The War behind the War [Adapted in places and slightly enlarged from a reply, during the course of the Second World War, to the recipient of the three preceding letters, this study was first published on the fourth anniversary of the end of that conflict and subsequently reprinted when Totalitarianism was on the rampage from Red China.] Now that Hitler is past history we are liable to forget the true significance of those six years of sweat and tears and blood which were required to beat Nazism to its knees. And, forgetting it, we may fail to see how there can arise new threats which may really be of a piece with the

The Mother SOME GENERAL TRUTHS AND PERSONAL FACTS The One whom we call the Supreme is the utter Unmanifest. The creative Conscious Force of the Supreme is the Divine Mother in Her transcendent poise, Aditi, holding the Truths that have to be manifested out of the absolute Mystery. Through the transcendent Mother and by Her creativity the whole universe has taken birth. And when the Supreme manifests in the world His own personal being, He does it also through Her transcendence. In Her universal aspect She is Mahashakti. All the Gods and Goddesses are of Her making - they are but powers that express Her. There are many powers of the universal Moth

The Supermind's Descent and "The Mind of Light" SOME FACTS, INTERPRETATIONS AND SPECULATIONS Whoever has studied the full circumstances, both inner and outer, of the momentous event that was the passing of Sri Aurobindo from the material scene knows this event to have been, for all its so-called "clinical picture", no inevitable hour of mortality. It reveals itself as an extreme measure freely adopted, for reasons of his own, in significant yet never dominant mortal detail by one who, after having ascended in consciousness to a new and hitherto unmanifested power of the Divine Reality, sought to effect a desc

Linguistic Formations and Usages Connected with the Name "Sri Aurobindo” A LETTER I see that you have adopted the adjectival form "Aurobindian" rather than "Aurobindonian" which I employ. Both can be propped up from Sri Aurobindo himself. On p.109 of Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo (Second Series) we have the Master writing: "I groan in an unAurobindian despair when I hear such things." On p.154 of Life-Literature-Yoga (Revised and Enlarged Edition) we find: "But even if I had no justification from the dictionary and the noun 'empy'rean' were only an Aurobindonian freak and

Doubts and the Life Divine A LETTER OF 1947 I myself have gone through many of your doubts and waverings. I have none of them any more. I may not be able to dispel all your difficulties, but some remarks may be of help to you. You seem to be struggling against three kinds of obstructions. The first is a fundamental uncertainty about the Divine's presence. This uncertainty cannot be removed by reasoning only. I dare say I can intellectually make out some sort of a case for the Divine's presence, but I cannot wholly prove anything. Neither, for that matter, can you wholly prove to me the contrary by mere logic. This should make you see

Is Sri Aurobindo New? A LETTER [This letter was first published in 1947, after being seen by Sri Aurobindo. The essential thesis of it still holds and needs to be underlined. It does not suffer because Sri Aurobindo himself has left his body. Apropos of this act of his on December 5, 1950, the author's booklet, The Passing of Sri Aurobindo: Its Inner Significance and Consequence, which was fully approved by the Mother, may be read. For immediate concentrated light we may refer the reader to the Messages of the Mother soon after December 5 and to the following two given some time later. One is dated 1951: "The lack of receptivity of the earth a

Sri Aurobindo and the Philosophers A LETTER [This letter was addressed to the well-known English author, Paul Brunton, two of whose early books were at one time bestsellers bridging the worlds of popular interest in the occult and of profound thought aspiring to the Unknown. He twice visited the Ashram at Pondicherry and was deeply impressed by Sri Aurobindo and, for all his doctrinal differences, remained a great admirer. He and the writer of this letter struck up a friendship which carried on a correspondence for a number of years. The letter marks a middle stage in the happy exchange of ideas.] The difficulties you have men

The Significance of the English Language in India* India's decision to remain a member of the Commonwealth in spite of being an independent sovereign Republic has given a new lease of life amongst us to the English language. Until recently English was apt to be regarded as the remnant of a foreign imposition, an inappropriate growth in the way of an authentic indigenous literature. Today it seems an appropriate and desirable link between us and the group of English-speaking nations with whom we have formed a voluntary association: it has become the medium of a larger existence in which we have elected to share. This i

Sri Aurobindo and Human Evolution "I have no intention of giving any sanction to a new edition of the old fiasco."¹ These ringing challenging words come from the greatest spiritual figure of modern India: Sri Aurobindo. They were meant to refuse acceptance of what he called "a partial and transient spiritual opening within with no true and radical change in the law of the external nature."² Although originally applied to a particular crisis in a disciple's career, the surmounting of the habitual outer personality with its petty and egoistic ways of thought, feeling, character and action, they can be taken in general to suggest Sri Aurobin

Sri Aurobindo from A to Z A BOOK-REVIEW Dictionary of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. Compiled from the Writings of Sri Aurobindo by M.P.Pandit. Sponsored by C.C. Mulgund. Dipti Publications, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1966. Rs.10.¹ This is a most welcome addition to the various experiments in compiling passages from Sri Aurobindo to serve particular practical ends. What Sri Aurobindo has written on Culture, on Science, on Education, on Yoga - we have had fine anthologies of such matter, the largest and of the greatest interest being on the last-named theme. But these, in spite of helpful headings, cannot immediately