The Story of Dr. Faustus Retold DR. Faust, as you know, you must have seen him on our school stage, was a very learned man. His ambition was to acquire all knowledge, knowledge of all subjects, of all arts and sciences. But he wanted not only to be a doctor of theories but of practice also, not only a learned man but a man of power in addition – not only to know but to control. Universal nature was his field and he sought not only to measure and survey the outside but to probe into her deeper secret mysteries. In those days there was a line of inquiry pursued by savants that was called occultism. The occultist sought to discover the secret and subtle forc

Prayer and Aspiration (1) WHAT you do has an inevitable and absolute consequence. This is a necessary concept at a given moment of the evolutionary process. It is meant to prevent men from becoming completely egoistic or doing what they do in a totally unconscious manner. There are many who are like that, the majority, I suppose; they follow their impulses and do not ask what consequences their actions will have for themselves and for others. It is good then if someone told them with a severe air: "Take care, that has consequences which, last long, very long." There are religions that rose to warn you: "You will pay for that in another life," "If you commit thi

PART TWELVE This Great Earth, Our Mother MAN'S soul is man's inalienable possession. And also it is his exclusive possession. He is the only created being that has a soul. It is, strange to say, an earthly gift and belongs to no other creature either in this world or other worlds and levels of existence. This earth is a miraculous object: it has qualities solely its own. A fundamental quality is that it grows: it is not static, it evolves, that is to say, changes in quality; it sprouts, germinates, brings forth objects and qualities that seem foreign, anomalous to its apparent and external nature. New modes of existence that were not there before appear a

The Ladder of Unconsciousness CONSCIOUSNESS, the normal consciousness we know, has various degrees of potency: its familiar form is the rational consciousness or intellect; then at a higher level, there is the intuitive consciousness and at a still higher level the visionary consciousness, that is, the consciousness that sees the Truth, and at the highest, the objectless consciousness, consciousness in itself or the sachchidananda consciousness. Likewise unconsciousness too has its own various degrees. As consciousness rises up to higher and higher grades of consciousness, so unconsciousness too descends into lower and lower grades of unconsciousness. T

INDEX ADITI, 287 Agnl,189,221,280,327,371 Ahriman, 287 Akbar, 196 Algeria, 141 Amrita, 29 Arjuna, 206, 350 Aryama, 330 Ashram, the, 57, 118-9, 161, 269, 270, 390 Ashwapati, 237-41, 243, 246, 274 Asura, 250, 287, 368 Atris, 372 BEATRICE, 284 Beethoven, 273 Bharati, 189 Bible, the, 121, 305, 345n – Book of Job, 305n – St. John, 345n Borman, 316 Brahma, 256 Brahman, 181-2, 185, 188-9, 193, 205, 290, 299, 339, 368, 385 Brindaban, 385 Britain, 338 Buddha, 52-3, 104-6,182-3,196,221, 225,309,311, 344,349,400 CHINA, 54 Christ, 349, 379, 400 Churchill, 346 Commonwealth, 362 Confucius, 196 Czardom

The World Tragedy SHAKESPEARE in giving expression to a most poignant experience of human life says – we all know the most familiar and famous lines – in a most poignant manner: The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right! – ¹ The poignancy comes not so much from the fact that this is a "naughty world," a cruel world, an unending sea of troubles which you have to brave and bear and fight constantly against: it is not merely that the world is painful and dolorous and even wicked but that it wants to remain so; even if you want to lift it up, out of its maladies, it sinks down back again into its familiar mud, and brings d

Spirits in Trees You told us the other day that there are spirits who remain bound to trees. How are they to get free? WHY should they get free? You told us how the spirits in the trees got freed when someone was kind to them and prayed on their behalf..... Yes, but that was in the story. It was a Christian legend and put in that way to illustrate a lesson. It was to show that if you are wicked you suffer even after death, that it is a virtuous life that saves you from misery. In reality, however, there is no question here of sin and punishment, it is not that spirits get attached to trees in order to be punished. When a person dies, his vital being leaves the

To Melt into the Divine How to melt into the Divine? That is to say, how to get dissolved in the Divine, lose one's ego? FIRST of all, one must wish for it, will for it, aspire for it with perseverance. Every time the ego shows itself, you must give it a blow on the nose, until it receives so much of it that it gets tired and gives up. Generally, however, one does not administer the blow but cherishes the miscreant, justifies its presence. When it shows itself one says, "After all it is right"; although in most cases, one does not even know it is the ego, one takes it for one's self. The first condition then is to consider it essential that one should have

Faith and Progress When one makes an effort, makes a little progress, one gets satisfied and is proud of it. That spoils everything. How to get rid of this fault? IT is because one looks at oneself while doing a thing. It is the habit of constantly observing oneself as one works or lives. Certainly you must observe yourself; but more than that you must be sincere and spontaneous – spontaneous in what you do and not turning towards yourself all the while, judging, criticising, sometimes even severely. That is often as bad as patting oneself with satisfaction. You must be sincere in your aspiration, you need not even know that you are aspiring: you should become t

Sadhana Must be Done in the Body THERE are people who are disgusted with life. They want to go away in the hope that it will be better the next time. But we tell you: It is no use running away from your body, it will not be easier without a body. On the contrary, it will be much more difficult. The body is meant for you to do Yoga. We are upon earth here and it is precisely during the period of our life upon earth that we can make progress. You cannot progress outside the life on earth. The terrestrial life, the material life is essentially the life for progress. It is here that we develop and advance. Outside the earthly life you take rest, or else you r