I OF LOVE AND ASPIRATION THERE is a Light before which all other light is darkness. .     There is a Strength before which all other strength is weakness.     There is a Joy before which all other joy is suffering. *             Forward to the Farthest!             Upward to the Highest!             Downward into the Deepest!     At the farthest awaits a humanity fulfilled and realised,     At the highest broods the Divinity that propels and forges,     At the deepest dwells the Instrument - the Individuality - that obeys and executes.     Be aware of these triple elements, house their triple movements;

X I BOW TO THE MOTHER Those of you who came to the Ashram as children recognised the Mother and called her by that name practically from your birth, that is, from the moment you began to recognise things. We the grown-ups did not have that privilege. It has taken us a long long time to open our eyes and know. We have lost valuable time, almost wasted it. But, as you know, it is never too late to mend and it is possible to recover and even to make amends for lost time; there lies an interesting secret. But as I was saying, you did not have to be told about the Mother, for you have almost been born and brought up in her lap. In our case somebody had t

IX TWO GREAT WARS We have been through two great World Wars in the course of our life in Pondicherry. This was quite an experience. The two Wars were identical in their inner nature and import. From our point of view, they were both of them a battle of the gods and the titans. On one side were the instruments of the gods, on the other of the titans. It is a curious thing, if not altogether strange, that Germany and, to some extent, Russia should have sided with the titans and England and France and America fought on the side of the gods. This is something that happens always in the history of man, this battle of the gods and the titans. Whenever there is a

XII SOVIET GYMNASTS (1) As you know, sometime back—quite a few years now—we had a group of Soviet Gymnasts in our midst. And what a pleasant, perfect performance they gave! Their hammer-and-sickle floating against the wind, the first time they stepped in unison on our sports ground, marching to the tune of the Russian national anthem, surely you must be still remembering that beautiful spectacle. Some of their tricks and techniques we have bodily taken over. A good many of you received training at the hands of these experts. They have been heavily filmed and photographed in action and these pictures you must have seen more than once. I draw you

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OLD LONG SINCE OLD LONG SINCE (1) 1905-1910 In our village and all around, four names of four great personages were being continually talked of. It was the time when Independence, Foreign Rule, Slavery were the cries that used to fill the sky. And the four great names that reached our ears in this connection were Tilak, Bipinchandra Pal, Lajpatrai (Lal-Bal-Pal) and Aurobindo. Of these only one name caught my heart and soul. Just to hear the name—Aurobindo—was enough. All the four persons were pioneers in the service of the country, great leaders of the front rank. Why then did one

XIII MY ATHLETICS There is in the Upanishad a description of the stage in man's life when he becomes so old and decrepit that he cannot walk except on a stick, tvam jīrno dandena vaācasi. At precisely that stage in our life, we in the Ashram received a call to plunge into the activities of our Playground. I was then perhaps the oldest among the inmates, and had long passed the fifty-year limit once set by the ancients for repairing to the forest, pañcāsordhe vanam vrajet; I was in fact in my early sixties. For at least twenty years previous to that, we had been taking it rather easy and were doing very little physical work or exercise. That had been what might b

APPENDIX [Extracts from Suresh Chandra Chakravarti's Reminiscences in Bengali Smriti Katha bearing on Sri Aurobindo's life.] It was about two-thirty in the morning. The date was March 30, 1910. There came a sound of the whistle from the engine. Then the train began to slow down; it became slower and slower and slower, until finally it came to a dead stop after giving a jolt backward and a slight push to the front. It was obvious that there was no such thing as a vacuum brake on this train. I opened the door of my compartment and got down on the platform. This was the railway station at Pondicherry. I feel sure that my readers will wonder with wide-open eyes at th

VII PONDICHERRY (2) I have said that this cemetery that was Pondicherry had been infested by ghosts and goblins. These had a special category known ordinarily as spies. The word "spy" carries with it, as you know, an association of all that is low and disgusting and unspeakable, things of dark import. But did you know that the word is pure Sanskrit? It was spaśa in the old Vedic language. The Vedic Rishi describes Indra as sending out these spaśa to trace the movements of his enemies, the forces of evil that clustered round the god. So, the Vedic gods had their spies, just as the modern British government had theirs, though of course there was bound to be a

DEOGHAR The scene was Deoghar, though not exactly the town itself. About five miles before you reach the town, there is the Jesidih Junction on the main railway line. Nearly a mile from there, close to the railway line there was a house with only a ground floor and quite neat and clean on the whole. All around were open fields—not the green meadows of Bengal but the barren red moorlands of Bihar. Not entirely unpleasant scenery though, for it breathed an atmosphere of purity and peace and silence. A little farther away there stood a larger two-storied mansion, perhaps the comfortable holiday retreat of some rich man. The time was towards the end of 1907 and the beginni