VI 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 normal, is human. To preserve yourself, that is to say, your body, is the very first injunction of Nature. That is Nature's primary and fundamental demand. And to preserve one's life one has to take others' life. That is also Nature. But then, it is said, man is meant to rise above Nature, live (even if it means to die) according to a higher law—not the biological

II 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, in what manner, to what extent? Man has been upon earth for the last two million years, they say. From what has happened before him in the course of Nature's evolution, it is legitimate to infer that man too, in his turn, has moved forward in the line towards growth and development. In fact, if we admit that man started life as a savage or jungle-man or ape-ma

IV 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 have gone before us" and so on. Indeed, the tradition in the domain of spiritual discipline seems to have been always to realise once again what has already been realised by others, to rediscover what has already been discovered, to re-establish ancient truths. Others have gone before on the Path, we have only to follow. The

I 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, Matter rising and being transformed into Spirit and man becoming God and Godlike. This is a truth, a fact of creation—giving the whole clue to the riddle of this world— that has not been envisaged at all in the past, or otherwise overlooked and not given the value and importance that it has. Poets and seers, sages and saints along with common men from the very birth of

VII READINGS IN "SAVITRI" (1) A guardian of the unconsoled abyss Inheriting the long agony of the globe, A stone-still figure of high and godlilke 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 to his throne, he waited unappeased The daily oblation of her unwept tears. Book 1 Canto 1. The deepest and the most fundamental mystery of the human consciousness (and in fact of the earth consciousness) is not that there is an unregenerate aboriginal being there as its bed-rock, a being made of the very st

V 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, the will thus exerted does not go in vain. First of all, it declares and asserts the independence and autonomy of the inner man: something within is found and established which is not touched by the environment, which lives by its own authentic truth and reality and is ever contented and happy. It is in reference to such a poise of consciousness t

READINGS IN "SAVITRI" (2) Savitri, the Divine Grace in human form, is upon earth. The Divine Consciousness has abandoned its own supreme transcendental status to enter into the human consciousness and partake of the earthly life: it has taken up a mortal frame, to Jive and dwell here below. Only thus she can transform the lower animal nature into the divine nature, raise man to godhead, make of earth heaven itself. A prodigal of her rich divinity, Her self and all she was she had lent to men, Hoping her greater being to implant That heaven might native grow in mortal soil. But the task is not easy. The flesh is weak: it is inc

THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO (PART IV) NOLINI KANTA GUPTA SRI AUROBINDO LIBRARY MADRAS Publisher : Sri Aurobindo Library 369 Esplanade, George Town Madras All Rights Reserved First Published in 1948 Imprimerie De Sri Aurobindo Ashram Pondichéry

III 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 in mechanical motion visible to the eye: intra-atomic movements that are subtle, invisible, hard to detect even by the most sensitive instruments, possess a tremendous potency, even to unimaginable degrees. Likewise in man, the extent of muscular flexions does not give the measure or potential of his activity. One cannot say that the first-line infantryman