A Preface on National Education   These two chapters appeared in the last two issues of the Arya in 1920 and 1921.   1   THE NECESSITY and unmixed good of universal education has become a fixed dogma to the modern intelligence, a thing held to be beyond dispute by any liberal mind or awakened national conscience, and whether the tenet be or not altogether beyond cavil, it may at any rate be presumed that it answers to a present and imperative need of the intellectual and vital effort of the race. But there is not quite so universal an agreement or common attain

Rajayoga   Man fulfilling himself in the body is given Hathayoga as his means. When he rises above the body, he abandons Hathayoga as a troublesome and inferior process and rises to the Rajayoga, the discipline peculiar to the aeon which man now evolves. The first condition of success in Rajayoga is to rise superior to the dehatmak bodh, the state of perception in which the body is identified with the self. A time comes to the Rajayogin when his body seems not to belong to him or he to have any concern with it. He is not troubled by its troubles or gladdened by its pleasures; it has them to itself and very soon, because he does not give his

Part Four   On Art   Sri Aurobindo wrote these essays in 1909­10. He published all of them except the last in the Karmayogin, a weekly newspaper of which he was the editor and principal writer.     The National Value of Art   I   THERE is a tendency in modern times to depreciate the value of the beautiful and overstress the value of the useful, a tendency curbed in Europe by the imperious insistence of an age-long tradition of culture and generous training of the aesthetic perceptions; but in India, wher

Things Seen in Symbols [2]   What is dhyana? Ordinarily, when a man is absorbed in thought and dead to all that is going on around him, he is supposed to be in dhyana. Or concentration of the whole thought on a single object to the exclusion of every other, is called dhyana. But neither of these ideas corresponds exactly with the whole truth; they represent only particular stages of the process of meditation. Dhyana is a wide term covering a number of processes which rise from ordinary attention to pa samadhi. __________   The distinguishing feature of dhyana is that it puts out

APPENDIX   ALTERNATIVE AND UNUSED PASSAGES AND FRAGMENTS   1   [An early fragment]   Kalidasa does best in more complicated & grandiose metres where his majesty of sound and subtle power of harmony have most opportunity; his treatment of the Anustubh is massive & noble, but compares unfavourably with the inexhaustible flexibility of Valmekie and the nervous ease of Vyasa.   2   [Alternative opening to "The Historical Method"]   Kalidasa   Of Kalidasa the

The Seasons   I   ITS AUTHENTICITY   THE "SEASONS" of Kalidasa is one of those early works of a great poet which are even more interesting to a student of his evolution than his later masterpieces. We see his characteristic gift even in the immature workmanship and uncertain touch and can distinguish the persistent personality in spite of the defective self-expression. Where external record is scanty, this interest is often disturbed by the question of authenticity, and where there is any excuse for the doubt, it has first to be removed. The impulse which leads us to deny authenticity to early and immature work, is natural and almost inevitable.

Hathayoga   The evolution of man has been upwards from the body to the spirit, and there are three stages in his progress. He bases himself upon body, rises through soul and culminates in spirit. And to each stage of his evolution belong certain kinds of sadhana, a particular type of Yoga, a characteristic fulfilment. There was no aeon in man's history, no kalpa, to use the Indian term, in which the Yoga was withheld from man or fulfilment denied to him. But the fulfilment corresponded to his stage of progress, and the Yoga corresponded to the fulfilment. In his earlier development he was realising himself in the body and the divinity of the

Education   Your Highness and Gentlemen, The subject on which I wish to address you this evening, and if you are sufficiently interested and have sufficient patience to pursue the subject farther with me, for perhaps another evening or two, is Education. Some of you may ask yourselves, why this subject rather than another? It is not a new subject but rather quite a threadbare one; you have already heard and read much about it and probably listened to much better lectures on the subject than any I can give you; it has besides been handled by a great many men in high places of auth

Section Two   The Concentric System:   Outer to Inner        Chapter One   The Outer Being and the Inner Being   The Outer and the Inner Being and Consciousness   There are always two different consciousnesses in the human being, one outward in which he ordinarily lives, the other in ward and concealed of which he knows nothing. When one does sadhana, the inner consciousness begins to open and one is able to go inside and have all kinds of experiences there. As the sadhana progresses, one begins to live more and more in this inner being and the outer becomes more and more superficial. At first the

Chapter Three   Morality and Yoga   The Spiritual Life and the Ordinary Life       The spiritual life (adhyatma jivana), the religious life (dharma   jivana) and the ordinary human life of which morality is a part are three quite different things and one must know which one desires and not confuse the three together. The ordinary life is that of the average human consciousness separated from its own true self and from the Divine and led by the common habits of the mind, life and body which are the laws of the Ignorance. The religious life is a movement of the same ignorant human consciousness, turning or trying to turn away from the earth toward