CHAPTER SIX krishna “Who doeth the works he hath to do but dependeth not on the fruit of his works, he is the Sannyasin, and he is the Yogin, and not he who lighteth not the daily fire and doeth not the daily ritual. Know, O son of Pandou, that what they have called renunciation is even Yoga, since no man becometh a Yogin if he hath not renounced the imaginations of the Will. Of the sage who has yet to ascend the hill of Yoga, works are the medium, but calm is the medium of him who sitteth already on the hill-tops. For when a man has renounced all the imaginings of the Will and his heart clings not to his works and clings not to the objects of the senses, that is the true Sa

Uma* 0 thou inspired by a far effulgence, Adored of some distant Sun gold-bright, 0 luminous face on the edge of darkness Agleam with strange and viewless light! A spark from thy vision's scintillations Has kindled the earth to passionate dreams, And the gloom of ages sinks defeated By the revel and splendour of thy beams. In this little courtyard Earth thy rivers Have made to bloom heaven's many-rayed flowers, And, throned on thy lion meditation, Thou slayest with a sign the Titan powers. Thou art rapt in unsleeping adoration And a thousand thorn-wounds are forgot; Thy hunger is for the unseizable, And for thee the n

CHAPTER FIVE urjoona “Thou declarest the renunciation of works, O Krishna, and again thou declares! Yoga in works. Which one alone of these twain is the better, this tell me clearly, leaving no doubt behind.” krishna “Renunciation of works, or Yoga in works, both of them make for the soul’s highest welfare, but of these two Yoga in works is distinguished above renunciation of works. Know him for the perpetual Sannyasin, who neither hates nor desires aught, for the mind that rises above the dualities, O strong-armed, is easily and happily released from its bondage. It is children who talk of Sankhya and Yoga as distinct and different, and not the learned; he who cl

ON PRIDE AND HEROISM Lion-Heart The maned lion, first of kingly names, Magnanimous and famed, though worn with age, Wasted with hunger, blunted his keen edge – And low the splendid spirit in him flames, Not therefore will with wretched grass assuage His famished pangs as graze the deer and bull. Rather his dying breath collects desire, Leaping once more from shattered brows to pull Of the great tusked elephants mad with ire His sovereign banquet fierce and masterful. The Way of the Lion The dog with a poor bone is satisfied, Meatless, with bits of fat and sinew greased, Nor is his hunger with such r

Chapter XIII   The Formation of the Nation-Unit — The Three Stages   THE THREE stages of development which have marked the mediaeval and modern evolution of the nation-type may be regarded as the natural process where a new form of unity has to be created out of complex conditions and heterogeneous materials by an external rather than an internal process. The external method tries always to mould the psychological condition of men into changed forms and habits under the pressure of circumstances and institutions rather than by the direct creation of a new psychological condition which would, on the contrary, d

Chapter XX   The Drive towards Economic Centralisation   THE OBJECTIVE organisation of a national unity is not yet complete when it has arrived at the possession of a single central authority and the unity and uniformity of its political, military and strictly administrative functions. There is another side of its organic life, the legislative and its corollary, the judicial function, which is equally important; the exercise of legislative power becomes eventually indeed, although it was not always, the characteristic sign of the sovereign. Logically, one would suppose that the conscious and organised determination of its own rules

Chapter XXIV   The Advent and Progress of the Spiritual Age   IF A subjective age, the last sector of a social cycle, is to find its outlet and fruition in a spiritualised society and the emergence of mankind on a higher evolutionary level, it is not enough that certain ideas favourable to that turn of human life should take hold of the general mind of the race, permeate the ordinary motives of its thought, art, ethics, political ideals, social effort, or even get well into its inner way of thinking and feeling. It is not enough even that the idea of the kingdom of God on earth, a reign of spirituality, freedom and unity, a real and inner

  Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry   A page of the Arya with changes made in the 1930s   The Human Cycle   Publisher's Note to the First Edition   The chapters constituting this book were written under the title "The Psychology of Social Development" from month to month in the philosophical monthly, "Arya", from August 1

Chapter XVII   Religion as the Law of Life   SINCE the infinite, the absolute and transcendent, the universal, the One is the secret summit of existence and to reach the spiritual consciousness and the Divine the ultimate goal and aim of our being and therefore of the whole development of the individual and the collectivity in all its parts and all its activities, reason cannot be the last and highest guide; culture, as it is understood ordinarily, cannot be the directing light or find out the regulating and harmonising principle of all our life and action. For reason stops short of the Divine and only compromises with the problems of life

Chapter XXV   War and the Need of Economic Unity   THE MILITARY necessity, the pressure of war between nations and the need for prevention of war by the assumption of force and authority in the hands of an international body, World-State or Federation or League of Peace, is that which will most directly drive humanity in the end towards some sort of international union. But there is behind it another necessity which is much more powerful in its action on the modern mind, the commercial and industrial, the necessity born of economic interdependence. Commercialism is a modern sociological phenomenon; one might almost say that is the