1 The Quest and Denials A pilgrim of our times, earnest in his quest and scrupulous in his methods, burning with a single aspiration to search for truth and to consecrate himself to the tasks that would flow from that search for the fulfilment of himself and for the eventual fulfilment of the human journey, finds himself arrested by various forms of denial and scepticism that pronounce the message that the present organisation of consciousness is the last limit and that the only course of rationality or reasonableness is to limit himself to the boundaries of that organisation and be content with limited certainties and probabilities and ever crumbling ideals of

6 Another Line of Inquiry: Verifiability of Spiritual Experiences One very helpful idea, which has been suggested, is that, in order to determine as to, in which among various religions lies the right way, is not to compare doctrines but to compare spiritual experiences which lie at the roots of religions. In the history of Indian religion, the effort to compare the nature and contents of underlying spiritual experiences has been very prominent. There are, however, religions which, although founded on spiritual experiences consisting of visions, voices, intuitions, revelations or inspirations of the founders or some rare individuals, explicitly or impli

3 Spirituality and Yoga In the history of human quest, the field of direct spiritual experience has come to be cultivated, both intensively and extensively. This cultivation has come to be explored and practiced systematically in various cultures of the world, and in India, this systematic exploration and practice have been recognized as Yoga, and it has come to be clearly distinguished from religion, occultism and philosophy. Yoga18 is a systematic and methodized pursuit of spirituality and direct spiritual experience. Spirituality, in its distinctiveness, aims at the knowledge and possession of the Spirit, as distinguished from Mind, Life and Matter; it

Alexander Alexander the Great Introduction But Alexander of Macedon and Napoleon Buonaparte were poets on a throne, and the part they played in history was not that of incompetents and weakling. There are times when Nature gifts the poetic temperament with a peculiar grasp of the conditions of action and irresistible tendency to create their poems not in ink and on paper, but in living characters and on the great canvas of the world. Such men become portents and wonders whom posterity admires or hates but can only imperfectly understand. Like Joan of Arc or Mazzini and Garibaldi, they save a dying nation or like Napoleon and Alexander they dominate the wo

Notes Plutarch Plutarch was one of the last classical Greek historians. He was born around AD 46 at Chaeronea in Boetia, and died sometime after AD 120. He was a student in the School of Athens, became a philosopher, and wrote a large number of essays and dialogues on philosophical, scientific and literary subjects (the Moralia). We know that he traveled widely in Egypt and went to Rome. Plutarch wrote his historical works relatively late in life, and his Parallel Lives of eminent Greeks and Romans is probably his best known and most influential work. As he states, his intention in the Lives was to write biography, not history as such, and this is reflected in the cho

Uprising at Opis Alexander left Susa in the spring 324. With his light troops he boarded the fleet of Nearchus and went down towards the sea, with the intention of exploring the Persian Gulf. In the meantime, Hephestion was to lead the main body of the troops to Opis, where Alexander planned to meet him at the beginning of the summer. Opis owed its importance to its geographical situation, which is why Alexander had chosen it to be the centre of his military administration. He had built a gigantic camp which served as a depot, arsenal and war machine storage. Here the young recruits coming from Greece were enrolled; and from here they set off to join their garrison loc

Alexander The Soul of a Conqueror (A portrait of Alexander by Will Durant The intellectual career of Aristotle, after he left his royal pupil, paralleled the military career of Alexander; both lives were expressions of conquest and synthesis. Perhaps it was the philosopher who instilled into the mind of the youth that ardor for unity which gave some grandeur to Alexander's victories; more probably that resolve descended to him from his father's ambitions, and was fused into a passion by his maternal blood. If we would understand Alexander we must always remember that he bore in his veins the drunken vigor of Philip and the barbaric int

Illumination, Heroism and Harmony Preface The task of preparing teaching-learning material for value oriented education is enormous. There is, first, the idea that value-oriented education should be exploratory rather than prescriptive, and that the teaching learning material should provide to the learners a growing experience of exploration. Secondly, it is rightly contended that the proper inspiration to turn to value-orientation is provided by biographies, autobiographical accounts, personal anecdotes, epistles, short poems, stories of humour, stories of human interest, brief passages filled with pregnant meanings, reflective short essays written in well-chise

After Alexanders death We see the greatness of Alexander as a whole, only when we contemplate the effects of his life work on successive periods of history. In the few years of his reign he actually put the ancient world on a new basis. The whole subsequent course of history, the political, the economic and cultural life of after times, cannot be understood apart from the career of Alexander. John Gustav Droysen wrote: "The name of Alexander betokens1 the end of one world epoch, and the beginning of another." (...) Through the unexpected early death of Alexander the leaders of the army present at Babylon were suddenly faced by extreme- ly difficult problems.

Acknowledgements This monograph is part of a series on Value-oriented Education centered on three values: Illumination, Heroism and Harmony. The research, preparation and publication of the monographs that form part of this series are the result of the cooperation of the following members of the research team of the Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research, Auroville: Abha, Alain, Anne, Ashatit, Auralee, Bhavana, Christine, Claude, Deepti, Don, Frederick, Ganga, Jay Singh, Jean-Yves, Jossi, Jyoti Madhok, Kireet Joshi, Krishna, Lala, Lola, Mala, Martin, Mirajyoti, Namrita, Olivier, Pala, Pierre, Serge, Shailaja, Shankaran, Sha