I   Evolution : Material - Spiritual - Supramental   Spiritual Evolution   THERE have been times when the seeking for spiritual attainment was, at least in certain civilisations, more intense and widespread than now or rather than it has been in the world in general during the past few centuries. For now the curve seems to be the beginning of a new turn of seeking which takes its start from what was achieved in the past and projects itself towards a greater future. But always, even in the age of the Vedas or in Egypt, the spiritual achievement or the occult knowledge was confined to a few, it was not spread in the whole mass of humanity. The mass of humanity evolves slow

SECTION ONE SYNTHETIC METHOD AND INTEGRAL YOGA The Central Aim   I DO not agree with the view that the world is an illusion, mithya. The Brahman is here as well as in the supracosmic Absolute. The thing to be overcome is the Ignorance which makes us blind and prevents us from realising Brahman in the world as well as beyond it and the true nature of existences. 12-4-1936   The Object of Integral Yoga   THE object of the Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine's sake alone, to b

SECTION FIFTEEN   PURPOSE AND PROCESS OF DEATH & REBIRTH Necessity of Death   DEATH is there because the being in the body is not yet developed enough to go on growing in the same body without the need of change and the body itself is not sufficiently conscious. If the mind and vital and the body itself were more conscious and plastic, death would not be necessary. 3-12-1933   Immortality of the Body   THERE can be no immortality of the body without supramentalisation; the potentiality is there in the Yogic force and Yogis can live for 200 or

SECTION FOURTEEN   AVATARHOOD AND EVOLUTION Connection of Avatarhood with Evolution (1)   AVATARHOOD would have little meaning if it were not connected with the evolution. The Hindu procession of the ten Avatars is itself, as it were, a parable of evolution. First the Fish Avatar, then the amphibious animal between land and water, then the land animal, then the Man-Lion Avatar, bridging man and animal, then man as dwarf, small and undeveloped and physical but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence, then the rajasic, sattwic, n

SECTION EIGHT   LOVE AND BHAKTI ˗ RELATIONSHIPS IN YOGA   1. LOVE AND BHAKTI IN YOGA II. THE TRUE MOVEMENT OF DEVOTION III. HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS IN YOGA I. LOVE AND BHAKTI IN YOGA   Importance of Bhakti in Yoga   IT is a misunderstanding to suppose that I am against Bhakti or against emotional Bhakti —which comes to the same thing, since without emotion there can be no Bhakti. It is rather the fact that in my writings on Yoga I have given Bhakti the highest place. All that I have said at any time which could account for this misunderstanding was

SECTION ELEVEN   DIFFICULTIES OF TRANSFORMATION   I. NECESSITY OF TRANSFORMATION II. THE TRUE WAY OUT OF DIFFICULTIES III. TRANSFORMATION OF THE VITAL  NATURE IV. VAIRAGYA V. REMOVAL OF EGO VI. CONVERSION OF SEX, FOOD AND SLEEP VII. MADNESS IN YOGA I. NECESSITY OF TRANSFORMATION   Insufficiency of Human Life and Need of Transformation—Yogic Tradit

Chapter XXVII   THE PERIL OF THE WORLD-STATE         This then is the extreme possible form of a World-State, the form dreamed of by the socialistic, scientific, humanitarian thinkers who represent the modern mind at its highest point of self-consciousness and are therefore able to detect the trend of its tendencies, though to the half-rationalised mind of the ordinary man whose view does not go beyond the day and its immediate morrow, their speculations may seem to be chimerical and Utopian. In reality they are nothing of the kind; in their essence, not necessarily in their form, they are, as we have seen, not only the logical outcome, but the inevitable practical last end of t

Chapter XXX   THE PRINCIPLE OF FREE CONFEDERATION         The issues of the original Russian idea of a confederation of free self-determining nationalities were greatly complicated by the transitory phenomenon of a revolution which has sought, like the French Revolution before it, to transform immediately and without easy intermediate stages the whole basis not only of government, but of society, and has, moreover, been carried out under pressure of a disastrous war. This double situation led inevitably to an unexampled anarchy and, incidentally, to the forceful domination of an extreme party which represented the ideas of the Revolution in their most uncompromising and violent  fo

Chapter VI   ANCIENT AND MODERN METHODS OF EMPIRE         A clear distinction must be made between two political aggregates which go equally in current language by the name of empire. For there is the homogeneous national and there is the heterogeneous composite empire. In a sense, all empires are composites, at any rate, if we go back to their origins; but in practice there is a difference between the imperial aggregate in which the component elements are not divided from each other by a strong sense of their separate existence in the whole and the imperial aggregate in which this psychological basis of separation is still in vigour. Japan before the absorption of Formosa and Kore

Chapter XII   THE ANCIENT CYCLE OF PRENATIONAL EMPIRE-BUILDING— THE MODERN CYCLE OF NATION-BUILDING         We have seen that the building of the true national unit was a problem of human aggregation left over by the ancient world to the mediaeval. The ancient world started from the tribe, the city-state, the clan, the small regional state —all of them minor units living in the midst of other like units which were similar to them in general type, kin usually in language and most often or very largely in race, marked off at least from other divisions of humanity by a tendency towards a common civilisation and protected in that community with each other and in their diversity from o