brings a tyrannical mastery over material Nature, which serves to pile up tools and instruments, arms and armaments, in order to ensure a dire efficiency and a grim order in practical life. Those that have stood against this Dark Force and its overshadowing menace—even though perhaps not wholly by choice or free-will, but mostly compelled by circumstances —yet, because of the ...
... for example, charity and service and philanthropy. Nothing higher than ideas and ideals confined to the moral, that is to say, the mental plane, could be brought into play in the world and its practical life,—even the moral and mental idea itself has often been mistaken for true spirituality. Thus the very ideal of governing or moulding our worldly preoccupations according to a truly spiritual or a... brings a tyrannical mastery over material Nature, which serves to pile up tools and instruments, arms and Page 8 armaments, in order to ensure a dire efficiency and a grim order in practical life. Those that have stood against this Dark Force and its overshadowing menace—even though perhaps not wholly by choice or freewill, but mostly compelled by circumstances — yet, because of ...
... Page 67 and service and philanthropy. Nothing higher than ideas and ideals confined to the moral, that is to say, the mental plane, could be brought into play in the world and its practical life –even the moral and mental idea itself has often been mistaken for true spirituality. Thus the very ideal of governing or moulding our worldly preoccupations according to a truly spiritual or a... that Science which brings a tyrannical mastery over material Nature, which serves to pile up tools and instruments, arms and armaments, in order to ensure a dire efficiency and a grim order in practical life. Those that have stood against this Dark Force and its over-shadowing menace – even though perhaps not wholly by choice or free-will, but mostly compelled by circumstances – yet, ...
... sections: (1) Letters on Personal, Practical and Political Matters, 1890 - 1926; (2) Early Letters on Yoga and the Spiritual Life, 1911 - 1928; and (3) Other Letters of Historical Interest on Yoga and Practical Life, 1921 - 1938. Page 569 Section One Letters on Personal, Practical and Political Matters, 1890 - 1926 The letters in this part have been arranged... 1927. [3] Circa 1928. The subject of this letter almost certainly was Marie Potel, who left the Ashram in March 1928. Section Three Other Letters of Historical Interest on Yoga and Practical Life 1921 - 1938 The letters in this section are of two types. Those in the first group are addressed to disciples who had undertaken to collect or provide funds for the Ashram. Those ...
... e assembly in the world. This is highly typical of the English school of thought and the exaggerated emphasis it lays on the mould and working of institutions. However supreme in the domain of practical life, however gifted with commercial vigour and expansive energy, the English mind with its short range of vision, its too little of delicacy and exactness, its inability to go beyond what it actually ...
... guarantee that they will be recognized at all times and places in the future. Moreover the definite meaning and extent of these names and the limits within which men are willing to honour them in practical life, varies immensely in different countries. The standard of morality is determined not by the profession of the community, but by the actual though unwritten code of actions which the community as ...
... Page 100 You do not notice it! That happens when you are not alert, when you are not attentive, when you are busy with altogether external things, the tiny little things of daily practical life. Then the forces can attack you, enter into you, install themselves without even your noticing it. Most often, they do not attack you directly thus, because if they attack you directly, there is ...
... Other Letters of Historical Interest on Yoga and Practical Life (1921-1938) Autobiographical Notes To and about Durgadas Shett [1] Pondicherry May 12. 1921 Dear Durgadas I received day before yesterday your letter and the Rs 400 you sent me. I accept the money and shall use it for the house for those who come to me for the Yoga. The house ...
... Other Letters of Historical Interest on Yoga and Practical Life (1921-1938) Autobiographical Notes To and about Punamchand M. Shah [1] To Punamchand I. Separation of Purusha and Prakriti to establish tranquility of heart and mind. (a) Separated Purusha, calm, observing Prakriti. (b) Prakriti in the heart and mind attending calmness. II ...
... Other Letters of Historical Interest on Yoga and Practical Life (1921-1938) Autobiographical Notes On a Proposed Visit by Jawaharlal Nehru DILIP KUMAR ROY: Nehru may be here about the 17th of this month. What do you think of my asking him to spend the day (or two) at my flat? Then surely he would want to ask the Mother for an interview. Your force will ...
... Other Letters of Historical Interest on Yoga and Practical Life (1921-1938) Autobiographical Notes To Dr. S. Radhakrishnan 2.10.34 My dear Professor Radhakrishnan, I regret that you should have had to wait for the publication of your book on account of the contribution I could not write. I had intimated to Dilip that it would be practically impossible ...
... stage of our national history.... We have here really an echo of the European idea, now of sufficiently long standing, that religion and spirituality on the one side and intellectual activity and practical life on the other are two entirely different things and have each to be pursued on its own entirely separate lines and in obedience to its own entirely separate principles____ Spirituality [does ...
... ramblings. But if you have the misfortune to remain there and look at them, then surely, as I said, you will get a headache. For it is a problem which must be resolved either by a descent into practical life and a concentration on some practical effort or else by rising above and looking from above at all this chaos so as to be able to bring some order into it and set it right. But one must never ...
... organisation, its political liberty, order and progress, the mechanism, comfort and ease of its social and domestic life, Page 158 its science, but science most in its application to practical life, most for its instruments and conveniences, its railways, telegraphs, steamships and its other thousand and one discoveries, countless inventions and engines which help man to master the physical ...
... complexity of life escapes. The idealist, the thinker, the philosopher, the poet and artist, even the moralist, all those who live much in ideas, when they come to grapple at close quarters with practical life, seem to find themselves something at a loss and are constantly defeated in their endeavour to govern life by their ideas. They exercise a powerful influence, but it is indirectly, more by throwing ...
... a nation a great period of national culture and vigorous mental and soul life is always part of a general stirring and movement which has its counterpart in the outward political, economic and practical life of the nation. The cultural brings about or increases the material progress but also it needs it that it may itself flourish with an entirely full and healthy vigour. The peace, well-being and ...
... killed, it only changes its form. In its more moderate movements the revolt put religion aside into a corner of the soul by itself and banished its intermiscence in the intellectual, aesthetic, practical life and even in the ethical; and it did this on the ground that the intermiscence of religion in science, thought, politics, society, life in general had been and must be a force for retardation, ...
... in these fields there has been remarkable accomplishment and the influence on European thought has been frequently considerable and sometimes capital. But when finally we turn to the business of practical life, there is an unqualified preeminence: in mechanical science and invention, in politics, in commerce and industry, in colonisation, travel, exploration, in the domination of earth and the exploitation ...
... Jew held his knowledge as a means towards life, towards the highest fulfilment of his being. It has been left for enlightened Europe to profess a religion, yet avowedly separate its precepts from practical life, and it has been first the privilege of Teutonic thinkers to speculate in the void, using great words & high ideas as if these were ornaments of a bright lustre & great costliness but of no living ...
... the sense-faculties without the knowledge that would give the old sense-values their right interpretation from the new standpoint might lead to serious disorders and incapacities, might unfit for practical life and for the orderly and disciplined use of the reason. Equally, an enlargement of our mental consciousness out of the experience of the egoistic dualities into an unregulated unity with some form ...
... and activity as regular, manageable and utilisable as the movements of physical forces. The powers of the soul can be as perfectly handled and as safely, methodically and puissantly directed to practical life-purposes of joy, power and light as the modern power of electricity can be used for human comfort, industrial and locomotive power and physical illumination; but the results to which they give ...
... of scientific truth itself has no justification without our being convinced that reality is such as to make it worth while for the researcher in pure science to tear himself away from immediate practical life and devote himself to the terrific exertions without which pioneer creation in scientific thought can never come into being. It is not only a "cosmic religious feeling", a sense of an ordering ...
... we are earnest in our inquiry and if we have patience to endure the persistence that is demanded by the inescapability of our need to know and our need to apply our knowledge to the problems of practical life in the midst of which we find ourselves poised uncomfortably and even painfully. Page 30 ...
... knowledge, several practical capacities of knowledge and will can be developed which should lift us from what Sri Aurobindo calls seven-fold ignorance to seven-fold integral knowledge. The result for practical life would be elimination of ignorance in our thought will, sensations, actions, and prevention from returning wrong or imperfect responses to the questionings of the world, liberation from wandering ...
... basic experimentation seems to have come to a close; it can only turn now in expanding or contracting circles of probabilities in the field of knowledge and those of compromise in the field of practical life. It can, of course, take another course, if it can choose to become sufficiently revolutionary and institute an inquiry into those ulterior sources from which its articles of faith regarding Truth ...
... but this ip after all not a competitive examination. If one can be a good and strong instrument, that is enough. These qualities seem very well on a piece of paper, but not so easy to get in practical life. They are not easy for those who have not got them; quite easy for those who have. For instance, the intuition you speak of, is a deuced difficult thing to make out, and in the field of ...
... see in art and literature discussions centred upon the scheme of composition, as whether the new poetry should be lyrical or dramatic, popular or aristocratic, metrical or free of metre, and in practical life we talk of remodelling the state by new methods of representation and governance, of purging society by bills and legislation, of reforming humanity by a business pact. All this may be good ...
... see in art and literature discussions centred upon the scheme of composition, as whether the new poetry should be lyrical or dramatic, popular or aristocratic, metrical or free of metre, and in practical life we talk of remodelling the state by new methods of representation and governance, of purging society by bills and legislation, of reforming humanity by a business pact. All this may ...
... powerfully; but the modus operandi was not such a passion or obsession with them, it had not attained that almost absolute value for itself which modern craftsmanship gives it. As technology in practical life has become a thing of overwhelming importance to man today, become, in the Shakespearean phrase, his "be-all and end-all", even so the same spirit has invaded and pervaded his aesthetics too. The ...
... world is that one is merely an optical illusion, while the other is an earnest one. We insist on seeing as broken a stick which in reality is not. That this earnest illusion agrees with our present practical life and with the superficial level at which our existence unfolds may justify the illusion, but it is also the reason we are powerless to control life, for to see falsely is to live falsely. The scientist ...
... sought the path of progress and liberation in all the ways possible. The force of knowledge, the force of philosophy, the force of thought and intellect in man can no doubt help him guide his practical life but they can also, on the contrary, cause imperfection by creating all kinds of problems in an unstable life. And so in trying to do good it succeeds in just the opposite.J" No political ideology ...
... Teresa, as a founder of convents and administrator, gave evidence of extraordinary practical ability .... The mystic is not as a rule ambitious, but I do not think he often shows incapacity for practical life, if he consents to mingle in it. 21 It is not in the least surprising therefore that Mirra should have decided energetically to meet the challenge of the phoenix-hour in the spirit of ...
... Will not the stifling of desires mean the stifling of life itself and its motor forces ? The Buddhist gospel or the Gita's may be a counsel of perfection, but how in this work-a-day world, in practical life, in this grim struggle for existence, can one renounce all desires and not sink into inertia and stagnation and eventual disintegration? Will it not spell a total defeat and frustration of life's ...
... with the eternal who moves, of the Timeless, Spaceless, Conditionless, with the Timed, Spaced & Conditioned, the Sage proceeds with a consideration of the latter only with which our vyavahara or practical life has to deal & emphasises the unity of all things near & far, subjective & objective. That is the near, the same That is the far. He is near to us in our subjective experience, he removes to a distance ...
... lofty aim and greatness of spirit of Indian civilisation, which stand too high to be vulnerable to an assault of this ignorant and prejudiced character. He questions its leading ideas, denies its practical life-value, disparages its fruits, efficacy, character. Has this disparagement any critical value or is it only a temperamental expression of the misunderstanding natural to a widely different view ...
... must be without any hold on real life. The Indian mind holds on the contrary that the Rishi, the thinker, the seer of spiritual truth is the best guide not only of the religious and moral, but the practical life. The seer, the Rishi is the natural director of society; to the Rishis he attributes the ideals and guiding intuitions of his civilisation. Even today he is very ready to give the name to anyone ...
... all to profit by this element. We have here really an echo of the European idea, now of sufficiently long standing, that religion and spirituality on the one side and intellectual activity and practical life on the other are two entirely different things and have each to be pursued on its own entirely separate lines and in obedience to its own entirely separate principles. Again we may be met also ...
... or implicitly. For, pioneer creation in scientific thought can never come without terrific exertion and intense devotion and a mighty and heroic turning away from common pleasures and immediate practical life - and all this single-minded idealistic pursuit of truth can never be possible without "cosmic religious emotion". "What deep faith," exclaims Einstein, "in the rationality of the structure of ...
... of the book and have listened stories of the Touch of Grace we feel like having passed through illustrative exercises worked out by the Divine Grace. These are episodes that concern problems of practical life. The light that Grace sheds is shared by the readers in abundant measure and that too for the simple reason that they are not unrelated miracles but they assure us that we too can approach the ...
... possesses the highest Truth in a direct perception and in self-experience; to become, to be the Highest that we know is the sign that we really have the knowledge. For the same reason, to shape our practical life, our actions as far as may be in consonance with our intellectual notions of truth and right or with a successful pragmatic knowledge,—an ethical or a vital fulfilment,—is not and cannot be the ...
... and higher movements there is demanded of us only a limited and specialised equality and impersonality proper to a particular field of consciousness and activity while the egoistic basis of our practical life remains to us; in the lower movements the whole foundation of our life has to be changed in order to make room for impersonality, and this the desire-soul finds impossible. The true soul secret ...
... ages of stupendous effort and initiative when the gods seem no longer satisfied with this tardy and fragmentary working, when the ideal breaks constantly through the dull walls of the material practical life, incalculable forces clash in its field, innumerable ideas meet and wrestle in the arena of the world and through the constant storm and flash, agitation of force and agitation of light the possibility ...
... meditation and work and dedicate both to the Mother is the best thing. 6 August 1933 My thoughts, emotions and sensations are all turned towards the Mother. But how can I make them serve her in practical life? I still make mistakes and do not always get the right inspiration. That depends on the physical mind. It has to learn to stop listening to itself and following its own ideas and to call seriously ...
... Other Letters of Historical Interest on Yoga and Practical Life (1921-1938) Autobiographical Notes Draft of a Letter to Maharani Chimnabai II To H.H the Maharani of Baroda It is true that I have by the practice of Yoga attained to the higher spiritual consciousness which comes by Yoga, and this carries with it a certain power. Especially there is ...
... Other Letters of Historical Interest on Yoga and Practical Life (1921-1938) Autobiographical Notes On a Proposed Visit by Mahatma Gandhi [1] GOVINDBHAI PATEL: Here is a postcard from Gandhi. If you think he can receive something from you, please grant him permission to meet you. You will have to write that I am unable to see him because for ...
... Other Letters of Historical Interest on Yoga and Practical Life (1921-1938) Autobiographical Notes To and about Morarji Desai [1] A. B. PURANI: This is a telegram from Dr. Chandulal Manilal Desai.... The other gentleman about whom he writes is Mr. Morarji Desai, originally a district deputy collector who resigned his post in the Non-cooperation ...
... Other Letters of Historical Interest on Yoga and Practical Life (1921-1938) Autobiographical Notes To Birendra Kishore Roy Chowdhury 21.2.37 Birendra Kishore I have made it a rule not to write anything about politics. Also the question of what to do in a body like the Assembly depends on circumstances, on the practical needs of the situation which ...
... and close union, and the state of perfect love and compassion, if one has gone beyond these two states and found the divine Delight, it is practically impossible to come down from there. But in practical life, that is, on the path of yoga, if you are touched, even in sing, by this divine Delight, it is obvious that, should it leave you, you are bound to feel that you have come down from a peak into ...
... required to live the presence of the opposites to find... to find what is there when the opposites join together—instead of running away when they join. That produces a result. And that in the practical life. Page 220 ...
... permanently and become your normal nature. But once the change has taken place, it is there, in principle, once and for all; and then what is needed is to express it gradually in the details of practical life. The first manifestation of the transformed consciousness always seems to be abrupt. You do not feel that you are changing slowly and gradually from one state into another; you feel that you are ...
... of earth and Matter. 94 * * * May, 1933 ... But what a floundering confusion the intellect of man has brought itself into now-a-days—whether in thought or in the field of practical life! An infant crying in the night when he is not hitting other infants in the stomach in order to bring the golden age. (I am referring to infants like Hitler, Mussolini and others.) 95 * ...
... were made to live the presence of opposites, so as to find... to find what is when opposites are joined—instead of running away from one another, they join. It produces a result. And that's in practical life. ...
... silence ) And materially, in the material life, you feel you are entangled in something in which every solution is false. Yes, yes, that's exactly it. So you don't know what to do. In practical life, you don't know what to do.... You can turn in every direction and in every direction it's false. Yes, it's false. So those who want to live authentically, what should they do in a practical ...
... leaves something in us unconvinced, for, opposed to Berkeley, we have the very strong feeling that, instead of matter being a form of mind, mind seems often to be a form of matter. Most of our practical life is based on what appears to be the independent existence of matter. And when we ask ourselves: wouldn't matter be more amenable to mind if it were just an idea? - the answer makes us seriously ...
... In conclusion, for effective and long lasting value education, a context is very necessary. Any attempt at imparting values to children and young adults in academic isolation, divorced from practical life, cannot succeed. The educational process, the pedagogy, the learning environment and the dynamics—involving the entire community of students, teachers, school management and parents—must ...
... lost their elasticity which is shown by two steps they have taken. The first is the socialisation of their government in two hours and the second is their offer to the French. The English lead a practical life; they don't live in ideas. That is why they are so successful in life. In times of crisis or necessity they are driven to take practical steps as the situation demands. NIRODBARAN: Only, they ...
... material out of which He weaves constantly His garbs, builds recurrently the unending series of His mansions." But even if we accept the truth both of Matter and Spirit, their difference in practical life is such, Matter seems to be so much a negation of Spirit, that it is difficult to believe that it also is Brahman (Spirit) unless we recognise a series of ascending terms of consciousness linking ...
... which should lift us from what Sri Aurobindo calls sevenfold ignorance to sevenfold integral knowledge. Such is the object and status of the knowledge that Yoga promises, and the result for practical life that is promised is elimination of ignorance in our thought, will, sensations, actions, and prevention from returning wrong or imperfect responses to the questionings of the world, liberation from ...
... is from Vivekananda that the life-force, the vitality of the nation has taken a new turn, a fresh and full-flooded stream – the light of a new achievement has glimmered into the people's daily practical life. What was in Rammohan a recondite and deep realisation of the Soul became a dream, imagination, hope and ideal in Bankim and culminated in Vivekananda as an unavoidable necessity of life, as an ...
... powerfully; but the modus operandi was not such a passion or obsession with them, it had not attained that almost absolute value for itself which modern craftsmanship gives it. As technology in practical life has become a thing of overwhelming importance to man today, become, in the Shakespearean phrase, his "be-all and end-all", even so the same spirit has invaded and pervaded his aesthetics too. ...
... or realities and meaning of life in day-to-day problems of contemporary times; To develop in themselves integration of personality which would enable them to confront the problems of practical life with a sympathetic understanding, equanimity and ability to deal with them effectively; To be able to counsel and guide people in different vocations and thus play the role of leadership; ...
... even then his status as a Rishi will remain quite irreproachable. He will be called a poet and seer even if he fails to see or show the real nature of the Ideal but can unfold the reality of the practical life. It is doubtful if Plato would recognise even a seer-poet of this type. He might say the. poet whose heart is pure or has been purified, whose consciousness has transcended the human consciousness ...
... body, purification of the vital, the reorientation and reorganisation of the entire lower base of consciousness, its physical and especially its lower vital parts. Those who want spirituality in practical life must go down to the bottom and accomplish this purification. And the future? The future of what? The future of the individual soul is in Mother's arms. And the future of the creation is ...
... and liberation in all the ways possible. The force of knowledge, the force of philosophy, the force of thought and intellect in man can no doubt help him guide Page 136 his practical life but they can also, on the contrary, cause imperfection by creating all kinds of problems in an unstable life. And so in trying to do good it succeeds in just the opposite. No political ideology ...
... by somebody who has the vision of the Truth-Consciousness, experience of the Truth-Consciousness, and also the experience of the operation of the Truth-Consciousness. So, it is not unrelated to practical life. The most important part of the whole contribution of Sri Aurobindo is that it is not merely an abstract individual experience, but it is the experience of a Reality which he has tried not only ...
... of the origin of all movements.... Something opens within you and all at once you find yourself in a new world." But, she cautions, "what is needed is to express it gradually in the details of practical life". 9 Wonders are many, there have been great discoveries, but nothing is more wonderful, or is a greater discovery, than the soul. It is not the super-subtle or marvelously resilient mind that ...
... what one should do? But neither the one nor the other should determine it. Should one remain passive? No, obey only the divine will. How can one know what you want in every detail of practical daily life? Learn to be quiet (make your mind quiet) and listen in the silence. 20 December 1935 ...
... But that does not mean that I agreed with your opinion. Now you have forced me to tell you my side . . .” What to do, Sweet Mother? How can one know what you want in every detail of practical daily life? If you don’t get rid of your ego, there will be no one, finally, with whom you won’t quarrel. 26 December 1935 ...
... matter, life and mind. They are separate and distinct from one point of view-the logical and practical. But life came out of matter, and then mind out of life--that is the evolutionary conception. In other words, matter shades off into life, there is a point where it is difficult to say whether it is matter or life; similarly there is a point where life shades off into mind, where mind and life are fused... fused together. We can further say that in matter there is a life and there is a mind, and in life there is a matter and a mind and in mind too there is a matter and a life. But these facts of Nature are disconcerting to the one-track mind of the logical philosopher and make the confusion worse confounded for him. Page 339 for whom things are either black or white. In the global outlook ...
... from below and the response from above: it is only in the union of these two that this work can be done. Man with his mind can determine his conduct in the practical, material life but then the very imperfection of man's earthly life can completely unsettle everything. No political ideology, no religious discipline, no philosophical system, no intellectual understanding, no ethical solution or... Sri Aurobindo's Yoga is the sadhana of Integral Transformation whereby this body will become the Divine Body and the Divine or Supramental Consciousness will illuminate and take root in this very practical consciousness. The mind of man acts today only within the confines of the unconscious, ignorant world. But as this mind becomes increasingly purified, illuminated and wide so will the cosmic... Page 18 At the very outset there is not much that needs to be changed in life from the outside. First one has to change one's attitude in life and then that takes care of the rest. One has to discover one's inner Truth and then allow it as fully as possible to direct one's whole life. It is not an easy path. At every step there is risk and danger. At every step one's inner ...
... the site of his house, builds it to the best advantage, arranges everything about it in a faultless rhythm. The whole motion of the life of a Japanese is almost Art incarnate. Or take again the example of the British people. The practical, successful life instinct, one might even call it the business instinct, of the Anglo-Saxon races is, in its general diffusion, something that borders... said of India that she was not great, or even, in a way, supreme. From hard practical politics touching our earth, to the nebulous regions of abstract metaphysics, everywhere India expressed the power of her genius equally well. And yet none of these, neither severally nor collectively, constituted her specific genius; none showed the full height to which she could raise herself, none compassed the... creative activities, even in external life, were once upon a time so rich and varied, so stupendous and, full of marvel. Because she was attached and limited to no one Page 160 dominating power of life, she could create infinite forms, so many channels of power for the soul whose realisation was her end and aim. There was no department of life or culture in which it could be said ...
... taste the site of his house, builds it to the best advantage, arranges everything about it in a faultless rhythm. The whole motion of the life of a Japanese is almost Art incarnate. Or take again the example of the British people. The practical, successful life instinct, one might even call it the business instinct, of the Anglo-Saxon races is, in its general diffusion, something that borders on... said of India that she was not great, or even, in a way, supreme. From hard practical politics touching our earth, to the nebulous regions of abstract metaphysics, everywhere India expressed the power of her genius equally well. And yet none of these, neither severally nor collectively, constituted her specific genius; none showed the full height to which she Could raise herself, none compassed the veritable... creative activities, even in external life, were once upon a time so rich and varied, so stupendous and full of marvel. Because she was attached and limited to no one Page 121 dominating power of life, she could create infinite forms, so many channels of power for the soul whose realisation was her end and aim. There was no department of life or culture in which it could be said ...
... to Morisset, whom She never spoke about, though not just to him alone. She already was deeply shocked by this division in a person —all persons—between art and life, between what we are and what we do, between the ideal and practical daily life. The eternal division between Matter and Spirit. For the "spirit" does not begin at a certain altitude; if it is not actually there in the most ordinary and banal... Divine Materialism - I 6: From Art to Matter She was to enter the “artists life” at nineteen by marrying Henri Morisset, a pupil of Gustave Moreau and a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. It seems odd to speak of an “artist’s life” for Her who had so many various lives present in her memory or living before her eyes—now glittering, now brutal, illumined... chisel marble or mold clay, but life, that primary matter without frame or flourish, what is it? All that is like a lovely opaline or lemon yellow foam, or whatever color we sprinkle over something that remains so gray and drab underneath, so petty at heart (Culture? A sort of foam that has been whipped up and floats on the surface, 7 She said), or else life was just a paintbrush or a chisel ...
... and the response from above: it is only in the union of these two that this work can be done. — Man with his mind can determine his conduct in the practical, material life but then the very imperfection of man's earthly life can completely unsettle everything. No political ideology, no religious discipline, no philosophical system, no intellectual understanding, Page 92 ... them and an united effort for improving the quality of life started. Normally, individual life and collective life depend on each other for their betterment. Collectivity creates opportunities for the individuals to grow and to progress. The individuals, by their achievements in various fields of human activities, make the collective life rich and fruitful. It has often been found that an... men tried to find out various solutes. The East approached through inner pursuits and ultimately found out an escape through philosophic and spiritual culture; and Western people, through their practical mind, took the outer approach and ended in materialism. But the problem of man is not solved. Just then, Sri Aurobindo came and told us that nothing will change the fate of man unless he is ...
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