A MASTERPIECE OF DISTORTION AN ANSWER TO A READER'S REQUEST FOR LIGHT ON A CRITICISM OF SRI AUROBINDO AND HIS YOGA The Reader's Letter I am enclosing extracts, translated by me into English, from a Hindi book by an author of some repute in circles appearing to be of spiritual seekers — Rajneesh. I came across it recently and found serious misconceptions about Sri Aurobindo and his work. Would you care to set right such blatant misrepresentations of what the Master was and worked at? The Answer You have sent me a veritable masterpiece of distortion. I wonder how Rajneesh, who claims to have an ins

AN AUROBINDONIAN CHRISTIAN A LETTER Your extremely friendly letter and the enclosed fine-feeling'd articles of Bede Griffiths have been lying in front of me for quite a time. Now at last I have sufficient leisure to give them the lengthy consideration they deserve. Let me at the very start tell you that I remember our meetings in the Ashram with great warmth and also that I have never wavered in my general admiration for Bede Griffiths ever since I came across a pamphlet of his on Hinduism. Recently I went through his Return to the Centre, marking several passages of keen insight which go beyond the conventional and traditipnal in

-024_Sri Aurobindo's supermind.htm SRI AUROBINDO'S SUPERMIND, CAUSAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND "TURIYA" A LETTER The following are my ideas after reading p. 256 of the book you wanted me to consult: Sri Aurobindo's Letters on Yoga, Tome I. In the first letter, after the mention of the external waking consciousness and then the inner subliminal whose movements are felt like things of dream and vision, there is the phrase: "the Superconscient (Supermind, Overmind etc.) is beyond even that range and is to the mind like a deep sleep." All that is above the inner subliminal is here considered "the Superconscient", and Supermind no less than Over-mind and the other "overhead

Aspects of Sri Aurobindo AMAL KIRAN (K.D. SETHNA) The Integral Life Foundation. P.O. Box 239 Waterford CT. 06385 U.S.A. First Published: 1995 Reprint: 2000 (Typeset in 10.5/13 Palatino) © Amal Kiran (K. D.Sethna) Published by The Integral Life Foundation, U.S.A. Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry PRINTED IN INDIA

DR. MAHADEVAN AND SRI AUROBINDO A NOTE ON AN "AIR" NATIONAL BROADCAST ON SEPTEMBER 19, 1972 An appreciation from a mind like Dr. T. M. P. Mahadevan, Director, Centre of Advanced Study in Philosophy, Univer-sity, of Madras, cannot but have value. Similarly any philosophical difficulty felt by such a mind has to be considered. A discussion in philosophy is usually a lengthy affair, for one issue arises out of another. But, within a limited universe of discourse, a few pointed remarks may not be inutile. Dr. Mahadevan has, in passing, mentioned two difficulties for him in Sri Aurobindo's philosophical system. The first

APROPOS OF THE PASSING OF SRI AUROBINDO AN OLD CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN DR. IMMANUEL OLSVANGER AND K. D. SETHNA 1 3, Gaza Road, Jerusalem, Israel, 7-2-52 Dear Mr. Sethna, I acknowledge with many thanks the receipt by airmail of your article "The Mystical and the Misty" in Mother India of January 19, 1952. I have read and reread it several times and was frequently carried away by the exquisite beauty of the language and by the poetry of the thoughts. It is in such poetry that my soul finds temporary repose and rest. But the appeal of this poetry does not depend upon the correctness of the thoughts

-003_Sri Aurobindo's Enlargement of spiritual Metaphysics.htm SRI AUROBINDO'S ENLARGEMENT OF SPIRITUAL METAPHYSICS A LETTER Your little disquisition on Plotinus vis-a-vis Abbe Moncha-nin's article on Sri Aurobindo's philosophy is delightful.1 Especially appealing to me is your statement that according to Plotinus "the original emanation of Nous from the One is not a temporal distinction (Ennead, V. I, 6th section), for they are as intimately conjoined as the Sun and its rays to which these hypostases are compared (Ennead, V. I 6th and 7th sections)." Here we have two points: (1) the One is not only a self-locked stasis but, in spite of its absolute supremacy and without abrogating its

-023_Sri Aurobindo's Supermind and The ancient indian Scripts.htm SRI AUROBINDO'S SUPERMIND AND THE ANCIENT INDIAN SCRIPTURES A LETTER Sri Aurobindo has said that the Vedic Rishis knew the Supermind as "satyam-ritam-brihat" — "the True, the Right, the Vast". In their earliest scripture, the Rigveda, the terms most frequently used in a joint form are "satyam" and "ritam". "Brihat" additionally comes in as applied to one or the other: e.g., "ritam-brihat" (1.75.5). The full Aurobindonian phrase occurs as such only in the Atharvaveda's great hymn to Earth (XII.1.1). According to Sri Aurobindo, the Supermind is also denoted in the Rigveda by the expression "turiya

SRI AUROBINDO AND THE CRIPPS PROPOSALS The end of March and the beginning of April 1942 are memorable for one of the very few interventions of Sri Aurobindo in India's public affairs. World War II was in full swing and Japan had joined hands with Hitler and posed a threat to Burma and even India, both of which were then under British rule. There was considerable discontent in India and a great reluctance to join the war effort of the British Commonwealth. India could not see much difference between German Nazism and British Imperialism. Most people forgot that the latter was the gradually fading remnant of an old turn of the human political m

-011_A Note on sri Aurobindo's SIDDHI.htm A NOTE ON SRI AUROBINDO'S "SIDDHI" It is bound to be surprising to our ears that a little before December 17, 1918 when Mrinalini Devi died, Sri Aurobindo had written to her that he had attained his "Siddhi" ("Goal-Attainment") and that she should come over to Pondicherry and join him in his world-work. Surprising, for two years later, on April 7, 1920 he wrote to his brother Barindra that he was only rising then into the lowest of the three levels of Supermind and trying to draw up into it all the lower activities and that his Siddhi would be complete in the future. Even as late as November 1926, when the Overmind Consciousness descended in