Human Progress CREATION has evolved. That is to say, there has been a growth and unfoldment and progress. From nebulae to humanity the march cannot but be called an advance, a progress, in more senses than one. But the question is about man. Has man advanced, progressed since his advent upon earth ? If so, in what manner, to what extent ? Man has been upon earth for the last two million years, they say. From what has happened before him in the course of Nature's evolution, it is legitimate to infer that man too, in his turn, has moved forward in the line towards growth and development. In fact, if we admit that man started life as a savage or jungle-man or ape-man, and look a

IV SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY In Quest of Reality THIS is, they say, the age of Positivism—no mystic obfuscation, but clear light in the open sun. Let us enquire a little into the nature of this modern illumination. Positivists are those who swear by facts. Facts to them mean naturally facts attested in the end by sense-experience. To a positivist the only question that matters and that needs to be answered and can be answered is whether a thing is or is not physically: other questions are otiose, irrelevant, misleading. So problems of the Good, of the Beautiful, of God are meaningless. When one says this is good, that is bad, well, it is a proposition

Hymn to Darkness HERE is a modern poem in Bengali. It is characteristically modern, though perhaps not quite modernist. It is an invocation to Darkness: That darkness is no more, The darkness in which my heart plunged when you came, It is no more there. Many are the lights now around the heart Arrayed as in a festive illumination. Ceaseless now There is the earth's merry-go-round all the time. But beyond still, Outside Time, the mind, even this mind stands And sends its call to Thee alone. Yes, the Darkness is there no longer; And yet stretching out both the arms My mind yearns to reach the Darkness And itself becomes the Darkness

Mystic Poetry I WOULD like to make a distinction between mystic poetry and spiritual poetry. To equate mysticism and spirituality is not always happy or even correct. Thus, when Tagore sings: Who comes along singing and steering his boat? It seems a face familiar. He goes in full sail, turns nor right nor left; The waves break helplessly at the sides! His face looks familiar....1 it is mysticism, mysticism in excelsis. Even A.E.'s I turn To Thee, invisible, unrumoured, still: White for Thy whiteness all desires bum. Ah, with what longing once again I turn!2 is just on the borderland: it has succeeded i

Nature's Own Yoga I 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 consciousness as a dynam

Prayers and Meditations of the Mother THE Prayers and Meditations -of the Mother. It is Life Divine in song, it is Life Divine set to music—made sweet and lovely, near and dear to us—a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. To some the ideal has appeared aloof and afar, cold and forbidding. The ascent is difficult involving immense pains and tiresome efforts. It is meant for the high-souled ascetic, not for the weak earth-bound mortals. But here in the voice of the Mother we hear not the call for a hazardous climb to the bare cold wind-swept peak of the Himalayas but a warm invitation for a happy trek back to our own hearth and home. The voice of the

II INDIA AND HER SWADHARMA The Spiritual Genius of India WHAT is it that we precisely mean when we say that India is spiritual? For, that is how we are accustomed to express India's special genius-—her backbone, as Vivekananda puts it—the fundamental note of her culture and nature, which distinguishes her from the rest of the world. What then are the distinguishing marks of spirituality? How does a spiritual collectivity live and move—kim asita vrqjeta kim? And do we find its characteristic gait and feature exclusively or even chiefly in India? Was not Europe also in her theocratic and mediaeval ages as . largely spiritual and as fu

Consciousness as Freedom CONSCIOUSNESS is liberty, unconsciousness is slavery. When you are unconscious you are a prey to all kinds of forces and beings outside yourself and over which you have no control. You are a plaything in the hands of any power or influence that seeks to possess you and when you are in such a state it is the undesirable powers that seek and secure hospitality in you. It is only when you become conscious that you begin to react to the outside forces that try to control you or utilise you. In the lower creation it is always a play of divergent forces and the individual being is only a field, a passive field for the play of cosmic or collectiv

The Relative Best WHATEVER happens is for the best—under the circumstances, it must be added, for the best is the resultant of many forces pulling in all directions for and against and sideways. The best means whatever leads to the goal, to the ultimate good, the final reality, the Supreme, the Divine. The universe is so arranged, the divine dispensation acts in such a way that every event, every circumstance, whatever its appearance, always leads to the Supreme Goal. So it is said the way, whatever it is, straight or crooked, always guides you to your final realisation. Only, in the progressive march, the best can always be bettered and must be bettered. In the earli

The New Humanity THE world is in the throes of a new creation and the pangs of that new birth have made mother Earth restless. It is no longer a far-off ideal that our imagination struggles to visualise, nor a prophecy that yet remains to be fulfilled. It is Here and Now. Although we may not know it, the New Man—the divine race of humanity is already among us. It may be in our next neighbour, in our nearest brother, even in myself. Only a thin veil covers it. It marches just behind the line. It waits for an occasion to throw off the veil and place itself in the forefront. We are living in strenuous times in which age-long institutions are going down and new forces rea