... our own image. The Practical Man —How is that to be done? Professor —By inquiry, by dispassionate, disinterested, calm, judicious, leisurely inquiry. Let us consider everything, accept only when acceptance is thoroughly justified, reject only when we must, and for God's sake let us not rush violently and enthusiastically to premature conclusions! The Practical Man, with levity —Why not establish... half-truths rather than wait for the full truth to dawn on him. Now a half-truth is a few degrees more mischievous than absolute error. It is the devil himself in the disguise of an angel. The Practical Man —But surely, Professor, half-truths are the preparation for whole truths. And mankind must have something to go by. We are not all College Professors who can wait comfortably in our studies for... questioning of everything questionable? It might be styled briefly S.D.D.D.Q.Q.Q. or, still better S.D³Q³, and, I believe, it would revolutionise knowledge. Professor —I have always revered the Practical Man in spite of his gross and numerous limitations. Why not? Let us at least try. Scientist, doubtfully —What would be the conditions of discussion? Professor —Put it like this. We agree to ...
... and no longer merely executive. He begins thus his passage from subjection to mastery. In thus progressing humanity falls apart after its fashion into classes; it divides itself between the practical man and the idealist and makes numerous compromises between the two extremes. In reality the division is artificial; for every man who does anything in the world, works by virtue of an idea and in the... conquer it that we have the great eras which change the world by carrying out the potentialities of several centuries in the action of a few decades. Therefore wherever and whenever the mere practical man abounds and excludes or discourages by his domination the idealist, there is the least work and the least valuable work done in that age or country for humanity; at most some preliminary spade-work... worker limiting himself by patent forces and actual possibilities the idealist who made his work possible seems an idle dreamer Page 114 or a troublesome fanatic; to the idealist the practical man who realises the first steps towards his idea seems a coarse spoiler of the divine work and almost its enemy: for by attaching too much importance to what is immediately possible he removes the ...
... daily the opposite, yet he holds the first opinion obstinately, but if you say "Although God is not seen of men, yet He exists," he turns from you angrily and stalks into his laboratory. The practical man avoids error by refusing to think at all. His method at least cannot be right. It is not right even for the practical uses he prefers exclusively to all others. You see him stumbling into some pit... and stumbles himself into a final success and departs at last, satisfied; leaving behind a name in history and a legacy of falsehood, evil and suffering to unborn generations. The method of the practical man is the shortest and most facile, but the least admirable of all. Truth is an infinitely complex reality and he has the best chance of arriving nearest to it who most recognises but is not daunted ...
... them what the secret Will in it chooses than by a direct and successfully ordered action. Not that the pure empiric, the practical man really succeeds any better by his direct action; for that too is taken by the secret Will in life and turned to quite other ends than the practical man had intended. On the contrary, ideals and idealists are necessary; ideals are the savour and sap of life, idealists the ...
... Thought that emerges is the importance of the stride forward that it makes during these Hours of the Gods in our terrestrial manifestation. There is no greater error than to suppose, as the "practical" man is wont to do, that thought is only a fine flower and ornament of life and that political, economic and personal interests are the important and effective motors of human action. We recognise that... motives, with a more divine instrumentation. Therefore by his very nature he serves the working of a Thought within him even when he is ignorant of it in his surface Page 140 self. The practical man who ignores or despises the deeper life of the Idea, is yet serving that which he ignores or despises. Charlemagne hewing a chaotic Europe into shape with his sword was preparing the reign of the ...
... It was far from my intention. The case I have put is an extreme and highly hypothetical one. My object is to put you on your mettle and induce you to adopt all reasonable precautions. The Practical Man —We can be careful to exclude detectives. Jurist —My dear sir! The very way to invite suspicion. The police would first learn the existence of a society. On inquiry they would find out that ...
... always delights him to play the lordly and generous patron, but he will take good care never to purchase this pleasure by the sacrifice of any substantial interest. For he is above all things a practical man of business. Tears and prayers do not move him, for he finds them [......] and contemptible. Abuse has not any lasting effect on him, for it wounds his self-respect without hurting his interests ...
... world is fixed, the infinite freedom of God which supports and contains that fixity, is an abstraction of no practical moment or no practical potency. Among the many superficial fallacies of the practical man, there is none more superficial or fallacious than the assumption that in face of what has been, it is idle to consider what might have been. The Might Have Been in the past is the material out ...
... the objections he brings against Indian civilisation. When you strip them of their journalistic rhetoric, you find that they amount simply to this natural antagonism of the rationalised vital and practical man against a culture which subordinates reason to a supra-rational spirituality and life and action to a feeling after something which is greater than life and action. Philosophy and religion are the ...
... single principle or limited rule. It is not likely to satisfy the standard either of the individual egoist or of any organised group-mind. It will conform to the demand neither of the positive practical man of the world nor of the formal moralist nor of the patriot nor of the sentimental philanthropist nor of the idealising philosopher. It will proceed by a spontaneous outflowing from the summits in ...
... League of Nations admitted and put into shape, but at every other point the idealist has gone under and the stamp of the politician and diplomat is over this whole new modern machine,—of the mere practical man with his short sight and his rough and ready methods. It is a leaky and ill-balanced ship launched on waters of tempest and chaos without a chart or compass or sailing instructions. Well, but ...
... tion must harmonise with a common self-determination, freedom must move in the frame of unity or towards the realisation of a free unity. And it may readily be conceded to the opportunist, the practical man and all the minds that find a difficulty in looking beyond the circumstances of the past and present, that there are in very many instances great difficulties in the way of applying the principle ...
... are trying to do now.......If you want to work in the village, you must take to a natural profession, go and settle down among the village people and be one of them. When they see that you are a practical man they will begin to trust you. If you go there and work hard for ten or fifteen years you will gain your status and you will be able to do something because they will be prepared to listen to you ...
... Government now. SRI AUROBINDO: But for Nehru's influence, Gandhi would have come to a compromise. PURANI: Rajagopalachari also seems to be in favour of some settlement. SRI AUROBINDO: He is a practical man. PURANI: I don't know how Churchill's offer to France of one nationality will work. Two nations temperamentally so different! SRI AUROBINDO (laughing): Yes, the French will say one thing ...
... are inspired. What kind of poetry am I writing now? Very funny surrealism! There is nothing surrealist nor funny. And funnier still that I should write these poems—a logical, medical, practical man, what? That is your idea of yourself? Queer. June 21, 1937 How did you enjoy the mangoes, Sir? Can't say, as I don't get them till tomorrow. Mother didn't take them, I suppose ...
... circumstances of Italy. He was not a statesman, but he had a more than statesmanlike insight. His plan of a series of petty, local and necessarily abortive insurrections strikes the ordinary practical man as the very negation of commonsense and political wisdom. It seems almost as futile as the idea of some wild brains, if indeed the idea be really cherished, that by random assassinations the ...
... Ghose said of his eldest son, "Beno will be his father in every line of action. Self-sacrificing but limited in his sphere of action." Sri Aurobindo said of his eldest brother: "He is a very practical man, the opposite of poetic, takes more after my father. He is a very nice man and one can easily get on with him. He had fits of miserliness." And he added, "Manmohan and I used to quarrel pretty often ...
... immediate impracticability of its creation or on the many difficulties which would stand in its way; for past experience shows that the argument of impracticability is of very little value. What the practical man of today denies as absurd and impracticable is often enough precisely the thing that future generations set about realising and eventually in some form or other succeed in bringing into effective ...
... present.Of the future the mind can know nothing except in eternally fixed movements, for it has no data. We try to read the future from the past & present and make the most colossal blunders. The practical man of action who follows there his will, his intuition & his instinct, is far more likely to be correct than the scientific reasoner. Moreover, the mind has to rely for its data on the outer senses ...
... at grips. The mystic either detaches himself from life as the other-worldly ascetic or the aloof visionary and therefore cannot help life, or else he brings no better solution or result than the practical man or the man of intellect and reason: by his intervention he rather disturbs the human values, distorts them with his alien and unverifiable light obscure to the human understanding and confuses the ...
... Italy. He was not a statesman but he had a more than statesmanlike insight. His plan of a series of petty, local and necessarily abortive insurrections Page 184 strikes the ordinary practical man as the very negation of common sense and political wisdom. It seems almost as futile as the idea of some wild brains, if indeed the idea be really cherished, that by random assassinations the freedom ...
... nature to supernature, find in their path two great stumbling blocks, on one side, the lower trend of Nature to persist in its past gains which represents itself in the besotted naturalism of the practical man & the worldling and on the other, this grand overshooting of the mark represented not only by the world-fleeing ascetic, who is after all, within his rights, but by the depressing pessimism of the ...
... out that the mystic either detaches himself from life as the other-worldly ascetic or as he aloof visionary and therefore cannot help life, or else he brings no better solution or result than the practical man or the man of intellect and reason. It may even be complained that the mystic by his intervention disturbs the human values, distorts them with his alien and unverifiable light obscure to ...
... about your eldest brother? SRI AUROBINDO: He went up for medicine but couldn't go on. He returned to India and got a job in Coochbehar. Now I hear he has come back to Calcutta. He is a very practical man, the opposite of poetic, and takes more after my father. He is a very nice man and one can easily get on with him. ...
... day. SATYENDRA: Yes, as the conditions change. SRI AUROBINDO: That is supramental. PURANI: Rajagopalachari will be willing to accept Dominion Status, I think. SRI AUROBINDO: He is a practical man. Now they are neither doing civil disobedience nor going to the Ministry. Gandhi knows only his Charkha. The Charkha is going to give Swaraj, non-violence, everything—his wonderful "co-ordination" ...
... remarked to Sri Aurobindo that among all of us Dr. Becharlal profited most from his association with Sri Aurobindo. Coming as a sharp contrast to Dr. Becharlal, Dr. Manilal was in every way a sound practical man. Since he spent most of his time away in Baroda, his personal service had to be limited. Both the doctors had been connected with the Ashram for a long time and Dr. Becharlal had served under Dr ...
... provided him with a small amount of capital, he tried his hand at several business ventures, and achieved considerable success. He had the mind of an innovator and pioneer, and the deft hand of a practical man. He went to the forests of Assam to extract Catechu from Accacia trees; he was one of the first to manufacture it on a large scale. He also manufactured large size reinforced concrete pipes for ...
... Sri Aurobindo : If you want to work in the village, you must take to a natural profession, go and settle down among the village people and be one of them. When they see that you are a practical man they will begin to trust you. If you go there and work hard for ten or fifteen years you will gain your status and you will be able to do something because they will be prepared to listen to ...
... co-operation. European culture has given to the world the practical, dynamic man, the vital man. Life in a society consists of three kinds of activities: ( 1 ) Domestic and social life, ( 2 ) Economic activity as producer and consumer, ( 3 ) Political status and action. In Asia these were regarded as first but not the chief business of man in society. But the main question is : What is... the aim of society ? Does it exist only for satisfying the practical and vitalistic ______________ ³ Human Cycle. Page 59 impulses of man ? Is it for giving comfort and for securing economic and political efficiency of the group life ? Modern collective life organised as the nation has two gods, ( 1 ) Life and (2) Practical Reason organised under the name of Science. But life... external, touching only the economic life of man. I am afraid he oversimplifies the problem. Tracing man's evolution up to now he puts it in three heads: ( 1 )Man Vs. Nature, ( 2 ) Man Vs. Man, ( 3 ) Man divided in his own self, a state of a psychological dichotomy. The first of these, Man Vs. Nature, is only a half truth. Nature is not always antagonistic to man. Tagore is more correct when he says ...
... here we break the barrier of ether. We can break the barrier of gravitation, nowadays; science is taking up the work, it is not as if it was somewhere in the air. Well, in the same way it is practical for man to take up the adventure of the spirit. If he takes up the adventure of the spirit, he can break this barrier of the manifested universe, mental consciousness, intellectual consciousness... the character who is father of Savitri, shows that man's present constitution is only a constitution which is in movement. Is man only a sum total of mind, life and body? Is man only mind plus life plus vital force plus body, physical being? That is the question, and Aswapathy says, no, these are man's instruments, the ones that the soul uses; so if man realizes, on this side of the equation, his inner... to her: "We want to solve the Page 35 problem of man here and if you want man to succeed, kindly send down by your grace your own emanation here." So an emanation is asked for, from the potential universe, from the House of the Spirit, to be sent down to earth so that man may be able to solve his problem. Man is now confined to his mind, life and body, he is very much confined here ...
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