George Seftris SEFERIS is a poet of sighs. I do not know the cadence, the breath of the original Greek rhythm. But if something of that tone and temper has been carried over into English, what can be more like a heave of sigh than – Stoop down, if you can, to the dark sea, forgetting The sound of a flute played to naked feet That tread your sleep in the other life, the submerged one.¹ It is the Virgilian "tears of things" – lacrimae rerum – the same that moved the muse of the ancient Roman poet, moves the modern Greek poet. Seferis' poetry sobs – explicit or muffled – muttering or murmuring like a refrain – a mantra: Oh the pity

The Democracy of Tomorrow THE great gift of Democracy is that of personal value, the sanctity of the individual. And its great failure is also exactly the failure to discover the true individual, the real person. The earlier stages of human society were chiefly concerned with the development of mankind in die mass. It is a collective growth, a general uplifting that is attempted: the individual has no special independent value of his own. The clan, the tribe, the kula, the order, the caste, or the State, when it came to be formed, were the various collective frames of reference for ascertaining the function and the value of the individual. It is in fulfilling the

Of Some Supreme Mysteries THE Supreme is infinite, therefore He is also finite. To be finite is one of the infinite aspects of the Infinite. Creation is the de-finition of the Infinite. *** All creation is fundamentally an act of self-division. The multiplicity of the divided selves of the Supreme forms the created universe. In and through the unnumbered divided selves, the one undivided Self still stands intact and inviolate. *** With each successive self-division, the Supreme descends into a more concrete form of creation. The Supreme has pulverised himself into the atoms of Matter. Matter is Spirit divided ad infinitum and inf

Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, A Great Man TAGORE is a great poet: he will be remembered as one of the I greatest world-poets. But humanity owes him another – perhaps a greater – debt of gratitude: his name has a higher value, a more significant potency for the future. In an age when Reason was considered as the highest light given to man, Tagore pointed to the Vision of the mystics as always the still greater light; when man was elated with undreamt-of worldly success, puffed up with incomparable material possessions and powers, Tagore's voice rang clear and emphatic in tune with the cry of the ancients: "What shall I do with all this mass of things, if I am n

The Mission of Buddhism BUDDHISM came as a blaze of lightning across the sky of India's tradition; it was almost a fiery writing on the wall, bearing the doom of a world. Buddhism opposed and denied some of the very fundamental principles upon which the old world rested. It was perhaps the greatest iconoclastic movement ever thrown up by the human consciousness. First of all, it denied the tradition itself; it did not recognise the authority and sanctity of the purve pitarah, the ancient fathers, nor their revealed knowledge, the Veda. Buddhism enjoined the priority and supremacy of the individual's own consciousness, own effort and own realisation. Be thou thy own light.

Brahmacharya BRAHMACHARYA means the storage of energy in the body and its sublimation. The energy in view is mainly physicovital energy, the vital energy based upon and imbedded in the physical body. Brahmacharya naturally meant a strict observance of certain rules and regulations involving a strenuous discipline. Brahmacharya was the very basis of education in ancient India: indeed, it was the basic education upon which Indian culture, Indian civilization, Indian life was based and built up. Without it there was no entry into the business of life. Modern education means storage of information, knowledge of things-as much knowledge of as many things as it is possible for the

Goethe A perfect face amid -barbarian faces, A perfect voice of sweet and serious rhyme, Traveller with calm, inimitable paces, Critic with judgment absolute to all time, A complete strength when men were maimed and weak, German obscured the spirit of a Greek. SRI AUROBINDO THE year 1949 has just celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great force of light that was Goethe. We too remember him on the occasion, and will try to present in a few words, as we see it, the fundamental experience, the major Intuition that stirred this human soul, the lesson he brought to mankind. Goethe was a great poet. He showed how a language, perhaps least poeti

Upgrading THE tempo is enhanced. Even so moves Life. The other way is towards Death. The infra-red may be the base, the starting; but the run is towards the ultra-violet. As you advance, you must quicken your steps. The bird flies quicker than the worm can crawl. The daring pilot would shoot rocket-like past the sound-barrier. The body walks slow. The pulse beats swifter: Instincts and desires rush faster still. Thought out-speeds them all. But consciousness ranges supreme. In its superlative sweep it embraces the two eternities, so it seems to stand still. Tadejati tannaijati, the Upanishad says. That is the law of motion. The higher one rises,

Rishi Dirghatama MANY of the Upanishadic rishis are familiar to you. Vedic rishis are perhaps not so. Today I will speak of one of the Vedic rishis. Some names of great Vedic rishis must have reached your ears-Vashishtha, Vishwamitra, Atri, Parasara, Kanwa (I do not know if it is the same Kanwa of whom Kalidasa speaks in his Shakuntala), Madhuchchanda. All of them are seers of mantra, hearers of mantra, creators of mantra; all of them occupy a large place in the Veda. Each one of them has his speciality, each one delivers a mantra that is in its tone, temper and style his own although the subject matter, the substance, the fundamental realisation is everywhere the same. For

Humanism and Humanism A GOOD many European scholars and philosophers have found Indian spirituality and Indian culture, at bottom, lacking in what is called "humanism."¹ So our scholars and philosophers on their side have been at pains to rebut the charge and demonstrate the humanistic element in our tradition. It may be asked however, if such a vindication is at all necessary, or if it is proper to apply a European standard of excellence to things Indian. India may have other measures, other terms of valua­tion. Even if it is proved that humanism as defined and under­stood in the West is an unknown thing in India, yet that need not necessarily be taken as a sign o