Short Notes (1) THE SENSE OF EARTHLY EVOLUTION Ignorance is usually equated with innocence. A child is ignorant, therefore he is innocent. Although it is said that ignorance of law is no excuse. Spiritually however, ignorance does not mean innocence. Ignorance or unconsciousness or inconscience – different degrees of the same thing – that is to say lack of consciousness, mean, at bottom, falsehood. It is through the ignorance that Maya, the great illusion, was born. Ignorance is false apprehension, it begins with the sense of separation, "I am other than the Divine." That is how Jiva is born in or through the ignorance. The world is separate from the Divine. That is how

On Teachers and Teaching MASTERY means to know how to deal with certain vibrations. If you have the knowledge and can deal with the vibrations, you have the mastery. The best field for such an experience and experiment is yourself. First, you must have mastery over yourself and when you have it, you can transmit its vibrations to others in so far as you are capable of identifying yourself with them. But if you cannot deal with the vibrations in yourself, how can you deal with them in others? You can, by word or by influence, encourage people so that they do what is necessary to master themselves, but you cannot yourself have direct mastery over them. To mast

PART ELEVEN The Opening Scene of "Savitri" "IT was the hour before the Gods awake". Only when the Gods awake, does the light begin to appear on earth. Other­wise it is all night here, black, impenetrable and unfathomable. Indeed the very creation begins with the awakening of the Gods. When the Gods are asleep, it is the non-existence – tamaasit tamasa gudhamagre – 'in the beginning darkness was engulfed in darkness'. This is the asat, non-being, this is the acit, the inconscience, this is the blackest night. The Bible also speaks of a similar darkness – Job's terrible vision: "A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, wi

Transfiguration THE Divine attributes – such as Peace and Joy, Consciousness and Power, Freedom, etc. – each and all of them are self-existent realities, existing by themselves in their fullness and perfection. They are not mere qualities that are acquired by effort through gradual culture and development, they are not acquired piecemeal as other human possessions, material or mental. They are there near us, about us in their fullness and wholeness. We do not see them or seize them as there happens to be a veil in between. We need not strain and struggle, labour and sweat, go through all the pains of the world in order to find them, realise them. It is, as I say, a veil inte

Are Not The Ascetic Means Helpful At Times? I DO not think so. You cure nothing in that way. You give yourself the illusion that you are progressing, but you are really freed of nothing. The proof is that as soon as you stop the practices, the old things come back violently with a vengeance. But naturally all depends upon the meaning you attach to the word. If it means not yielding to your desires, then it is not asceticism, it is common sense, it is good sense. By asceticism people usually understand fasting, bearing biting cold or burning heat, lying on a bed of sharp nails, that is to say, torturing the body in some way or other. Th

Notes on Freedom MAN is born free, – in his spirit, not in his body. The body is bound and all that is there in its frame of reference – the life and even the mind with their multiple movements. The spirit alone is free with all else that is there in its frame of reference. The mind and the life bound normally, because tied to the body-scheme attain the freedom of the spirit when linked to the spirit. The body is bound because it is bound to the ignorant material nature. The body too can attain freedom, the freedom of the spirit, when submitted to the spirit. Freedom is a divine quality; it belongs to the Divine Consciousness. Nothing below that status is free or

Savitri (1) SAVITRI, the poem, the word of Sri Aurobindo is the cosmic Answer to the cosmic Question. And Savitri, the person, the Godhead, the Divine Woman is the Divine's response to the human aspiration. The world is a great question mark. It is a riddle, eternal and ever-recurring. Man has faced the riddle and sought to arrive at a solution since he has been given a mind to seek and interrogate. What is this universe? From where has it come? Whither is it going? What is the purpose of it all? Why is man here? What is the object of his existence? Such is the mode of human aspiration. And Ashwapati in his quest begins to explore the world and see what it is, the

Art and Katharsis ART, we all know, is concerned with the Beautiful; it is no less intimately connected with the True; the Good too is in like manner part and parcel of the æesthetic movement. For, Art not only delights or illumines, it uplifts also to the same degree. Only it must be noted that the uplifting aimed at or effected is not a mere moral or ethical edification – even as the Truth which Art experiences or expresses is not primarily the truth of external facts and figures in the scientific manner, nor the Beauty it envisages or creates the merely pleasant and the pretty.   There is a didactic Art that looks openly and crudely to moral hygiene. And because of this

Being or Becoming and Having AGAIN, in this ceaseless continuity of progression it is indeed not necessary at all to stop a while or somewhere and become something for one's perfection or fulfilment. The normal ideal that is placed before man or which he himself seeks is that he should become something, a definite pattern of some particular achievement, and possess something in the sense of an acquisition. An ordinary man must have an occupation and even an extraordinary man, the saint or the sage, must embody, that is to say, enchain himself in the name and form of a particular realisation – a siddhānta or a siddhi. A man has to be -a soldier, a merchant, a politician or a poet, a philoso

The Nietzschean Antichrist NIETZSCHE as the apostle of force is a name now familiar to all the world. The hero, the warrior who never tamely accepts suffering and submission and defeat under any condition but fights always and fights to conquer – such is the ideal man, according to Nietzsche, – the champion of strength, of greatness, of mightiness. The dominating personality infused with the supreme "will to power" – he is Ubermensch, the Superman. Sentiment does not move the mountains, emotion diffuses itself only in vague aspiration. The motive power, the creative fiat does not dwell in the heart but somewhere higher. The way of the Cross, the path of love and charity and pity does not