THE BASIS OF UNITY I A modern society or people cannot have religion, that is to say, credal religion, as the basis of its organized collective life. It was mediaeval society and people that were organized on that line. Indeed mediaevalism means nothing more—and nothing less—than that. But whatever the need and justification in the past, the principle is an anachronism under modern conditions. It was needed, perhaps, to keep alive a truth which goes into the very roots of human life and its deepest aspiration; and it was needed also for a dynamic application of that truth on a larger scale and in smaller details, on the mass of mankind and in its day to day life. That

NEW WORLD-CONDITIONS It is a trite saying that one must change with the changing times. But how many can really do so or know even how to do so? In politics, as in life generally (politics is a part of life, the " precipitated " part, one may say in chemical language), the principle is well-known, though often in a pejorative sense, as policy or tactics. Anyhow the policy pays: for it is one of the main lines, if not the main line of action along which lies success in the practical field. And precisely he who cannot change, who does not see the necessity of change, although conditions and circumstances have changed, is known as the ideologist, the doctrinaire, the fanatic.

THE WAY TO UNITY Common love, common labour and, above all, as the great French thinker, Ernest Renan,* pointed out, common suffering—that is the cement which welds together the disparate elements of a nation—a nation is not formed otherwise. A nation means peoples differing in race and religion, caste and creed and even language, fused together into a composite but indivisible unit. Not pact nor balancing of interests nor sharing of power and profit can permanently combine and unify connecting *"Dans le passé, un héritage de gloire et de regrets à partager, dans l'avenir un même programme à réaliser; avoir souffert, joui, espéré ensemble, voilà ce qui vaut mieux que de

VANSITTARTISM Germany is considered now, and naturally with great reason, as the arch criminal among nations. Such megalomania, such lust for wanton cruelty, such wild sadism, such abnormal velleities no people, it is said, have ever evinced anywhere on the face of the earth: the manner and the extent of it all are appalling. Hitler is not the malady; removal of the Fuehrer will not cure Germany. The man is only a sign and a symbol. The whole nation is corrupt to the core: it has been inoculated with a virus that cannot be eradicated. The peculiar German character that confronts and bewilders us now, is not a thing of today or even of yesterday; it has been there since Tacitus re

FEDERATED HUMANITY The last great war, out of its bloody welter, threw up a mantra for the human consciousness to contemplate and seize and realise: it was self-determination. The present world-war has likewise cast up a mantra that is complementary. The problem of the unification of the whole human race has engaged the attention of seers and sages, idealists and men of action, since time immemorial; but only recently its demand has become categorically imperative for a solution in the field of practical politics. Viewed from another angle, one can say that it is also a problem Nature has set before herself, has been dealing with through the ages, elaborating and leading to

-005_Sri Aurobindo^s Gita.htm IV SRI AUROBINDO'S GITA THE supreme secret of the Gita, rahasyam uttamam, has presented itself to diverse minds in diverse forms. All these however fall, roughly speaking, into two broad groups of which one may be termed the orthodox school and the other the modern school. The orthodox school as represented, for example, by Shankara or Sridhara, viewed the Gita in the light of the spiritual discipline more or less current in those ages, when the purpose of life was held out to be emancipation from life, whether through desireless work or knowledge or devotion or even a combination of the three. The Modern School, on the other hand, represented by Bankim in Be

I A YOGA OF THE ART OF LIFE (1) WHEN Sri Aurobindo said, "Our Yoga is not for ourselves but for humanity," many heaved a sigh of relief and thought that the great soul was after all not entirely lost to the world, his was hot one more name added to the long list of Sannyasins that India has been producing age after age without much profit either to herself or to the human society (or even perhaps to their own selves). People understood his Yoga to be a modern one, dedicated to the service of humanity. If service to humanity was not the very sum and substance of his spirituality, it was, at least, the fruitful end and consummation. His Yoga was

-004_Sri Aurobindo and His ^School^.htm III SRI AUROBINDO AND HIS ' SCHOOL' ACONSIDERABLE amount of vague misunderstanding and misapprehension seems to exist in the minds of a certain section of our people as to what Sri Aurobindo is doing in his retirement at Pondicherry. On the other hand, a very precise exposition, an exact formula of what he is not doing has been curiously furnished by a well-known patriot in his indictment of what he chooses to call the "Pondicherry School" of contemplation. But he has arrived at this formula by "openly and fearlessly" affirming what does not exist; for the things that Sri Aurobindo is accused of doing are just the things that he is not doing. In the

THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO THE YOGA OF SRI AUROBINDO Part One NOLINI KANTA GUPTA SRI AUROBINDO LIBRARY MADRAS Publishers : Sri Aurobindo Library, 369 Esplanade, George Town, Madras All Rights Reserved First Edition ... 1939 Second Edition ... 1944 Third Edition ... 1950 Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press Pondicherry Printed in India

-003_Nature^s Own Yoga.htm II NATURE'S OWN YOGA (1) Sri Aurobindo's Yoga is in the direct line of Nature's own Yoga. Nature has a Yoga' which she follows unfailingly and inevitably—for it is her innermost law of being. Yoga means, in essence, a change or transformation of consciousness, a heightening and broadening of consciousness which is effected by communion or union or identification with a higher and vaster consciousness. This process of a developing consciousness in Nature is precisely what is known as Evolution. It is the bringing out and fixing of a higher and higher principle of consciousness, hitherto involved and concealed behind the veil, in the earth cons